Publisher's Synopsis
SMERSH, acronym of the Russian phrase Death to Spies', is primarily known to readers as James Bond's sinister opponent in Ian Fleming's novels. Yet SMERSH was a real organization and just as diabolical as its fictional counterpart. No information was available on this organization until the fall of the Soviet Union, and its importance to WWII history is almost completely unknown to scholars and history readers alike. Ostensibly a military counterintelligence organization dedicated to fighting Nazis, SMERSH spent considerable time and effort terrifying its own, including writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was arrested for writing to a fellow officer. Its activities often strayed into the political sphere, exemplified by the arrests of many political leaders and foreign diplomats in Eastern Europe, including the famous rescuer of Hungarian Jews, Raoul Wallenberg, at the end of WWII.
While it was formally part of the Defence Commissariat, SMERSH was not under the control of the military hierarchy. In reality it was a secret service independent of the other Soviet security organizations. Its head, Viktor Abakumov, a shadowy and powerful figure whose biography is revealed here for the first time, reported directly to Joseph Stalin on a daily basis.
Based on a huge number of documents and memoirs available only in Russian, the book details all the known activities of SMERSH its clever radio games', which used captured German officers to lure German intelligence into traps, mass vetting of Soviet troops who had been prisoners of the Germans, arrest and persecution of Red Army generals, infiltration of Nazi spy schools, participation in military tribunals and the Special Board' of the NKVD, and participation in the Nuremberg trials and the Sovietization' of Eastern Europe. Now, after ten years of research, a critical missing piece of the history of WWII and the Soviet secret services is finally exposed.
While it was formally part of the Defence Commissariat, SMERSH was not under the control of the military hierarchy. In reality it was a secret service independent of the other Soviet security organizations. Its head, Viktor Abakumov, a shadowy and powerful figure whose biography is revealed here for the first time, reported directly to Joseph Stalin on a daily basis.
Based on a huge number of documents and memoirs available only in Russian, the book details all the known activities of SMERSH its clever radio games', which used captured German officers to lure German intelligence into traps, mass vetting of Soviet troops who had been prisoners of the Germans, arrest and persecution of Red Army generals, infiltration of Nazi spy schools, participation in military tribunals and the Special Board' of the NKVD, and participation in the Nuremberg trials and the Sovietization' of Eastern Europe. Now, after ten years of research, a critical missing piece of the history of WWII and the Soviet secret services is finally exposed.
