GUPVI/SMERSH Cooperation: Secret German Informers
In 1944–46, the Operational Department/Directorate frequently ‘shared’ German informers from Camp No. 27 with Kartashov’s SMERSH/MGB department in Moscow. Paul-Erchard Hille, the former Nazi journalist and member of the editorial board of Hermann Goebbels’s personal paper, Essener National Zeitung, is a good example.44 As his Personal File reveals, Hille was drafted in 1943 and served in the German infantry as a lance corporal. In January 1945, he was taken prisoner in Latvia by the troops of the 3rd Baltic Front, and then held in various POW camps until March 3, 1945 when he was moved to Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison. He must already have been a known informer; otherwise it would have been very unusual for SMERSH investigators to place an NKVD POW with SMERSH prisoners. From March 22 to April 4, Hille shared a cell with Vilmos Langfelder, Raoul Wallenberg’s assistant and driver. Langfelder and Wallenberg arrived in Moscow on February 6, 1945, and from then on, were investigated by Kartashov’s department.
After sharing a cell with Langfelder, Hille was transferred to the NKVD Butyrka Prison, where he had several cell mates. In May 1945, Yakov Schweitzer, one of the main investigators of the GUPVI’s Operational Directorate, interrogated him. Interrogations continued in October of 1945 after Hille’s transfer to Camp No. 27, where Schweitzer and Nikolai Lyutyi, who supervised informers, questioned him.45 Lyutyi’s interrogation or, most probably, beseda (a confidential conversation), points directly to Hille as a cell informer.
In January 1946, Hille was again in Butyrka Prison, where he spent from the end of February to the end of April in Cell 288 with Heinz Linge, former personal valet to Hitler. During this period, the whole Operational Directorate and Amayak Kobulov himself were preoccupied with investigating the circumstances of Hitler’s death. Linge, Baur, and some other witnesses of Hitler’s suicide came under intense interrogation. As Linge recalled in 1956, ‘the subject of these interrogations was mainly the question [of ] whether Hitler was dead or alive… During these interrogations I was always maltreated [i.e., beaten].’46 NKVD investigators held each witness who was interrogated about Hitler’s death in a cell with an informer and, moreover, these cells were bugged. The documents in Hille’s file reveal that while Linge was his cell mate, Schweitzer, who was investigating Linge’s case, interrogated Hille several times. Hille told Schweitzer whatever Linge tried to conceal from the investigators.47 In May 1946, after fulfilling his role as cell spy, Hille was returned to Camp No. 27.
On October 10, 1947, Nikolai Selivanovsky (MGB deputy minister) ordered Kartashov to request Hille’s transfer from Camp No. 27 to his MGB department. For an unknown reason, Amayak Kobulov did not sign the document transferring Hille to Lubyanka until January 30, 1948. In April 1951, the already mentioned officer Boris Solovov finished his interrogations of Hille. On April 14, 1951, the OSO (MGB) sentenced Hille to twenty-five years in prison for spying, and he was sent to Vladimir Prison. In July 1953, not long after Stalin’s death in March that year, Hille was released, and by December 1953 he was among the first POWs repatriated to East Germany.
An Anti-Hitler Plotter in GUPVI’s Hands
The GUPVI and GUKR SMERSH did not generally share information they received from prisoners during investigations. The two organizations sent separate reports to Stalin, Molotov, and other Politburo members, and only the GKO and Politburo members had full information on POWs. Abakumov and Kobulov conducted two separate investigations concerning the circumstances of Hitler’s suicide and presented the Politburo with two lists of potential defendants for trial at Nuremberg. The case of Colonel Hans (Johannes) Crome, former HQ head of the 4th Army Corps, was one of those rare instances in which the NKVD shared information directly with the GRU, NKGB, and SMERSH. On September 19, 1944, Beria signed the following letter:
September 19, 1944
No. 997/b
To: State Committee of Defense,
Comrade STALIN I.V.
SNK [Sovnarkom], Comrade MOLOTOV
CC VKP(b), Comrade MALENKOV
Razvedupr RA, Comrade IL’ICHEV
NKGB USSR, Com.[rade] MERKULOV
GUKR ‘SMERSH’ NKO, Com.[rade] ABAKUMOV
Attached to this letter is the testimony of German POW, Colonel CROME.
Hans CROME, from the family of a Lutheran priest, a professional officer of the Reichswehr, graduate of the German Academy of the General Staff, was taken prisoner near Stalingrad in January 1943, when he was in charge of the headquarters of the 4th Army Corps.
In connection with the information published in the press about the assassination attempt on Hitler, CROME reported that he was a member of an organization of military plotters created in Germany in 1941.
In his testimony CROME reported data of interest on the circumstances of organization of the plotters’ group, on its members and their ideas, and on the group’s goals and activity.
This is correct [a signature of a secretary]
Typed in 7 copies
[in handwriting:]
Sent to Com.[rades] Molotov, Malenkov, Il’ichev on September 22, 1944
Sent to Com.[rades] Merkulov and Abakumov on September 23, 1944.48
In other words, the GUPVI had a higher-level German military plotter than the SMERSH’s prisoner Major Kuhn, about whom Abakumov reported to Stalin four days later. A 28-page Russian translation of Crome’s testimony dated September 2, 1944 was attached to Beria’s letter.
Crome claimed that the military anti-Hitler organization created in 1941 consisted of a central, leading group in Berlin, with branches in the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW), the Army High Command (OKH), the armies at the Eastern Front, and the occupational troops in France. The central group included Colonel General Ludwig Beck, Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Infantry Generals Alexander Falkenhausen and Friedrich Olbricht, and Major General Hans Oster (Canaris’s deputy), along with four civilians: Professor Jens Jessen; Ambassador to Rome Ulrich von Hassell (incorrectly spelled ‘Gasselt’ throughout the document); Oberbürgermeister Carl Goerdeler; and Prussian Staatsminister Johannes Popitz. While these names are now well known, in 1944 the Soviet leaders and heads of security services were possibly hearing about them and about the widespread German military Resistance for the first time.49 The organization’s goal was to arrest Hitler and other Nazi leaders and to try them in court. If Hitler’s arrest was impossible, the plotters were prepared to assassinate him. Crome mentioned Kuhn’s superior General Tresckow as the lead plotter at the Eastern Front.
Two points in Crome’s testimony are most interesting. First, he claimed that Admiral Canaris was one of the leaders of the plot and that the plotters’ meetings took place at his apartment in Berlin, which corresponds with some other data about Canaris.50 Second, according to Crome, the plotters planned coups twice, in December 1941 and autumn 1942 (in fact, it turned out to be more than twice). The first attempt was cancelled, and the second was postponed. In February 1942, RSHA head Reinhard Heydrich made a sudden visit to Paris, after which came the dismissal and discharge from the army of one of the key plotters, Field Marshal von Witzleben (commander of the German Occupational Troops in France), followed by the SD’s intensified oversight of Witzleben’s staff officers. Obviously, Heydrich had information about the plotters’ plans. Crome did not know what happened later because of his transfer to the Stalingrad Front and subsequent capture in February 1943. Unfortunately, no information is available about the reaction of the recipient of Beria’s cover letter and Crome’s testimony.