Vadim Birstein - SMERSH

When he told SMERSH member Colonel LIKHACHEV about this conversation, [Likhachev] approved a new meeting. He ordered that the stranger be told there was no member of Soviet counterintelligence in Nuremberg. Watching the meeting [with the stranger] from his car, Com.[rade] LIKHACHEV observed the American shadow following Com.[rade] TARKHOV.

Soon after this, on November 25, 1945, the American officer HINELY [?] sent a note to Com.[rade] TARKHOV through our communication officers, inviting him to a party of American officers that would also be attended by girls. When the Soviet communication officer answered that he could not come, HINELY told him not to tell anybody about the invitation because ‘some girls’ wanted to spend the evening [personally] with him.

2. It is also necessary to note the careless behavior of many of the Soviet representatives who had recently arrived for the trial. They spent a lot of time outside on the streets, and in restaurants, having friendly drinks with the Americans. Only a small proportion of the Soviet correspondents and writers who are here for the trial actually attend [sessions at] the court systematically.

The same day there was a strange attempt on Likhachev’s life. Olga Svidovskaya-Tabachnikova recalled:

We spent many evenings in the restaurant of the Grand Hotel, which had been seriously destroyed by American bombs. There was a lobby with a revolving door and a restaurant in the part that had been somewhat restored and had lighting. Half-starved Germans entertained the Allies to the best of their abilities. The whole scene was extremely pitiful, but there was no place else [in the city] to go.

One day we—Likhachev, Grishaev, Solovov, and me—wanted to go, as usual, to the Grand Hotel, but something came up, and Likhachev could not go, so I stayed at home too. In Nuremberg, the Likhachev team was furnished with an exceptional limousine—a black and white ‘Horch’ with red leather upholstery. This was a unique car. There were rumors that the ‘Horch’ had come from Hitler’s personal garage. Likhachev regularly sat to the right of the driver…

[On the evening of December 8, 1945] Grishaev and Solovov got out of the car and entered the hotel. A minute later someone opened the right-side door [of the limousine] and Buben [the driver] was shot at close range. I think Likhachev was the real target, and the shooter had assumed [Likhachev] was sitting in his usual place… The shooter escaped. Before he collapsed, Buben managed to say: ‘An American shot me.’ Boris Solovov claims that the Americans knew very well what, in fact, the ‘Likhachev team’ was about. 61

The Horch that Svidovskaya mentioned was an eight-seat hand-made Horch 951, the dream car of all high-ranking officers of the Soviet Administration in Germany. Lieutenant General Vladimir Kryukov, one of the generals closest to Marshal Zhukov, had four cars, including two Horch 951s, one of which, the Horch 951A, was made for Hitler personally. Likhachev’s Horch was possibly made for one of the defendants on trial, either Goering or Alfred Rosenberg. Apparently, Abakumov later used this Horch in Moscow to commute to the Kremlin.

Solovov was right in claiming that American intelligence was aware of the SMERSH presence in Nuremberg. A review of American military counterintelligence (CIC) reports from February 1 to June 15, 1945, reveals:

The activities of the Soviet intelligence group in Nuremberg, their previous professional experience, and their personal qualifications suggest that the members of this group were responsible to the NKGB and/or the GUKR (Counter Intelligence Administration of the Red Army) [i.e., SMERSH], despite the fact that they called themselves NKVD officers and were referred to as such by other Soviet citizens in Nuremberg. The abbreviation NKVD as used in Nuremberg was merely a general intelligence and security designation. 62

But Richard W. Cutler, a former American counterintelligence (X-2 branch of the OSS) officer who was in Nuremberg during the trial, does not mention SMERSH and the NKGB in his memoirs. 63He uses the acronym NKVD to describe all Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence activity. The CIC reports also did not mention the Likhachev team or the assassination attempt on Likhachev. One of the reports stated:

Colonel Victor Staatland, alias Bendinov, aka Bimaev, appears to have been the executive or administrative officer of the NKVD Group in Nuremberg until his departure on 12 April [1946]…

Staatland was in constant communication with Moscow by telephone, usually speaking from his hotel room… In court, he sat in the press section. He was always seen in civilian clothes, on which he wore several combat ribbons.

Questioned about his German name, Staatland admitted that it was a ‘working pseudonym’ and that he is known as Bendinov in Moscow.

Another report added:

Staatland… stopped greeting General [Lev] Smirnov, one of the [Soviet] prosecutors, after the latter had talked too openly about Russia’s internal politics…

Staatland… is almost certainly an NKGB man. His detailed personal knowledge of the White Russians living abroad and his preoccupation with the White Russians in Nuremberg suggest INU [NKGB foreign intelligence] connections. 64

The CIC information about ‘Colonel Staatland’ makes no sense. Obviously, this was Viktor Shtatland, a famous cameraman who shot documentary films at the fronts during the war. In Nuremberg, Rudenko showed a film called Documentary on Atrocities of the German-Fascist Occupiers , which was made with Shtatland’s participation. In the courtroom, Shtatland, as a member of the camera crew of the noted documentary filmmaker Roman Karmen, filmed the trial. After the trial, the crew produced the documentary Sud narodov ( The Judgment of Nations ). Naturally, Shtatland talked frequently on the phone with a Moscow film studio.

The CIC report was also wrong about the other Soviet press people: ‘Vsevolod Vitalievich Vishnevsky, Staatland’s assistant, claimed to be a colonel but was always seen in civilian clothes decorated with combat ribbons. He has probably been in intelligence work for some time… Vishnevsky was openly a “strong-arm man,” considerably lower in the administrative and social hierarchy than Staatland. He left Nuremberg on March 28… Staatland once admitted that “Vishnevsky” was not necessarily his real name.’ 65Even the description of this man, given in this report, ‘stocky build; stiff black hair; narrow Kalmyk eyes; high Mongolian cheekbones; generally tough appearance,’ points to Vsevolod Vishnevsky, a well-known and popular Soviet playwright who also wrote for the newspaper Pravda . He was neither Shtatland’s assistant nor a colonel.

Prosecutor Lev Sheinin was the third person who attracted the CIC’s attention: ‘General Leon Sheinin, who departed from Nuremberg with Staatland on 12 April, was officially a military jurist, but unlike some of his associates appeared to have intelligence background rather than a background in military and international law. His connections with Staatland were very close.’ 66Lev Sheinin was, in fact, a jurist; he served as Vyshinsky’s assistant in the 1930s, then headed the Investigation Department at the USSR Prosecutor’s Office. Also, he published detective fiction stories. In 1942, Sheinin defended two Soviet agents in an Ankara court. 67These agents had provided their Turkish adherent with a bomb in an attempt to assassinate the German Ambassador Franz von Papen, now a defendant in Nuremberg. Sheinin, a member of the team of Soviet prosecutors in Nuremberg, also headed a group of Soviet writers and journalists. 68