Cookridge writes that Minishkiy stayed in Moscow for three months, and then Gehlen organized his escape with the help of a Walli I field group that brought him back.56 Later Minishkiy worked in Group II of the FHO. Presumably, he surrendered to the Americans along with the rest of Gehlen’s men and later lived in the United States.
In a number of other cases the FHO was efficient. For instance, it had discovered the existence of SMERSH within three months of its creation.57
In July 1943 the FHO captured a secret manual for SMERSH’s officers. Gehlen wrote in his memoirs that it described ‘how to detect “parachutists, radio operators, saboteurs, and other German espionage agents”. It was translated by Group III, and we modified our tactics and forged documents accordingly.’58 Possibly, this was a copy of the Instruction for Organizing the Search for Enemy Agents that SMERSH headquarters sent to every SMERSH officer in the field. A copy of the translated text was immediately sent to Hitler, who attentively read it from cover to cover.
In comparison, SMERSH was able to summarize information on German intelligence only eight months later. In February 1944 Abakumov reported to Stalin and the GKO on the publication of the Collection of Materials on the German Intelligence Organs Acting at the Soviet–German Front.59
The FHO also conducted the so-called radio games, Funkspiele, both with Abwehr III and alone, by using Soviet defectors or captured Soviet radio operators to pass false information to Soviet intelligence and military command. The FHO considered the radio game conducted by Ivan Yassinsky, a former Soviet military interpreter captured in August 1943, very successful. Supposedly, Yassinsky managed to receive ‘descriptions of Soviet Intelligence schools at Stavropol and Kuibyshev, where SMERSH trained its senior agents’.60
In fact, there was no SMERSH school in Stavropol. If this information was not a Soviet deception, most probably Yassinsky had discovered a military intelligence school in Stavropol-on-Volga (currently Toliatti), a town located near Kuibyshev. In October 1941, the Red Army Military Institute (College) for Foreign Languages that trained military translators and agents was evacuated there from Moscow. Ivan Kruzhko, an attendee of the intelligence courses at this institute, later recalled: ‘We were taught to become specialists in the German language. There were also special subjects like geography, German political economy, as well as military disciplines: martial arts, shooting skills, long marching in full marching order, orienting, interrogation of prisoners and so forth.’61
Secret Field Police (GFP)
In addition to the Abwehr, there was another counterintelligence organization within the Wehrmacht, the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei or GFP). Its task was similar to that of the UOO or the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC)—the safety and support of the operations of the field army, which mainly consisted of discovering espionage in the German Armed Forces.62 The GFP was headed by Field Police Chief of the Armed Forces Wilhelm Krichbaum, a close friend of Heydrich, who reported to the OKW Chief Keitel, while Chief of the Army Police Cuno Schmidt was attached to the OKH and reported to Krichbaum.
In reality, the GFP mainly prevented desertion from the German Army, conducted investigation for military tribunals, and fought against partisans. Typically, the GFP worked as a group of approximately 50 men attached to an army and its field operations were coordinated with the Abwehr department 1c.63 Overall, there were 24 such groups at the Eastern Front. Although in the Wehrmacht, GFP personnel were selected from SS, Gestapo and Kripo (criminal police) men and cooperated with the SS-Einsatzgurppen. Also, field Abwehr III detachments frequently used the GFP for executions. In the occupied territories, the GFP established its own network of local agents.
In 1939, the special Reichssicherhetsdienst (RSD) Gruppe was included in the GFP. It was formed in 1933 as Führerschutzkommando (Führer protection command), Hitler’s personal guards in Bavaria. The RSD members were both SS officers and Wehrmacht servicemen. In 1942, the RSD participated in killing the local Jews before Hitler’s arrival in the Wehrwolf bunker near Vinnitsa.64 Oberführer Johann Rattenhuber headed this security force from March 1933 until May 1, 1945, when, fleeing from Hitler’s bunker after Hitler’s suicide, he was captured by SMERSH.
Notes
1. Thomas, ‘German Intelligence,’ 290.
2. Interrogation of Kauder on July 15, 1946, quoted in Robert W. Stephens, Stalin’s Secret War: Soviet Counterintelligence against the Nazis, 1941–1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 171.
3. Vladimir Makarov and Andrei Tyurin, SMERSH. Gvardiya Stalina (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2009), 258–9 (in Russian).
4. Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, 314.
5. Reinhard Gehlen, The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen, translated by David Irving (New York: World Publishing, 1972), 57–58.
6. MVD Report on the interrogation of K. Geisler, dated April 18, 1947. Document No. 28 in Lubyanka, Stalin i MGB SSSR, mart 1946-mart 1953, edited by V. N. Khaustov, V. P. Naumov and N. S. Plotnikov, 49-51 (Moscow: Materik, 2007) (in Russian).
7. Ibid.
8. Details in Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archive (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 187–203.
9. Vladimir Lotta, ‘Sekretnyi front General’nogo shtaba,’ Krasnaya zvezda, November 2, 2002 (in Russian), http://www.redstar.ru/2002/11/02_11/4_01.html, retrieved September 6, 2011.
10. Page 204 in Silver, ‘Memories of Oberursel.’
11. Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, 316–7; Stephan, Stalin’s Secret War, 168–9.
12. Makarov and Tyurin, SMERSH, 260.
13. Kauder’s testimony quoted in Avraham Ziv-Tal, The Maskirovka of Max and Moritz (Sichron-Ya’acov, Israeclass="underline" Bahur Books, 2007), 222.
14. Kauder’s testimony cited in Ziv-Tal, The Maskirovka, 222–3.
15. Ibid., 223.
16. Doerries, Hitler’s Intelligence Chief, 118–9.
17. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, 199–202.
18. Makarov and Tyurin, SMERSH, 261–81.
19. Ibid., 265–6.
20. Michael Mueller, Canaris: The Life and Death of Hitler’s Spymaster (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007), 213.
21. Makarov and Tyurin, SMERSH, 266.
22. Interrogation of Gerda Filitz on April 30, 1947, in ibid., 267–8.
23. Interogation of Valentina Deutsch on June 25, 1947, in ibid., 264–5.
24. Kauder’s testimony in Ziv-Tal, The Maskirovka, 215–22.
25. Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven, CTL Yale University Press, 1994), 135–40.
26. Ye. V. Popov, ‘Vengerskaya rapsodiya’ GRU (Moscow: Veche, 2010), 95 (in Russian).
27. Dulles’s telegram 1534-38, dated January 2, 1944. Document 2-109 in From Hitler’s Doorsteps: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942-1945, edited by Neal H. Petersen, 190–1 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1996).