Part VII. Toward Berlin

CHAPTER 21

Crossing the Border

In late March 1944, troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts crossed the border with Romania. On May 1, 1944, Stalin explained the Soviet move to the West: ‘Our tasks cannot be restricted by pushing the enemy troops out of our Motherland… We must free our brothers from German enslavement—the Poles, Czechoslovaks, and our allied nations of Western Europe who have been conquered by Hitler’s Germany.’¹

During May 1944, new commanders of the 1st–3rd Ukrainian fronts were appointed and the main members of the Stavka, along with the commanders of every front, were given aliases to use in communications between Moscow and the fronts. Stalin’s alias was ‘Semenov’, Nikolai Bulganin became ‘Balashov’, while Georgii Zhukov was called ‘Zharov’ (Table 21-1). Evidently military leaders became more careful in messages that could potentially be intercepted by the enemy.

The work of SMERSH UKRs of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts and of the 2nd (foreign POWs and Soviet servicemen who had been POWs) and 6th (investigation) GUKR departments significantly increased. SMERSH operatives in the field were searching for members of General Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army (ROA), as well as for any local politicians, activists, and White Russian émigrés who could potentially create problems for the Soviet-controlled regimes Stalin planned to set up. Nicola Sinevirsky, who worked for SMERSH, wrote later that SMERSH’s ‘mission was to wipe out the segment of Europe that still thought differently and did not accept the Soviet system’.²

Romania

On August 30, 1944, troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front took over Ploesti (the oil-rich region of Romania, which was of utmost importance for the Nazi war machine), and then reached Bucharest the next day. The front included a Romanian division formed in the Soviet Union.

A week earlier, on August 23, Romania’s 23-year-old King Mihai I had ordered his guards to arrest the dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu and other leaders of the Romanian fascist regime.³ King Mihai was a great-greatgrandson of the British Queen Victoria by both of his parents; he was also a third cousin of the future Queen Elizabeth II as well. The king’s action was preceded by lengthy secret negotiations with the Western Allies and the Soviets.

Table 21-1. ALIAS NAMES USED FOR SOVIET MILITARY LEADERS IN 1944–45¹

On August 17, the Romanian opposition to Ion Antonescu had signed an armistice, which the King announced to his people on the radio. On August 26, in response to the Romanian ‘betrayal’, the Germans, under Lieutenant General Reiner Stahel’s command, attacked Bucharest. Stahel was one of the Führer’s most loyal and ruthless generals, and on July 27, 1944 Hitler personally awarded him the Iron Cross for successfully bringing out a group of German troops encircled by the Red Army near Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. After this, Hitler appointed Stahel Military Commander of Warsaw and then ordered Stahel’s transfer to Romania during the German suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, which took place between August 1 and October 2, 1944.⁴

The German efforts failed. On September 2, 1944, Minister Manfred von Killinger shot his secretary and himself, just after the Romanians burst into the German Legation.⁵ Colonel Traian Borcescu, former deputy head of the Romanian Special Intelligence Service, recalled in 1994: ‘I ran to stop [Killinger], and I saw him fall right next to his secretary. “Don’t panic,” said Karl Clodius, Germany’s representative for economic affairs in Bucharest, “the captain of a ship never leaves it when it’s sinking.”’⁶ As Timewrote, ‘Fat, scarfaced Dr. Karl Clodius has long been Adolf Hitler’s successful advance man in the Balkans.’⁷ All other members of the legation and most of the German colony (about 350 people) were detained by the Romanian security service in a concentration camp.

During these dramatic events, on September 29, a 21-man team from the Office of Strategic Service (OSS, the American intelligence service during World War II and the CIA’s predecessor), headed by Lieutenant Commander Frank Wisner, was dropped into Bucharest.⁸ Wisner’s code-name was ‘Typhoid’, while the operation was called ‘Bughouse’. Before this, Wisner was stationed at the OSS office in Istanbul and then in Cairo.⁹ With King Mihai’s permission the team immediately organized an evacuation of 1,888 Allied flyers captured by the Germans in Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.

The team sent a huge number of Romanian diplomatic documents to the State Department in Washington.¹⁰ It also acquired about ten thousand dossiers in the buildings of the former Gestapo and German Legation. The reports and letters by SS-Hauptsturmführer Gustav Richter, ‘adviser on the Jewish question’ at the legation, were among the most valuable.¹¹ From 1941–1943, Richter was Eichmann’s representative in Romania, and after that, he served as police attaché at the German Legation—i.e., the SD chief in Romania.

After analyzing all these materials, the OSS counterintelligence branch X-2 identified over 4,000 Axis intelligence officials and agents, over a hundred subversive organizations, and about two hundred commercial firms used as cover for espionage activity.¹² A two-hundred-page file of this data was forwarded to Soviet foreign intelligence. The NKGB handed the American file over to the GRU (military intelligence), but it is unknown whether SMERSH received this information.

Until November, Wisner and his team were the only Americans in Bucharest, and Wisner established contacts with both the Romanian General Staff and Soviet military authorities. The team exchanged some information with the Soviets and even obtained the right to interrogate German military prisoners in Soviet custody. Wisner was on such good terms with the HQ of the 2nd Ukrainian Front that he was offered assistance in setting up an OSS outpost in Budapest.¹³ However, Wisner obviously remembered Bill Donovan’s (OSS head’s) oral instruction ‘to change [the German] targets to Russian intelligence targets in the Balkans’.¹⁴

There were also teams of British intelligence (SOE) agents in Romania. ¹⁵ The cooperation of British intelligence and Soviet foreign intelligence began in Moscow in September 1941, when Lieutenant Colonel Robert Guinness signed the first agreement with the Soviet representative, ‘General Nikolaev’ (who was actually the prominent intelligence operative Colonel Vasilii Zarubin).¹⁶ However, from the beginning the Soviets suspected the British of spying and in October 1945, British specialists discovered Soviet secret listening devices throughout the British Intelligence Mission’s building in Moscow.¹⁷ On December 10, 1944, the Soviet Foreign Commissariat sent a diplomatic note to the British Embassy in Moscow that stated: ‘The presence of the other intelligence groups in addition to those [of SMERSH] that are already in existence does not seem expedient.’¹⁸ From this time onwards, the Soviets pushed all the British and, eventually, the American intelligence teams out of Romania and Bulgaria.

On August 30, 1943 Stalin ordered the troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front to continue on the move, while part of the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front stayed in the city. In Bucharest, the Romanians handed the German diplomats-detainees over to operatives of the UKR SMERSH of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, while the Swedish ambassador, Patrik Reuterswärd, who took over German interests in Romania, ceded the building of the German mission to the Soviet military representatives.¹⁹ Interestingly, in 1943, he offered himself to the German Ambassador Killinger as a go-between in the proposed secret negotiations between the British and German representatives on a separate peace agreement.

Additionally, SMERSH operatives arrested all German military diplomats on September 2, 1944, including General Erik Hansen (head of the mission), Admiral Werner Tillessen (head of the navy mission), and General Alfred Gerstenberg (head of the air force mission) (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com).²⁰ General Stahel was also taken prisoner. Stalin considered the capture of the German military diplomats and generals a great success of the 2nd Ukrainian Front’s high command.²¹ The arrested German diplomats, along with Stahel, were sent to Moscow. This varied group included the above-mentioned Gustav Richter and Willy Roedel, a devoted Nazi and Killinger’s assistant on intelligence matters. Later both became cell mates of the Swede Raoul Wallenberg.

General Karl Spalcke, German military attaché to Romania from 1942 to 1944, was also among those arrested. SMERSH was especially interested in him because in the 1920s–30s, Spalcke was involved in the joint Soviet–German military program and personally knew Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky who was executed in 1937. Spalcke, a specialist in modern Russian history, hated the Nazi Party and despised both Richter and Roedel. Max Braun, Spalcke’s assistant, later told the MGB interrogators:

After Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on Hitler [on July 20, 1944], Killinger cursed Stauffenberg at the meeting of the Legation’s staff. He called Stauffenberg ‘a pig’ and said that he would personally shoot to death any member of the Legation who was involved in Stauffenberg’s affair.

General Spalcke had the courage to tell Killinger, in the presence of members of the Legation, that Stauffenberg is not a pig, but he is a courageous officer of the General Staff who had proven that in a battle…

Killinger and the staff members were stunned by Spalcke’s speech, but Killinger did nothing against Spalcke because Spalcke was not involved in the assassination attempt.²²

Later in March 1945, SMERSH operatives arrested Spalcke’s wife and 13-year old son in East Prussia and took them to Moscow. Until April 1950 they were kept together in a Lefortovo Prison cell. In 1951 they were convicted as ‘socially dangerous elements’ to eight and five years of imprisonment respectively. They were released in December 1953. General Spalcke, who was imprisoned in Vladimir Prison, was released in October 1955. I am happy to report that I found General Spalcke’s son on the internet and contacted him through a German colleague of mine. Despite his terrible experience during his teenage and young adult years, he became a prominent West German diplomat.

There was also Josias von Rantzau, an anti-Nazi (although in 1938 he joined the NSDAP) and a friend of Adam von Trott and Ulrich von Hassell, anti-Hitler resistance members in the German Foreign Ministry.²³ Kurt Welkisch, press attaché of the German legation, was also sent to Moscow. He was a secret Soviet agent of the Red Orchestra network with the alias ‘ABC’.²⁴ Welkisch’s reports to Moscow’s military intelligence HQ during 1940 and 1941 kept Soviet intelligence well informed about the staff of the German Legation in Bucharest.

On September 7, 1944, the last transport of the detained German diplomats arrived in Moscow. It consisted of fifteen people, including Counsel Gerhard Stelzer, who replaced von Killinger for a short time as head of the legation.²⁵ Stelzer was important for SMERSH because in the 1930s, he had served at the German Embassy in Moscow. His wife, Renata, was also arrested and arrived with him at Moscow prison.

