What Stalin Knew (22 page)

agent nets that reported on foreigners, foreign installations, and Soviet

citizens suspected of espionage activity on behalf of foreign intelligence

services. The Fourth Department operated the system of special depart-

ments (
osobye otdely
) responsible for counterintelligence and political re-

liability in the military forces. Out of a total of 1,484 employees in the

GUGB, only 225 were in the Fifth Department, all of them housed in Build-

ing No. 2, better known as the Liubianka. The place reeked of ‘‘repression.’’6

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NKVD FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

By February 1941 the GUGB was removed from the NKVD and made

an independent People’s Commissariat, the NKGB. The Fifth (Foreign In-

telligence) Department became the First Directorate, testimony to the

growing importance of external intelligence. The other departments of the

GUGB were combined into the Second Directorate for Counterintelligence

and a Third Secret-Political Directorate. Under Fitin’s leadership the Mos-

cow staff of the new Foreign Intelligence Directorate continued to grow.

The number of personnel in its foreign residencies numbered 242. The

structure of the operational departments was then streamlined, with Ger-

many remaining the First Section. Subordinate to the Fifth Department in

1939 were fourteen geographic sections (
otdeleniia
). The First covered

Germany, Hungary, and Denmark, the Second Poland, the Third France,

Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, the Fourth Great Britain, and so on.

The Fifteenth Section dealt with technical intelligence; the Sixteenth han-

dled operational technical matters such as documentation and conceal-

ment devices.7

Unlike Proskurov, the chief of military intelligence, Fitin never had

access to Stalin directly. Because his department was subordinate to the

NKVD’s Chief Directorate for State Security (GUGB), his reporting had to

be signed by either Lavrenty P. Beria himself or Vsevolod N. Merkulov,

GUGB’s chief. Merkulov had served in internal security from 1921 to 1931.

In December 1938 he came up to Moscow from party work in the Georgian

SSR along with other Beria cronies; in November Beria had become Peo-

ple’s Commissar for Internal Affairs. Then, in February 1941, when the

People’s Commissariat for State Security was created out of the NKVD/

GUGB, Merkulov became commissar, with Bogdan Z. Kobulov as his dep-

uty. When Merkulov was absent—as he was, for example, from about

June 9 to June 13, 1941—reports to Stalin and other listed recipients were

signed by Kobulov. On the few occasions when Fitin met personally with

Stalin, Merkulov was always present; it is doubtful that either Beria or

Merkulov would have given Fitin permission to see Stalin alone. Even had

he been permitted, it seems unlikely that Fitin could have persuaded Stalin

to accept the validity of reporting with which he did not agree.8

As concern over German military activities on the western frontier

grew acute, Fitin was forced to spend more and more time with Pavel M.

Zhuravliev, head of the German component in the center. Fitin was person-

ally responsible for relations with Soviet military intelligence. Beginning

in the summer of 1940 and continuing through June 1941, there was con-

stant communication between the two organizations. The RU frequently

NKVD FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

95

passed specific requirements to the NKGB, after which Zhuravliev’s people

would adapt them to the capabilities of individual residencies and their

sources and send them to the appropriate residency. All exchanges be-

tween the RU and the First Directorate had to be approved by Fitin. There

is one instance noted in July 1940 in which Fitin passed on to the RU a

report from sources in Bratislava, Slovakia, on the Germanization of the

Slovakian army. This report Fitin had actually copied by hand.9

Another task for which the German Department was responsible was

the receipt of reports from the NKVD border troops and their agents and

dissemination to the RU and the senior leadership. Evaluating NKGB re-

porting in May 1941, the RU asserted that it accepted without doubt the

increasing German army presence along the Soviet frontier. It pointed out,

however, that by moving their troops from one area to another, the Ger-

mans may have been attempting to confuse RU estimates. It therefore

requested greater precision in identifying units and the nature of their

movements.10 That this guidance was having some effect can be seen in a

detailed report to the NKGB SSR from the Belorussian SSR NKGB that

provided precise unit identification and organizational structure. Merku-

lov made a marginal note to Fitin: ‘‘Put this together with information you

have and prepare the contents of it for the Central Committee VKP(b).’’11

Unlike Military Intelligence, NKVD/NKGB Foreign Intelligence had

never created an analytical component, or ‘‘information’’ unit. It had al-

ways relied on the dissemination of reports directly to specific customers,

leaving them to decide on interpretation. Stalin insisted on this procedure

and made clear that he alone would judge individual reports and their

implications. His problem was his limited ability to understand things

foreign. Apart from brief trips abroad before World War I to attend party

conferences, his first substantive foreign visit was to Iran for the Teheran

Conference in 1943. His last was to Potsdam, in the Soviet Zone of Ger-

many in 1945.12 Already blinkered by Marxist-Leninist ideology and a con-

spiratorial cast of mind, Stalin was a poor judge of the reporting. The most

telling evidence was his fixation on the idea that Hitler could not, would

not attack the USSR until he had conquered England.13 By the spring of

1941, Fitin received increased reporting from his own sources and from

other elements of the NKGB and NKVD. In recognition that some ca-

pability for analysis needed to be created, the Information Section of the

German Department, the NKGB’s first analytical component, was formed.

