Max Christiansen-Clausen
Max Christiansen-Clausen (born February 27, 1899 on the island of Nordstrand ; † September 15, 1979 in East Berlin ) - until 1946: Max Gottfried Friedrich Clausen - was a German communist, entrepreneur in Japan and radio operator at the headquarters for reconnaissance ( GRU ) in the General Staff of the Red Army .
Life
Youth, training and recruitment
As the son of a bricklayer who had close ties to the church, he grew up on the North Frisian island of Nordstrand. In 1914, after leaving school, he wanted to begin an apprenticeship as a machinist. But since the family was penniless, they couldn't even afford the monthly tuition fee of 30 marks. So he was forced to work as a farmhand for a farmer.
A year later he was able to start an apprenticeship as a locksmith with a friend of his father's. But in 1917 he had to do military service as a soldier, so that he could not continue his training. He was drafted into a unit in Mecklenburg-Neustrelitz , which carried out communications link tasks. There he was trained in the basics of electrical engineering. He then built radio masts in Würzburg, Nuremberg, Dresden, Zeithain and Neustrelitz.
During this assembly work, which also took him to the local train station in Berlin-Schöneberg for logistical reasons , he first came into contact with social democrats who influenced him politically. After a home leave, he was sentenced to five days' arrest for exceeding his vacation time. While in custody he had close contact with a communist who told him about the Russian socialist movement.
Front deployment in France
After training as a radio operator, he was commanded to the front in France near Metz . He was used in the acts of attack at Compiègne . Then he came to the sector of the front at Château-Thierry , where he saw that his division was worn out in battle. During a German artillery attack, in which gas grenades with blue crosses were fired, the wind direction changed and he inhaled some gas, which he had to spit out blood for weeks. He was then transferred to the Somme , where he experienced the armistice.
His unit was moved to Koblenz via Cambrai . When he found out that his class had not been demobilized, he deserted. He was picked up in Heide near Husum and, after serving a one-week detention , commanded to Itzehoe , where he was deployed in an artillery unit. When he and his unit were transferred to Zossen to be deployed in the riots in Berlin, he applied to be released because his father was ill.
Post-war problems and communist contacts
His father died in 1919. His mother died in 1902, and his brother died at the front a week before the end of the war. So he lost his whole family. Because of an illness in his respiratory tract, he had to interrupt the resumed apprenticeship as a locksmith and was taken to the hospital in Kiel. He escaped an announced operation by fleeing back to his teacher. But there he couldn't find a suitable job and applied to Neumünster as a parenting assistant in a welfare facility in Rickling . He spent a year there with his childhood friend, Marcus Thun, before moving to Hamburg. There he was able to find employment as a seaman , with his uncle August Weist helping him. On the subsequent sea voyages he got to know many ports in Europe, North Africa and Asia. Under the influence of tense political developments, he joined the Red Union in 1922. In July 1922 he took part in a sailors' strike in Szczecin , whereupon he was sentenced to three months in prison.
Since he lost his job, he worked for the German Seemannsbund of the KPD as a propagandist and recruiter for the union. When he found the opportunity to bring a sailing ship to Murmansk in 1924 , he spent a week at the International Sailors' Club in Petrograd . The following year he joined the Red Front Fighters Association and the Red Aid Organization . He became a member of the KPD in 1927.
On his journeys to European seaports, he had the task of supplying the local seaman's clubs with political literature. He had to be very clever in order to overcome the customs controls. He mastered this and other tasks so well that he received an invitation to Moscow in September 1928. The initiative came from Karl Lesse , who as a functionary of the Comintern headed the group of the International Seafarers' Union in Hamburg .
Red Army radio operator
When he entered the Soviet Union, the information in his passport was incorrect, so he was held at the border. Only after some time did he give the address he was supposed to go to in Moscow: Grosse Fahnengasse 19. He was released immediately and was allowed to travel on, because this address was known to the border guards: the seat of the intelligence staff of the Red Army. There he reported to General Jan Karlowitsch Bersin , the head of the intelligence department.
There he was given a new identity and was now called Max Sckenk . With Nikolai Jablin, a Bulgarian and employee of Georgi Dimitroff , he was instructed in the knowledge and skills of radio on shortwave. His training ended in March 1929. His first assignment took him to Shanghai , where he was led by a GRU resident who ran a shop with household items in Shanghai.
