1. Reappraisal

2. Name

3. Harnack group/Schulze-Boysen
    Origin  Acts of Resistance  AGIS leaflets  Call for popular uprising 

4. Individuals and others groups
    Individuals  German Groups  The Schulze-Boysen Group  The Harnack Group  The Von Scheliha Group  Belgium Groups  The Trepper Group  Sukolov Group  Jefremov Group  Switzerland Groups  Red Three Group  Radio messages examined  Netherland Group  Winterlink Group  France Groups  Elsewhere  Herrnstadt group 

5. Baum group

6. Networking
    Foreign Representatives 

7. Persecution by Nazi authorities

8. Literature
    Documents  Overall view  Single issues 

9. See also

10. References

11. External links

The Red Orchestra ({{lang-de|Die Rote Kapelle}}) or the Red Chapel as it was known in Germany, was the name given by the Gestapo to anti-Nazi resistance workers during World War II. These included friends of Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, as well as groups working independently of these intelligence groups, working in Paris and Brussels, that were built up on behalf of Leopold Trepper on behalf of the Soviet Main Directorate of State Security (GRU).^[1] Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership but a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. To date, about 400 members are known by name.^[2] They printed illegal leaflets hoping to incite civil disobedience, helped Jews and opposition escape the regime, documented the crimes of the Nazi regime and forwarded military intelligence to the Allies. To this day, the public perception of the "Red Orchestra" is characterized by the transfigurations of the post-war years and the Cold War.^[3]

Reappraisal

For a long time after World War II, only parts of the German resistance to Nazism had been known to the public within Germany and the world at large.^[4] This included the groups that took part in the 20 July plot and the White Rose resistance groups. In the 1970s there was a growing interest in the various forms of resistance and opposition. However, no group was so systematically misinformed, and recognised as little, as the resistance groups around Arvid Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen.^[4]

In a number of publications, the groups that these two people represented were seen as traitors and spies. An example of these was Kennwort: Direktor; die Geschichte der Roten Kapelle (Password: Director; The history of the Red Chapel) written by Heinz Höhne who was a Der Spiegel journalist.^[4] Höhne based his book on the investigation by the Lüneburg Public Prosecutor's Office against the General Judge of the Luftwaffe Manfred Roeder who was involved in the Harnack and Schulze-Boysen cases during World War II and who contributed decisively to the formation of the legend, that survived for much of the Cold War period. In his book Höhne reports from former Gestapo and Reich war court individuals who had a conflict of interest and were intent in defaming the groups attached to Harnack and Schulze-Boysen with accusations of treason.^[4]

The perpetuation of the defamation from the 1940 to the 1970s that started with the Gestapo, was incorporated by the Lüneburg Public Prosecutor's Office and evaluated as a journalistic process that can be seen by the 1968 trial of far-right holocaust denier Manfred Roeder by the German lawyer Robert Kempner. The Frankfurt public prosecutors office, which prosecuted the case against Roeder, based its investigation on procedure case number "1 Js 16/49" which was the trial case number defined by the Lüneburg Public Prosecutor's Office.^[4] The whole process propagated the Gestapo ideas of the Red Orchestra and this was promulgated in the report of the public prosecutor's office which stated:^[4]

...To these two men and their wives, a group of political supporters of different characters and of different backgrounds gathered over the course of time. They were united in the active fight against National Socialism and in their advocacy of communism (emphasis added by author). Until the outbreak of the war with the Soviet Union, the focus of their work was on domestic politics. After that, he shifted more to the territory of treason and espionage in favour of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of 1942, the Schulze-Boysen Group was finally involved in the widespread network of the Soviet intelligence service in Western Europe... The Schulze-Boysen group was first and foremost an espionage organization for the Soviet Union...

From the perspective of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) the Red Orchestra were honoured as anti-fascist resistance fighters and indeed received posthumous orders in 1969. However, the most comprehensive collection biographies that exist are from the GDR, and represent their point of view.^[4]

In the 1980s, the GDR historian Heinrich Scheel, who at the time was vice president of the East German Academy of Sciences and who was part of the anti-Nazi Tegeler group that included Hans Coppi, Hermann Natterodt and {{Interlanguage link|Hans Lautenschlager|de}} from 1933, conducted research into the Rote Kapelle and produced a paper which took a more nuanced view of the Rote Kapelle and discovered the work that was done to defame them.^[5][4] Heinrich Scheel's work enabled a reevaluation of the Rote Kapelle, but it was not until 2009 that the German Bundestag overturned the judgments of the National Socialist judiciary for "treason" and rehabilitated the members of the Red Chapel.^[6]

