A Feat of Heroism by a Soviet Intelligence Officer

True, that it is troops that win the battles, but the outcome of every battle is largely pre-determined by the performance of intelligence services involved. None of the major battles in the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was fought without obtaining and analyzing secret intelligence about the enemy plans first. It is the Soviet intelligence Service officers that collected the required secret information in the enemy rear, at the risk of losing their lives. Because, a failure meant not only death, but one through brutal torture in the torture chamber.

Nikolai Kuznetsov, a legendary Soviet intelligence officer, was certainly one of the more prominent officers in the Soviet Intelligence Service.

He was born into a family of a peasant, in the Ural Mountains region in 1911. His linguistic endowments and a very prodigious memory helped him master German, and he even submitted a research paper in German to get a University diploma in engineering. Nikolai Kuznetsov knew German history inside out, and he knew about German customs and traditions from German-Soviet engineers who worked together with him at a factory in the Urals. Small wonder then, when Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in June of 1941, Kuznetsov was asked to join a special-purpose unit to be trained for intelligence gathering in the enemy rear.

In the summer of 1942, he was taken to a guerilla unit that was operating in the vicinity of the city of Rovno, in the occupied Western Ukraine. Rovno was important because the Germans had declared this occupied city as the capital of Occupied Ukraine, and Hitler’s Governor General. Erich Koch had his official residence set up in Rovno.

The city was a place where numerous intelligence operations against the Soviet troops were planned, where information about the Anti-Hitler Coalition was channeled to, and where repots were deciphered. So, it was that into this hornets nest that the Soviet Intelligence Service officer, Nikolai Kuznetsov was supposed to be infiltrated as a German Oberleutenant, or First Lieutenant, PAUL SIBERT.

One day, a young, good looking and smartly dressed officer was walking down a Rovno Street, saluting officers which were higher in rank and responding offhandedly to saluting officers. Now and again, he would stop to look at a shop – or a cafe window or towards a poster or a playbill. There was absolutely nothing about him that would cause suspicion. He got so much used to this role of a German officer that Paul Sibert had become his alter ego. Yet, he was always on his guard, since he knew only too well that the German Security services – the Gestapo and counterintelligence – were filled with experienced professionals. Throughout almost the 18 months that Kuznetsov had been in the enemy rear, he was permanently at risk of being exposed. He managed to gather intelligence of particular importance, one of which revealed the German Command’s strategic and tactical plans. Kuznetsov masterminded the plan to kill Hitler’s Governor General of Ukraine, Erich Koch during an audience with him, but failed to carry it out, because Koch was heavily guarded. But it was not useless altogether, since during the audience Kuznetsov learned from Koch about German preparations for a major offensive near Kursk in the summer of 1943. This is the way the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexander Lukin describes the episode in his documentary novel about Nikolai Kuznetsov (Lukin got all this material from Kuznetsov himself.)

Kuznetsov, while visiting Koch, suddenly was asked as to: "Where were you wounded?"

"In a place near Kursk, Herr Reichskommissar. Until I make a recovery, I am temporarily compelled to form a part of a rear service. But I am impatient about going back to the front."

"Oh, you will soon get the pleasure of avenging your injury," Koch said. "The Fuehrer, will soon uncork a surprise at the Bolsheviks in just the area, you were wounded in."

Kuznetsov barely managed to restrain himself from jumping to his feet. At first he thought that he might have misunderstood Koch. But then he realized that this Reichskommissar of the Ukraine and the Gauleiter, or political chief of East Prussia, Erich Koch, had in a casual conversation with some Oberleutenant, blurted out plans for an important Nazi military operation. Koch could hardly expect his remarks to be carefully reported that very night to the command of our unit." Alexander Lukin wrote in his book, "and later to our High Command in Moscow."

So it was back in the spring of 1943 that the Red Army Command was informed of the German High Command’s plans to launch an offensive operation, codenamed the "Operation Citadel", near the city of Kursk. The Soviet command concentrated its forces in the area and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Nazi troops in what came to be known as the Battle of Kursk.

In 1944 the Soviet troops were driving the Germans westward to the borders of the USSR. Kuznetsov moved to the city of Lvov, in Western Ukraine, where he killed two high-ranking German officers in what proved to be an act of retaliation of unparalleled daring. Germans responded with immediate police round-ups, and Kuznetsov decided to leave the city for his guerilla unit. But while en route, his car was stopped by military police. Following a skirmish, Kuznetsov and his men forced their way into a nearby forest. But the Germans took up the chase. When the Soviet intelligence officers were ambushed in one of the villages, they decided not to surrender, but to die for their Motherland – and used an anti-tank grenade to blow themselves up and all the Germans around them. Nikolai Kuznetsov became a war hero even while alive. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred on him.

Cartoon showing the traitors who started
the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union