A similar Soviet attempt to arrest the Hungarian diplomats failed. Lieutenant General Sergei Shtemenko, head of the operational directorate of the general staff, wrote in his memoirs: ‘There was a signboard on the door of the Hungarian Embassy: “Swedish Embassy.” Later it became known that this protective sign was installed with the approval of the Swedish Ambassador.’²⁶ However, SMERSH operatives managed to arrest Alfons Medyadohy-Schwartz, Hungarian chargé d’affaires (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com).

On August 31, a group of Romanian Communists, who had been keeping in custody the eight high Romanian officials arrested on King Mihai’s order, handed them over to the commanders of the 2nd Ukrainian Front.²⁷ Three days later Marshal Malinovsky, commander of this front, reported to Moscow that the Romanian prisoners had been sent to Moscow via special train.

The group included Ion Antonescu and his wife Maria; Mihai Antonescu, the Romanian foreign minister; General Kristia Pantasi, Defense Minister; General Konstantin Vasiliu, Inspector of Gendarmes; Eugen Kristesku, general director of the Special Information Service; Gheorghe Alexianu, governor of the Romanian-occupied Soviet territory; Radu Lekka, general Commissar on Jewish affairs; and some others. A special team of SMERSH operatives was in charge of guarding the prisoners and bringing them to Lubyanka.²⁸ The prisoners were told that they were being taken to Moscow for negotiations regarding the conditions of the armistice.

This was a lie. All these people were intensively interrogated in the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th GUKR SMERSH departments.²⁹ Abakumov considered Kristesku’s information about British intelligence in Romania so important that he ordered Sergei Kartashov, head of the 2nd GUKR department, to prepare a special report for Stalin.³⁰

Apparently, it was planned to try these Romanians for the atrocities committed by the Romanian troops against Soviet civilians in 1941–43. On October 16, 1941, Romanian troops occupied the city of Odessa in Ukraine. Four days later the building that housed the Romanian military command was blown up and 60 Romanian officers and soldiers died. The explosion was caused by a radio-operated mine left by an NKVD diversion group. In retaliation, Ion Antonescu ordered the execution of 200 hostages for every dead Romanian officer, and 100 hostages for every dead soldier. About 5,000 hostages, mostly Jews, were hanged and shot in the streets of Odessa. Additionally, on October 23–25, approximately 20,000 Jewish men, women and children were burnt alive, and from 5,000 to 10,000 Jews were shot. In Transistria, the area near Odessa, about 250,000 Jews were exterminated in concentration camps during the Romanian occupation.³¹ But SMERSH’s plan for a trial was never implemented.

On April 9, 1946, Ion and Mihai Antonescu and Generals Pantasi and Vasiliu were handed over to the Romanian secret police to stand trial in Bucharest.³² Later Alexianu was also transferred to Romania. These five were sentenced to death along with another eighteen defendants, and they were all accused of betraying the Romanian people on behalf of Nazi Germany, supporting the German invasion of the Soviet Union, murdering political opponents and civilians, and other crimes. Ion and Mihai Antonescu, Vasiliu, and Alexianu were executed on June 1, 1946; for the others, the death sentence was commuted to imprisonment. In December 2006, the Bucharest Court of Appeals overturned Ion Antonescu’s conviction for certain crimes.³³ It decreed that the war against the USSR to free Bessarabia (Moldavia) and northern Bukovina (taken by the Soviets in 1939) was legitimate.

In the meantime, SMERSH operatives continued to arrest high-ranking Romanian and German intelligence officers and numerous Russian émigrés. On November 22, 1944, Abakumov reported to Beria on SMERSH activities in Romania:

On the whole, by November 15 [1944], 794 enemy intelligence and counterintelligence officers were arrested, including:

	Officers of Romanian and German intelligence	47
	Rezidents of Romanian and German intelligence	12
	Agents of German intelligence	180
	Agents of Romanian intelligence and counterintelligence	546
	Agents of Hungarian intelligence	9

Among the arrestees are: BATESATU, Head of the Romanian intelligence center ‘N’ of the 2nd Section of the Romanian General Staff; SERBANESCU, Deputy Head of the Intelligence Center No. 2 of the ‘special information service’ of Romania; a German, STELLER, rezident [head of a spy network] of German intelligence; ZARANU, rezident of the German intelligence organ ‘Abwehrstelle-Vienna’, and others.

The investigation has found that German and Romanian intelligence services actively used White Guardists and members of various anti-Soviet émigré organizations for espionage against the Red Army.

‘SMERSH’ organs have arrested 99 members of such organizations, who have admitted that they spied for the Germans and Romanians.

For instance, the following active White Guardists were arrested in the city of Bucharest: POROKHOVSKY, I. Ye., General Secretary of the Main Ukrainian Military Organization in Europe; KRENKE, V. V., Doctor of Economics; DELVIG, S. N., Lieutenant General of the Czar’s Army.³⁴ They confessed to their contacts with the enemy intelligence services…

I have already reported on all of this to Comrade STALIN.³⁵

The last phrase was a reminder to Beria that although Abakumov was obliged to report to Beria, he, in fact, reported directly to Stalin.

Interestingly, on September 26, 1944 Stalin had already signed a cable to the commanders of both the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian fronts: ‘The Stavka… prohibits the making of arrests in Bulgaria and Romania… From now on, nobody should be arrested without the permission of the Stavka.’³⁶ Therefore, it is possible that Stalin personally approved most of the above-mentioned arrests.

A few months later, an arrested Finn, Unto Parvilahti, met Romanian intelligence officer Theodor Batesatu, who was mentioned by Abakumov, in Lefortovo Prison. Parvilahti wrote in his memoirs: ‘A black patch covered his [Batesatu’s] right eye-socket; the eye was missing and he told me that he himself had shot it away when trying to blow his brains out on capture…“Now they’re going to do the firing,” he said with grim humor.’³⁷

Soviet military leaders also urged the arrest of the Romanian king and his court, but Stalin decided to use Romanian Communists to get rid of the king later. General Shtemenko recalled:

In late August and the beginning of September 1944…while reporting to the Stavka on the military situation, many times A. I. Antonov [first deputy head of the General Staff] and I…suggested taking decisive measures against [i.e., arresting] the king’s court. As usual, the Supreme Commander [Stalin] listened to us attentively, lit his pipe unhurriedly, smoothed out his smoky moustache with the pipe’s mouthpiece, and said approximately the following: ‘The foreign king is not our concern. Our tolerance toward him will be advantageous for our relationships with the Allies. The Romanian people…will make their own decision regarding the real meaning of the monarchy. And it’s reasonable to think that the Romanian Communists… will help their people to understand the situation.’³⁸

In the meantime, on July 6, 1945, Stalin gave the king the highest Soviet military award, the Order of Victory, made of platinum, gold, silver, rubies, and diamonds. The other recipients of this order were fifteen of the highest military leaders of the war; Stalin and Marshals Georgii Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky received it twice.³⁹ Among the five foreign recipients, including the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, King Mihai was the only civilian.⁴⁰

Apparently, while awarding Mihai supposedly for ordering the arrest of Ion Antonescu and his accomplices, Stalin tried to gloss over the fact that on February 27, 1945, Stalin’s watchdog Andrei Vyshinsky, Soviet Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, whom Stalin sent to Bucharest, forced Mihai I to appoint the new government headed by the pro-Soviet Petru Groza as prime minister.

In December 1947, Stalin’s secret plan to get rid of Mihai I was implemented. Backed by orders from Moscow, Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej, general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, forced the king to abdicate. In 2007, King Mihai I recalled: ‘It was blackmail… They said, “If you don’t sign this immediately we are obliged”—why obliged I don’t know—to kill more than 1,000 students that they had in prison.’⁴¹ Outside the palace the king could see soldiers and artillery facing the compound. A few days later he left the country. Only in 1992, after the fall of the Communist regime, did the king visit Romania again.

Bulgaria

On September 7, 1944, the Red Army invaded Bulgaria from Romania. Bulgaria had joined the Axis in 1941, when the Bulgarian King (Tsar) Boris III declared war against England and the United States, but not against the Soviet Union.⁴² His father, Ferdinand I, was the founder of the royal dynasty of Bulgaria and a relative of Queen Victoria, as well as of the French, Belgian, Portuguese, and Mexican royal families. Additionally, Boris III was married to Giovanna di Savoia, daughter of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. During World War II, German Minister Adolf Heinz Beckerle constantly tried to intervene in Bulgaria’s internal affairs.⁴³ Tsar Boris was extremely embarrassed by Beckerle’s efforts, especially because Beckerle was not a professional diplomat, but a policeman.

On August 15, 1943, during the ongoing collapse of Italy (on July 10 the Western Allies landed in Sicily, and the armistice was signed on September 3), Tsar Boris visited Hitler and refused to change Bulgaria’s neutrality toward Russia. Apparently, this was too much for Hitler. Shortly after his return from Berlin Boris III died mysteriously—most probably, poisoned by the Germans. Boris’s son, Simeon II, was only six years old, and his uncle Prince Kyril of Bulgaria, Prime Minister Professor Bogdan Filov, and Lieutenant General Nikola Mihov of the Bulgarian army were appointed regents, while Dobri Bozhilov succeeded Filov as prime minister. All these people were pro-German.

On September 2, 1944, the Soviet Union declared war against Bulgaria and after five and a half hours the Bulgarians called for an armistice. By September 9, the Fatherland Front—a coalition of the Communist Party, the left wing of the Agrarian Union, and a few pro-Soviet politicians who had returned from exile in the Soviet Union—had taken power.⁴⁴ Bulgaria became the first Communist-controlled country outside the Soviet Union, and the Bulgarian population in Sofia enthusiastically welcomed Soviet troops.