Name

The term "Red Orchestra" was invented by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the counter-espionage part of the Schutzstaffel (SS), which referred to resistance radio operators as "pianists", their transmitters as "pianos", and their supervisors as "conductors".^[7]

The Red Orchestra was a collective name that was used by the Gestapo, the German secret police for the purpose of identification, and the Funkabwehr, the German radio counterintelligence organisation. The Funkabwehr used the name to identify the Paris and Brussels groups that were opponents of the Nazis, that appeared after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Only after the Abwehr had decrypted radio messages in August 1942, in which German names appeared, did the Gestapo start to arrest and imprison them, their friends and relatives. In 2002, the German filmmaker Stefan Roloff, whose father was a member of one of the Red Orchestra groups,^[8] wrote:

Due to their contact with the Soviets, the Brussels and Berlin groups were grouped by the Counterespionage and the Gestapo under the misleading name Red Chapel. A radio operator tapping Morse code marks with his fingers was a pianist in the intelligence language. A group of "pianists" formed a "chapel", and since the Morse code had come from Moscow, the "chapel" was communist and thus red. This misunderstanding laid the foundation upon which the resistance group was later treated as a serving espionage organization in the historiography of the Soviets, until it could be corrected at the beginning of the 1990s. The Organization construct created by the Gestapo, Red Orchestra has never existed in this form.^[9]

In his research, the historian Hans Coppi Jr., whose father was also a member, Hans Coppi, emphasised that, in view of the Western European groups

A network led by Leopold Trepper of the 'Red Chapel' in Western Europe did not exist. The different groups in Belgium, Holland and France worked largely independently of each other.^[1]

The German political scientist summed up in a research article for the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand.^[10]

The Gestapo investigates them under the collective name, Red Chapel and wants to know them above all as an espionage organization of the Soviet Union. This designation, which reduces the groups around Harnack and Schulze-Boysen on contacts to the Soviet intelligence service, also later shapes the motives and aims, later distorting their image in the German public.

Harnack group/Schulze-Boysen

The Red Orchestra in the world today are mainly the resistance groups around the Luftwaffe officer Harro Schulze-Boysen, the writer Adam Kuckhoff and the economist Arvid Harnack, to which historians assign more than 100 people.^[10]

Origin

Harnack and Schulze-Boysen had similar political views, both rejected the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and sought alternatives to the existing social order. Since the Great Depression of 1929, they saw the Soviet planned economy as a positive counter-model to the free-market economy. They wanted to introduce planned economic elements in Germany and work closely with the Soviet Union without breaking German bridges to Western Europe.

Before 1933, Schulze-Boysen published the non-partisan leftist and banned magazine {{lang-de|Gegner|lit=The Opponent}}.^[11] In April 1933, the Sturmabteilung detained him for some time, severely battered him, and killed a fellow Jewish inmate. As a trained pilot, he received a position of trust in 1934 in the Reich Ministry of Aviation and had access to war-important information. After his marriage to Libertas Schulze-Boysen née Haas-Heye in 1936, the couple collected young intellectuals, including the artist couple Kurt and Elisabeth Schumacher, the writers Günther Weisenborn and {{Interlanguage link|Walter Küchenmeister|de}}, the journalists {{Interlanguage link|John Graudenz|de}} and {{Interlanguage link|Gisela von Poellnitz|de}}, the doctors {{Interlanguage link|John Rittmeister|de}} and {{Interlanguage link|Elfriede Paul|de}}, the dancer {{Interlanguage link|Oda Schottmüller|de}}, and since 1938 the couple Walter and Marta, who was an actress. Schulze-Boysen held twice monthly meetings at his Charlottenburg atelier for thirty-five to forty people in what was considered a Bohemian circle of friends. During the meetings, book discussions in the first 90 minutes were followed by Marxist discussions and resistance activities that were interspersed with parties, picnics, sailing on the Wannsee and poetry readings, until midnight as the mood took.^[12]

Other friends found the Schulze-Boysens among former students of a reform school on the island of Scharfenberg in Berlin-Tegel. These often came from communist or social - democratic workers' families, e.g. Hans and Hilde Coppi, Heinrich Scheel, Hermann Natterodt and Hans Lautenschlager. Some of these contacts existed before 1933, for example through the German Society of intellectuals.

