Red Pianists (novel)

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Red Pianists is a novel by Russian writer Igor Mikhailovich Bondarenko published in 1990.

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This is the most complete version of the " Rote Kapelle " - a network of scouts in the states of Western Europe during the Second World War , presented as a novel. The author met several times in Berlin and Budapest with scouts from the Soviet intelligence service Sándor Radó (code name - Dora) and Ruth Werner (code name - Sonja), who lived in East Berlin in the 1980s. The author also researched the Berlin archives and describes in the novel the actions of the German security service , which liquidated the groups working for Moscow in Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Austria in 1942.

The Dora group center was in Switzerland, which prevented the SD from quickly neutralizing this group as well. This only succeeded in 1943, when the outcome of the war had already been determined. In the headquarters of the Reich Security - the 6th Department - and in the Gestapo, all clientele groups working for Moscow had a common code name “Red Orchestra”. Sándor Radó's group was singled out and given its own name - "The Red Three " (based on the number of channels in Geneva and Lausanne).

The novel by the French journalist Gilles Perrault "Rote Kapelle" describes only the "Franco-Belgian branch" which was directed by Leopold Trepper ("Grand Chef") and Anatoli Gurewitsch ("Little Chef", code name "Kent"). The two groups were liquidated as early as 1942, and their leaders played a radio game with Moscow under Gestapo control. After the war they were subjected to reprisals. The main sources of information were, of course, on the territory of Germany. The strongest and most effective was the Schulze-Boysen / Harnack group , which was actually not just a clientele, but a ramified anti-Nazi organization that produced and distributed leaflets and exploited other forms of struggle against the Nazi regime.

Heroes of the novel

  • Sándor Radó - Resident of the Soviet Inquiry Service in Switzerland.
  • Harro Schulze-Boysen - First Lieutenant in the Air Force, served on the staff of Reichsmarschall Göring, in the department where the messages from the German Air Force attachés from various countries (customer service) were received.
  • Arvid Harnack - Senior Councilor in the Ministry of Economics of the Third Reich (rank of Deputy Minister), also had access to the most secret documents about Germany's industrial potential.
  • John Sieg - held an important post with the Reichsbahn - traffic commander of the Stettiner Bahnhof in Berlin, from which the troop transport left for the Eastern Front.
  • Libertas Schulze-Boysen - Harro Schulze-Boysen's wife, advisor at the Goebbels Propaganda Ministry (supervised the Berlin film studio “Defa”).
  • Herbert Golnow - First Lieutenant, held an important position in the Wehrmacht Department. The main specialization of this department was the preparation of diversions on the territory of the USSR.
  • Horst Heilmann - served in the department for deciphering enemy transmitters.
  • Mildred Harnack - Arvid Harnack's wife, doctor of philosophy, worked at the University of Berlin.
  • Countess Erika von Brockdorf - radio broadcasts were sent to Moscow from her apartment.
  • Hans Coppi - Schulze-Boysen's radio operator.
  • Hilde Coppi - the wife of the radio operator Hans Coppi, a participant in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany.
  • Anna Kraus - "court astrologist", with whom the top leaders of the Third Reich "consulted".
  • Ilse Stöbe - a well-known journalist, worked in twos with the Legation Councilor of the Foreign Ministry Rudolf Schelija since 1932.

Interesting facts

  • When France suffered a defeat and surrendered in 1940, French secret agents (Long - alias, and others) began to work for Rado, that is, for Moscow, because General De Gaulle had founded the organization "Fighting France" in London and supported the USSR explained. Long and other French scouts considered Soviet Russia an ally, and since De Gaulle did not yet have an intelligence service of their own, they worked for Rado. They had their own sources of information in Germany.
  • Rado received particularly valuable information from a certain Taylor (Schneider). Schneider was a German anti-fascist who emigrated to Switzerland when Hitler came to power. He had a friend - a certain Rudolf Roessler . He also emigrated to Switzerland after 1933. But Rößler did not remain a passive anti-fascist, he decided to actively fight against the Nazi regime. Rößler (his code name was "Luzy") ran a bookstore in Lucerne. Many of his friends, who had not emigrated but were also against Hitler, held fairly important posts in various upper state organs in Germany: on the staff of the High Command, on the staff of the Air Force under Marshal Goering, in the Foreign Ministry. They provided their friend Rößler with the most valuable information about the plans of the German Command. This anti-Nazi group saw the salvation of their country from "the brown plague" in the defeat of the Hitler army at the front.
  • The brigade leader SS Walter Schellenberg dealt with the liquidation of the Swiss “Red Three” . First he tried to get Brigade Colonel Roger Masson, the head of the Swiss secret service, to work. In order to force the Swiss counterintelligence (Masson) to liquidate the "Red Three", a wrong order was fabricated to move the mountain rifle corps, which General Dietl commanded, to the borders of Switzerland. That was agreed at the highest level - with Himmler and Hitler. For the sake of credibility, General Dietl's staff was actually moved from Norway to the Swiss borders. Schellenberg organized the "leakage of information". That was a very serious threat, and the Swiss Army and Defense Command received short-range direction finders from the Germans, and they used them to discover all of Sándor Radó's radio operators. Radó himself managed to cross the border with France and join one of the communist partisan groups, the Maquis .
  • The names of the people who worked for Rößler in Germany are not yet known. Rudolf Rößler himself died on December 12, 1958 in Krins, near Lucerne, without having given the names of his informants.

People gallery

literature

  • Krasnyje pianisty: novel, short story. - Moscow: Wojenisdat , 1990. - 366 pages - ISBN 5-203-01019-6 .
  • Krasnyje pianisty: Roman Chronicle. - Moscow: Wojenizdat, 1991.
  • Krasnye pianisty; Who comes to "Marienehe"; No appeal can be made. - Rostov-on-Don: Redder magazine "Don", 1991. - 464 pp.
  • Krasnyje pianisty: Roman Chronicle. - Rostov-on-Don: Maprekon, 1994. - ISBN 5-7509-0263-3 .
  • Krasnye pianisty. The yellow circle. / Episode “Particularly Dangerous for the Reich” - М .: Weče, 2008. - 412 pp. - ISBN 978-5-9533-3559-1 .