The new Bulgarian authorities immediately ordered the arrests of the young tsar’s regents, former ministers of all cabinets from January 1941 to September 1944, and all members of the parliament during that period.⁴⁵ In two days, 160 former politicians on this list were arrested, and their properties were confiscated. Later many of them were executed without trial.⁴⁶

On September 11, Georgi Dimitrov, the famous Bulgarian Communist, ordered from Moscow the creation of ‘people’s courts’ for trying these and other ‘traitors’. At the time Dimitrov headed the Department of International Information of the Central Committee, the Comintern’s successor. Apparently, Stalin wanted to deal with the most important of the arrested former Bulgarian leaders himself because Prince Kyril, former prime ministers Bozhilov and Petru Gabrovski, two other ministers, and three members of parliament were handed over to the UKR SMERSH operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front and were brought to Moscow Lubyanka Prison. In Sofia, Soviet military intelligence also seized the Bulgarian state archive and sent it to Moscow, where most of its documents are still kept at the Military (former Special) Archive.

After a three-month investigation by SMERSH (the details of the interrogations are unknown), Moscow decided that Prince Kyril and other Bulgarian arrestees should be tried in Sofia and not in Moscow, and they were transported back to Bulgaria.⁴⁷ On February 1, 1945, the Bulgarian People’s Court sentenced the three regents, 22 former ministers, 87 members of parliament, and 47 generals and colonels to death as war criminals who had involved Bulgaria in World War II on the German side, and they were executed.⁴⁸

In September 1946, Simeon II, his sister Maria Louise and their mother Queen Giovanna were sent into exile. Tsar Simeon II, who had never abdicated, returned to Bulgaria in 1996, and served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006.

In the meantime, SMERSH operatives hunted Axis diplomats in Bulgaria. Later, in prison, the Italian diplomat Giovanni Ronchi claimed that while immunity for foreigners was one condition of Germany’s capitulation in Sofia, the Soviets immediately violated this agreement.⁴⁹ In accordance with the agreement, members of the Italian and German legations were put on a special train that went from Sofia to Turkey.⁵⁰ The evacuation was organized by a Swedish diplomat, chargé d’affaires Erland Uddgren, and two representatives of the Swedish Red Cross were on board the train, which was flying the Swedish flag. For some time, the train stayed on the Romanian border with Turkey, while the diplomats waited for Turkish visas.

In Moscow, Stalin ordered the train to be found and the diplomats arrested.⁵¹ An operational group of the NKVD rear guard troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front located the train and took a number of diplomats, including 32 Germans and a few Italians, into custody. SMERSH operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front sent a group of important German and Italian diplomats, including Ronchi, to Moscow (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com), but nothing was ever heard of the rest of the people on the train. However, the two Swedish representatives returned to Sofia. SMERSH operatives also arrested members of the Hungarian Legation in Sofia and sent them to Moscow (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com).

In an operation similar to that which had taken place in Bucharest, in early September a six-man OSS team arrived in Sofia.⁵² It organized the evacuation of 335 airmen, mostly Americans, by train to Turkey. This train had better success than the one with German and Italian diplomats on board, and on September 10, it reached Istanbul. On September 26, the American and British intelligence missions left Sofia after Soviet military authorities threatened to arrest them.

SMERSH unleashed mass arrests of Russian émigrés. The Soviets were well informed about White Guard military organizations in Bulgaria. Nikolai Abramov, a son of General Fyodor Abramov, the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS, a Russian émigré military organization) leader in Bulgaria, for many years was an OGPU/NKVD agent. From 1931 to 1937, he sent detailed reports to Moscow about the ROVS’ activity in Bulgaria.⁵³

In Sofia, SMERSH operatives arrested two former commanders of the White armies, Lieutenant General Nikolai Bredov and Colonel V. P. Kon’kov.⁵⁴ The latter was also a commander of the Russian Corps that fought alongside the Germans. Another arrested officer, B. P. Aleksandrov, for years headed special courses at a school in Bulgaria that trained White Russian terrorists who were then sent to the Soviet Union.⁵⁵ This and similar schools in Prague and Paris maintained contact with the intelligence services in many countries. Aleksandrov was in touch with Finnish intelligence, and SMERSH investigators accused him of having been a Finnish spy. Several arrested émigrés were shot—for instance, Dmitrii Zavzhalov, editor of the newspaper Za Rossiyu [For Russia].⁵⁶But most of them were sent to Moscow, and their fate is unknown. As for Kon’kov, he survived a long-term sentence in the labor camps, and returned to Bulgaria after Stalin’s death.

Slovakia

Simultaneously with the events in Romania and Bulgaria, on August 29, 1944, Slovak Defense Minister Ferdinand Čatloš (pronounced Chatlosh) announced on the radio that German troops had occupied Slovakia, and the Slovak National Uprising under the command of General Jan Golian, and then General Rudolf Viest, began.⁵⁷ Besides the Slovak troops (about 60,000 men), partisan detachments under the leadership of Soviet commanders were parachuted to Slovakia via an airlift called the ‘Main Land—Uprising Slovakia’. About 1,500 Soviet military planes carried Czechoslovak paratroopers, military equipment and supplies from Soviet territory to the insurgent area.⁵⁸ Partisan detachments also included the escaped French and Ukrainian POWs, as well as groups of British SOE and American OSS operatives.⁵⁹ From September 7, 1944 to February 18, 1945 a Soviet military mission headed by Major Ivan Skripka and a small British–American military mission headed by the British Major John Segmer and American Captain James Holt Green operated at the HQ of the insurgents.

A number of events preceded the uprising. At the end of 1943, General Čatloš ordered two strong divisions to be stationed in the area where he expected the Red Army would enter Slovakia. His plan was to help the Red Army, but he wanted to maintain Slovakian independence. At the beginning of August 1944, Čatloš sent a courier, Karol Šmidke (pronounced Shmidke), a pro-Communist leader who was well known in Moscow, to inform the Red Army high command of his plan.⁶⁰ But Šmidke also brought plans of other Slovak political factions, and Moscow refused to deal with Čatloš. Possibly, the Soviets considered him a German collaborator because during the first two weeks of the German invasion in June 1941, Čatloš commanded the Slovak Expeditionary Army Group within the German troops. After the uprising started, Stalin refused to permit the British and Americans to significantly assist the insurgents.⁶¹

Due to bad coordination of efforts and failures of the troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front at the Polish–Slovak border, by October 27 the German troops and the Slovak units that remained loyal to the pro-German Slovak fascist President Jozef Tiso had defeated the insurgents. Generals Viest and Golian were captured by the Germans and were later executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, while General Čatloš, who deserted to the partisans on September 2, ended up in SMERSH’s hands together with General Jozef Turanec (pronounced Turanets), who succeeded Čatloš as Slovak Defense Minister after the escape of the latter. Both generals were brought to Moscow and, apparently, were kept in secrecy because SMERSH investigators ordered Jan Loyda, a German POW who was put with Čatloš (and later with Raoul Wallenberg and his cell mate Willy Roedel) obviously as a cell spy, not to tell anybody that he had been his cell mate.⁶²

In January 1947, Čatloš and Turanec were brought back to Prague to testify during the trial of Jozef Tiso, who was sentenced to death on April 15, 1947.⁶³ In December of the same year, Čatloš was tried and sentenced to five years in prison, but the next year he was released. Turanec, who in 1941–42 commanded the Slovak Motorized Division in Soviet territory, was sentenced to death. His death sentence was commuted to a 30-year imprisonment, and in 1957 he died in Leopoldov Prison, where convicted functionaries of the Tiso regime were incarcerated.⁶⁴

One more Slovak officer, Captain František Urban (who during the uprising fought in the Aleksandr Nevsky partisan detachment under the command of a Red Army officer, V. A. Stepanov), was ordered to come to Moscow and join the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps formed in the Soviet Union and commanded by General Ludvik Svoboda, a personal friend of Marshal Ivan Konev.⁶⁵ On September 25, 1944, Captain Urban arrived in Moscow and was immediately arrested. In Lubyanka Prison he shared a cell with the Finn Unto Parvilahti.⁶⁶ After a two-year SMERSH investigation, the OSO sentenced him to five years in labor camps, allegedly for treason and collaboration with the Germans. In 1951, he was released to the Czechoslovak military authorities and returned to Slovakia.

Yugoslavia

By October 20, 1944, the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, assisted by partisans of the Yugoslavian Communist leader, Josip Broz Tito, had liberated a considerable part of Yugoslavia, including its capital Belgrade. With the assistance of Yugoslav Communists, SMERSH operatives began making arrests.

In early October, Yugoslav partisans arrested the Russian émigré Mikhail Georgievsky and handed him over to SMERSH. Georgievsky, a professor of ancient languages, was the main ideologist and general secretary of the emigrant anti-Soviet organization, the National Alliance of the New Generation (NSNP) established in 1930 and known since 1936 as the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS).⁶⁷ The goal of the NSNP/NTS was to organize a revolution in Russia, and for years the NTS sent its agents into the Soviet Union to establish contacts and collect information on the political situation inside the country.