John Rittmeister's wife Eva was a good friend of Liane Berkowitz, Ursula Goetze, {{Interlanguage link|Friedrich Rehmer|de}}, Maria Terwiel and {{Interlanguage link|Fritz Thiel|de|Fritz Thiel (Widerstandskämpfer)}} who met in the 1939 abitur class at the local high school, Abendgymnasium in Schöneberg. The Romanist Werner Krauss joined this group, and through discussions, an active resistance to the Nazi regime grew. Ursula Goetze who was part of the group, provided contacts with the communist groups in Neukölln.^[22]

From 1932 onwards, the economist Arvid Harnack and his American wife Mildred assembled a group of friends and members of the Berlin Marxist Workers School (MASCH) to form a discussion group which debated the political and economic perspectives at the time. Harnak's group meetings in contrast to Schulze-Boysen were austere. Members of the group included the German politician and Minister of Culture Adolf Grimme, the locksmith {{Interlanguage link|Karl Behrens|de}}, the German journalist Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta and the industrialist and entrepreneur Leo Skrzypczynski. From 1935, Harnack tried to camouflage his activities by becoming a member of the Nazi Party working in the Reich Ministry of Economics with the rank of Oberregierungsrat. Through this work, Harnack planned to train them to build a free and socially-just Germany after the end of the National Socialism regime.^[13]

Oda Schottmüller and {{Interlanguage link|Erika Gräfin von Brockdorff|de}} were friends with the Kuckhoffs. In 1937 Adam Kuckhoff introduced Harnack to the journalist and railway freight ground worker John Sieg, a former editor of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) newspaper the Die Rote Fahne. As a railway worker at the Deutsche Reichsbahn, Sieg was able to make use of work-related travel, enabling him to found a communist resistance group in Neukölln in Berlin. He knew the former Foreign Affairs Minister Wilhelm Guddorf and {{Interlanguage link|Martin Weise|de|Martin Weise (Widerstandskämpfer)}}.^[14] In 1934 Guddorf was arrested and sentenced to hard labour. In 1939 after his release from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Guddorf worked as a bookseller, and worked closely with Schulze-Boysen.^[15]

Through these contacts a loose network of seven Berlin friends, discussion and training groups formed by 1941, that constituted some 150 Berlin Nazi opponents.^[16] Included in the group were artists, scientists, citizens, workers and students from several different backgrounds. The combined group included Communists, political conservatives, Jews, devout Catholics, and atheists. Their ages were from 16 to 86, and about 40% of the group were women. They had different political views and searched for the open exchange of views, at least in the private sector. Schulze-Boysen and Harnack were close in some ideas of the Communist Party of Germany, others were devout Catholics such as Maria Terwiel and her husband {{Interlanguage link|Helmut Himpel|de}}. Uniting all groups was the firm rejection of national socialism.

On the initiative of Adam and Greta Kuckhoff, they introduced Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen to Arvid and Mildred Harnack and began engaging then socially, with their hitherto separate groups moved together once the Polish campaign began on September 1939.^[17] From 1940 onwards, they regularly exchanged their opinions on the war and other Nazi policies and sought action against it.^[13]

The historian Heinrich Scheel, a schoolmate of Hans Coppi, judged these groups by stating:

Only with this stable hinterland, it was possible to get through all the little glitches and major disasters and to make permanent our resistance

As early as 1934, Scheel had passed written material from one contact person to the next within clandestine communist cells and had seen how easily such connections were lost if a meeting did not materialize, due to one party being arrested. In a relaxed group of friends and discussion with like-minded people, it was easy to find supporters for an action.^[18]

Acts of Resistance

From 1933 onwards, the Berlin groups connected to Schulze-Boysen and Harnack resisted the Nazis by:

• Providing assistance to the persecuted
• Disseminating pamphlets and leaflets that contained dissident content.
• Writing letters to prominent individuals including university professors.
• Collecting and sharing information, including on foreign representatives, on German war preparations, crimes of the Wehrmacht and Nazi crimes,
• Contacting other opposition groups and foreign forced labourers.
• Invoking obedience to Nazi representatives.
• Writing drafts for a possible post-war order.