Orders in Shanghai, Harbin, Canton and Mukden
From the apartment of the former Belarusian officer Konstantin Mishin, he sent messages to Vladivostok (code name Wiesbaden ) with a 50 watt transmitter . In order to be able to work more flexibly, he built a transmitter with a power of 7.5 watts that could be transported in a suitcase. He was able to complete this construction in July 1929. During these months the Soviet-Chinese border war broke out in Manchuria .
Via the diplomatic post of a French employee in the diplomatic service, he managed to transport the transmitter to Harbin . He sent messages from a hotel for about six weeks. Then he moved to the apartment of the US Vice Consul Tycho Leonard Lilliestrom (born August 3, 1885 in Lahti , † 1943), who was rewarded for renting him with generous cash benefits. After a while he handed the transmitter over to Hermann Siebler , who continued to broadcast there until the end of Lilliestrom's term of office.
Clausen went back to Shanghai, where he continued to work with Gurevich until he was replaced by Richard Sorge in 1929 . Worried he was given the job of going to Canton as his representative . For this new task he had to build another transmitter, because he gave the existing one to his successor Seppel Weingart . He knew this from both the sea voyage from Hamburg and from the training period in Moscow.
When he was looking for a new apartment in Shanghai, he met the same age nurse Anna Wallenius , née Schdankow, from Novonikolajewsk , who had acquired Finnish citizenship through marriage. In Semipalatinsk she married the Finnish merchant Wallenius, and when the revolution broke out in Russia they fled to Shanghai, where her husband died in 1927. She later became the wife of Max Christiansen. Max then traveled to Canton with Anna and Mischin and rented two houses from the English consulate. However, it turned out that the transmission power of 7.5 watts was not sufficient for a distance to Vladivostok. So he built himself a new transmitter with an output of 50 watts.
After a year the job was over and he returned to Shanghai in 1931. In the meantime the Japanese had occupied Manchuria. He was instructed to go to Mukden , where the headquarters of the Japanese army had taken up quarters. In Mukden he rented a gas station with an attached shop, which he had a Chinese employee run. For the next two years he was able to hide his activities there from the Japanese. In August 1933 he returned to Moscow to spend six weeks vacation on the Black Sea.
Further training near Moscow
With a new identity, he was now of German-Hungarian nationality, and a passport in the name of Goldberg , he attended the new radio school on the Lenin Mountains near Moscow. The director of this facility was his commanding officer from Shanghai Gurevich. Then he went to Odessa from August 1933 . Because he insisted that his wife travel with him, he was disciplined . In 1934 he was sent to Krasny Kut in the Volga German Republic , this time with the identity of Rautmann and of Latvian origin. Working on a machine-tractor station (MTS) was unfamiliar, but he soon found a new job.
With a number of telephone transmitters and a self-made transmitter, he set up a transmission operation on the MTS for the field brigades, which were now in communication with the headquarters via radio. This development was so well received that he was commissioned to build such facilities for the entire Volga Republic. In the summer of 1935, however, he received instructions from Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov to go with his wife to Tokyo together with Richard Sorge.
Order in Japan
Since Bersin had meanwhile been replaced as head of the GRU by Semyon Petrovich Urizki , they were bid farewell to Japan with a small celebration in his apartment. The main task was to take all measures so that a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Japan can be avoided. The direct management for the order in Japan was taken by Lev Alexandrovich Borowitsch .
After spending over two months trying to overcome his previous identities, Clausen arrived in Tokyo on November 28, 1935. As a citizen of the German Empire, he did not need a visa for Japan, so entry was not associated with any difficulties. On the same day he met Richard Sorge at the Hotel Sano . This meeting had the character of a coincidence, since it was agreed that a meeting was arranged there every Tuesday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Like all employees, Clausen had an alias "Fritz", with which he was always addressed by Sorges employees.
Contacts in Tokyo
During a small celebration he got to know the NSDAP block warden there, whom he introduced himself to as a businessman who wanted to open a branch in Japan. Thereby the intended meeting came about that the block warden Clausen was introduced to the concern. The next meetings took place at the German émigré Bolke, who ran a bar where the staff of the German embassy and German journalists stopped by.