In 1941, Georgievsky’s plans to move to England were thwarted by the rapid German occupation of Yugoslavia. He refused to serve the Germans, and the Gestapo arrested him in the summer of 1944 along with a great many other NTS members. In Moscow, Georgievsky, after being held in investigation prisons until the autumn of 1950, was finally sentenced to death and executed on September 12, 1950.⁶⁸

On December 24, 1944, in the town of Novi Sad, UKR operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front arrested another influential emigrant, 66-year-old Vasilii Shulgin. Shulgin was a Russian monarchist leader who had been a well-known political figure before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.⁶⁹On March 2, 1917, he accepted the abdication of Nicholas II. During the Civil War, Shulgin actively participated in the White Russian movement, escaping to Romania in 1920, and later living in Bulgaria, Germany, France, and Yugoslavia. In 1925–26, Shulgin secretly visited the Soviet Union, later describing the trip in his 1927 book, Three Capitals, published in Berlin. He wrote sympathetically about Soviet Russia. In fact, the ‘secret’ trip was organized by the OGPU, using the old enemy for propaganda purposes. However, during his time in Yugoslavia Shulgin did not participate in politics. A group of SMERSH arrestees that included Shulgin was sent to Moscow by plane. This was the first flight in Shulgin’s life. On January 30, 1945 Shulgin was brought to Lubyanka Prison.⁷⁰

A nineteen-year-old officer, Pavel Kutepov, was arrested in Panchevo, a town near Belgrade. His father, Major General Aleksandr Kutepov, head of ROVS from 1928 to 1930, was kidnapped on January 26, 1930, by an OGPU terrorist group in Paris headed by Yakov Serebryansky.⁷¹General Kutepov died after his kidnappers injected him with morphine. In the eyes of the Soviet secret services Pavel Kutepov was guilty merely for having such a father. The SMERSH interrogators decided that Pavel intended to kill Stalin. In June 1945, Abakumov reported to Stalin:

KUTEPOV testified that having been born in emigration, he was raised in an atmosphere of hatred of the Soviet Union and, being on good terms with the terrorist [Boris] KOVERDA, a murderer of the Soviet Envoy [Pyotr] VOIKOV [in Warsaw in 1927], he decided to follow [Koverda’s] example and to commit a terrorist act against Comrade Stalin[Stalin’s name was inserted in handwriting in the original].⁷²

To do this, beginning in 1941 KUTEPOV sought a way to enter the USSR. For this purpose, he tried to join the German intelligence in order to be sent to the Soviet Union. When this failed, he decided to change sides and go to the Red Army to obtain the trust of the organs [i.e., secret services] and thus get to Moscow.

Following this plan, KUTEPOV stayed near Belgrade after the Germans were pushed out of Yugoslavia. Here he was arrested. The interrogation of Kutepov continues.

ABAKUMOV.⁷³

In fact, Pavel Kutepov, a cadet at the Russian Military Cadet Corps in the town of Belaya Tserkov, was a member of a pro-Soviet underground organization in this émigré corps.⁷⁴ Oddly, he was convinced that his father had not been kidnapped, but had secretly gone to the Soviet Union on Stalin’s invitation. After the Soviet troops took over Yugoslavia, and before his arrest, Kutepov Jr. worked as a translator for the Red Army. This work was no doubt what Abakumov meant by ‘he decided to change sides and go to the Red Army to obtain the trust of the organs’.

Apparently, SMERSH/MGB investigators failed to prove Kutepov’s alleged intention to kill Stalin, because in 1947 he was sentenced to 20 and not 25 years in prison (that year, the death sentence was replaced by a 25-year imprisonment). After conviction, as of July 25, 1947, Shulgin and Pavel Kutepov were being held in Vladimir Prison, and both survived the imprisonment.⁷⁵

Back in March of 1945, Abakumov had reported to Beria that in all, SMERSH operatives had arrested 169 leaders and active members of anti-Soviet emigrant organizations in Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.⁷⁶

Hungary

After Yugoslavia, the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front marched into Hungary, where the 2nd Ukrainian Front had already begun encircling Budapest. Although the details are unknown, at the time Abakumov was already involved in Hungarian affairs. On September 23, 1944, a Hungarian delegation headed by Baron Ede Atzel crossed the front line and was captured by SMERSH operatives of the 4th Ukrainian Front.⁷⁷ The delegation represented the underground Hungarian Independent Movement and included Joseph Dudas, one of the Hungarian Communist leaders. The Hungarians wanted to discuss the possibility of an armistice.⁷⁸

The delegation was sent to the military intelligence (RU) HQ in Moscow, where it met with General Fyodor Kuznetsov, head of the RU. Then, on Abakumov’s demand, the Hungarians were moved to the GUKR SMERSH and, apparently, interrogations followed. On September 29, the Hungarians were sent back to the 4th Ukrainian Front, and two of them were wounded while crossing the front line. It remains unclear why Abakumov wanted to control the Hungarian negotiators.

Abakumov’s personal representative also tried to take control of the second (now official) delegation of the Hungarian government, headed by General Gabor Faragho, which crossed the front line on September 28 at the location of the 1st Ukrainian Front. Kuznetsov, acting on Stalin’s order, took control of the delegates and brought them to Moscow.

On December 8, 1944, SMERSH operatives of the 2nd Ukrainian Front arrested Gerrit van der Waals (a Dutch lieutenant, who, after having been taken prisoner by the Germans, escaped and worked for British Intelligence SOE in Budapest), and Karl (Karoly) Schandl, a young Hungarian lawyer and a member of an underground resistance organization who accompanied van der Waals.⁷⁹ Van der Waals had important military information for British Intelligence SOE and planned to cross the Soviet front line in order to reach his intelligence contact. On December 6, van der Waals and Schandl naively reported to the Soviet troops who had just arrived, and they were taken into custody. As Schandl stated later, on December 12 they were interrogated separately and the interrogator ‘asked why they had helped the British and the Americans in Budapest and not the Russians’.⁸⁰ On January 2, 1945, van der Waals and Schandl were taken to Bucharest, and two weeks later they arrived in Moscow by way of Kiev. They were put under the jurisdiction of the 2nd GUKR SMERSH Department.

Van der Waals and Schandl became victims of the Allies’ general misunderstanding of the Soviet attitude toward agents of the Allies. Nicola Sinevirsky described what a SMERSH officer told him in Prague in May 1945: ‘It is quite evident that British Intelligence is slipping,’ he said. ‘I am really amazed at the British… They instruct their agents very badly. Any agent, regardless of whom he works for, must remember, and remember well all his life, that he dare not, at any time or anywhere, disclose the fact that he is an agent… The answer is obvious. Death to Spies.’⁸¹ In other words, SMERSH arrested everyone who declared himself to be a British agent.

On December 24, 1944, fighting began inside Budapest while SMERSH operatives continued making arrests. On January 23, 1945, a UKR official of the 2nd Ukrainian Front reported on the arrests between January 1 and January 20, 1945:

On the whole, 48 [agents] were arrested. Of them:

Agents of German intelligence	39
Agents of Hungarian intelligence	7
Agents of German Counterintel.[ligence]organs	2
[…]
In addition, during this period five officials of the Hungarian intelligence service and three representatives of the diplomatic corps were detained. This number includes:
Employees of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest	2
Employees of the Hungarian Consulate in Romania	1
According to their nationalities, they are:
Hungarians	6
Swedes	1
Slovak	1.82

The Swede was the well-known Raoul Wallenberg, while the Slovak was the diplomat Jan Spišjak (pronounced Spishak).

Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman trained as an architect, arrived in Budapest on July 9, 1944 as Secretary to the Swedish Legation.⁸³ In this capacity he represented the Utrikesdepartementet (UD), the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, as well as the War Refugee Board, an American governmental organization established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944. That board was a U.S. executive agency created to aid civilian victims of the Nazi and Axis powers, especially the European Jews.⁸⁴Hungary was the last country in Europe where a considerable population of approximately 250,000 Jews still existed, mostly in Budapest. Although on July 6 Admiral Miklos Horthy, the Hungarian regent (really a dictator), ordered the suspension of deportations of the Jews under German supervision to extermination camps in Poland, it was only a matter of time until the deportations resumed. During a short period Wallenberg organized measures that eventually saved the lives of thousands of Budapest Jews, including the printing and distribution of Schutzpasses, protective passports recognized by both the Hungarians and the Germans.

Wallenberg’s work was facilitated by the fact that he belonged to an extremely powerful family in Sweden. His elder second cousins, the brothers Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg, owned an enormous financial and industrial empire, and were also on familiar terms with the Swedish government. While staying in Budapest, Raoul used the brothers’ Stockholms Enskilda Bank as a conduit for funding for his humanitarian work.

However, there was also a negative aspect of this blood relationship. During the whole war, the Svenska Kullagerfabriken AB, a ball-bearing factory that was the main enterprise of the Wallenberg brothers, supplied mostly Germany, but also England and the Soviet Union, with ball bearings that were crucial for the military industry. Because of their continuing supplying of Germany, the relationship of the brothers with the U.S. and England became extremely tense in 1943–44, and this had consequences for the brothers after the war.

As for Jan Spišjak, no doubt he was unpleasantly surprised by the detention. Although he represented the government of the Axis country, before the war, from 1940 to 1941, he had provided Soviet diplomats in Budapest with important intelligence information, and could expect better treatment at the hands of Soviet counterintelligence.⁸⁵

At first Wallenberg and Spišjak were ‘detained and guarded’, but not arrested.⁸⁶ A Soviet military report stated that on January 13, 1945, Wallenberg, along with Vilmos Langfelder, an engineer who was Wallenberg’s driver, approached the soldiers of the 7th Guard Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front fighting in Pest. Wallenberg ‘refused to go to the rear because, as he said, he was responsible for about 7,000 Jewish citizens in the eastern part [Budapest consists of the western part Buda and eastern part Pest divided by the Danube River] of the city’.⁸⁷ Wallenberg asked to meet with high-level Soviet commanders and to send a telegram to Stockholm to inform the Foreign Office of his whereabouts. The head of the Political Department of the 151st Rifle Division reported Wallenberg’s detention to his superior, and the head of the Political Department of the 7th Guard Army issued an order ‘to forbid Raoul Wallenberg to have contacts with the outside world’.⁸⁸ Later Langfelder told his cell mate in Lubyanka Prison in Moscow that Wallenberg had never reached Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, with whom he intended to discuss the 7,000 Jewish survivors in Budapest he was responsible for.

Colonel General Matvei Zakharov, head of HQ of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, reported Wallenberg’s detention to Nikolai Bulganin, Stalin’s new deputy.⁸⁹ From the end of 1944, military commanders reported to Stalin through Bulganin. However, Abakumov still reported directly to Stalin and SMERSH issues, such as the question of Wallenberg’s arrest, were decided by Stalin himself.