From the summer of 1936, the Spanish Civil War preoccupied the Schulze-Boysen group. Through Walter Küchenmeister, the Schulze-Boysen group began to discuss more concrete actions, and during these meetings would listen to foreign radio stations from London, Paris and Moscow.^[19] A plan was formed to take advantage of Schulze-Boysen employment, and through this the group were able to get detailed information on Germany's support of Francisco Franco. Beginning in 1937, in the Wilmersdorf waiting room of Dr Elfriede Paul, began distributing the first leaflet on the Spanish Civil War.^[20]

After the Munich Agreement, Schulze-Boysen created a second leaflet with Walter Küchenmeister, that declared the annexation of the Sudetenland in October 1938 as a further step on the way to a new world war. This leaflet was called Der Stoßtrupp or the The Raiding Patrol, and condemned the Nazi government and argued against the government's propaganda.^[19] A document that was used at the trial of Schulze-Boysen indicated that only 40 to 50 copies of the leaflet were distributed.^[19]

The Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, was seen as the beginning of the feared world war, but also as an opportunity to eliminate Nazi rule and to a thorough transformation of German society. Hitler's victories in France and Norway in 1940 encouraged them to expect the replacement of the Nazi regime, above all from the Soviet Union, not from Western capitalism. They believed that the Soviet Union would keep Germany as a sovereign state after its victory and that they wanted to work towards a corresponding opposition without domination by the Communist Party of Germany.

AGIS leaflets

From 1940 onwards, the group started to produce leaflets that were signed with AGIS in reference to the Spartan King Agis IV, with titles like The becoming of the Nazi movement, Call for opposition, Freedom and violence^[21] and Appeal to All Callings and Organisations to resist the government.^[22] Their printing was arranged by the potter Cato Bontjes van Beek. They were often left in phone booths, or selected addresses from the phone book. Extensive precautions were taken, including wearing gloves, using many different typewriters and destroying the carbon paper.

In the spring of 1942, Joseph Goebbels held a Nazi propaganda exhibition called The Soviet Paradise (German original title "Das Sowjet-Paradies"), with the express purpose of preparing the German people for the invasion of the Soviet Union.^[23] Both the Harnacks and Kuckhoff's spent half a day at the exhibition. In May Schulze-Boysen and nineteen others, mostly people from the group around Rittmeister, travelled across five Berlin neighbourhoods to paste handbills over the original exhibition posters with the message:

Permanent Exhibition

The Nazi Paradise

War, Hunger, Lies, Gestapo

How much longer?^[23]

Call for popular uprising

In February 1942, Schulze-Boysen wrote the Agis Pamphlet or Agisflugschrift, named after the Greek name, which he used as an alias. The paper describes how the care of Germany's future is decided by the people... and called for the opposition to the war the Nazis all Germans, who now all threaten the future of all.^[24][25]

The text first analyzed the current situation: contrary to the Nazi propaganda, most German armies were in retreat, the number of war dead in the millions. Inflation, scarcity of goods, plant closures, labour agitation and corruption in State authorities happened all the time. Then the text examined German war crimes:

The conscience of all true patriots, however, is taking a stand against the whole current form of German power in Europe. All who retained the sense of real values shudder when they see how the German name is increasingly discredited under the sign of the swastika. In all countries today, hundreds, often thousands of people, are shot or hanged by legal and arbitrary people, people to whom they have nothing to be accused of but to remain loyal to their country ... In the name of the Reich, the most abominable torments and atrocities are committed against civilians and prisoners. Never in history has a man been so hated as Adolf Hitler. The hatred of tortured humanity is weighing on the whole German people.

Among its main members were theatrical producer Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta, pianist Helmut Roloff, secretary Ilse Stöbe, diplomat Rudolf von Scheliha, author Günther Weisenborn, potter Cato Bontjes van Beek, Horst Heilmann (a radio operator in the Cipher Section of OKH), and photojournalist John Graudenz (who had been expelled from the USSR for reporting the Soviet famine of 1932–1933).

The group gathered intelligence from many sources. It did not communicate with the USSR by radio.

For the remainder of 1941, the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack team gave most of its intelligence to the United States through the American embassy's monetary attaché, Donald Heath.^[26]

However, these efforts to inform other governments about Nazi atrocities and war plans were only a small part of their resistance effort.

Their primary activity was the distribution of leaflets to incite civil disobedience and cause the Nazis to worry about subversion. They also printed and pasted up anti-Nazi stickers in large numbers, and they helped people in danger from the Nazis to escape the country via an Underground Railroad-like network.

During 1942 the OKH Cipher Section decoded some of Trepper's radio traffic, and on 30 July 1942, the Gestapo arrested radio operator {{Interlanguage link multi|Johann Wenzel|de|Johann Wenzel (Kommunist)}}. Horst Heilmann tried to warn Schulze-Boysen, but the warning was not in time. Schulze-Boysen was arrested on 30 August, and Harnack on 3 September. The rest of the team was arrested within a few weeks, and many were executed.^[7]

The investigation was carried out by the Red Orchestra Special Commission under the leadership of Horst Kopkow, whose death was feigned by MI5 was later given a different identity to help with Communists in West Germany after WWII.