Another contact was made with a Sorge employee, agent Branko Vukelic , who worked as a journalist for the French news agency Havas . In Vukelic's apartment, he assembled a transmitter so that he could contact Vladivostok. But there are also indications that Clausen first started radio traffic with a station in Shanghai and was only able to send it to Vladivostok later. His wife came to Shanghai, where they remarried at the German Consulate General, which gave her a German passport in the name of Anna Clausen . So she could enter Japan with a legal passport.
First radio communication
He took up radio communications in February 1936 in the apartment of Guenther Stein (code name Gustav ), who was a German journalist in Japan and had a great deal of knowledge. Later, too, he kept broadcasting from his apartment, until Stein left Japan in 1939. Another transmission slot was located in a country house near Chigasaki not far from Yokohama , where it was possible to broadcast from 1937.
Building a factory
His wife supported him during the next five years of his activity by transporting film rolls to Shanghai as a courier. On a total of 18 trips she transported important documents from the office of the Japanese emperor and the German institutions in Japan. In business, he first worked for the German forester, who ran a tool production. Then Clausen and Förster imported German motorcycles of the Zündapp brand . In order to pursue more of his own goals, Clausen set up a company M. Clausen Shokai in Japan for the production of copying machines , through which he gained contacts with the Japanese army , large industrial companies and Japanese professors. Relations with Japanese officers were so close that his wife was able to fly to Shanghai on Japanese military planes.
New powers
From 1938 Clausen was allowed to encrypt or decrypt the radio messages he was sending himself. Normally, a radio operator in his organization was not allowed to perform this task. But after Sorge had a serious accident with a motorcycle on May 13, 1938, Clausen showed him how to code. During this work with radio messages, Clausen had to code from memory, since there should not be any written documentation about it. According to his information, Clausen was able to code and send up to 500 groups of five per hour. The Japanese did not manage to decipher the code until he was arrested.
By working with the texts of the radio messages, Clausen gained sufficient insight into the activities of Sorge. When Japanese troops crossed the Mongolian border in 1938, the Red Army was informed of the attack in good time by a radio message. Information about another Japanese attack on Vladivostok in 1939 was also sent to Moscow beforehand, which enabled it to be successfully repulsed.
Counter espionage, health problems and contacting your own embassy
During their activities in Japan, Sorge and his staff came into the focus of the German defense . So Sorge warned him about the journalist Wolfgang Sorge (1891–1941), who he had already noticed in China. In Japan, Sorge was observed by agents Klaus Mehnert and Ivar Lissner , but Sorge was able to fend off both. The constant precautionary measures to deceive the Japanese radio defenses , the burdens on the part of his company and the complex coding of the radio messages led to a heart failure in him in the first half of 1940, which he only laboriously achieved with a three-month treatment by a German doctor and a several-week vacation Hakone overcame.
Due to the effects of the war, contacts with Shanghai could no longer be adequately maintained. Therefore, the leadership in Moscow decided to take a measure that was in strict contrast to the previous rules, namely contacting Soviet personnel in the embassy in Tokyo. Covert meetings were organized and money and other funds were handed over. Consul Helge Leonidowitsch Wutkewitsch and Consul Viktor Sergejewitsch Zaitsew participated in these meetings . In the United States, Zaitsew held the post of press attaché at the Soviet embassy in 1947. However, these contacts did not lead to the discovery of the Sorge group. This only happened when members of the Japanese Communist Party associated with the Sorge group were arrested.
Crucial radio messages about the German invasion of the Soviet Union
On March 5, 1941, Clausen was able to convey to the staff of the reconnaissance of the Red Army for the first time that 50 German divisions would be ready for an attack on the Soviet Union. This information was specified in May 1941 that the German deployment now comprised 150 divisions. Clausen announced the date of the attack on the Soviet Union on June 15, 1941, seven days before the invasion. This information was challenged in Moscow.