On January 17, 1945, Bulganin answered Zakharov: ‘Raoul Wallenberg should be arrested and brought to Moscow. The necessary orders have been given to counterintelligence “SMERSH.”’⁹⁰ On January 19, Wallenberg and Langfelder were arrested.⁹¹ Persons like Wallenberg and Langfelder, arrested without arrest warrants and detained, were called the spetskontingent or special contingent.

On January 22, Nikolai Korolev, head of the UKR of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, sent a list of addresses of embassies in Budapest to the head of the SMERSH operational group with a footnote stating that the list was ‘based on data in the Reference Book received by the Political Directorate of the front from Ambassador of Slovakia SPASHEK [Spišjak], as well as on the basis of [blank, where a word was erased—possibly “interrogations”] of the detained [sic!—not arrested] Secretary of the Swedish Legation in Budapest, Wallenberg.’⁹² Most probably, Wallenberg was interrogated at the OKR of the 18th Rifle Corps. On January 25, Wallenberg and Langfelder were put on a train, under guard.⁹³ After arriving in Moscow on February 6, they were taken to Lubyanka Prison. The events that followed will be described elsewhere.

Interestingly, witnesses in Budapest reported to Stockholm the actual true date of Wallenberg’s arrest:

Mr. Raoul Wallenberg, attaché of the Swedish legation in Hungary, was arrested on January 17th by Russian military authorities. Some letters written in prison have been received from him, but he has now disappeared. In Stockholm it is believed that he has been killed, because he was fearless and would never have refrained from speaking the truth.⁹⁴

On January 27, 1945, Bulganin ordered Spišjak and two Swiss diplomats, Max Meier and Harald Feller, to be arrested and sent back to Moscow.⁹⁵ They were transported there as SMERSH prisoners guarded by NKVD convoy troops. Two years later, on January 8, 1947, after interrogations in Moscow, Spišjak was handed over to the Czechoslovak security service, to stand trial in Prague.⁹⁶ Meier and Feller were luckier, eventually being exchanged for Soviet citizens arrested in Switzerland.

On February 13, 1945, the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts took the rest of Budapest, and the 102-day siege was over. The former Hungarian minister of finance Nicholas Nyaradi recalled the final battle he witnessed:

The Germans were behind a barricade of ripped-up paving blocks and overturned trams… A line of Soviet infantrymen simply marched, as though on a parade… Naturally, they were mowed down by German machine guns… I counted a total of twenty such attacking waves of Soviet infantrymen, each new row falling on top of the dead… Then the last waves of the Russians, charging up the stack of corpses, vaulted the barricades and slaughtered the Germans with savage ferocity.

What made my blood run cold was not the way in which the Nazis were exterminated, but the complete indifference with which the Russian officers commanded their men to die, and the complete indifference with which the soldiers obeyed the orders.⁹⁷

Marshal Malinovsky granted his troops three days of ‘pillage and free looting,’ which turned into a two-week rampage of rape, murder, and drunkenness.⁹⁸ Nyaradi wrote: ‘Even the women of the Red Army managed to rape Hungarian men, by forcing them into sexual intercourse at the point of tommy guns!’⁹⁹ Swiss diplomats presented a detailed description of events in a report they compiled in May 1945, after returning to Switzerland:

During the siege of Budapest and also during the following fateful weeks, Russian troops looted the city freely. They entered practically every habitation, the very poorest as well as the richest. They took away everything they wanted, especially food, clothing, and valuables… There were also small groups which specialized in hunting up valuables using magnetic mine detectors in search of gold, silver, and other metals. Trained dogs were also used… Furniture and larger objects of art, etc. that could not be taken away were frequently simply destroyed. In many cases, after looting, the homes were also put on fire…

Bank safes were emptied without exception—even the British and American safes—and whatever was found was taken… Russian soldiers often arrested passersby, relieving them of the contents of their pockets, especially watches, cash and even papers of identity.

Rapes are causing the greatest suffering to the Hungarian population. Violations are so general—from the age of 10 to 70 years—that few women in Hungary escape this fate. Acts of incredible brutality have been registered… Misery is increased by the sad fact that many of the Russian soldiers are ill and medicines in Hungary are completely missing…

Near the town of Godollo, a large concentration camp has been erected where some forty thousand internees are being held and from where they are being deported for an unknown destination toward the East. It is known that these internees get very little food unless they sign an agreement to engage as volunteers in the Red Army or accept a contract for work in Russia… The population of Germanic origin from the age of two up to the age of seventy is deported en masse to Russia…

Russians have declared that all foreigners who stay in Budapest will be treated exactly as if they were Hungarians… During looting the [Swiss] legation, at one of four occasions, the Russians put a rope around the neck of Mr. Ember, an employee of the legation, in order to force him to hand over the keys of the official safe. As he refused to do so, even in his plight, they pulled the rope around his neck until he lost consciousness. Then they took the keys from his pocket, emptied the safe, and took away all the deposits, amounting to several millions…

A big safe of the Swedish legation which the Nazis had unsuccessfully tried to remove was removed by the Russians with all its contents. This affair will have a diplomatic consequence as the Swedes propose to protest to Russia.¹⁰⁰

The Swedish press did complain about the last event. Amazingly, Soviet diplomats confirmed that Soviet soldiers had looted the Swedish legation and raped a servant.¹⁰¹

Witnesses reported more on Soviet behavior to Stockholm: ‘The Russians seemed not to differentiate in their treatment of good or bad Hungarians, Jews or Gentiles, pro Allies or quislings. The Russians did not respect the “protective passports” with which Hungarian Jews had been issued by neutral legations. They qualified these as “interference in Hungarian domestic affairs.”’¹⁰²

During this period, SMERSH, as usual, was hunting enemy agents in Budapest. Between January 15 and March 15, 1945, operatives of the UKR SMERSH of the 2nd Ukrainian Front arrested 588 people, including 110 agents of German intelligence services, 20 agents of Hungarian counterintelligence, 56 terrorists, 10 officers of German intelligence and counterintelligence, and 30 officers of Hungarian intelligence and counterintelligence. ¹⁰³

All high-ranking officers, diplomats, and other important foreigners were taken to Moscow. Count István Bethlen, Hungarian Prime Minister from 1921 to 1932 and an influential figure in politics, was among them. His main offense, in Soviet eyes, may have been that in 1943, he was among those Hungarian politicians who tried to organize secret, separate peace negotiations with the British and Americans, but not the Soviets. Apparently, the Soviets ignored information received in March 1943 from a Soviet spy ring in Switzerland that Count Bethlen also planned peace negotiations with the Soviet Union.¹⁰⁴

On December 2, 1944 SMERSH operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front detained Bethlen, and at first the Count was kept in Hungary. On February 17, 1945, Deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs Dekanozov reported to Foreign Affairs Commissar Molotov: ‘Count Bethlen is the most outstanding representative of the Hungarian reaction and a convinced advocate of pro-British orientation…Bethlen must be…arrested and transported to the Soviet Union, where he must be kept for a few months, after which the issue must be settled for good.’¹⁰⁵ Molotov wrote on the report: ‘Carry out. March 20, 1945.’ After this Bethlen was flown to Moscow, imprisoned and on April 28, 1945 formally arrested. On October 5, 1946 the 72-year-old Count died in the Butyrka Prison Hospital in Moscow.

The Armija Krajowa

In late July 1944, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front under Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky began the liberation of Poland; they were followed by the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian and the 1st Ukrainian fronts. Rokossovsky was one of the few Soviet commanders who was arrested in 1937 but later released. Of Polish origin, he was accused of spying for Poland, and was brutally tortured during interrogations by OO investigators. During World War II, Rokossovsky successfully commanded several fronts. In 1944, Rokossovsky’s 1st Belorussian Front included the 1st Polish Army under General Zygmund Berling, formed in the Soviet Union. It consisted of four infantry divisions, one cavalry brigade, and five artillery brigades. Counterintelligence was called the Informational Department and included SMERSH officers who did not know Polish.¹⁰⁶

Rokossovsky’s troops were in the suburbs of Warsaw on August 1, 1944, when the Polish underground Armija Krajowa, subordinate to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London, began its tragic Warsaw Uprising.¹⁰⁷ On Stalin’s order, Rokossovsky’s troops stopped advancing until the uprising was over. There is little doubt that Stalin’s reason for holding the Russian troops back was his desire to have the Germans destroy the Armija Krajowa for him. On August 25, 1944, the HQ of the NKVD rear guard troops of the 3rd Belorussian Front explicitly demanded that the troops disarm and detain every Armija Krajowa unit moving to Warsaw to help the insurgents. ¹⁰⁸

Stalin had his own plans for Poland. In an attempt to co-opt the Polish emigrant government in London, a Communist provisional government, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PCNL), was created in Moscow on July 21, 1944. The PCNL agreed that all military operations in Poland would be conducted under Stalin’s control. The 1st Polish Army was merged with the Armija Ludowa, a group of pro-Communist partisans in Nazi-occupied Poland, and became the Ludowe Wojsko Polskie (People’s Army of Poland, or LWP). On August 1, 1944, the PCNL moved to the liberated city of Lublin.

