Boris Smyslowsky

Boris Smyslowsky , pseudonyms : Art (h) ur Holmston or von Regenau (born December 3, 1897 in Selenogorsk ( Russian Зеленогорск, Finnish Terijoki); † September 5, 1988 in Vaduz ), was a Russian nobleman and officer. His career as a military person with officer rank began in the army of the Russian Empire .

Smyslowsky was a participant in the Russian Civil War and in collaborating units of the German Wehrmacht in World War II .

Act

Between the world wars

Boris Smyslowsky began his military career in the Moscow 1st Cadet Corps . From 1917 he completed training at the St. Petersburg Tsar Nikolai Military Academy , which he did not finish due to the Russian civil war that followed the two Russian revolutions of that year.

In the civil war he took part on the side of the White Guards . Among other things, as an officer in the 1918 artillery of the army of General Denikin in battles on North Caucasus River Kuban and on the peninsula Crimea part. As a staff captain of the 3rd Russian Army ( Russian 3 ^я . Русская Армия), he headed the espionage department in 1920 . This army was one of several military units set up by emigrants from Soviet Russia in 1920 in neighboring, again independent Poland .

After his defeat in the civil war, Smyslowsky initially stayed in Poland as an emigrant. Between 1928 and 1932 he stayed in Germany and organized courses for the Troop Office , the general staff of the German Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic , on secrecy .

Special staff R

During the Second World War, Smyslowsky headed the formation of a reconnaissance unit by the Wehrmacht in July 1941 as a special leader (K) of the Wehrmacht . He initially used the pseudonym Hauptmann von Regenau . The original name of the unit was "учебныи русскии батальон" (Russian training battalion), the first Russian volunteer formation in the Wehrmacht.

1942 was the trained unit in the back of the Red Army began to operate for reconnaissance and combat partisans in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, even special rod R (R = Russia) or Special Division R . Smyslowsky headed 12 education schools for military agent activities to fight partisans in World War II, as a result of which several 10,000 emigrants, prisoners of war and defectors of the Red Army from Central and Eastern Europe were actively used as collaborating agents.

A final renaming of the reconnaissance unit, which for camouflage reasons was also called Army Holmston after Smyslowski's Swedish uncle Art (h) ur Holmston , took place in 1945 as the 1st Russian National Army . After an independently calling project, the Russian military historical society , its previous name was Green Army for Special Use .

Smyslowsky, meanwhile in the rank of Major General of the Wehrmacht , planned to flee to Liechtenstein in the spring of 1945 in order to avoid capture by Allied troops . On May 3, 1945, he and a team of around 500 entered the Austrian Nofels am Schellenberg , across the border to the Principality of Liechtenstein. The head of the government Franz Josef II. , Prince von und zu Liechtenstein , as well as the government of the country ignored an extradition request of the USSR and granted asylum . In 1980 the Russians Memorial was erected in memory in the Liechtenstein community of Schellenberg .

Boris Smyslowsky died on September 5, 1988 in Vaduz. A number of the victims among the partisan organizations or the civilian population of the Baltic States, Poland and the USSR as a result of his educational work for the Wehrmacht was never known. Likewise, he was never tried by an Allied court of World War II.

literature

• Borys Smysłowski-Holmston , publications of the Polish encyclopedia Naukowy.pl (Polish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 1. Rosyjska Armia Narodowa , publications of the Polish encyclopedia Naukowy.pl (Polish)
2. ↑ Jakow Tscherkasskij: Борис Смысловский: нацист, он же русский патриот? . Russian. In: Русская Германия / Russkaja Germanija from May 18, 2012. ReLine Intermedien und Verlags GmbH, Berlin 2012. Online at rg-rb.de, accessed on September 5, 2013.
3. ↑ 1st Russian National Army , publications of the Russian military historical society ( Memento of the original from June 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (english / russian) 
4. ↑ 1. Rosyjska Armia Narodowa , publications of the Polish Science Encyclopedia (Naukowa.pl), ibid.