How SMERSH beat "Zeppelin": or Why the attempt on Stalin's life was doomed to failure

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In response to the operation of the German intelligence center "Zeppelin" (the result of which was to physically eliminate the Soviet leader, IV Stalin), the NKVD and the military counterintelligence SMERSH decided to conduct a joint operation "Fog" based on a radio game. The Abwehr led a very serious preparation. However, the painstaking and persistent work of the Soviet counterintelligence made it possible to outstrip and outplay the enemy military intelligence.

Tavrin and Shilova - superkillers for Stalin

Pyotr Ivanovich Shilo (he will become Tavrin much later) in 1932 was arrested for embezzling state money. Escaped from prison - seized a convenient moment when the prisoners were taken to the bathhouse. In 1934 and 1936, he was also prosecuted for embezzlement of funds, but he successfully escaped from custody. Shilu every time managed not only to avoid punishment, but, using forged documents, get a job in monetary, and sometimes very important positions. In 1939, using a forged certificate, he made himself a passport in the name of Petr Ivanovich Tavrin and got a job as the head of the Turin exploration party, from where he was later called to the front. There he joined the ranks of the AUCPB, became deputy commander, and then commander of a machine-gun company. But Tavrin was in for an unpleasant surprise - he was identified by the authorized special department captain Vasiliev, who knew him by the name of Shilo.

May 30, 1942 Tavrin fled from the unit and crossed the front line to the Germans. In the prisoner of war camp, he meets the provocateur Zhilenkov, who arranged for him to check: Tavrin had to work in a group of prisoners of war who were preparing to escape from the camp. He coped with the task, after which he received an offer of cooperation with German military intelligence and was transported to a special SD camp in Eastern Silesia, and then to an intelligence school in Pskov. According to the results of the exam after training at a special school, held in Berlin, Tavrin was included in a team of 23 captured Soviet officers who were selected for espionage and sabotage activities against the USSR.

Tavrin turned out to be the most suitable of them to carry out an operation of special secrecy - a sabotage against the top leadership of the Soviet Union. Having penetrated the Kremlin for a ceremonial meeting on the anniversary of the October Revolution, he had to approach the leader and shoot him with explosive poisonous bullets. In January 1944, in a Riga hospital, Tavrin underwent a cosmetic operation: under anesthesia, they simulate a large wound on the stomach and two small ones on his arms (in confirmation of the legend that he was seriously wounded and was being treated in the hospital).

After two weeks of rehabilitation, he was sent to Berlin, where he was instructed by Zhilenkov for a week. Then Otto Skorzeny, a German spy and saboteur number 1, came to a Berlin hotel to meet with Tavrin. He talked with Tavrin for a long time, shared his rich experience, and gave instructions. To help Peter Tavrin was given a radio operator - Lydia Adamchik (Shilova). A twenty-year-old girl, taken to Germany for forced labor, chose to be an agent of German intelligence. Disguised as a married couple, they were accommodated in a safe house in Riga.

Manufacturing of a special board "Arado-232" and equipment of super agents

The preparation of the agent in "Zeppelin" approached thoroughly. Dozens of SD specialists worked on the preparation of documents for him and his companion: service certificates (including a certificate of the deputy head of the SMERSH counterintelligence department and documents of an officer who arrived from the hospital for treatment), passports, work books, cash and labor certificates, vacation tickets, diplomas of universities and technical schools, driver's licenses, 116 seals and stamps of military and state institutions and even facsimiles of the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Tavrin was supplied with a large amount of Soviet money, real military orders and award books in his name, and for plausibility - also with fake newspaper clippings with articles about the award (the agent's name was also in the lists on assigning military insignia). Also Tavrin was equipped with a mechanical fountain pen with a pistol mounted in it with 15 explosive cartridges filled with a fast-acting poison; 5 hand grenades, explosives and a small magnetic bomb of high destructive power, detonated at a distance using a radio signal of a certain frequency; "Panzerknaki" - a short-barreled hand grenade launcher, which consisted of a metal tube attached to the arm with a leather case, and a projectile - an accumulative armor-piercing high-explosive grenade (the device could easily be hidden under the sleeve of a jacket or overcoat, from where a shot could be fired).

