Is it possible? Well, why not, on the other hand? The image of Stirlitz, although literary, has prototypes in reality. Who among those interested in that era has not heard of the “red chapel” - the Soviet intelligence network in the highest structures of the Third Reich? And if so, then why not be similar to the Nazi agents in the USSR?
The fact that during the war there were no high-profile revelations of enemy spies does not mean that they did not exist. They really couldn't be found. Well, even if someone had been discovered, they would hardly have made a big deal out of this. Before the war, when there was no real danger, espionage cases were fabricated from scratch to settle scores with objectionable people. But when a disaster struck that was not expected, then any exposure of enemy agents, especially high-ranking ones, could lead to panic in the population and the army. How is it so, in the General Staff or somewhere else at the top - treason? Therefore, after the execution of the command of the Western Front and the 4th Army in the first month of the war, Stalin no longer resorted to such repressions, and this case was not particularly advertised.
But this is a theory. Is there any reason to believe that Nazi intelligence agents really had access to Soviet strategic secrets during the Great Patriotic War?

Agent network "Max"

Yes, there are such reasons. At the very end of the war, the head of the Abwehr department "Foreign armies - East", General Reinhard Gehlen, surrendered to the Americans. Subsequently, he headed the intelligence of Germany. In the 1970s, some documents from his archive were made public in the West.
The English historian David Ken spoke about Fritz Kauders, who coordinated the Max network of agents in the USSR, created by the Abwehr at the end of 1939. The famous general of state security Pavel Sudoplatov also mentions this network. Who was a part of it is unknown to this day. After the war, when the chief of Kauders changed owners, the Max agents began to work for US intelligence.
It is better known about the former employee of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Minishkiy (sometimes called Mishinsky). It is mentioned in several books of Western historians.

Someone Minishky

In October 1941, Minishkiy served as a political worker in the troops of the Soviet Western Front. There he was captured by the Germans (or defected) and immediately agreed to work for them, indicating that he had access to valuable information. In June 1942, the Germans smuggled him across the front lines, staging his escape from captivity. At the very first Soviet headquarters, he was greeted almost like a hero, after which Minishkiy established contact with the Abwehr agents previously sent here and began to transfer important information to Germany.
The most important is his report on the military conference in Moscow on July 13, 1942, which discussed the strategy of the Soviet troops in the summer campaign. The meeting was attended by the military attaches of the United States, Britain and China. It was stated there that the Red Army was going to retreat to the Volga and the Caucasus, to defend Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the passes of the Greater Caucasus at any cost, and to organize offensive operations in the areas of Kalinin, Orel and Voronezh. Based on this report, Gehlen prepared a report to the Chief of the German General Staff, General Halder, who then noted the accuracy of the information received.
There are several absurdities in this story. All those who escaped from German captivity were under suspicion and subjected to a lengthy check by the SMERSH authorities. Especially the political workers. If the political worker was not shot by the Germans in captivity, this automatically made him a spy in the eyes of the inspectors. Further, Marshal Shaposhnikov, mentioned in the report, who allegedly attended that meeting, at that time was no longer the chief of the Soviet General Staff.
Further information about Minishki says that in October 1942 the Germans organized his return crossing through the front line. Until the end of the war, he was engaged in the analysis of information in the department of General Gehlen. After the war, he taught at a German intelligence school, and in the 1960s he moved to the United States and received American citizenship.

Unknown agent in the General Staff

At least twice the Abwehr received reports from an unknown agent in the General Staff of the USSR about Soviet military plans. On November 4, 1942, the agent reported that by November 15, the Soviet command planned to launch a series of offensive operations. Further, the areas of offensives were named, which almost exactly coincided with those where the Red Army launched offensives in the winter of 1942/43. The agent made a mistake only in the exact place of strikes near Stalingrad. According to historian Boris Sokolov, this can be explained not by Soviet disinformation, but by the fact that at that moment the final plan for the operation near Stalingrad had not yet been determined. The original date of the offensive was really planned for November 12 or 13, but then was postponed until November 19-20.
In the spring of 1944, the Abwehr received a new report from this agent. According to him, the Soviet General Staff considered two options for action in the summer of 1944. According to one of them, the Soviet troops plan to deliver the main blows in the Baltic states and Volhynia. In another way, the main target is the German troops of the Center group in Belarus. Again, it is likely that both of these options have been discussed. But in the end, Stalin chose the second one - to strike the main blow in Belarus. Hitler decided that it was more likely that his opponent would choose the first option. Be that as it may, the agent's report that the Red Army would launch an offensive only after the successful landing of the allies in Normandy turned out to be accurate.

Who is under suspicion?

