Hitler Moves East, 1941-1943 (34 page)

Yakir, Tukhachevskiy, and other comrades were arrested and subsequently liquidated. Many outstanding commanders

and political workers of the Red Army were murdered."

Thus far Khrushchev. Although as Premier and Party leader of the Soviet Union all archives and records are available to him, he submitted no evidence to support his theory, but referred to foreign Press reports. No doubt he had good reason, to avoid giving away too many secrets. Certainly, in spite of its fantastic implication, his claim is not new.

The sensational story has been cropping up here and there for over a decade. President Benes of Czechoslovakia, who died in 1948, and Sir Winston Churchill have both supplied evidence in connection with it in their memoirs, as have also two of the leading officials of Himmler's Secret Security Service, Dr Wilhelm Höttl—alias Walter Hagen—and Walter Schellenberg. These pieces of evidence, together with responsible reports by German and Czech diplomats dating back to 1936 and 1937, add up to a sinister Machiavellian play acted out in our own century. The play, perhaps, is not quite as simple as Khrushchev now presents it, or as Benes, Churchill, and Himmler's lieutenants make out.

Certainly, these dark threads deserve following up. After all, the Tukhachevskiy affair was the most important scandal in modern history and the one with the most fateful consequences. Many actors were involved and many settings, right from the first years of the Soviet Union and the secret collaboration between Reichswehr and Red Army in the years 1923 to 1933. Himmler and Heydrich appeared only in its final act, but for the sake of better understanding we shall take this last act first. It began about the middle of December 1936.

Paris, 16th December 1936: The former White Russian General Skoblin, who was working both for Stalin's secret service and for Himmler, passed on two pieces of information to a representative of the German intelligence service. Item No. 1: The Soviet Army Command is planning a coup against Stalin. The leader of the conspiracy is Marshal Tukhachevskiy, the Deputy War Minister. Item No. 2: Tukhachevskiy and his closest followers are in touch with leading generals of the German High Command and the German intelligence service.

It was a sensational story. After all, the man named as the leader of an imminent revolt against Stalin was his Deputy Minister of War, his former Chief of the General Staff, the ablest and most outstanding military figure of the Soviet Union. The Marshal, then forty-three, represented the increasingly powerful Red Army. He was a man of aristocratic origin, a former guards officer. He had been trained as a general staff officer at the exclusive Tsarist Alexander Academy.

Released from German captivity, he had gone over to Lenin's troops. In 1920 he had defeated General Denikin, the key leader of the White Russian counter-revolution. Ever since he had been the celebrated civil war general, the saviour of the Red revolution.

Heydrich, [Formerly Deputy Chief of the Gestapo and 'protector' of Czechoslovakia.] a cold man but with a fine sense for grand intrigue, instantly realized the possibilities of the information from Paris.

If Skoblin's news was correct the Soviet Union might become a military dictatorship. The enormous empire might be ruled by a supremely able organizer and strategist, a Red Bonaparte, a Russian Napoleon. Would that be to the advantage of Hitler's Germany?

Heydrich's answer was: No. It may be assumed that he made sure of Hitler's agreement with his view. Certainly there is no doubt that he discussed the matter with Hitler at once; there can likewise be no doubt that Hitler did not want a strong Russia.

In the circumstances, what could be more natural than to allow the information from Paris to reach Stalin and thus to deliver Tukhachevskiy, the best military mind in Russia, together with his followers, to the executioners?

But Jahnke, a member of Heydrich's staff, was against it. Skoblin, he argued, was in contact with the Soviet secret service, and it was therefore not impossible that the Kremlin may have planted the whole story on the Tsarist general in Paris. For what purpose? Maybe to make Hitler suspicious of his own generals. Or maybe in order to lure Hitler's secret service into a trap and to manœuvre the German leaders into mistaken decisions. Who could tell?

But Heydrich put Jahnke under house arrest and began to implement his plan. Tukhachevskiy was to be handed over

to the executioner. With this end in view Heydrich performed a few secret service moves which testified to his natural gift for intrigue.

With a cold smile he lectured to his friend, SS Standartenführer Hermann Behrens: "Even if Stalin merely wanted to bluff the German leaders with Skoblin's information—I will supply the old man in the Kremlin with enough evidence to show that his own lies were the purest truth."

He ordered a secret squad of expert burglars to break into the secret archives of the Wehrmacht High Command and to steal the Tukhachevskiy file. This contained the papers of the so-called Special Detachment R, a camouflage organization of the Reichswehr which existed from 1923 to 1933 under the official designation of GEFU— Gesellschaft zur Förderung gewerblicher Unternehmungen, meaning Association for the Promotion of Commercial Undertakings. It came under the Armaments Department, and its task was to manufacture in the Soviet Union all the weapons and war materials which the Treaty of Versailles forbade the German Wehrmacht to possess. The file contained the records of many conversations between German officers and representatives of the Soviet military authorities, including, of course, Tukha-chevskiy, who was Chief of the Red Army General Staff from 1925 to 1931.

Heydrich had the GEFU file altered; he extended the correspondence by shrewd additions, he added some new letters and notes, so that in the end a perfect file was available, with authenticated documents and seals, a file that would have got any general in any country before a court martial on charges of high treason.

In the cellars of the Prinz Albrecht Strasse, Heydrich inspected the work of his specialists with approval. The first step had been accomplished. Now came the second: how could the file be played into Stalin's hands?

To fake a document and to make it look convincing is not particularly difficult for the experts of any secret service. But to get such a document to the proper address, without arousing suspicion, is a problem indeed. It must have been more than ordinarily difficult when the addressee was Josef Stalin. But Heydrich solved the problem.