The transfer of saboteurs was to be carried out by the most experienced pilots on a specially equipped transport aircraft "Arado-332". It was a unique four-engine monoplane - high-speed, with a large flight ceiling, on which the latest navigation equipment was installed (thanks to which it was all-weather and could fly at any time of the day). Wooden propeller blades, mufflers on the motors, black matte paint of the hull allowed it to be unobtrusive at night. The chassis "Arado-332" - 12 pairs of rubber-coated wheels, provided it with the ability to land even on arable field or on a small area. A motorcycle was fixed in the cargo compartment of the aircraft, on which the saboteurs were to reach their destination in the future.

How the super-saboteurs were "pierced"

Soviet troops advanced along the entire front. German intelligence officers were in a hurry to implement their plan to eliminate the country's chief leader of the Soviets, Stalin. But a carefully designed operation was doomed to failure from the outset. There was a leak of information - the materials on the Pskov intelligence school "Zeppelin", obtained during the seizure by the partisans, fell into the hands of Soviet intelligence officers. It became clear to the Soviet intelligence officers who studied them that a saboteur was being trained with a very important task. This information was taken into consideration by a special department of the NKVD - SMERSH. Soon from a tailor (an employee of Soviet intelligence) in one of the Riga ateliers, which were part of the system of the German special services, a message came to the center about a suspicious customer - he asked to sew him a leather coat from those models worn by the military or NKVD workers. The pockets of the product had to be made elongated and wide, and the right sleeve widened.

Some time later, a radiogram came to Moscow about the arrival of an unusual aircraft in Riga - "Arado-332". Gradually, disparate messages began to form a clear picture. On the night of September 5-6, 1944, the air surveillance service reported on the suppression of the front line by a special-purpose aircraft. Arado-332 was shelled and made an emergency landing. The crew of the plane was discovered on September 9 by search engines from a special department of the NKVD. The saboteurs managed to escape, but on the way to Rzhev near the village of Karmanovo they were stopped - the head of the NKVD branch Vetrov introduced himself and asked for documents. The military man deliberately opened his leather cloak wide to demonstrate his awards. But instead of respecting the solid "iconostasis" and documents confirming Tavrin's belonging to the service in the NKVD, he heard a demand to follow Vetrov to the regional department. Tavrin did not take into account that by the fall of 1944, the order of wearing and disposing of military awards had changed in the Soviet army.

What was the purpose of the operation "Fog"

The confessions of the saboteurs about the preparation of an operation to physically destroy Stalin made the Chekists wary: was this operation just a diversionary maneuver, were not other sabotage preparations being prepared in the depths of the Abwehr? The scale of the operation spoke of the seriousness of the intentions of the German masters of Tavrin.

SMERSH decided to start the game with Zeppelin. Tavrin and his companion agreed to participate in the radio game. And already on September 27, 1944, the first communication session took place within the framework of a radio game called "Fog".

How was the fate of German agents after exposure

Tavrin and Shilova were kept in the inner prison of the Lubyanka. A safe house was prepared for them, but they would never get into it. The saboteurs revealed all secret signals and codes, so the Chekists completely controlled all broadcasts. During the radio game, SMERSH employees and their opponents exchanged more than two hundred messages. German intelligence was convinced that Tavrina and Shilov were close to completing the assignment, which encouraged the Chekists, which meant that they would not send other saboteurs to eliminate the country's leader.

Messaging continued until January 1945. The main task that the Chekists set themselves - to prevent the landing of new sabotage groups - was accomplished.

For several years after the end of the war, Soviet counterintelligence officers waited for some of the German agents or representatives of other foreign special services to contact Tavrin and Shilova, but this did not happen. It was decided to end Operation Fog. For Tavrin and Shilova, this story ended with a death sentence, which was carried out in 1952.

And the lives of these The 9 queens ended for very strange reasons.