According to the same Sokolov, a secret agent should be sought among those Soviet military men who, in the late 1940s, while working in the Soviet military administration in Germany (SVAG), fled to the West. In the early 1950s in Germany, under the pseudonym "Dmitry Kalinov", a book by an allegedly Soviet colonel entitled "Soviet marshals have the floor" was published, based, as stated in the preface, on documents from the Soviet General Staff. However, it has now been clarified that the true authors of the book were Grigory Besedovsky, a Soviet diplomat, an émigré defector who fled the USSR back in 1929, and Kirill Pomerantsev, a poet and journalist, the son of a white émigré.
In October 1947, Lieutenant Colonel Grigory Tokaev (Tokaty), an Ossetian who was collecting information about the Nazi missile program in the SVAG, learned about his recall to Moscow and the impending arrest by the SMERSH authorities. Tokayev moved to West Berlin and asked for political asylum. Later he worked in various high-tech projects in the West, in particular - in the NASA Apollo program.
During the war years, Tokayev taught at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy and worked on Soviet secret projects. Nothing says anything about his knowledge of the military plans of the General Staff. It is possible that the real agent of the Abwehr continued after 1945 to work in the Soviet General Staff for new, overseas masters.

Having made the main stake on the armed forces in the upcoming aggression, the Nazi command did not forget about waging a "secret war" against the Soviet Union. Preparations for it were in full swing. All the rich experience of imperialist intelligence, all the secret service organizations of the Third Reich, the contacts of the international anti-Soviet reaction, and, finally, all the well-known spy centers of Germany's allies now had a clear direction and goal - the USSR.

The fascists tried to conduct reconnaissance, espionage, and sabotage against the Land of the Soviets constantly and on a large scale. The activity of these actions increased sharply after the capture of Poland in the autumn of 1939, and especially after the end of the French campaign. In 1940, the number of spies and agents sent to the territory of the USSR increased by almost 4 times compared to 1939, and in 1941 by 14 times. During the eleven pre-war months alone, Soviet border guards detained about 5,000 enemy spies. The former head of the first department of German military intelligence and counterintelligence (Abwehr), Lieutenant General Pickenbrock, testifying at the Nuremberg Trials, said: reconnaissance missions "Abwehr" in the USSR. These tasks, of course, were connected with the preparation of the war against Russia.

Great interest in the preparations for the "secret war" against the Soviet Union was shown by Hitler himself, believing that the entire huge reconnaissance and subversive apparatus of the secret services of the Reich, put into action, will significantly contribute to the implementation of its criminal plans. On this occasion, the English military historian Liddell Hart later wrote: “In the war that Hitler intended to wage ... the main attention was paid to attacking the enemy from the rear in one form or another. Hitler scorned frontal assaults and hand-to-hand combat, which is the ABC for an ordinary soldier. He began the war with the demoralization and disorganization of the enemy ... If in the First World War artillery preparation was carried out to destroy the enemy's defensive structures before the infantry attack, then in a future war, Hitler proposed to undermine the morale of the enemy. In this war, all types of weapons and especially propaganda were to be used.

Admiral Canaris. Chief of the Abwehr

On November 6, 1940, the Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces, Field Marshal Keitel, and the Chief of Staff of the Operational Command of the Design Bureau, General Jodl, signed a directive of the Supreme High Command addressed to the intelligence services of the Wehrmacht. All intelligence and counterintelligence agencies were instructed to clarify the available data on the Red Army, on the economy, mobilization capabilities, the political situation of the Soviet Union, on the mood of the population and to obtain new information related to the study of theaters of military operations, the preparation of reconnaissance and sabotage measures during the invasion, to provide covert preparing for aggression, while at the same time misinforming about the true intentions of the Nazis.

Directive No. 21 (plan "Barbarossa") provided, along with the armed forces, the full use of agents, sabotage and reconnaissance formations in the rear of the Red Army. Detailed evidence at the Nuremberg trials was given on this issue by Colonel Stolze, the deputy head of the Abwehr-2 department, captured by Soviet troops: “I received instructions from Lahuzen (head of the department. - Auth.) To organize and lead a special group under the code name “A” , which was supposed to be engaged in the preparation of acts of sabotage and work on the decomposition in the Soviet rear in connection with the planned attack on the Soviet Union.

At the same time, Lahousen gave me, for review and guidance, an order that came from the operational headquarters of the armed forces ... This order contained the main directives for conducting subversive activities on the territory of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after the German attack on the Soviet Union. This order was first marked with the conditional code "Barbarossa ..."