During the course of 1936 the German Foreign Office had been in touch with the Czechoslovak Minister in Berlin and had from time to time tentatively aired the question of Czechoslovakia's attitude in the event of a German-French war.

This was Heydrich's point of attack. At the end of January 1937—President Benes records in his memoirs—the Czechoslovak Minister in Berlin, Mastny, sent a cable to Prague, with every sign of surprise, to the effect that his interlocutor in the Foreign Office was suddenly showing a lack of interest in the subject. From certain hints it must be concluded that the Germans were in touch with an anti-Stalin group within the Red Army. Berlin was evidently expecting a change of regime in Moscow, a change which would shift the balance in Europe in favour of Nazi Germany. President Benes was seriously alarmed at the prospect of losing his Soviet backing against Germany.

Czechoslovakia, with its explosive minorities problem, with its restive Sudeten Germans, owed its existence largely to the antagonism between Germany and the Soviet Union. A reconciliation, perhaps even an alliance, between a Russian military dictatorship and German fascism would spell serious danger. Benes's Republic was a product of the Treaty of Versailles: to liquidate the consequences of that treaty was Hitler's avowed aim. With Russia on his side he would not find it difficult.

What could be more natural than President Benes instantly summoning the Soviet Ambassador in Prague, Aleksandrov-skiy, and passing on to him Mastny's report. Conspiracy of the generals against Stalin. Hitler involved. Wehrmacht generals involved.

The Ambassador listened carefully, hurried back to his Embassy, picked up his suitcase, and immediately flew off to Moscow. Heydrich's mail was being delivered to its addressee.

But Heydrich was a careful man. He did not confine himself to his Prague postman, but acted on the sound principle that a thing worth doing is worth doing well. He therefore supported his Prague action by one in Paris.

At a diplomatic reception in Paris, two or three days after the conversation between Benes and Aleksandrovskiy, Ed- ouard Daladier, several times French Premier, but just then, for a change, Minister of War, genially linked his arm under that of the Soviet Ambassador, Vladimir Potemkin, and led him to a niche by a window. After a quick glance to make sure there were no unwelcome eavesdroppers, Daladier anxiously told Potemkin that France was worried. There

was news about a possible change of course in Moscow. There was talk about arrangements between the Nazi Wehrmacht and the Red Army. Could His Excellency put his mind at rest? Potemkin was poker-faced. He escaped from the situation with non-committal phrases. Ten minutes later he left the reception, drove back to his Embassy, and sent an urgent coded signal to Moscow containing Daladier's information.

How Heydrich managed to play the information into Daladier's hands it is impossible to establish with certainty today. Probably there was a contact through a Deuxième Bureau man at the French Embassy in Moscow.

After these preparatory moves Heydrich staged his second act. He sent his special confidential representative, Standartenführer Behrens, to Prague, where he made contact with a personal representative of the Czechoslovak President and drew his attention to the existence of documentary evidence against Tukhachevskiy. Benes was informed, and immediately passed on his information to Stalin. Shortly afterwards Be-nes's contact suggested to Heydrich's representative that he should get in touch with a member of the Soviet Embassy in Berlin, by name of Israilovich. Israilovich was the NKVD representative at the Russian Embassy in Berlin.

Heydrich's man met him and let him see two genuine letters from the faked-up file. Israilovich, in the accepted manner, feigned indifference. He asked the price. Behrens shrugged his shoulders. Israilovich promised to meet him again in a week, together with an authorized person.

The arrangement was kept. The authorized person was a representative of Yezhov, the chief of the Soviet secret service. His first question too was the price. Heydrich, in order to prevent his business partners from getting suspicious, had fixed the price at the fantastic sum of 3,000,000 gold roubles. "But you are authorized to let yourself be beaten down," he had instructed his man.

But there was no question of beating down. Yezhov's representative merely nodded as Behrens, in the most matter-of- fact way, named the sum, the highest ever paid for a file in the history of secret service activities.

No plan of military operations, no treason, and no traitor in history ever achieved such a high price. The deal was clinched within a day. Yezhov's man left for Moscow with Heydrich's file. That was about the middle of May 1937.

Three weeks later, on llth June 1937, the world was stunned by the news, put out by the official Soviet Tass Agency, that Marshal Tukhachevskiy and seven leading generals had been sentenced to death by shooting by the Soviet Supreme Court under the chairmanship of the President of the Military Tribunal Ulrich. The sentence had been carried out at once.

"The defendants were accused," it was explained in the report, "of having violated their duty as soldiers, of having broken their military oath of allegiance, and of having committed treason against the Soviet Union in the interests of a foreign country." An official communiqué added the following details:

In the course of investigations it was established that the defendants, together with the Deputy Defence Commissar Gamarnik, who recently committed suicide, had organized an anti-State movement and had been in contact with the military circles of a foreign country pursuing an anti-Soviet policy. In favour of that country the defendants conducted military espionage. Their activity was aimed at ensuring the defeat of the Red Army in the event of the country being attacked. The ultimate aim of the accused was the restoration of big land ownership and capitalism. All the accused made confessions.

The sensation was complete when Tass put out an Army order by Voroshilov to be promulgated to the forces in all Military Districts. This demanded that suspect persons should be denounced. The order said:

The ultimate objective of the traitors was the annihilation of the Soviet regime at any cost and by all means. They strove for the overthrow of the workers' and peasants' Government and had made preparations for murdering the leaders of the Party and the Government. They expected help from the fascist circles of a foreign country and, in return, would have been prepared to hand over the Soviet Ukraine. The principal organizers were in direct contact with the General Staffs of the fascist countries.