In 1955, Crome was repatriated to West Germany, where he continued his service and became Brigadegeneral of the Bundeswehr. He retired in 1961 and died in 1997. As for Field Marshal Witzleben, the Gestapo arrested him on July 21, 1944. On August 7–8, 1944 he was tried along with seven other military plotters. Witzleben was condemned to death and executed.
Interestingly, from 1963 to 1965 Crome’s son Hans-Henning headed Department 85 in the BND, the West German intelligence service. This department was in charge of investigating former war criminals among the BND staff. Crome Jr. collected materials on 146 staff members, 71 of whom—former RSHA officers—resigned because their crimes had been proven. In 2010 he told an interviewer: ‘My work in Department 85 is the only issue that haunts my nightmares after 40 years of my service.’51 He was referring to the crimes committed by those staffers who had resigned. Later Crome made a successful intelligence career while being stationed in New York, Madrid, and Bern.
In May 1945, after the war in Europe, Moscow investigation prisons of both GUKR SMERSH and GUPVI’s Operational Directorate were full of prisoners under investigation, and it took years to close cases and try all prisoners. But the influx of new prisoners from Europe was still coming, and in August, after the war with Japan, it increased enormously.
Notes
1. GKO Order No. 6594, dated September 24, 1944. Quoted in Viktor Cherepanov, Vlast’ i voina. Stalinskii mekhanizm gosudarstvennogo upravleniya v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine (Moscow: Izvestia, 2006), 329 (in Russian).
2. Ibid., 435.
3. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki i dokumenty, edited by V. S. Khristoforov et al., 214–5 (Moscow: Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie, 2003) (in Russian).
4. Document 6 (Indictment of the Austrian composer, Hans Hauska) in ‘Vernite mne svobodu!’ Deyateli literatury i iskusstva Rossii i Germanii—zhertvy stalinskogo terrora, edited by V. F. Kolyazin and V. A. Goncharov, 118–9 (Moscow: Medium, 1997) (in Russian).
5. Vladimir Abarinov, ‘A report of Doctor Smoltsov,’ Novoe vremya, No. 1 (1993), 40–41 (in Russian).
6. A notarized testimony of Count Adelmann about Raoul Wallenberg given to the Swedish authorities on February 6, 1956 (in German) (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).
7. Nikolai Mesyatsev, Gorizonty i labirinty moei zhizni (Moscow: Vagrius, 2005), 141 (in Russian).
8. Page 123 in Dmitrii Dontsov, ‘Stenografistka generala Abakumova,’ in Voennaya kontrrazvedka of ‘Smersha’ do kontrterroristicheskikh operatsii (Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 2010), 112–31 (in Russian).
9. Roger Moorhouse, Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death (New York: Bantam Books, 2006), 236–41.
10. Peter Hoffmann, Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905–1944 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 181.
11. Michael Mueller, Canaris: The Life and Death of Hitler’s Spymaster, translated by Geoffrey Brooks (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007), 224–5.
12. Klemens von Klemperer, German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 374–5.
13. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, The Secret War Against Hitler, translated by Hilda Simon (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1966), 295.
14. Peter Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945, translated from the German by Richard Barry (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1979), 334–5.
15. Boris Chavkin and Aleksandr Kalganov, ‘Neue Quallen zur Geschichte des 20. Juli 1944 aus dem Archiv des Foederalen Sicherheitsdienstes der Russischen Foederation (FSB). “Eigenhaendige Aussagen” von Major i.G. Joachim Kuhn,’ in Forum für osteuropäische Ideen-und Zeitgeschichte, 5. Jahrgang, 2001, Heft 2, 355–402.
16. Kuhn’s statement, dated September 2, 1944. Document No. 1 in ibid., 374–98.
17. Kopelyansky’s Russian translation in Boris Khavkin, ‘Zagovor protiv Gitlera. Iz “Sobstennoruchnykh pokazanii” Kyuna,’ Rodina, no. 6 (2004) (in Russian), http://istrodina.com/rodina_articul.php3?id=1199&n=67, retrieved July 23, 2008.
18. Ibid.
19. Photos of these documents in Peter Hoffmann, ‘Oberst i. G. Hennig von Tresckow und die Staatsstreichpläne im Jahr 1943,’ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 55, No. 2 (2007), 331–64.
20. Khavkin, ‘Zagovor protiv Gitlera.’
21. Peter Hoffmann, ‘Major Joachim Kuhn: Explosives purveyor to Stauffenberg and Stalin’s prisoner,’ German Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (October 2005), 519–46. Unfortunately, this article contains inaccurate details.
22. Kuhn’s letter dated February 15, 1952, in Chavkin und Kalganov, ‘Neue Quellen zur Geschichte,’ 369–70; Hoffmann, ‘Major Joachim Kuhn,’ 537–8.
23. Von Herwarth, Against Two Evils, 261.
24. NKVD Order No. 0308, dated September 19, 1939. Document No. 2–1 Voennoplennye v SSSR 1939–1956. Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Logos, 2000), edited by M. M. Zagorul’ko, 72–74 (in Russian). An overview of the UPVI/GUPVI activity is given in Stefan Karner, Im Archipel GUPVI. Kriegsgefangenschaft in der Internierung in der Sowjetunion. 1941–1956 (Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995).
25. A GUPVI’s report, RGVA, Fond I/p, Opis’ 07e, Delo 136, L. 747.
26. NKVD Order No. 00398, dated March 1, 1943. Document No. 2.12 in Voennoplennye v SSSR, 100–5.
27. NKVD Instruction No. 489, dated October 7, 1943. Document 7.3 in ibid., 729–32.
28. NKVD Order No. 00130, dated September 9, 1944. Document 7.4 in ibid., 732–5.
29. NKVD Order No. 00100, dated February 20, 1945. Document 2.23 in ibid., 122–3.
30. V. M. Berezhkov, Stranitsy diplomaticheskoi istorii (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenoya, 1987), 208 (in Russian).
31. NKVD Order No. 0014, dated January 11, 1945. Document 2.22 in Voennoplennye v SSSR, 120–2.
32. MVD Directive No. 219, dated August 31, 1946. Document 7.6 in ibid., 739.
33. V. A. Vsevolodov, ‘Srok khraneniya—postoyanno!’ Kratkaya istoriya lagerya voennoplennykh i internirovannykh UPVI NKVD-MVD No. 27 (1942–1950 gg.) (Moscow: LOK-motiv, 2003), 53–58 (in Russian).
34. Details in Aleksandr Kolpakidi, Likvidatory KGB. Spetsoperatsii sovetskikh spetssluzhb. 1941–2004 (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2004), 20–25 (in Russian).
35. Yevgenii Zhirnov, ‘Prints skryl svoyu nastoyashchuyu familiyu,’ Kommersant-Vlast’, no. 14 (668), April 10, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=664971, retrieved September 9, 2011.
36. Kruglov’s report to Molotov, dated March 16, 1946. GARF, Fond R-9401, Opis’ 2 (Molotov’s NKVD/MVD Special Folder), Delo 142. L. 56–58.
37. Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1994), 112–5.