From August to December 1944, Nikolai Bulganin represented Soviet interests at the PCNL, organizing local administrations on Soviet-occupied territory and coordinating the activity of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Belorussian fronts and the 1st Ukrainian front.¹⁰⁹ He was also responsible for ‘cleansing the rear of the Red Army of various groups representing the emigrant [Polish] “government” and the armed units of the so-called Armija Krajowa… and detaining their officers via “SMERSH” organs.’¹¹⁰ NKVD troops under Beria’s deputy, Ivan Serov, collaborated with SMERSH operational groups to carry out the cleansing. Serov had prior experience, having cleansed the newly acquired Polish territories in 1939.¹¹¹

Another unit was created within the LWP to conduct the cleansing—the Main Informational Directorate under Piotr Kozuszko (Kozhushko in Russian).¹¹² This military counterintelligence unit at first consisted exclusively of SMERSH and NKVD operatives. On October 17, 1944, Beria reported to Stalin and Molotov: ‘To enforce the counterintelligence organs of the Polish Army [LWP], Comrade Abakumov will send 100 “SMERSH” workers. We will also send 15 comrades from the NKVD–NKGB to help the Polish security organs. Comrade Abakumov—“SMERSH”—and Comrade Serov will assist on sites of the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Polish Army and its head, Comrade Kozhushko.’¹¹³ The directorate had its own concentration camps for detaining arrested members of Armija Krajowa (or AK, in Chekist parlance).

On October 26, 1944, Serov reported to Beria:

Through the agents, operational SMERSH groups on the territory of the Bialystok Voevodstvo [Province] found out that…an ‘AK’ unit of 17,000 men is in the Bielovezhskaya Pushcha [forest]. Comrade MESHIK [Abakumov’s deputy] was sent to check this information. He reported that…the ‘SMERSH’ operational group of the 2nd Belorussian Front is performing actions against the AK members [i.e., arresting them] …

The investigation of 20 cases of active members of the ‘AK’ has been completed and in the near future they will be sentenced by the Military Tribunal.¹¹⁴

Investigations were conducted with the usual cruelty. A former member of the Armija Krajowa detachment, a woman partisan named Stanislava Kumor, recalled: ‘In the Bialystok Prison, the Chekists broke my arms, burned me with cigarettes, and lashed my face with a whip.’¹¹⁵

Apparently, the Armija Krajowa’s threat in the Bialystok Region was so serious that Abakumov and Lavrentii Tsanava, one of Beria’s men and later NKGB Commissar of Belorussia, were sent to clear up the situation. On October 29, 1944, Beria reported to Stalin:

To assist Comrades ABAKUMOV and TSANAVA in carrying out the measures, two NKVD regiments are being relocated to the town of Bialystok.

The troops will arrive on the evening of October 31, 1944.

Therefore, a total of three NKVD regiments and up to 4,000 men will be concentrated in Bialystok.

Major General KRIVENKO of the NKVD is being sent to Bialystok to command the NKVD troops.

All comrades being sent have already been instructed.¹¹⁶

General Mikhail Krivenko was deputy head of the NKVD Main Directorate of Border Guards. He had already participated in the anti-Polish action in 1940, when, as head of the NKVD Convoy Troops, he organized the transportation of captured Polish officers from the Ostashkov Camp, where they were being held, to the Katyn Forest, where they were massacred. Krivenko and other participants in the execution received high awards.¹¹⁷ From 1942 to 1943, Krivenko again headed the NKVD Convoy Troops.

Four days after Beria’s report to Stalin, Abakumov and Tsanava sent Beria a coded cable reporting on their first measures in Bialystok:

In this operation we are using 200 experienced SMERSH and NKGB operatives, as well as three NKVD regiments.

The operational groups have the following objectives:

To find and arrest: leaders and members of the ‘Armija Krajowa’; agents of the Polish emigrant government; leaders and members of other underground organizations undermining the work of the Committee of National Liberation, and, partly, of the Red Army; agents of the German intelligence organs ‘Volksdeutsch’ and ‘Reichsdeutsch’; members of gangs and groups hiding in the underground and forests; and persons opposing measures on the resettlement of the Belorussians, Ukrainians, Russians, and Rusyns [a small Slavic nation in the Carpathians] from Polish territory to the Soviet Union.¹¹⁸

Therefore, every Pole who opposed the Sovietization of Poland was arrested. In addition, all Slavs of non-Polish origin were forced to move to the Soviet Union.

Abakumov and Tsanava continued:

The operation to capture [the enemies] is scheduled for November 6 of this year. Until then, we are working to establish who should be arrested…

Up to November 1 [1944], the operational ‘SMERSH’ groups had arrested… 499 persons, of whom 82 were sent under guard to the territory of the Soviet Union [possibly, to GUKR SMERSH in Moscow]. We are preparing to send the remaining 417 persons to the NKVD Ostashkov Camp.

An additional 1,080 men were disarmed and transferred to the reserve of the Polish Army…

We are using the Bialystok City Prison to hold the arrestees until they are transported under guard to the Soviet Union.¹¹⁹

This was the same Ostashkov Camp in which the captured Polish officers were held in 1939–40 before they were massacred.

On November 8, 1944, Abakumov and Tsanava sent another cable to Beria:

On November 8 [1944], 1,200 active members of the Armija Krajowa and other underground organizations were arrested. Of them, 1,030 persons were sent to the NKVD Ostashkov Camp by special train No. 84176…

On the night of November 6/7 of the current year, the documents of people living in the city of Bialystok were checked, resulting in the arrest of 41 members of the ‘AK’ and other criminal elements.

The operation to capture members of the ‘Armija Krajowa’ and agents of German military intelligence continues.

On November 11, we are planning to send a second train to the Ostashkov Camp.¹²⁰

The first train, carrying 1,030 prisoners identified as ‘interned persons,’ left Bialystok on November 7, 1944, and arrived in Ostashkov on November 19.¹²¹ Amazingly, 15 prisoners managed to escape on the way to Ostashkov.

The last cable to Beria from Abakumov and Tsanava in Bialystok said:

On November 12 [1944], we sent a second train No. 84180 with 1,014 arrested active members of the ‘Armija Krajowa’…to the Ostashkov Camp. A total of 2,044 persons were arrested and sent out…

On November 10, the Chief Plenipotentiary for resettlement informed [us] that he had listed 33,702 families to be resettled…196 families have already been sent to the BSSR [Belorussia]…

A total of 341 persons are working on the resettlement…

We consider it expedient to leave small [NKVD] operational groups subordinate to Colonel [Vladimir] KAZAKEVICH, deputy head of the Directorate ‘SMERSH’ of the 2nd Belorussian Front, who is in charge of the operational work in Bialystok and Bialystok Voevodstvo…

We consider it expedient to return and to continue conducting our usual duties.

We ask for your instructions.¹²²

The second train, carrying 1,014 Poles, left Bialystok on November 12, 1944,¹²³ and arrived eight days later in Ostashkov. Later, on April 14, 1945, 1,516 Poles were transferred to other POW camps, while the rest were sent back to Poland in 1946 and 1947.¹²⁴

Beria considered the operation complete. On November 14, 1944, in a cover letter accompanying copies of Abakumov and Tsanava’s last report, he wrote to Stalin, Molotov, and Malenkov: ‘During the operation, 2,044 active members of the Armija Krajowa and other underground organizations were arrested. The work preparing the resettlement of the Belorussians and Ukrainians to the Soviet Union has been improved… I think Comrades ABAKUMOV and TSANAVA should be allowed to leave.’¹²⁵

The permission was granted and Abakumov returned to Moscow, while Tsanava went to Belorussia. Two months later Tsanava was back at the 2nd Belorussian Front as NKVD Plenipotentiary. Now the SMERSH Directorate of this front was under his, and not Abakumov’s, control.

Notes

1. Stalin’s Order No. 70, dated May 1, 1944, page 187 in I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, T. 15 (Moscow: Pisatel’, 1997), 185–8 (in Russian).

2. Nicola Sinevirsky, SMERSH (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1950), 62–63.

3. Wilhelm Hoettl, The Secret Front: The Story of Nazi Political Espionage (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1954), 182. On Ion Antonescu (1882–1946), see Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940–1944 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

4. Details in transcripts of Stahel’s interrogations in GUKR SMERSH on April 28 and August 25, 1945. Document Nos. 79 and 80 in Generaly i ofitsery Vermakhta rasskazyvayut… Dokumenty iz sledstvennykh del nenetskikh voennoplennykh. 1944–1951, edited by V. G. Makarov and V. S. Khristoforov (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2009), 387–402 (in Russian).

5. Hoettl, The Secret Front, 188; Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (London: Bantam Press, 1992), 411.

6. Quoted in ‘German Diplomats in Bucharest after 23 August, 1944,’ Radio Romania International, July 8, 2009, http://www.rri.ro/arh-art. shtml?lang=1&sec=9&art=22271, retrieved September 8, 2011.

7. ‘Turkey: Advance Man’s Retreat,’ Time, October 13, 1941.

8. Elizabeth W. Hazard, Cold War Crubicle: United States Foreign Policy and the Conflict in Romania. 1943–1953 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1996), 40–81.

9. Later Frank Wisner became CIA station chief in London, chief of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, and the CIA’s deputy director of plans. In 1965, he suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide.

10. Hazard, Cold War Crubicle, 44–45.

11. Shlomo Aronson, Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 162–6.

12. The Secret War Report of the OSS, edited by Anthony Cave Brown, 286 (New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1976).

13. Hazard, Cold War Crubicle, 60.

14. An interview with Lawrence Houston, cited in ibid., 196, and a speech by Allen Dulles on May 4, 1959, quoted in Richard Harris Smith, The OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 118.

15. On SOE operations in Romania see Alan Ogden, Through Hitler’s Back Door: SOE Operations in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria 1939–1945 (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military, 2010), 197–263.

16. Bradley F. Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin: How the Allies Traded Intelligence, 1941–1945 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 20–26; Martin Kitchen, ‘SOE’s Man in Moscow,’ Intelligence and National Security 12, No. 3 (July 1997), 95–109.

17. Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin, 254.

18. Quoted (page 395) in B. D. Yurinov, “Ternistyi put’ sotrudnichestva,” in Ocherki istorii rossiiskoi vneshnei razvedki. T. 4. 1941–1945 gody (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1999), 385–98 (in Russian).