The Abwehr played an important role in preparing for the war against the USSR. This one of the most knowledgeable, ramified and experienced secret organs of fascist Germany soon became almost the main center for the preparation of the "secret war". The Abwehr launched its activities especially widely with the advent of Land Admiral Canaris, who began to strengthen his espionage and sabotage department in every possible way in the "Fox Hole" (as the Nazis themselves called the main residence of the Abvor).

The central apparatus of the Abwehr consisted of three main departments. The direct center for the collection and preliminary processing of all intelligence data relating to the ground forces of foreign armies, including the army of the Soviet Union, was the so-called Abwehr-1 department, headed by Colonel Pickenbrock. Intelligence data from the imperial security department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the apparatus of the fascist party and from other sources, as well as from military, naval and aviation intelligence, came here. After preliminary processing, Abwehr-1 presented the available military data to the main headquarters of the branches of the armed forces. Here the processing and generalization of information was carried out and new applications for exploration were drawn up.

The Abwehr-2 department, led by Colonel (in 1942 - Major General) Lahousen, was engaged in the preparation and conduct of sabotage, terror, and sabotage on the territory of other states. And, finally, the third department - "Abwehr-3" headed by Colonel (in 1943 - Lieutenant General) Bentivegni - carried out the organization of counterintelligence inside the country and abroad. The Abwehr system also included an extensive peripheral apparatus, the main links of which were special organs - "Abverstelle" (ACT): "Koenigsberg", "Krakow", "Vienna", "Bucharest", "Sofia", which received in the fall of 1940 the task to maximize reconnaissance and sabotage activities against the USSR, primarily by sending agents. A similar order was received by all intelligence agencies of army groups and armies.

There were branches of the Abwehr at all major headquarters of the Nazi Wehrmacht: Abwehrkommandos - in army groups and large military formations, Abwehrgroups - in armies and their equal formations. Abwehr officers were assigned to divisions and military units.

In parallel with the department of Canaris, another organization of Hitler's intelligence worked, the so-called VI Directorate of the Main Imperial Security Directorate of the RSHA (foreign intelligence services of the SD), which was headed by Himmler's closest associate, Schellenberg. At the head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) was Heydrich, one of the bloodiest executioners of Nazi Germany.

Canaris and Heydrich were the chiefs of two competing intelligence services, which were constantly squabbling over "a place in the sun" and the favor of the Fuhrer. But the commonality of interests and plans made it possible for a while to forget personal hostility and conclude a "friendly pact" on the division of spheres of influence in preparation for aggression. Military intelligence abroad was a generally recognized field of activity for the Abwehr, but this did not prevent Canaris from conducting political intelligence within Germany, and Heydrich from engaging in intelligence and counterintelligence abroad. Next to Canaris and Heydrich, Ribbentrop (through the Foreign Ministry), Rosenberg (APA), Bole (“foreign organization of the NSDAP”), Goering (“Air Force Research Institute”, which deciphered intercepted radiograms) had their own intelligence agencies. Both Canaris and Heydrich were well versed in the intricate interweaving of sabotage and reconnaissance services, providing all possible assistance if possible or tripping each other if possible.

By the middle of 1941, the Nazis created more than 60 training centers for the preparation of agents for sending to the territory of the USSR. One of these "training centers" was located in the little-known remote town of Chiemsee, another - in Tegel near Berlin, the third - in Quinzsee, near Brandenburg. Future saboteurs were trained here in various subtleties of their craft. So, for example, in the laboratory in Tegel, they taught mainly subversion and methods of arson in the "eastern territories". Not only venerable scouts worked as instructors, but also chemists. The Quenzug training center, well hidden among the forests and lakes, was located in Quinzsee, where “general profile” terrorist saboteurs were trained with great thoroughness for the upcoming war. There were mock-ups of bridges, sections of the railway track, and training aircraft aside, at their own airfield. The training was as close as possible to "real" conditions. Before the attack on the Soviet Union, Canaris made it a rule that every intelligence officer must go through training in the Quenzug camp in order to bring his skills to perfection.

In June 1941, in the town of Suleyuwek near Warsaw, a special command body "Abwehr-Abroad" was created to organize and manage reconnaissance, sabotage and counterintelligence activities on the Soviet-German front, which received the code name "Wally Headquarters". At the head of the headquarters was an experienced Nazi intelligence officer, Colonel Schmalypleger. Under an inexpressive code name and an ordinary five-digit field mail number (57219), a whole city was hiding with high, several rows of barbed wire, fences, dozens of sentries, barriers, control and penetration points. Powerful radio stations tirelessly monitored the air throughout the day, maintaining contact with the Abwehrgroups and at the same time intercepting the transmissions of Soviet military and civilian radio stations, which were immediately processed and decrypted. It also housed special laboratories, printing houses, workshops for the manufacture of various non-serial weapons, Soviet military uniforms, insignia, fake documents for saboteurs, spies and other items.