Individuals and others groups

Other small groups and individuals, who knew little or nothing about each other, each resisted the National Socialists in their own way until the Gestapo arrested them and treated them as a common espionage organization from 1942 to 1943.

Individuals

• Kurt Gerstein

Kurt Gerstein was a German SS officer had twice been sent to concentration camps in 1938 due to close links with the Confessional Church and had been expelled from the Nazi Party. As a mine manager and industrialist, Gerstein was convinced that he could resist by exerting influence inside the Nazi administration. On 10 March 1941, when he heard about the German euthanasia program Aktion T4, he joined the SS and by chance became Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS (Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS) and was ordered by the RSHA to supply prussic acid to the Nazis'. Gerstein set about finding methods to dilute the acid, but his main aim was to report the euthanasia programme to his friends. In August 1942, after attending a gassing using a diesel engine exhaust from a car, he informed to the Swedish embassy in Berlin of what happened.^[28]

• Willy Lehmann

Willy Lehmann was a communist sympathizer who was recruited by the Soviet NKVD in 1929 and became one of their most valuable agents. In 1932 Lehmann joined the Gestapo and reported to the NKVD the complete work of the Gestapo.^[29] In 1935 Lehmann attended a rocket engine ground firing test in Kummersdorf that was attended by Wernher von Braun. From this Lehmann sent six pages of data to Stalin on 17 December 1935.^[30] Through Lehmann, Stalin also learned about the power struggles in the Nazi party, rearmament work and even the date of Operation Barbarossa. On October 1942 Lehmann was discovered by the Gestapo and murdered without trial.^[29] Lehmann had no connection to the Schulze-Boysen or Harnack group.

German Groups

The Schulze-Boysen Group

The Harnack Group

The Von Scheliha Group

Belgium Groups

The Trepper Group

Trepper directed seven GRU networks in France, and the network steadily gathered military and industrial intelligence in Occupied Europe, including data on troop deployments, industrial production, raw material availability, aircraft production, and German tank designs. Trepper was also able to get important information through his contacts with important Germans. Posing as a German businessman, he had dinner parties at which he acquired information on the morale and attitudes of German military figures, troop movements, and plans for the Eastern Front.

Additionally, communication between the Simex company and its main customer, the Todt Organization, provided information on German military fortifications and troop movements. As a bonus, these communications supplied some of Trepper's agents with passes that allowed them to move freely in German-occupied areas.

During December 1941, German security forces stopped Trepper's transmitter in Brussels. Trepper himself was arrested on 5 December 1942 in Paris.^[33] The Germans tried to enlist his help as part a sophisticated anti-Soviet operation, to continue transmitting disinformation to Moscow under German control, as part of a playback (German:Funkspiel) operation. According to orders, and relying on training, Trepper agreed to work for the Germans, and began transmitting, which may have included hidden warnings, but saved his life.^[34] During September 1943 he escaped and hid with the French Resistance.

Operations by the Trepper team had been entirely eliminated by the spring of 1943. Most agents were executed, including Suzanne Spaak at Fresnes Prison, just thirteen days before the Liberation of Paris during 1944. Trepper himself survived the war.

Sukolov Group

The Sukolov Group operated in Belgium between July 1940 and December 1941. It had as its core Leopold Trepper, and working for him {{Interlanguage link|Victor Sukolov|de|Anatoli Markowitsch Gurewitsch}} (Sokolov/ Sokoloff etc., also known as Victor(/ Anatoli Markowitsch) Gurevich and Fritz Kent), who was subsequently involved in a similar group in Marseilles.^[35][36]

Jefremov Group

Switzerland Groups

Red Three Group

The Swiss group were perhaps the most important in the war, as they could work unheeded. The head of the Soviet intelligence service in Switzerland was Maria Josefovna Poliakova who first arrived in Switzerland between 1936 and 1937 to direct operations.^[53] Poliakova passed control to the new director of the Soviet intelligence service in Switzerland sometimes between 1939 and 1940. The new director was Alexander Radó, codenamed Dora, who held the secret Red Army rank of Major General.^[37][38]

The other important leader in the Switzerland group was Ursula Kuczynski codenamed Sonia, who was a colonel of the Soviet intelligence service, the GRU.