19. Testimony of Max Braun on September 10, 1947. Page 324 in Document No. 43 in Generaly i ofitsery Vermakhta, 217–20.

20. The Romanians handed over several members of the mission, including Colonel Hans Schwickert, to the NKVD—not SMERSH—operatives. Yevgenii Zhirnov, ‘Prints skryl svoyu nastoyashchiuiu familiyu,’ Kommersant-Vlast’, no. 14 (668), April 10, 2006 (in Russian), http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=664971, retrieved September 8, 2011.

21. Stavka’s directive No. 220218, dated September 17, 1944. Document No. 24 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya 14, no. 3 (2), 107–8 (in Russian).

22. Interrogation of Max Braun, dated September 10, 1947. Page 220 in Document No. 43 in Generaly i ofitsery Vermakhta rasskazyvayut.

23. Marie Vassilchikov, Berlin Diaries, 1941–1945 (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 25–27, 46, 54, 82–88, 95, 150, and Giles MacDonogh, A Good German: Adam von Trott zu Solz (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1992), 26, 97, 127, 164, 168, 170, 182, 215, 283.

24. Kurt Welkisch and his wife Margarita (alias LZL) belonged to the Alta group that also included Ilse Stebe, Gerhard Kegel, and Rudolf von Scheliha (alias Ariets). Details in Vladimir Lota, ‘Alta’ protiv ‘Barbarossa’ (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 2004) (in Russian).

25. In 2001, recollections of Gerhard Stelzer translated into Romanian were published: Rolf Pusch and Gerhard Steltzer, Diplomati Germani la Bucuresti, 1937–1944 (Bucharest: Editura All Educational, 2001).

26. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 359.

27. Report of Malinovsky and Susaikov, dated September 2, 1944, Document No. 29 in Russkii arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Krasnaya Armiya v stranah tsentral’noi, severnoi Evropy i na Balkanakh’ 1944–1945. Dokumenty i materialy, T. 14 (3–2) (Moscow: Terra, 2000), 38–39 (in Russian).

28. Boris Syromyatnikov, ‘Sorok shest’ chasov s rumynskim diktatorom,’ Voenno-promyshlennyi kur’er, No. 40 (October 17–23, 2007) (in Russian). Also, a photo of the first page of Abakumov’s report No. 753/A to Beria, dated June 1945, in SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 90.

29. Transcripts of interrogations in the Romanian File, RG–05.025, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (a photocopy of the File H–19767, three volumes, kept in the FSB Central Archive in Moscow).

30. Page 146 in ibid.

31. Details in Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2000).

32. Page 526 in the File H–19767 and Hugh Seton-Watson, The East European Revolution (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1951), 205.

33. ‘Razboiul anti-URSS a fost legitim,’ Ziua, 20 February 2007 (in Romanian).

34. During WWI, Baron Sergei N. Delvig (1866–1944?) commanded an artillery unit. From 1917–20, he served in the Ukrainian Army. In 1920, Delvig emigrated to Romania.

35. Abakumov’s report to Beria No. 606/A, dated November 22, 1944. A photo of the report in SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 142.

36. Cited in Dmitri Volkogonov, Triumf i tragedia. Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina. Kniga 2 (Moscow: Agenstvo pechati Novosti, 1989), 24 (in Russian). This cable was not included in the English version of Volkogonov’s book.

37. Unto Parvilahti, Beria’s Gardens: Ten Years’ Captivity in Russia and Siberia, translated from the Finnish by Alan Blair (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1959), 54.

38. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 360.

39. The awarded Soviet military leaders: I. S. Stalin (twice), A. M. Vasilevsky (twice), G. K. Zhukov (twice), A. I. Antonov, L. A. Govorov, I. S. Konev, R. Ya. Malinovsky, K. A. Meretskov, K. K. Rokossovsky, S. K. Timoshenko, and F. I. Tolbukhin. Additionally, on February 20, 1978, Leonid Brezhnev received this award; however, on September 21, 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev abolished the decision to award Brezhnev.

40. The awarded foreigners: US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower (June 5, 1945), British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (June 5, 1945), King Mihai I (July 6, 1945), Polish Marshal Mihał Rola-Żymierski (August 9, 1945), and Yugoslavian Marshal Josip Broz Tito (September 9, 1945).

41. Cited in Craig S. Smith. ‘Romania’s King Without a Throne Outlives Foes and Setbacks,’ The New York Times, January 27, 2007.

42. Robert Lee Wolff, The Balkans in Our Time (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 242–8.

43. Michael Bar-Zohar, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews (Holbrook, MA: Adams Media Company, 1998), 46–48.

44. Vojtech Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 202–3.

45. Details in Yelena Valeva, ‘Politicheskie protsessy v Bolgarii, 1944–1948 gg.,’ ‘Karta,’ no. 36-37 (2003), 48-59 (in Russian), http://www.hro.org/node/10845, retrieved September 8, 2011.

46. In September 1944, the Communist authorities liquidated about 18,000 arrestees without trial. Vostochnaya Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov, 1944–1953 gg. Tom 1. 1944–1948 gg., edited by T. V. Volokitina et al., 150–1 (Moscow: Sibirskii khronograf, 1997) (in Russian).

47. Document Nos. 28 and 30, in Vostochnaya Evropa, 101, 104–5.

48. Bogdana Lazorova, ‘Cherveniyat teror 1944–1949 g.,’ DARIK News, May 6, 2006 (in Bulgarian), http://www.dariknews.bg/view_article.php?article_ id=63793, retrieved September 8, 2011. Overall, from December 20, 1944 until the end of April 1945, the Bulgarian people’s courts tried 11,122 political defendants, and of these, 2,730 were sentenced to death, 1,305 were convicted to life imprisonment, and the rest, to various terms of imprisonment.

49. Nadezhda and Maiya Ulanovskie, Istoriya sem’i (New York: Chalidze Publications, 1982), 212 (in Russian).

50. Report by Claudio de Mohr, former Italian Cultural Counselor, in Agne Hamrin, ‘Ånnu en Moskgafänge vittnar om Wallenberg: Svenskarna kränktes om skyddsuppdrag,’ Dagens Nyheter, September 1, 1953. Also, a statement by Adolf Heinz Beckerle, former German Minister to Sofia, to the Swedish authorities, dated April 15, 1957. I am grateful to Susanne Berger for these references.

51. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 375–6.

52. The Secret War Report of the OSS, edited by Anthony Cave Brown, 290–1 (New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1976) 1.

53. Vladimir Antonov, ‘Syn protiv otsa,’ Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, September 16, 2005 (in Russian), http://nvo.ng.ru/spforces/2005-09-16/7_syn.html, retrieved September 8, 2011.

54. V. G. Chicheryukin-Meingardt, Drozdovtsy posle Gallipoli (Moscow: Reittar, 2002), 66–79 (in Russian).

55. A. V. Okorokov, Russkaya emigratsiya. Politicheskie, voenno-politicheskie i voinskie organizatsii, 1920–1990 gg. (Moscow: Azuar Consulting, 2003), 81–82 (in Russian).

56. Vadim Abramov, SMERSH. Sovetskaya voennaya razvedka protiv razvedki Tret’ego Reikha (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2005), 213 (in Russian).

57. Details in Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 205–25.

58. Vladimir Lota, Informatory Stalina. Neizvestnye operatsii sovetskoi voennoi razvedki. 1944–1945 (Moscow: Tsetrpolitgraf, 2009), 216-27 (in Russian).

59. On SOE involvement in the Uprising, see Ogden, Through Hitler’s Back Door, 62–84.

60. Report about Šmidke’s mission to Stalin, dated August 10, 1944, and a Russian translation of Čatloš’s letter to the Soviet leaders. Document No. 1 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya, 14 (3–2), 478–82.

61. Details in Ján Stanislav, ‘Mocnosti protifašisickej koalície a ozbrojený zápas v SNP,’ in Humanisické tradície v literárnom odkaze Slovenskeho národého povstania (Banská Bystrica, Slovakia: Štátna vedecká knižnica, 2004), 18–42 (in Slovakian), http://www.snp.sk/docs/zbornik.pdf, retrieved September 8, 2011.

62. Jan Loyda’s letter to the commandant of Vladimir Prison, dated January 28, 1953, from his personal file (page 78). A copy in the Riksarkivet Utrikesdepartementet (RA UD, Archive of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs), Stockholm.

63. On January 8, 1947, representatives of the 3rd MGB Main Directorate handed Čatloš in Prague over to the Czechoslovak authorities. From Čatloš’s prisoner card at the Military Archive in Moscow.

64. ‘Jozef Turanec’ (in Czech), http://forum.valka.cz/viewtopic.php/p/186621#186621, retrieved September 8, 2011.

65. Peter B. Vlčko and Ryan P. Vlčko, ‘The Soviet Union’s Role in the Slovak National Uprising. The Talsky Affair: Incompetent, Traitor or Pawn?’ (2005), 34, http://sitemaker.umich.edu/ryanvlcko/files/soviet_role_in_the_slovak_national_ uprising__snp_.pdf, retrieved September 8, 2011.

66. Parvilahti, Beria’s Gardens, 75.

67. On the NSNP see Boris Pryanishnikov, Novopokolentsy (Silver Spring, MD: Multilingual Typesetting, 1986) (in Russian).

68. Aleksandr Kolpakidi, Likvidatory KGB. Spetsoperatsii soverskikh spetssluzhb, 1941–2004 (Moscow: Yauza-Eksmo, 2004), 286 (in Russian).

69. Shulgin published a series of memoirs in Russian, but only one was translated into English: V. V. Shulgin, The Years: Memoirs of a Member of the Russian Duma, 1906–1917, translated by Tanya Davis (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1984).

70. See SMERSH’s documents on Shulgin’s arrest in Tyuremnaya odisseya Vasiliya Shulgina. Materialy sledstvennogo dela i dela zaklyuchennogo, edited by V. G. Makarov, A. V. Epnikov, and V. S. Khristoforov, 135–42 (Moscow: Knizhnitsa, 2010) (in Russian).