To fight against partisan detachments, to identify persons associated with partisans and underground fighters, the Nazis organized a counterintelligence body called Sonderstab R at the “Valli headquarters”. It was headed by the former head of counterintelligence of the Wrapgel army, Smyslovsky, aka Colonel von Reichenau. Hitler's agents with solid experience, members of various white émigré groups like the People's Labor Union (NTS), nationalist scum, launched their work here.

To carry out sabotage and landing operations in the Soviet rear, the Abwehr also had its own “home” army in the person of cutthroats from the Brandenburg-800, Elector regiments, the Nachtigal, Roland, Bergman battalions and other units, the creation of which began in 1940, immediately after the decision was made to launch preparations for a war against the USSR on a large scale. These so-called special-purpose units were mostly formed from Ukrainian nationalists, as well as White Guards, Basmachi, and other traitors and traitors to the Motherland.

Covering the preparation of these units for aggression, Colonel Stolze at the Nuremberg trials showed: “We also prepared special sabotage groups for subversive activities in the Baltic Soviet Republics ... In addition, a special military unit was prepared for subversive activities on Soviet territory - a special purpose training regiment "Brandenburg-800", subordinated directly to the head of "Abwehr-2" Lahousen. Stolze's testimony was supplemented by the head of the Abwehr-3 department, Lieutenant General Bentivegni: “... From the repeated reports of Colonel Lahousen to Canaris, which I also attended, I know that a lot of preparatory work was carried out through this department for the war with the Soviet Union. During the period February - May 1941, there were repeated meetings of the leaders of the Abwehr-2 with Deputy Jodl, General Warlimont ... In particular, at these meetings, in accordance with the requirements of the war against Russia, the issue of increasing the special-purpose units called "Brandenburg- 800, and on the distribution of the contingent of these units among individual military formations. In October 1942, a division with the same name was formed on the basis of the Brandenburg-800 regiment. Some of its units began to be equipped with saboteurs from Germans who spoke Russian.

Simultaneously with the preparation of the “internal reserves” for aggression, Canaris energetically involved his allies in intelligence activities against the USSR. He instructed the Abwehr centers in the countries of South-Eastern Europe to establish even closer contacts with the intelligence agencies of these states, in particular with the intelligence of Horthy Hungary, fascist Italy, and the Romanian Siguranza. The cooperation of the Abwehr with the Bulgarian, Japanese, Finnish, Austrian and other intelligence services was strengthened. At the same time, the intelligence centers of the Abwehr, the Gestapo, and the security services (SD) in neutral countries strengthened. The agents and documents of the former Polish, Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian bourgeois intelligence services were not forgotten and came to court. At the same time, at the behest of the Nazis, the hidden nationalist underground and gangs intensified their activities in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus, and on the territory of the Baltic republics.

A number of authors testify to the large-scale preparation of the Nazi sabotage and intelligence services for a war against the USSR. Thus, the English military historian Louis de Jong in his book The German Fifth Column in the Second World War writes: “The invasion of the Soviet Union was carefully prepared by the Germans. ... Military intelligence organized small assault units, staffing them from the so-called Brandenburg training regiment. Such units in Russian uniforms were supposed to operate far ahead of the advancing German troops, trying to capture bridges, tunnels and military depots ... The Germans tried to collect information about the Soviet Union also in neutral countries adjacent to the Russian borders, especially in Finland and Turkey, ... intelligence established connections with nationalists from the Baltic republics and Ukraine with the aim of organizing an uprising in the rear of the Russian armies. In the spring of 1941, the Germans established contact with the former ambassadors and attachés of Latvia in Berlin, the former intelligence chief of the Estonian General Staff. Such personalities as Andrei Melnik and Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Germans.”

A few days before the war, and especially with the outbreak of hostilities, the Nazis began to throw into the Soviet rear sabotage and reconnaissance groups, lone saboteurs, scouts, spies, provocateurs. They were disguised in the form of soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, employees and the NKGB, railway workers, signalmen. The saboteurs were armed with explosives, automatic weapons, telephone eavesdropping devices, supplied with fake documents, large sums of Soviet money. Believable legends were prepared for those heading to the deep rear. Sabotage and reconnaissance groups were also attached to the regular units of the first echelon of the invasion. On July 4, 1941, Canaris, in his memorandum to the headquarters of the Wehrmacht's supreme command, reported: “Numerous groups of agents from the indigenous population, that is, from Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Georgians, Estonians, etc., were sent to the headquarters of the German armies. Each group consisted of 25 or more people. These groups were led by German officers. The groups used captured Russian uniforms, weapons, military trucks and motorcycles. They were supposed to penetrate into the Soviet rear to a depth of fifty to three hundred kilometers in front of the front of the advancing German armies, in order to report the results of their observations by radio, paying special attention to collecting information about Russian reserves, about the state of railways and other roads, as well as about all activities carried out by the enemy ... "

At the same time, the saboteurs were faced with the task of blowing up railway and highway bridges, tunnels, water pumps, power plants, defense enterprises, physically destroying party and Soviet workers, NKVD officers, Red Army commanders, and sowing panic among the population.