Radó formed several intelligence groups in France and Germany, before arriving in Switzerland in late 1936 with his family. In 1936 Radó formed Geopress, a news agency specialising in maps and geographic information as a cover for intelligence work, and after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, business began to flourish.^[39] In 1940, Radó met Alexander Foote, an English Soviet agent, who joined Ursula Kuczynski's network in 1938, and who would become the most important radio operator for Radó's network. In March 1942, Radó made contact with Rudolf Roessler who ran the Lucy spy ring. Roessler was able to provide prompt access to the secrets of the German High Command.^[38] This included the pending details of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union and many more, over a period of two years.

Radó's established three networks in Switzerland that became known as the Rote Drei. The Rote Drei was a German appellation based on the number of transmitters or operators serving the network, and is perhaps misleading, as at times there was four, sometimes even five.^[53]

The first network was run by Rachel Dübendorfer had the most important contacts of the three subgroups and who was codenamed Sissy. It was Dübendorfer who received the reports from Roessler, the led the Lucy spy ring, who in turn received them from the sources Werther, Teddy, Olga, and Anna, and it was never discovered who they were.^[53] A study by the CIA concluded that the four sources that were forwarding intelligence to Roessler were a General in the Wehrmacht, Hans Oster, Abwehr chief of staff, Hans Bernd Gisevius, the German politician Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Chief of Intelligence, Army Group Centre General Fritz Boetzel.^[40] The second network was run by the French journalist {{Interlanguage link|George Blun|de}}, whose groups codenamed was Long, and whose sources could not match the production of Lucy's group in quality or quantity.^[41] The third subgroup was led by Swiss journalist {{Interlanguage link|Otto Pünter|de}} whose was codenamed Pakbo. Pünter network was considered the least important.^[41]

The three principal agents above were chiefly an organisation for producing intelligence for the Soviet Union. But some of the information that was collected for the Rote Drei was sent to the west through a Czech Colonel, Karel Sedláček. In 1935, Sedláček was trained in Prague for a year in 1935, and sent to Switzerland in 1937 by General František Moravec. By 1938, Sedláček was a friend of Major {{Interlanguage link|Hans Hausamann|de}} who was Director of the unofficial Bureau Ha, a supposed press-cuttings agency, in fact a covert arm of the Swiss Intelligence. Hausamann has been introduced to the Lucy spy ring by Xaver Schnieper a junior officer in the Bureau. It was unknown whether Hausamann was passing information to Lucy, who passed it to Sedláček who forwarded it London Czechs in exile, or via an intermediary.^[41]

Radio messages examined

The radio stations that were known were established at:

• A station built by Geneva radio dealer Edmond Hamel codenamed Eduard behind a board in his apartment at Route de Florissant 192a. Hamels wife, who acted as an assistant, prepared the encrypted messages. Radó paid the couple 1000 Swiss francs per month.^[43]
• A station built in Geneva by Radó's lover, a waitress Marguerite Bolli at Rue Henry Mussard 8. She earned 800 Swiss francs per month.^[43]
• The third station was built by Alexander Foote that was hid insider a typewriter. This radio was located in Lausanne at Chemin de Longeraie 2. Foote a Captain the Red Army was paid 1300 francs per month.^[43]

Wilhelm F. Flicke who was an cryptanalyst and unofficial historian at the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, the German High Command signal intelligence agency, worked on the messages transmitted by the Swiss group during World War II and who estimates some 5500 messages, about 5 a day for three years, were sent.^[41] The Trepper Report stated that between the radio stations that were established by the three subgroups between 1941 and 1943, well over 2000 militarily important messages were sent to the GRU Central office.^[44] In September 1993, the CIA Library undertook an analysis of the messages and estimated that a reasonable number would be 5000.^[41]

Netherland Group

Winterlink Group

France Groups

Elsewhere

Herrnstadt group

In 1932, Ilse Stöbe, who worked as a secretary at the Berliner Tageblatt, and who knew Herrnstadt as a friend. She was posted to Warsaw in 1932 and was recruited by Herrnstadt.^[47]

In 1933 Herrnstadt recruited German diplomat {{Interlanguage link|Gerhard Kegel|de|Gerhard Kegel (Diplomat)}}.