The most important information for the turning point against the German attack could give Clausen on September 15, 1941, whereby the decision of the Japanese was communicated not to attack the Soviet Union. This enabled reserves of the Red Army to be relocated from the Siberian areas to the Moscow area. Sergei Alexandrovich Kondrashov states that from 1936 to October 1941, the Sorge group received 805 reports with significant content, 363 of which were passed on to headquarters and the relevant ministry. Clausen later stated that while he was in Japanese custody, only about a quarter of the messages he had sent from taped records were shown to him. However, some of these were flawed and incomplete. The records published by US General Charles Willoughby in 1952 also contained only a fraction of the messages sent by Clausen. Furthermore, the number of radio messages in the years from 1936 to 1938 was missing.
Broadcast technology and operation
Channel
Clausen had worked with a self-made transmitter that had an output power of approximately 15 watts. The construction was based on an oscillator circuit that worked with two UX-210 tubes and were connected in parallel. Since it was not possible to work with a larger antenna, it was transmitted via a dipole. Based on the conditions of the transmission, Clausen had chosen an alternating current source for the anode voltage. Furthermore, Clausen had acquired the method on the line with a negative voltage, the telegraph key to operate. This resulted in a poor frequency fidelity, which led to extreme fluctuations in the tone of the signals during reception.
Broadcasting
Clausen had planned important precautionary measures for radio operations, which began when the transmitter was built. In Japan, for example, he only bought parts that were not indicative of the construction of a transmitter. He assembled certain parts like the Morse code himself. Because of the AC operation, it didn't need any rectifiers either. Furthermore, the transmitter was designed according to the modular principle so that it could be disassembled or assembled in an extremely short time. Certain parts such as the floor slabs were deposited in different places. All in all, he could transport the moving parts in a briefcase.
For on-site Morse Code operation, he used a constructive solution to dampen the click of the button by installing a low-frequency choke. When transmitting, he also constantly changed the wavelength, so that he transmitted in the shortwave range from 39 meters to 41 meters. This was especially important for longer radio messages. Although broadcasting was agreed at a certain time, broadcasting was never started at regular times. Longer radio messages were also sent in different sessions. A code for amateurs was used as the initial signal.
New working techniques
Was broadcast within Tokyo, it constantly changed the district. Because of the dense development, it was difficult to locate the transmitter. It was also possible to broadcast from the outskirts of Tokyo and other places. On average, Clausen sent 40,000 words per year, with extensive texts being transmitted, especially in 1941. Clausen provided with his services of broadcasting for the reconnaissance service of the Red Army a considerable enrichment of the technical level. During his service in Japan, he had to answer some technical questions from Moscow.
Arrested, sentenced and released after the war
On October 18, 1941, he was arrested with the employees of Sorge and sentenced to life imprisonment on January 29, 1943. His wife received seven years in prison. Because of an appeal by the Japanese prosecutor calling for the death penalty, his conviction did not become final until a year later in January 1944. He was imprisoned in Sugamo Penitentiary near Toshima . Because of the constant bombing, he was then transferred to a penitentiary in Sendai Prefecture.
When the US forces arrived in Japan, his and his wife's imprisonment ended on October 9, 1945. They then went to Urawa . In December 1945 they moved to Karuizawa , to see Frieda Weiß, his wife's German teacher. By now it had become known to them that US intelligence was interested in them. So in 1946 they decided to leave Japan.
They were able to fly to Vladivostok via the Soviet embassy, where they received medical care for four weeks. In Moscow there was detailed reporting on his activities in Japan, which dragged on until September 1946.
Return to Germany
Before leaving for the Soviet occupation zone , he was given a new identity with the name Christiansen . After moving to Wildau , he became a member of the SED and joined the FDGB . He took up a job in the personnel department of a shipyard in Berlin. Over the next 13 years he worked in various large Berlin companies.
His urn was buried in the "Pergolenweg" grave complex at the Socialist Memorial at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg .
Awards (selection)
In the GDR he was awarded the Karl Marx Order , the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold and, in 1964, the Red Banner Order of the Soviet Union a. a. out.
reception
Evaluations of the radio messages
In 2005, Heiner Timmermann, as co-editor of the anthology Spionage, Ideologie, Mythos - the Richard Sorge case , wrote that the GRU's radio reconnaissance at the end of 1940 had deciphered the Japanese radio code. Wolfgang Krieger states in his contribution that the GRU broke important Japanese codes in the fall of 1941 , so that the Russian side would have been certain that the Japanese armed forces would not attack the Soviet Union.