Undermine the Soviet rear from within, introduce disorganization into all links of the national economy, weaken the morale and combat stamina of the Soviet troops, and thereby contribute to the successful achievement of its ultimate goal - the enslavement of the Soviet people. All the efforts of the Nazi intelligence and sabotage services were directed to this. From the first days of the war, the scope and tension of the armed struggle on the "invisible front" reached the highest intensity. In its scope and forms, this struggle was unparalleled in history.

History is written by the victors, and therefore it is not customary for Soviet chroniclers to mention German spies who worked behind the lines in the Red Army. And there were such scouts, and even in the General Staff of the Red Army, as well as the famous Max network. After the end of the war, the Americans transferred them to their place, to share their experience with the CIA. Indeed, it is hard to believe that the USSR managed to create an agent network in Germany and the countries occupied by it (the most famous is the Red Chapel), but the Germans did not.

And if German intelligence officers during the Second World War are not written in Soviet-Russian histories, then the point is not only that it is not customary for the winner to confess his own miscalculations.

Reinhard Gehlen - first, in the center - with cadets of the intelligence school

In the case of German spies in the USSR, the situation is complicated by the fact that the head of the Foreign Armies - East department (in the German abbreviation FHO, it was he who was in charge of intelligence) Reinhard Galen prudently took care of preserving the most important documentation in order to surrender to the Americans at the very end of the war and offer them a "goods face".

His department dealt almost exclusively with the USSR, and in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, Gehlen's papers were of great value to the United States.

Later, the general headed the intelligence of the FRG, and his archive remained in the United States (some copies were left to Gehlen). Having already retired, the general published his memoirs “Service. 1942-1971", which were published in Germany and the USA in 1971-72. Almost simultaneously with Gehlen's book, his biography was published in America, as well as the book of British intelligence officer Edward Spiro "Ghelen - Spy of the Century" (Spiro wrote under the pseudonym Edward Cookridge, he was a Greek by nationality, a representative of British intelligence in the Czech resistance during the war). Another book was written by American journalist Charles Whiting, who was suspected of working for the CIA, and was called Gehlen - German Spy Master. All of these books are based on the Gehlen archives, used with the permission of the CIA and the German intelligence BND. They contain some information about German spies in the Soviet rear.

Gehlen's personal card

General Ernst Kestring, a Russian German born near Tula, was engaged in "field work" in Gehlen's German intelligence. It was he who served as the prototype of the German major in Bulgakov's book Days of the Turbins, who saved Hetman Skoropadsky from reprisals by the Red Army (in fact, the Petliurists). Koestring was fluent in the Russian language and Russia, and it was he who personally selected agents and saboteurs from Soviet prisoners of war. It was he who found one of the most valuable, as it turned out later, German spies.

On October 13, 1941, 38-year-old Captain Minishkiy was taken prisoner. It turned out that before the war he worked in the secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and earlier in the Moscow City Party Committee. From the moment the war began, he served as a political instructor at the Western Front. He was captured along with the driver when he was driving around the advanced units during the battle of Vyazemsky.

Minishki immediately agreed to cooperate with the Germans, citing some old grievances against the Soviet regime. Seeing what a valuable shot they got, they promised, when the time came, to take him and his family to the west with the provision of German citizenship. But first, business.

Minishki spent 8 months studying in a special camp. And then the famous operation "Flamingo" began, which Gehlen carried out in collaboration with the intelligence officer Bown, who already had a network of agents in Moscow, among which the radio operator with the pseudonym Alexander was the most valuable. Baun's men ferried Minishkiy across the front line, and he reported to the very first Soviet headquarters the story of his capture and daring escape, every detail of which was invented by Gelen's experts. He was taken to Moscow, where he was hailed as a hero. Almost immediately, mindful of his previous responsible work, he was appointed to work in the military-political secretariat of the GKO.

Real German agents; something like this could look like other German spies

Through a chain through several German agents in Moscow, Minishki began to supply information. The first sensational message came from him on July 14, 1942. Gehlen and Gerre sat all night, drawing up a report based on it to the Chief of the General Staff, Halder. The report was made: “The military conference ended in Moscow on the evening of July 13th. Shaposhnikov, Voroshilov, Molotov and the heads of the British, American and Chinese military missions were present. Shaposhnikov declared that their retreat would be as far as the Volga, in order to force the Germans to spend the winter in the area. During the retreat, comprehensive destruction should be carried out in the territory being abandoned; all industry must be evacuated to the Urals and Siberia.

