SOVIET INTELLIGENCE NETWORKS had been active in
Europe, the United States, and the Far East from the 1920s. In the months
leading up to Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, and thereafter, the provided a
stream of information which would often have proved vital had not STALIN been
repeatedly determined to believe the opposite of what he was told.
Among the most important of these sources was RICHARD
SORGE, a German journalist based in Japan who had the ear of the German
ambassador and a number of high-ranking Japanese officials. In March 1941 Sorge
had sent microfilmed German documents to Moscow indicating a German attack in
June and, subsequently, precise details of the German order of battle. They
were no believed, but his revelation in November 1941 that Japan was preparing
to move south against Britain and United States was taken at face value, enabling
the transfer of divisions from Siberia for the Soviet Counter-offensive before
Moscow.
High-level Soviet sources in the German high command
and civil service in Berlin – the latter part of the network dubbed the ¨RED
ORCHESTRA¨ by the Germans – also provided valuable information, such as Hitler’s
plans in the autumn of 1941 to besiege Leningrad rather than take it by storm.
Elements of the Red Orchestra were based in neutral
Switzerland, where the spy Rudolf Rössler was based. A German bookseller, he
had sources at a high level within OKW and from 1942 was the lynchpin of the
Soviet network known as ¨Lucy¨. Rössler provided Moscow with the Ostheer’s
order of battle for Operation Citadel at Kursk in 1943. Jonh Cairncross, a
British army officer, seconded to Betchley Park, the home of British Ultra
decoding service, supplied the Luftwaffe’s order of battle for Citadel. By the
autumn of 1943 Stalin would be waging an intelligence war against his allies as
well as the Germans.