It was organized by Mikhail A. Allakhverdov, a veteran Chekist and Central

Asian specialist who had just returned from Belgrade, reportedly after an

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NKVD FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

attempt to stage a coup against the pro-German government. Some said he

was actually sent there to watch the British run their own coup. It was

successful, but the patient died—Hitler immediately overran Yugoslavia.14

Allakhverdov’s deputy was Zoia Ivanovna Rybkina, who had entered

internal security in 1928 and by 1935 occupied the post of deputy resident

in Helsinki, where she served until 1939. In 1940 she was assigned to the

German Section, where she specialized in the study of German intentions

toward the USSR and processed reporting from Berlin residency sources.

She was therefore well qualified to become deputy in this first NKGB

Information Section.15

One of the section’s activities was the preparation of a ‘‘calendar’’ of

reporting by the two most prolific Berlin sources, Korsikanets and Star-

shina, on German plans and preparations to attack the USSR. This was to

be the final effort of the newly created section before the war began.16

∞≠

C H A P T E R

Fitin’s Recruited Spies

Fitin’s foreign intelligence directorate was part of

the state security apparatus on which Stalin had always relied. Because

this apparatus was headed by men like Beria and Merkulov on whom he

believed he could depend, he may have tended to pay special attention to

Fitin’s reports. Which of Fitin’s spies produced the best intelligence reports

for Stalin, and did their reports please him? City by city, here is the answer

to that question.

Berlin

The Berlin residency began to rebuild after Hitler’s ascent to power. A new

resident, Boris M. Gordon, arrived in 1934 and began recruiting sources.

His most successful recruit was Arvid Harnack, an official in the German

Economics Ministry. Harnack had a wide circle of acquaintances, all of

them opposed to Hitler, capable of providing access to a variety of in-

telligence. His development of Harnack (code name Korsikanets) was in-

terrupted in May 1937 when he was recalled to Moscow, where he was

arrested and executed on the usual spurious charges. His replacement,

Aleksandr I. Agaiants, arrived soon after his departure and began to re-

establish contact with various sources, including Wilhelm (Willy) Leh-

mann (code name Breitenbach), a police official who had volunteered his

98

FITIN’S RECRUITED SPIES

services in the pre-Hitler period. He was later assigned to Gestapo counter-

intelligence operations against the Soviet mission.

Unfortunately for the residency, Agaiants died while undergoing an

operation for a perforated stomach ulcer in December 1937. His death left

the residency without a chief and with many of its best sources out of

contact. In August 1939 the new resident arrived as first secretary and then

counselor of the Soviet mission. He was Amaiak Z. Kobulov, whose older

brother, Bogdan Kobulov, was a Beria favorite and then a department chief

in the NKVD’s sinister Chief Directorate for State Security (GUGB). The

appointment of an individual who had no foreign intelligence experience,

had never been abroad, and spoke no German was typical of the nepotism

then prevalent in Beria’s NKVD. It was deeply resented by the professional

officers in the German component. Although Fitin himself endeavored to

contain his displeasure at the appointment, it became evident that if oper-

ational discipline and contact with key sources were to be restored, an

experienced deputy would have to be assigned to Berlin.

This turned out to be Aleksandr M. Korotkov, an experienced officer

who had been active since 1933 as an illegal in Western Europe. It was

Korotkov who recontacted Korsikanets on September 17, 1940, using the

pseudonym Alexander Erdberg. He would continue to handle this case and

then work directly with Korsikanets’s friend Harro Schulze-Boysen (code

name Starshina), who occupied a major’s slot in the intelligence element of

the German Air Ministry. The several subsources exploited by these agents

included: a member of the Technical Department of the Wehrmacht (code

name Grek), the principal bookkeeper of the industrial chemical giant I. G.

Farben (code name Turok); a Russian émigré industrialist and former

tsarist officer with good contacts in the German military (code name Al-

banets); a German naval intelligence officer (code name Italianets); an

employee of the heavy-machine building firm AEG (code name Luchisty);

and a German air force major, liaison officer between the Air Ministry and

the Foreign Ministry (code named Shved).

The third person with whom Korotkov was in direct contact was

Starik, an old friend of Korsikanets who was able to report on the opposi-

tion to Hitler and assist in communications among the group. A review of

available declassified reports from Berlin during the 1940–41 period dem-

onstrates that it was this formidable intelligence team that provided the

bulk of the information.1

The Berlin NKGB residency did an excellent job of source exploitation.

In October 1940 Korsikanets reported that ‘‘Germany would go to war with

FITIN’S RECRUITED SPIES

99

the USSR after the first of the year 1941.’’ The initial phase of the operation

would be the occupation of Romania. Another source in the German high

command told Korsikanets that ‘‘the war would begin in six months.’’ In

early January 1941, Starshina, the Luftwaffe officer in the intelligence

element of the Air Ministry, reported that ‘‘an order had been given to begin

large-scale photographic reconnaissance flights over the Soviet border

area. At the same time Hermann Göring ordered the ‘Russian Section’

of the Air Ministry subordinated to the active air staff responsible for

operations planning.’’ On January 9 Korsikanets reported, ‘‘The Military-

Economic Department of the Reich Statistical Administration was or-

dered by the German high command to prepare a map of Soviet industrial

areas.’’ Per Starshina, by March 1941 ‘‘the photographic reconnaissance

flights were under way at full speed. German aircraft were operating from

air fields at Bucharest, Königsberg, and Kirkenes in northern Norway.

Photos were taken at a height of 6,000 meters. Göring is the ‘driving force’

in planning for a war against the USSR.’’2

On March 20 Korsikanets learned that ‘‘in addition to the occupation

forces there was only one active division in Belgium, thus confirming the

postponement of military action against the British Isles. Preparation for