The British representative asked for Soviet assistance in Egypt, but was told that the Soviet manpower resources were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and guns, in part because part of the supply of weapons destined for Russia, which the British were supposed to deliver through the port of Basra in the Persian Gulf, was diverted to protect Egypt. It was decided to conduct offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using large tank forces and air cover. A distraction attack must be carried out at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be kept.”

It all happened. Halder later noted in his diary: “The FCO has provided accurate information on the enemy forces newly deployed since June 28, and on the estimated strength of these formations. He also gave a correct assessment of the energetic actions of the enemy in the defense of Stalingrad.

The above authors made a number of inaccuracies, which is understandable: they received information through several hands and 30 years after the events described. For example, the English historian David Kahn gave a more correct version of the report: on July 14, the meeting was attended not by the heads of the American, British and Chinese missions, but by the military attaches of these countries.

Secret Intelligence School OKW Amt Ausland/Abwehr

There is no consensus about the real name of Minishkia. According to another version, his surname was Mishinsky. But perhaps it is not true either. For the Germans, it passed under the code numbers 438.

Coolridge and other authors report sparingly on the further fate of Agent 438. The participants in Operation Flamingo definitely worked in Moscow until October 1942. In the same month, Gehlen recalled Minishkiy, arranging, with the help of Bown, a meeting with one of the leading reconnaissance detachments of the Wally, who ferried him across the front line.

In the future, Minishkiy worked for Gehlen in the information analysis department, worked with German agents, who were then transferred across the front line.

Minishkia and Operation Flamingo are also named by other respected authors, such as the British military historian John Eriksson in his book The Road to Stalingrad, by the French historian Gabor Rittersporn. According to Rittersporn, Minishkiy really received German citizenship, after the end of the Second World War he taught at an American intelligence school in southern Germany, then moved to the United States, having received American citizenship. The German Stirlitz died in the 1980s at his home in Virginia.

Minishkiy wasn't the only super spy. The same British military historians mention that the Germans had many intercepted telegrams from Kuibyshev, where the Soviet authorities were based at that time. A German spy group worked in this city. There were several "moles" surrounded by Rokossovsky, and several military historians mentioned that the Germans considered him as one of the main negotiators for a possible separate peace at the end of 1942, and then in 1944 - if the assassination attempt on Hitler would be successful. For reasons unknown today, Rokossovsky was seen as a possible ruler of the USSR after the overthrow of Stalin in a coup of the generals.

It looked like a unit of German saboteurs from Brandenburg. One of his most famous operations was the capture of the Maykop oil fields in the summer of 1942 and the city itself.

The British knew well about these German spies (it is clear that they know now). This is also recognized by Soviet military historians. For example, former military intelligence colonel Yuri Modin, in his book The Fates of Scouts: My Cambridge Friends, claims that the British were afraid to supply the USSR with information obtained by decoding German reports, precisely because of the fear that there were agents in the Soviet headquarters.

But they personally mention another German superintelligence officer - Fritz Kauders, who created the famous Max intelligence network in the USSR. His biography is given by the aforementioned Englishman David Kahn.

Fritz Kauders was born in Vienna in 1903. His mother was Jewish and his father was German. In 1927 he moved to Zurich, where he began working as a sports journalist. Then he lived in Paris and Berlin, after Hitler came to power he left as a reporter in Budapest. There he found himself a profitable occupation - an intermediary in the sale of Hungarian entry visas to Jews fleeing Germany. He made acquaintances with high-ranking Hungarian officials, and at the same time met the head of the Abwehr station in Hungary, and began working for German intelligence.

He makes acquaintance with the Russian emigre general A.V. Turkul, who had his own intelligence network in the USSR - later it served as the basis for the formation of a more extensive German spy network. Agents are thrown into the Union for a year and a half, starting in the autumn of 1939. The accession of Romanian Bessarabia to the USSR helped a lot here, when at the same time they “attached” dozens of German spies, abandoned there in advance.

General Turkul - in the center, with a mustache - with fellow White Guards in Sofia

With the outbreak of war with the USSR, Kauders moved to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where he headed the Abwehr radio post, which received radiograms from agents in the USSR. But who these agents were has not been clarified so far. There are only fragments of information that there were at least 20-30 of them in various parts of the USSR. The Soviet super-saboteur Sudoplatov also mentions the Max intelligence network in his memoirs.