Baum group

Networking

Foreign Representatives

From 1933 to December 1941 the couple Harnack had contact to the US Embassy counsellor Donald R. Heath and Martha Dodd, the daughter of the then US Ambassador William Dodd. The Harnack's would often attend at receptions at the American embassy as well at parties organised by Martha Dodd, until about 1937.^[49] As like-minded people, the group was convinced that the population would revolt against the Nazi's and when it did not, it convinced the group that new avenues were needed to defeat Hitler. From the summer of 1935, Harnack worked on economic espionage for the Soviet Union, and economic espionage for the United States by November 1939. Harnack was convinced that America would play a part in defeating Nazi Germany.^[49]

In September 1940, Alexander Mikhailovich Korotkov, then an employee of a Soviet intelligence service and an agent runner, won over Arvid Harnack as an informant for the Soviet Embassy.^[50] From 26 September 1940, Harnack passed on knowledge received from Schulze-Boysen about the planned attack on the Soviet Union to Korotkov, but not about the open and branched structure of his group of friends. In March 1941, Schulze-Boysen informed Korotkov directly about his knowledge of the German attack plans.

During May 1941, Korotkov had taken delivery of two shortwave radio sets that had been delivered in the Soviet Union embassy diplomatic pouch and handed them to Greta Kuckhoff without precise instructions on how to use them, nor in how to maintain contact with the Soviet leadership, in case of war.^[51] The two radio sets were of different design. The first set had been damaged by Korotkov and had been returned to the Soviet Union for repair, returned and kept by Greta Kuckhoff at 22 June 1941. That other set was battery powered, with a range of 600 miles that was passed to Coppi on the instruction of Schulze-Boyson at the Kurt and Elisabeth Schumacher's apartment. On 26 June 1941, Coppi sent a message:A thousand greetings to all friends. Moscow replied We have received and read your test message. The substitution of letters for numbers and vice versa is to be done using the permanent number 38745 and the codeword Schraube, and to transmit at a predefined frequency and time. After that, the batteries were too weak to reach Moscow. The second set was passed to Coppi at the Eichkamp S-Bahn railway station. The second set was more powerful being, powered by AC powered. Coppi would later accidentally destroy the AC-powered transmitter by connecting it to a DC power socket, destroying the transformer and Vacuum tube.^[52] Coppi and the Harnack/Shulze-Boysen resistance groups never received sufficient training from Korotkov. Indeed when Greta Kuckhoff was trained she concluded that her own technical preparation was extraordinarily inadequate.^[53] Only a few members of the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Group knew about these radio experiments.

Persecution by Nazi authorities

All of the men in the Red Orchestra were executed in the most gruesome manner, hanging by a meathook, at the Plotzensee prison in Berlin.^[54]

Literature

Documents

• {{cite book |last1=Schulze-Boysen |first1=Harro |title=Gegner von heute - Kampfgenossen von morgen |trans-title=Opponent today - comrades of tomorrow|date=1983 |publisher=Fölbach |location=Coblenz |isbn=978-3-923532-00-1 |edition=3. Aufl |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Griebel |first1=Regina |last2=Coburger |first2=Marlies |last3=Scheel |first3=Heinrich |title=Erfasst? : das Gestapo-Album zur Roten Kapelle : eine Foto-Dokumentation |trans-title=recorded? The Gestapo album the Red Orchestra. A photo documentation|date=1992 |publisher=Audioscop |location=Halle |isbn=978-3-88384-044-4 |language=German}}

Overall view

• {{cite book |last1=Roloff |first1=Stefan |title=Die Rote Kapelle : die Widerstandsgruppe im Dritten Reich und die Geschichte Helmut Roloffs |trans-title=Red chapel. The resistance group in the Third Reich and the history of Helmut Roloff |date=2002 |publisher=Ullstein |location=Munich |isbn=978-3-550-07543-8 |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Anne |title=Red Orchestra : The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler |date=2009 |publisher=Random House |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4000-6000-9 |edition=1st}}
• {{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Anne |title=Die Rote Kapelle : die Geschichte der legendären Widerstandsgruppe |date=December 2010 |publisher=Bertelsmann |location=Munich |isbn=978-3-570-10021-9 |edition=1. Aufl |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Schafranek |first1=Hans |last2=Tuchel (Editor) |first2=Johannes |title=Krieg im Äther : Widerstand und Spionage im Zweiten Weltkrieg |trans-title=War in the ether: Resistance and espionage in World War II|date=2004 |publisher=Picus |location=Vienna |isbn=978-3-85452-470-0 |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Coppi junior |first1=Hans |last2=Danyel |first2=Jürgen |last3=Tuchel |first3=Johannes |title=Die Rote Kapelle im Widerstand gegen Nationalsozialismus |trans-title=The Red Chapel in opposition to Hitler. Writings of the Memorial of the German Resistance|date=1992 |publisher=Edition Hentrich |location=Berlin |isbn=978-3-89468-110-4 |edition=1. Aufl |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Rosiejka |first1=Gert |title=Die Rote Kapelle : "Landesverrat" als antifaschist. Widerstand |trans-title=The Red Chapel: "treason" as anti-fascist. resistance |date=1985 |publisher=Ergebnisse-Verl |location=Hamburg |isbn=978-3-925622-16-8 |edition=1. Aufl |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Bourgeois |first1=Guillaume |title=La véritable histoire de l'Orchestre rouge |trans-title=The real story of the Red Orchestra |date=2015 |publisher=Le grand jeu |location=Paris |isbn=978-2-36942-067-5 |edition=Editions Nouveau Monde |language=French}}
• {{cite book |last1=Perrault |first1=Gilles |title=Auf den Spuren der Roten Kapelle |trans-title= In the footsteps of the Red Chapel|date=1994 |publisher=Europaverl |location=Hamburg, Vienna, Munich |isbn=978-3-203-51232-7 |edition=Überarb. und erw. Neuausg |language=German}}