71. Details in A. Kolpakidi and D. Prokhorov, KGB: Prikazano likvidirovat’. Spetsoperatsii sovetskikh spetssluzhb 1918–1941 (Moscow: Yauza, 2004), 215–28 (in Russian).

72. Boris Koverda (1907–1987), a Russian emigrant, targeted Pyotr Voikov (1888–1927) for assassination because in 1917, Voikov participated in the decision to liquidate Nicholas II and his family. The Polish Extraordinary Court sentenced Koverda to life in prison, but in 1937 he was amnestied. After WWII, Koverda emigrated to the United States, where he lived and died near Washington, DC.

73. A photo of Abakumov’s report No. 759/A dated June 1945. SMERSH, 90.

74. Yu. B. Mordvinov, Belogvardeitsy. Avtobiograficheskaya povest’ (2001), 95–109 (in Russian).

75. Pavel Kutepov was released in 1954. He was not permitted to live in Moscow and settled down in the city of Ivanovo. In 1960, he was hired by the Moscow Patriarchate as a translator and moved to Moscow. In 1967, Kutepov was promoted to head of the Translation Bureau of the Foreign Affairs Church Department of the Moscow Patriarchate. He died in 1983. Shulgin was released on September 14, 1956, but he was allowed to live only in Vladimir. His wife came from abroad to join him. He died on February 15, 1976 and was rehabilitated on November 12, 2001.

76. A photo of the first page of Abakumov’s report to Beria No. 684/A dated March 1945, SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 150.

77. Memoirs by Yevgenii Popov, former RU translator, cited in Vladimir Lota, Informatory Stalina. Neizvestnye operatsii sovetskoi voennoi razvedki. 1944–1945 (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2009), 317–20 (in Russian).

78. Atzel’s statement to the officers of the Political Directorate of the 46th Army, dated November 27, 1944. Document No. 33 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya, 14 (3–2), 331–5.

79. On van der Waals’s story in Budapest see Karoly Kapronczay, Refugees in Hungary: Shelters from Storm During World War II, translated by Eva Barcza-Bessenyey (Toronto: Matthias Corvinus Publishing, 1999), 198–203; on SOE in Hungary see Ogden Through Hitler’s Back Door, 23–61, 90–93.

80. Report by Folke Persson, Swedish Consul in New York, to the Swedish Foreign Ministry about a conversation with Karl Schandl, dated February 7, 1958. In Raoul Wallenberg—A Collection of Documents (Stockholm: Utrikesdepartement), Vol. 42 (the collection does not include a year of publication or page numbers).

81. Sinevirsky, SMERSH, 183.

82. Report of Major Petrovsky, assistant head of the 2nd Department, UKR SMERSH, 2nd Ukrainian Front, dated January 23, 1945. Raoul Wallenberg’s Document Database (RWDD), Riksarkivet Utrikesdepartementet (RA UD, Archive of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs), Stockholm.

83. On Raoul Wallenberg’s background and his work in Budapest, see Jenö Lėvai, Raoul Wallenberg: His Remarkable Life, Heroic Battles and the Secret of His Mysterious Disappearance, translated into English by Frank Vajda (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1989) and Paul A. Levine, Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: Myth, History and Holocaust (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2010).

84. T. Kushner, ‘Rules of the Game: Britain, America and the Holocaust in 1944,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5, no. 4 (1990), 381–402.

85. Document Nos. 18 and 74 in Dokumenty vneshnei politiki. 1940–22 iyunya 1941, Tom 23, Kniga 1 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1998) (in Russian), and Document No. 804 in ibid., Tom 23, Kniga 2 (2) (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1998), 634–6 (in Russian).

86. Copies of military reports and orders regarding Raoul Wallenberg and Jan Spišjak, Max Meier and Harald Feller (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

87. Cable to Commander of the 30th Rifle Corps, dated January 14, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

88. Ibid.

89. Zakharov’s cable No. 987 to Bulganin (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

90. Bulganin’s order to Zakharov and Abakumov (cable No. 5533/sh), dated January 17, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

91. Wallenberg’s prisoner card from the FSB Central Archive (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

92. Note to Lt. Colonel Ryndin, head of the Operational Group of the 2nd Ukrainian Front in Budapest, dated January 22, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

93. Zakharov’s cable No. 1619 to Bulganin, dated January 25, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

94. Special Annex to Bulletin No. XXXII (1945), 8. Courtesy by Lovice Maria Ullein-Reviczky, Antal Ullein-Reviczky Foundation (Hungary).

95. Bulganin’s cable to Zakharov No. 1367/sh, dated January 27, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

96. Information released by the Russian participants of the Swedish-Russian Working Group on Raoul Wallenberg on April 14–15, 1993.

97. Nicholas Nyaradi, My Ringside Seat in Moscow (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1952), 221.

98. Details in Krisztián Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II, translated from the Hungarian by Ladislaus Löb (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 339–63;

99. Nyaradi, My Ringside Seat, 222. An analysis of atrocities in James Mark, ‘Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945,’ Past and Present, no. 188 (August 2005), 133–61.

100. Report of the Swiss Legation in Budapest in the spring of 1945. Appendix III in John Flournoy Montgomery, Hungary—The Unwilling Satellite (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1947), http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/montgo/montgo21.htm, retrieved September 8, 2011.

101. Letter of Mikhail Vetrov to Vladimir Dekanozov, dated May 24, 1945 (RWDD, RA UD, Stockholm).

102. Special Annex to Bulletin No. XXXII (1945), 8.

103. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 159.

104. Cable to ‘Director’ (Ivan Il’ichev, head of the GRU), dated March 2, 1943, quoted in Shandor Rado, Pod psevdonimom Dora (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1973), 203–4 (in Russian).

105. Quoted in Ignác Romsics, István Bethlen: A Great Conservative Statesman of Hungary, 1974-1946 (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1995), 385.

106. A report by G. S. Zhukov to the Central Committee, dated April 17, 1944. Document No. 5 in Sovetskii factor v Vostochnoi Evrope. 1944–1963. Tom 1. 1944–1948. Dokumenty, edited by T. V. Volokitina, G. P. Murashko, and A. F. Noskova (Moscow: Rosspen, 1999), 56–58 (in Russian).

107. See Wlodzimierz Borodziej, The Warsaw Uprising of 1944, translated by Barbara Harshow (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).

108. Directive of the HQ of the NKVD rear guard troops of the 3rd Belorussian Front, dated August 25, 1944. Quoted on page 198 in P. A. Aptekar’, ‘Vnutrennie voiska NKVD protiv pol’skogo podpol’ya (Po dokumentam Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo voennogo arkhiva),’ in Repressii protiv polyakov i pol’skikh grazhdan, edited by A. E. Gur’yanov (Moscow: Zven’ya, 1997), 197–206 (in Russian).

109. Stavka’s directive, dated August 2, 1944. Document No. 9, Chapter 4 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya otechestvennaya. SSSR i Pol’sha: 1941–1945. K istorii voennogo soyuza. Dokumenty i materialy, T. 14 (3–1), edited by V. A. Zolotarev, 334–35 (Moscow: TERRA, 1994) (in Russian).

110. GKO Order on Poland, dated July 31, 1944. Quoted in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e (Po ‘Osobym papkam’ I. V. Stalina), edited by A. F. Noskova, 12 (Moscow: Institut slavyanovedeniya, 1994) (in Russian).

111. Nikita Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB Ivan Serov (Moscow: Materik, 2005), 21–31 (in Russian).

112. Serov’s report to Beria, dated October 16, 1944. Forwarded to Stalin and Molotov. Document No. 5 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 37–42.

113. An excerpt cited as a note to Document No. 5 in ibid., 38.

114. Serov’s report to Beria, dated October 26, 1946. Document No. 9 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 55–58.

115. Quoted in Andrei Blinushov, ‘Takikh lagerei predstoit mnogo…,’ ‘Karta,’ no. 2, 5–6 (in Russian), http://www.hro.org/files/karta/02/p05.jpg, retrieved September 8, 2011. A detailed examination of the torture methods used by the Soviet and Polish investigators in Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, ‘The Dialectics of Pain: The Interrogation Methods of the Communist Secret Police in Poland, 1944–1955,’ Glaukopis, 2/3 (2004–2005). One of the victims described 39 methods of torture that he was subjected to.

116. Beria’s report to Stalin, dated October 29, 1944. Document No. 10 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 58–59.

117. Document Nos. 16, 104, and 128 in N. S. Lebedeva, N. A. Petrosova, B. Woszcynski et al., Katyn. Mart 1940 g.—sentyabr 2000 g. Rasstrel. Sud’by zhivykh. Ekho Katyni. Dokumenty, 66, 219–21 and 275–9 (Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2001) (in Russian).

118. Cable to Beria, dated September 3, 1944, and Document No. 11 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 59–65.

119. The same cable to Beria, dated September 3, 1944.

120. Cable to Beria, dated November 8, 1944. Document No. 12 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 65–71.

121. N. Ye. Yeliseeva et al., ‘Katalog eshelonov s internirovannymi polyakami, otpravlennymi v glub’ SSSR,’ in Repressii protiv polyakov, 215–25.

122. Cable to Beria, dated approximately November 13, 1944. Document No. 15 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 77–81.

123. Yeliseeva et al., ‘Katalog eshelonov.’

124. O. A. Zaitseva and A. E. Gur’yanov, ‘Dokumenty TsKhIDK ob internirovanii pol’skikh grazhdan v SSSR v 1944–1949 gg.,’ in Repressii protiv polyakov, 226–47.

125. Beria’s cover letter to Abakumov and Tsanava’s report, dated November 14, 1944. Document No. 16 in NKVD i pol’skoe podpol’e, 82–83.