As mentioned above, not only the names of German spies, but also the minimum information about their actions in the USSR is still closed. Did the Americans and the British pass information about them to the USSR after the victory over fascism? Hardly - they needed the surviving agents themselves. The maximum that was then declassified was secondary agents from the Russian émigré organization NTS.

(quoted from the book by B. Sokolov "Hunting for Stalin, hunting for Hitler", publishing house "Veche", 2003, pp. 121-147)

(Reinhard Gehlen - the first, in the center - with cadets of the intelligence school)

History is written by the victors, and therefore it is not customary for Soviet chroniclers to mention German spies who worked behind the lines in the Red Army. And there were such scouts, and even in the General Staff of the Red Army, as well as the famous Max network. After the end of the war, the Americans transferred them to their place, to share their experience with the CIA.

Indeed, it is hard to believe that the USSR managed to create an agent network in Germany and the countries occupied by it (the most famous is the Red Chapel), but the Germans did not. And if German intelligence officers during the Second World War are not written in Soviet-Russian histories, then the point is not only that it is not customary for the winner to confess his own miscalculations. In the case of German spies in the USSR, the situation is complicated by the fact that the head of the Foreign Armies - East department (in the German abbreviation FHO, it was he who was in charge of intelligence) Reinhard Galen prudently took care of preserving the most important documentation in order to surrender to the Americans at the very end of the war and offer them a "goods face".

His department dealt almost exclusively with the USSR, and in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, Gehlen's papers were of great value to the United States.

Later, the general headed the intelligence of the FRG, and his archive remained in the United States (some copies were left to Gehlen). Having already retired, the general published his memoirs “Service. 1942-1971", which were published in Germany and the USA in 1971-72. Almost simultaneously with Gehlen's book, his biography was published in America, as well as the book of British intelligence officer Edward Spiro "Ghelen - Spy of the Century" (Spiro wrote under the pseudonym Edward Cookridge, he was a Greek by nationality, a representative of British intelligence in the Czech resistance during the war). Another book was written by American journalist Charles Whiting, who was suspected of working for the CIA, and was called Gehlen - German Spy Master. All of these books are based on the Gehlen archives, used with the permission of the CIA and the German intelligence BND. They contain some information about German spies in the Soviet rear.

(Gelena's personal card)

General Ernst Kestring, a Russian German born near Tula, was engaged in "field work" in Gehlen's German intelligence. It was he who served as the prototype of the German major in Bulgakov's book Days of the Turbins, who saved Hetman Skoropadsky from reprisals by the Red Army (in fact, the Petliurites). Kestring was fluent in the Russian language and Russia, and it was he who personally selected agents and saboteurs from Soviet prisoners of war. It was he who found one of the most valuable, as it turned out later, German spies.

On October 13, 1941, 38-year-old Captain Minishkiy was taken prisoner. It turned out that before the war he worked in the secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and earlier in the Moscow City Party Committee. From the moment the war began, he served as a political instructor at the Western Front. He was captured along with the driver when he was driving around the advanced units during the battle of Vyazemsky.

Minishki immediately agreed to cooperate with the Germans, citing some old grievances against the Soviet regime. Seeing what a valuable shot they got, they promised, when the time came, to take him and his family to the west with the provision of German citizenship. But first, business.

Minishki spent 8 months studying in a special camp. And then the famous operation "Flamingo" began, which Gehlen carried out in collaboration with the intelligence officer Bown, who already had a network of agents in Moscow, among which the radio operator with the pseudonym Alexander was the most valuable. Baun's men ferried Minishkiy across the front line, and he reported to the very first Soviet headquarters the story of his capture and daring escape, every detail of which was invented by Gelen's experts. He was taken to Moscow, where he was hailed as a hero. Almost immediately, mindful of his previous responsible work, he was appointed to work in the military-political secretariat of the GKO.

(Real German agents; other German spies could look something like this)

Through a chain through several German agents in Moscow, Minishki began to supply information. The first sensational message came from him on July 14, 1942. Gehlen and Gerre sat all night, drawing up a report based on it to the Chief of the General Staff, Halder. The report was made: “The military conference ended in Moscow on the evening of July 13th. Shaposhnikov, Voroshilov, Molotov and the heads of the British, American and Chinese military missions were present. Shaposhnikov declared that their retreat would be as far as the Volga, in order to force the Germans to spend the winter in the area. During the retreat, comprehensive destruction should be carried out in the territory being abandoned; all industry must be evacuated to the Urals and Siberia.

The British representative asked for Soviet assistance in Egypt, but was told that the Soviet manpower resources were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and guns, in part because part of the supply of weapons destined for Russia, which the British were supposed to deliver through the port of Basra in the Persian Gulf, was diverted to protect Egypt. It was decided to conduct offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using large tank forces and air cover. A distraction attack must be carried out at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be kept.”