From this, despite the differences in the times, it could be concluded that Clausen's radio messages regarding the Soviet troop transfers to the Moscow area at the end of 1941 had no real meaning.
According to Jürgen Rohwer , the Soviet analyst Sergej Tolstoy had deciphered the Purple Code in autumn 1941 . For Stalin, more convincing knowledge of the Japanese intentions to attack would have been gained from the reports than from Clausen's radio messages. At the same time, however, Rohwer restricts these statements: It is not yet known which of the German or Japanese military code or encryption methods the Soviet cryptanalysts were able to break, and if so, which ones and during which period .
Assessment of the coding used
It is well known that the Japanese armed forces used their own encryption codes, constantly changing codebooks to avoid being decrypted by enemy analysts. The diplomatic services also had their own coding. The Sorge group used its own coding that was only applicable to itself and was based on the tabular values of the Statistical Yearbook for the German Reich of 1935. This pad enabled double coding, which allowed at least a hundred thousand possible combinations, which at the time was sufficient to avoid decryption by the Japanese.
How much effort is required to decipher the codes, e.g. B. the Japanese Navy required, z. For example, it can be seen from this that the US services only succeeded in this completely after 1945. This leaves open which knowledge the Soviet side had gained from which decodings for which period.
Whymant's thesis on Clausen's attitude
Robert Whymant reported in his 1996 publication about Sorge that in the last phase after 1940, Clausen only sent some or abridged documents. He relies on statements made by Clausen to the Japanese. Whymant does not take into account the fact that Clausen wanted to save himself from a death sentence through such statements and others that distanced himself from Sorge and Moscow. Rather, Whymant had to admit that statements by Clausen that he had not sent certain reports were not correct. These sent reports have since been published either in full or at least in part by the Soviet and Russian sides.
Military units
The NVA news battalion 33 was named after Max Christiansen-Clausen.
Cinematic reception
- 1975: His most important radio message , documentary, director: Eckhard Potraffke
Fonts
- Towards the dawn , in: Der Binnenschiffer, No. 8/1960 to No. 17/1961, Berlin
literature
- Franziska Ehmcke, Peter Pantzer (Eds.), Lived Contemporary History - Everyday Life of Germans in Japan 1923-1947 , Munich 2000.
- Julius Mader , Dr. Sorge Report , 3rd expanded edition, Berlin 1986.
- Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of the secret services in the 20th century . Munich 2003.
- Wladimir Tomarowski, Richard Sorge - No secret , in: Heiner Timmermann: Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - the Richard Sorge case , Münster 2005.
- Sergei Alexandrowitsch Kondraschow: Richard Sorge and his group , in: Heiner Timmermann: Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - the Richard Sorge case , Münster 2005.
- Wolfgang Krieger, The importance of the secret services in World War II , in: Heiner Timmermann: Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Fall Richard Sorge , Münster 2005.
- Jürgen Rohwer, The Allied Intelligence Services' Knowledge of the Japanese Planning for Fleet Operations in Autumn 1941 , in: Heiner Timmermann: Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Fall Richard Sorge , Münster 2005.
- Charles A. Willoughby, Sorge - Soviet Master Spy , London 1952
- Max Christiansen-Clausen, the radio operator Dr. Richard Sorges , Leipzig 1982
- Robert Whymant , Stalin's Spy. Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring , New York 1996 (German: The man with three faces - The life of Richard Sorge, Berlin 2002)
Individual evidence
- ^ Jürgen Rohwer, The knowledge of the allied intelligence services about the Japanese planning for the naval operations in autumn 1941 , in: Heiner Timmermann: Spionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Fall Richard Sorge , Münster 2005.
- ↑ BArch DVL 8-10 / ... Accessed March 31, 2015 .
- ↑ His most important radio message , on defa-spektrum.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Christiansen-Clausen, Max |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Clausen, Max Gottfried Friedrich (until 1946) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German communist and radio operator at the headquarters for reconnaissance in the General Staff of the Red Army |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 27, 1899 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | North beach |
| DATE OF DEATH | 15th September 1979 |
| Place of death | East Berlin |