Max Hastings - The Secret War - Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945

On 15 March Centre increased the risk level for its Berlin informants by ordering Korotkov to establish a direct link with Schulze-Boysen, cutting out couriers, so as to hasten evaluation of his reports. Their first meeting took place in Harnack’s flat, where Schulze-Boysen gave the Russian a momentary fright by turning up in his Luftwaffe uniform. ‘I didn’t have time to change,’ he explained. Korotkov reported to Moscow: ‘We talked exclusively about the information on anti-Soviet plans that was available to him. He is absolutely conscious of the fact that he is dealing with a representative of the Soviet Union [as distinct from the Comintern]. My impression is that he is happy to tell us everything he knows. He answered our questions without equivocation or any attempt to obfuscate. Moreover, it was obvious that he had prepared for this meeting, by writing down some questions for us on a scrap of paper … We hope to establish a close connection with Schulze-Boysen. However, at present he is confined to barracks and is only occasionally and unpredictably free to travel into town, often while it is still light and even in his uniform, as happened when I met him. Any rendezvous must be flexible.’

On the evening of 19 April, in Harnack’s flat Korotkov met Adam Kuckhoff, a writer and theatre director, who was promptly recruited with the codename ‘Old Man’. Korotkov messaged Moscow about him in frankly condescending terms: ‘Kuckhoff strikes one as a cultured and educated man whose views have been influenced by reading the works of Lenin. He still keeps some of Lenin’s works and thinks himself a communist.’ In Moscow the Comintern checked its files on Kuckhoff and endorsed his credentials. They told Korotkov that ‘Old Man’ ‘was deeply affected by the general crisis of the bourgeois culture and became close to the “union of Intellectuals”’. The writer now became a prominent member of the Harnack group.

The insistent theme of all the reporting to Moscow was that of looming Nazi onslaught. On 8 May 1941 ‘Zakhar’ reported: ‘rumours about Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union are constantly increasing … War is going to be declared in mid-May.’ A.S. Panyushkin, who unusually combined the role of Soviet ambassador to the Chinese government in Chongqing with that of NKVD station chief, reported to Moscow early in May that Hitler was expected to invade. The Chinese military attaché in Berlin even told the Russians of the Germans’ intended axes of advance.

The NKVD team in Berlin was fortunate to escape disaster, living through this uniquely sensitive period in Russo–German relations with an oaf as its station chief. Kobulov’s fall from grace began with a drunken row at a May 1941 embassy banquet for a visiting Soviet delegation: he publicly slapped the face of the deputy trade representative. This episode prompted the ambassador to demand the NKVD officer’s recall. Kobulov counterattacked by asking Beria to bring him home; he claimed to dislike the feuding inside the embassy as much as the British bombing of Berlin. Beria felt obliged to report the banquet episode to Stalin and Molotov, but rejected the demand for his man’s recall in return for Kobulov’s maudlin promise of future good behaviour; he was ordered by Moscow to risk no further personal contact with Harnack.

The NKVD man attempted to redeem himself as a spymaster by recruiting as an informant a Latvian journalist codenamed ‘Lycée student’, who, he assured Moscow, was ‘most reliable’. This man, Oreste Berlings, was already on the Gestapo’s books as agent ‘Peter’, a double of whom Ribbentrop said complacently, ‘We can pump whatever information we want into him.’ This foolishness would have been trivial had it not taken place in the last weeks before the Germans launched ‘Barbarossa’, when intelligence from Berlin should have been of critical importance to Soviet decision-making. Kobulov’s blundering contributed to the Kremlin’s stubborn scepticism about NKVD reporting.

On 18 April 1941, heedless of Stalin’s insistence that no clash with Germany was imminent, Russia’s intelligence services formally shifted to a war footing: the GRU and NKVD warned their networks across Europe, and strengthened their stations in Switzerland and Berlin. But they did little to improve the management of informants in the field, chiefly because experienced handlers were in such short supply. Even more serious, they failed to provide agents with means of long-range communications. Russian-built wirelesses were of poor quality: NKVD communications improved only later in the war, when the Lubyanka secured American sets. In the protracted meanwhile, contact between Moscow and its overseas agents remained precarious. On 1 May 1941 the Berlin station urgently requested transmitters for the Harnack group, in case contact through the embassy was lost. Harnack himself was reluctant to accept such equipment; he said that while he knew nothing about wireless, he was acutely conscious of the ubiquity of the Abwehr’s and Gestapo’s direction-finders. Eventually, however, he acquiesced in a step which merely reflected the logic of his convictions: that war was imminent, and he wished to continue to work against Hitler. After several weeks’ delay, in mid-June his handlers presented him with two sets. The first was a portable D-6, with a range not much over five hundred miles and batteries with two hours’ life. The NKVD man promised more batteries, but these were never forthcoming. The second set was a little more powerful, but required mains electricity.

Korotkov explained that coding procedure was easy: the spies needed only remember the number 38745 and the keyword ‘ Schraube ’. He urged Harnack to make Karl Behrens his second wireless-operator, but the German baulked. This was a hugely risky assignment, he pointed out, and Behrens had three small children. He would never forgive himself if the man was caught, and paid the price. Behrens was anyway under Gestapo surveillance, having provided false papers for a Jewish brother-in-law. A second possible candidate, Kurt Schumacher, was called up for military duty. Eventually the second wireless set was placed in the hands of a man named Hans Koppi, suggested by Schulze-Boysen. Within weeks, however, Hitler’s hosts had swept across Russia, driving the Soviets many miles back, beyond reach of Berlin’s feeble signals. The sets given to Harnack fell silent. He continued industriously to gather intelligence, but lacked means to pass it on. This impasse persisted through the first five months of the Eastern war.

Meanwhile Willy Lehmann’s material also began to include evidence of Germany’s commitment to war with Russia. On 28 May he told his handler that he had been ordered for undisclosed reasons to organise a twenty-four-hour duty roster for his section. A few days later his health collapsed, and he was obliged to take sick leave, from which he returned only on 19 June. What he then learned in his office caused him to discard tradecraft and call an immediate meeting with Zhuravlev, his courier: the Gestapo had been formally informed of an order to initiate military operations against the Soviet Union. This report was immediately forwarded to Moscow, but it seems unlikely that Beria showed it to Stalin until the last hours before the German invasion.

Another significant NKVD German source was Captain Walter Maria Stennes, once an enthusiastic Nazi stormtrooper and friend of Hitler. Stennes – ‘Friend’ in Moscow Centre’s books – had since experienced a dramatic change of heart, becoming an ardent foe of the regime. Having survived a brief term of imprisonment, he departed for China where he became Chiang Kai-shek’s air adviser and was recruited by the Russians. On 9 June 1941, following a conversation with a high-ranking Wehrmacht visitor, he informed Vasily Zarubin that the invasion had been planned for May, then postponed, and that a three-month campaign was now scheduled to start on 20 June. Zarubin also told Moscow that Stennes had met Sorge in Shanghai, who had heard the same story.