SMERSH, acronym of the Russian phrase ‘Death to Spies’, is primarily known to readers as James Bond’s sinister opponent in Ian Fleming’s novels. Yet SMERSH was a real organization and just as diabolical as its fictional counterpart. No information was available on this organization until the fall of the Soviet Union, and its importance to WWII history is almost completely unknown to scholars and history readers alike. Ostensibly a military counterintelligence organization dedicated to fighting Nazis, SMERSH spent considerable time and effort terrifying its own, including writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was arrested for writing to a fellow officer. Its activities often strayed into the political sphere, exemplified by the arrests of many political leaders and foreign diplomats in Eastern Europe, including the famous rescuer of Hungarian Jews, Raoul Wallenberg, at the end of WWII.
Chapter 1. Soviet Military Counterintelligence: An Overview
Chapter 2. Stalin’s Ruling Mechanism
Chapter 6. On the Verge of the War
Chapter 7. The Scapegoats: Hunting for Generals
Chapter 8. Directorate of Special Departments (UOO)
Chapter 9. At the Moscow Gates
Chapter 11. Alleged New Traitors (Late 1941–Early 1943)
Chapter 12. Special Tasks of the OOs
Chapter 13. German Military Intelligence at the Eastern Front
Chapter 14. Abwehr’s Failures and Successes
Chapter 15. German Intelligence and Occupation
Chapter 16. The Birth of SMERSH
Chapter 19. Against Our Own People
Chapter 20. First Trials of War Criminals
Chapter 21. Crossing the Border
Chapter 22. In the Heart of Europe
Chapter 23. Berlin and Prague Are Taken
Chapter 25. Investigations in Moscow
Chapter 27. In Europe and at Home
Chapter 28. The SMERSH Team in Nuremberg
Epilogue. The Road to the Top: Abakumov Becomes a Minister