What Stalin Knew (26 page)
Authors: David E. Murphy
On June 20, a Friday, the American embassy wives and employees
were busy packing. Mrs. Steinhardt took Karmen with her on a last round
of shopping in the commission stores. She told Karmen that all the women
would be flying out of Moscow the next day, she to Stockholm, the others to
Teheran. The men of the embassy would go to the new dacha at Tarasovka
while journalists would move from hotels in town to places on the city’s
outskirts. All the foreigners with whom Karmen came in contact predicted
that Germany would defeat the USSR in from six weeks to three months.
Karmen asked why earlier reports had produced no response and de-
manded that they be sent to a higher level.19
Among the other agents reporting on the American embassy were
Verny, a chauffeur with a good command of English who also reported on
the plans to lease a new dacha. On June 20 Verny took the ambassador
around the outskirts of Moscow to reconnoiter roads that could be used if
the city was evacuated. Jack, the ambassador’s valet, reported that on
June 1 he had helped the ambassador pack three valises. Necessary items
were put in the first valise, next to the door; the second accommodated
items of lesser importance. The first would be taken if there were only
fifteen minutes to leave, the second if they had half an hour, and so forth.20
LISTENING TO THE ENEMY
115
Such minutia was probably typical of the reports Second Directorate
agents working in various diplomatic installations in Moscow sent to their
case officers, but taken together the details represent the thoughts and
actions of foreigners who appear to have been convinced that war with Ger-
many was at hand. Combined with the transcripts from listening devices
and telephone taps, the information should have persuaded the recipients—
Stalin, Molotov, and Beria—that something vitally threatening was afoot.
There were other indicators as well. On June 14 German authorities
issued an order to all German merchant ships not to enter Soviet ports.
Those already in Soviet ports were to leave immediately. On June 20 the
Leningrad Directorate of the Soviet Baltic Commercial Fleet reported a
radiogram, sent in the clear, uncoded, from the freighter
Magnitogorsk
that
it was being held in the German port of Danzig for unknown reasons. The
Baltic Commercial Fleet message noted that ‘‘the
Magnitogorsk
is not re-
sponding to our queries. Although we have had no instructions from Mos-
cow, tomorrow, June 22, we will order the
Lunacharsky
to return to Lenin-
grad and the
Vtoraia Piatiletka
to go to Riga.’’ The last German ship to leave
Leningrad on June 15 carried the German specialists helping to complete
the German cruiser
Luetzow,
purchased earlier by the Soviets. It seems
incredible that no one in the Soviet navy’s Baltic Fleet became aware of
these messages, historically a prime indicator of approaching hostilities.21
In addition to controlling the activities of the Moscow operational
departments, the Second Directorate oversaw and in some cases directed
counterespionage operations in the union republics. For this reason it was
kept informed of operations by German military intelligence (Abwehr) in
key border areas. One wonders how Merkulov’s men interpreted the fol-
lowing report and what they did with it. Coming at the end of a description
of German military activities along the frontier were these ominous sen-
tences: ‘‘German intelligence is sending its agents into the USSR for short
periods—three to four days. Agents being dispatched for longer periods,
ten to fifteen days, are instructed that in the event German troops cross
the frontier before they are scheduled to return to Germany, they must
report to any German troop unit located on Soviet territory.’’22 Such re-
porting shows the need to draw strategic conclusions from simple coun-
terintelligence reports. If the interrogation of captured Abwehr agents re-
flected briefing along these lines by their handlers, it should have been
evident that the Wehrmacht was on the point of invading the Soviet Union.
Taken as a whole, the information obtained from NKGB counterin-
telligence confirmed that provided by foreign intelligence sources, yet
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LISTENING TO THE ENEMY
there is no suggestion that it influenced in any way Stalin’s conviction
that Hitler would not attack the USSR because he was still preparing the
invasion of Great Britain. But what of the impact of this reporting on
the professional officers who obtained it and comprehended its meaning?
Their silence was the result of living and functioning in a world of fear
where one dared not confide in one’s colleagues. As the material obtained
from their operations grew more threatening, some of them—those very
close to the center—began to express their concerns openly but never, of
course, to the Great Leader himself.