Single issues

• {{cite book |last1=Bahar |first1=Alexander |title=Sozialrevolutionärer Nationalismus zwischen konservativer Revolution und Sozialismus : Harro Schulze-Boysen und der "Gegner"-Kreis|trans-title=Social Revolutionary Nationalism between Conservative Revolution and Socialism. Harro Schulze-Boysen and the "opponent" circle|date=1992 |publisher=D. Fölbach |location=Coblenz, Frankfurt |isbn=978-3-923532-18-6 |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Fischer-Defoy |first1=Christine |title=Kunst, Macht, Politik : die Nazifizierung der Kunst- und Musikhochschulen in Berlin |trans-title= art, power, politics. The Nazification of the art and music colleges in Berlin |date=1988 |publisher=Elefanten Press |location=Berlin |isbn=978-3-88520-271-4 |language=German}}
• {{cite book |last1=Hamidi |first1=Beatrix |title=Frauen gegen die Diktatur : Widerstand und Verfolgung im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland |trans-title=the unity in diversity. The women of the rote Kapelle|date=1994 |publisher=Edition Hentrich |location=Berlin |isbn=978-3-89468-122-7 |pages=98–105 |edition=1. Aufl |language=German |editor=Christl Wickert|chapter=Women against the dictatorship. Resistance and persecution in the Nazi Germany}}
• {{cite book |last1=Mommsen |first1=Hans |title=Die "rote Kapelle" und der deutsche Widerstand gegen Hitler |trans-title=the "Red Orchestra" and the German resistance to Hitler.|date=2012 |publisher=Klartext-Verlag (SBR-Schriften)|location=Bochum |isbn=978-3-8375-0616-7 |language=German |volume=33}}
• {{cite book |last1=Mielke |first1=Siegfried |last2=Heinz |first2=Stefan |title=Eisenbahngewerkschafter im NS-Staat : Verfolgung - Widerstand - Emigration (1933-1945)|trans-title=Railway Unionists in the Nazi State: Persecution-Resistance-Emigration (1933-1945)|date=2017 |publisher=Metropol |location=Berlin |isbn=978-3-86331-353-1 |pages=291–306}}
• {{cite book |last1=Roth |first1=Karl Heinz |last2=Ebbinghaus |first2=Angelika |title=Rote Kapellen, Kreisauer Kreise, schwarze Kapellen : neue Sichtweisen auf den Widerstand gegen die NS-Diktatur 1938-1945 |trans-title=Red Chapels, Kreisauer Circles, Black Chapels: New Views of German Resistance to the Nazi Dictatorship |date=2004 |publisher=VSA-Verlag |location=Hamburg |isbn=978-3-89965-087-7}}

See also

• People of the Red Orchestra
• Plötzensee Prison
• Schwarze Kapelle
• White Rose
• FRG 1972 (TV Miniseries),

References

• Trepper, Leopold (1977). The Great Game McGraw–Hill, Inc. {{ISBN|0-07-065146-9}}
• Brysac, Shareen Blair (2000) Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-513269-6}}
• Anne Nelson: Red Orchestra. The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler. Random House, New York 2009, {{ISBN|978-1-4000-6000-9}}.
• Guillaume Bourgeois: La Véritable Histoire de l’Orchestre rouge, Nouveau Monde, « Le Grand Jeu », 2015

External links

• Plötzensee Memorial Centre
• BFCentral
• on Sophia Poznanska
• Book review of Red Orchestra by Anne Nelson. Random House website. Retrieved April 7, 2010
• {{IMDb title | 0095793 | L'orchestre rouge }}

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