It all happened. Halder later noted in his diary: “The FCO has provided accurate information on the enemy forces newly deployed since June 28, and on the estimated strength of these formations. He also gave a correct assessment of the energetic actions of the enemy in the defense of Stalingrad.

The above authors made a number of inaccuracies, which is understandable: they received information through several hands and 30 years after the events described. For example, the English historian David Kahn gave a more correct version of the report: on July 14, the meeting was attended not by the heads of the American, British and Chinese missions, but by the military attaches of these countries.

(Secret intelligence school OKW Amt Ausland/Abwehr)

There is no consensus about the real name of Minishkia. According to another version, his surname was Mishinsky. But perhaps it is not true either. For the Germans, it passed under the code numbers 438.

Coolridge and other authors report sparingly on the further fate of Agent 438. The participants in Operation Flamingo definitely worked in Moscow until October 1942. In the same month, Gehlen recalled Minishkiy, arranging, with the help of Bown, a meeting with one of the leading reconnaissance detachments of the Wally, which ferried him across the front line.

In the future, Minishkia worked for Gehlen in the information analysis department, worked with German agents, who were then transferred across the front line.

Minishkia and Operation Flamingo are also named by other respected authors, such as the British military historian John Eriksson in his book The Road to Stalingrad, by the French historian Gabor Rittersporn. According to Rittersporn, Minishkiy really received German citizenship, after the end of the Second World War he taught at an American intelligence school in southern Germany, then moved to the United States, having received American citizenship. The German Stirlitz died in the 1980s at his home in Virginia.

Minishkia was not the only super spy. The same British military historians mention that the Germans had many intercepted telegrams from Kuibyshev, where the Soviet authorities were based at that time. A German spy group worked in this city. There were several "moles" surrounded by Rokossovsky, and several military historians mentioned that the Germans considered him as one of the main negotiators for a possible separate peace at the end of 1942, and then in 1944 - if the assassination attempt on Hitler would be successful. For reasons unknown today, Rokossovsky was seen as a possible ruler of the USSR after the overthrow of Stalin in a coup of the generals.

(This is how the unit of German saboteurs from Brandenburg looked like. One of its most famous operations was the capture of Maykop oil fields in the summer of 1942 and the city itself)

The British knew well about these German spies (it is clear that they know now). This is also recognized by Soviet military historians. For example, former military intelligence colonel Yuri Modin, in his book The Fates of Scouts: My Cambridge Friends, claims that the British were afraid to supply the USSR with information obtained by decoding German reports, precisely because of the fear that there were agents in the Soviet headquarters.

But they personally mention another German superintelligence officer - Fritz Kauders, who created the famous Max intelligence network in the USSR. His biography is given by the aforementioned Englishman David Kahn.

Fritz Kauders was born in Vienna in 1903. His mother was Jewish and his father was German. In 1927 he moved to Zurich, where he began working as a sports journalist. Then he lived in Paris and Berlin, after Hitler came to power he left as a reporter in Budapest. There he found himself a profitable occupation - an intermediary in the sale of Hungarian entry visas to Jews fleeing Germany. He made acquaintances with high-ranking Hungarian officials, and at the same time met the head of the Abwehr station in Hungary, and began working for German intelligence. He makes acquaintance with the Russian emigre general A.V. Turkul, who had his own intelligence network in the USSR - later it served as the basis for the formation of a more extensive German spy network. Agents are thrown into the Union for a year and a half, starting in the autumn of 1939. The accession of Romanian Bessarabia to the USSR helped a lot here, when at the same time they “attached” dozens of German spies, abandoned there in advance.

(General Turkul - in the center, with a mustache - with fellow White Guards in Sofia)

With the outbreak of war with the USSR, Kauders moved to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where he headed the Abwehr radio post, which received radiograms from agents in the USSR. But who these agents were has not been clarified so far. There are only fragments of information that there were at least 20-30 of them in various parts of the USSR. The Soviet super-saboteur Sudoplatov also mentions the Max intelligence network in his memoirs.

As mentioned above, not only the names of German spies, but also the minimum information about their actions in the USSR is still closed. Did the Americans and the British pass information about them to the USSR after the victory over fascism? Hardly - they needed the surviving agents themselves. The maximum that was then declassified was secondary agents from the Russian émigré organization NTS.

(quoted from the book by B. Sokolov "Hunting for Stalin, hunting for Hitler", publishing house "Veche", 2003, pp. 121-147)

Even in the Interpreter's Blog about the accomplices of the Germans during the Second World War.