[To view this image, refer to
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Stalin and Boris M. Shaposhnikov
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I. I. Proskurov, Hero of the Soviet Union
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Ribbentrop and Stalin
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Semen K. Timoshenko
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Georgy K. Zhukov
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Ilse Stöbe (Alta)
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Arvid Harnack (Korsikanets)
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Harro Schulze-Boysen (Starshina)
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Willy Lehmann (Breitenbach)
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Pavel M. Fitin
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Richard Sorge
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Ivan I. Maslennikov
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Petr V. Fedotov
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Grigory M. Shtern
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Ernst G. Shakht
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Filipp I. Golikov
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Yakov V. Smushkevich
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Proskurov and his family before his arrest
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Lev Ye. Vlodzimirsky
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Proskurov’s monument
∞≤
C H A P T E R
Working on the Railroad
Before and during the war the Soviet economy
functioned much as it had since its creation by Stalin in the first Five Year
Plan. Problems in speeding the transformation of the Soviet Union into a
modern industrial state were addressed with punitive measures carried
out by the economic components of the NKVD’s State Security Chief Di-
rectorate. Industrial accidents, for example, were reported as sabotage by
informants and punished by death or imprisonment. Thus, it is not sur-
prising that the First (Railroad) Department of the NKVD’s Chief Trans-
port Directorate (GTU) was charged with improving the performance of
the national rail system. Less well known is the important contribution it
made to the collection of intelligence on the buildup of German forces in
occupied Poland.
As early as July 1939, the GTU began complaining of acts of sabotage
on rail lines within the USSR. The perpetrators were never detected. The
GTU called for improvements in agent operations at key points such as
locomotive repair shops, railroad bridges, marshaling yards, water towers,
and so forth.1 The agent informants operated in classic NKVD fashion,
reporting on individuals on train crews or at stations whom they suspected
of anti-Soviet attitudes or actual sabotage. When the USSR occupied the
western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia in the fall of 1939, the rail lines
in the area were organized regionally in the Soviet manner. Agent infor-
mants were imported from other parts of the USSR or recruited from
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WORKING ON THE RAILROAD
members of local railroad employee groups. As in other counterintelli-
gence and security situations, their actions also led to the collection of
first-rate intelligence on the areas in which these groups operated—in
other words, straight from the iron horse’s mouth.
In a special report dated July 12, 1940, the GTU gave an early demon-
stration of what its agents could discover. The report contained informa-
tion from agents in Hamburg, Lübeck, Stettin, Memel, Tilsit, Königsberg,
and Danzig, who asserted that the number of locomotives assigned to haul
construction materials, cement, and iron to build fortifications in areas
along the Soviet frontier had recently been increased. The report described
new seaplane bases at Swinemünde and activity at shipyards in Stettin,
providing details on new classes of motor torpedo boats. It was signed by
Solomon R. Milshtein, head of the GTU, and sent to Beria, people’s com-
missar for internal affairs, and to Bogdan Z. Kobulov, who as head of
the Chief Economic Directorate was responsible for security in industry.
Clearly, the report should have been sent to military intelligence (RU)
as well.2
A July 28, 1940, GTU report reflects the modus operandi of the GTU
agent networks. An agent (code name Zagorsky) run by the Belostokaia
railroad, went by train to a German border station. Here, he conversed
with employees of the German railroad who claimed there were some
30,000 German troops concentrated fifteen kilometers from the station.
This information was confirmed by another agent (code name Shibanov).
According to a report in early August, agents from the Belostokaia railroad
traveled by train as far as the German stations of Malkino and Sedlets,
where German troops were being hurriedly moved to the Soviet frontier
area. On July 20, for example, two trains unloaded German motorized
troops. Each train included flatcars transporting equipment for them. To
speed up the unloading of the trains, the Malkino station had a turntable
for quickly rerouting the locomotives. Trains from Soviet railroads were
not allowed to use this device but had their locomotives turned about by
manual switching. ‘‘In the past several days German tank units have been
unloading at the Sedlets station, after which they move in the direction of
the Soviet frontier.’’ The reports were signed by Captain of State Security
M. L. Benenson, deputy chief of the First (Railroad) Department, GTU,
and stamped with the Milshtein seal. The recipients were the same, Beria
and Bogdan Kobulov. Again, there is no indication that this information
was passed to military intelligence.3
The GTU’s agent networks provided significant details on August 16,
WORKING ON THE RAILROAD
119
1940. A German commission composed of officers and headed by a general
arrived in Terespol, Poland, by armored train and inspected the area. An
agent (code name Bykov) operating there saw German officers at the rail-
road station with the number 58 on their shoulder boards. The troops (in-
fantry, artillery, tank units, and cavalry) arrived in large numbers and were
quartered in tents near the town of Ostrolenka. It was reported that there
were to be eighteen German divisions concentrated in the area around
Terespol. Antiaircraft artillery units were located in the Lublin and Dem-
blin areas, and tank units were said to have occupied the towns of Lukov
and Sedlets. To economize on fuel, agents reported, one tank towed two
others in moving from rail heads. According to German soldiers who spoke
to a GTU agent, numerous German troops had arrived from the Western
Front and were being quartered in renovated Polish barracks. Agents also
reported that on August 2 German demolition teams had blown up old
Austrian and Polish fortifications and that construction units were build-
ing new works. The report ended with considerable detail on German
recruitment of Ukrainian nationalists in the Peremyshl area and the dis-