On August 23, 1943, the great battle on the Kursk Bulge ended. For a month and a half of fighting with the Soviet troops, the army of the Third Reich bled to death - 500 thousand soldiers were killed and wounded, 1,500 tanks and 1,700 aircraft were destroyed. Nazi Germany never recovered from this defeat: the Germans began to retreat along the entire Eastern Front. In fact, our victory near Kursk was secured on April 12, 1943, when Soviet intelligence put on the table Stalin plan for the future operation "Citadel", signed by all the generals of the Wehrmacht, - himself Hitler I saw the same plan ... only three days later! It was thanks to the success of the intelligence officers that the USSR was able to prepare for the German tank offensive and crush the enemy. Meanwhile, the names of our agents surrounded by Hitler, who got the Citadel plan, have not yet (!) been declassified. Only their code names are known - Werther and Olga.

The richest spy

It is believed that the main role in the theft of documents from Berlin was played by owner of the modest Vita-Nova publishing house Rudolf Rössler. This 45-year-old German, who emigrated to Switzerland after Hitler came to power, in November 1942 offered his services to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the USSR General Staff, receiving the nickname Luci. Rössler handed over to the secret services of the Soviet Union not only the Citadel plan, but also the drawings of the German Panther tank and other valuable information. Alas, unlike most Soviet residents abroad, Rössler was not a staunch communist - he worked exclusively for money and was considered the highest paid agent in the history of Soviet intelligence. The exact figure is unknown, but Western newspapers assured that Rudolf received about $ 500 thousand for the Citadel.

- Roessler is a very mysterious person in the history of world espionage, - says Dietrich Mainz, research historian from the Swiss city of Basel. - From the beginning of the German invasion of Europe, he, like tomatoes in the market, traded secrets for the secret services of Britain, Switzerland and the United States, and then decided to help the USSR as well. According to him, "only the Soviet Union is capable of winning the war." Surprisingly, until May 1944, Soviet intelligence did not even know his real name! A participant in the First World War, he was familiar with a large number of senior officers of the Third Reich. It is assumed that Luci had established contacts at Hitler's headquarters, about two hundred (!) Agents worked for him: Werther, who supplied information about Wehrmacht operations, Olga (in the command of the Luftwaffe), Anna(at the Foreign Ministry of the Reich), Teddy and Bill.

And although in Moscow they repeatedly demanded to give the real names of the agents, Rudolf Rössler flatly refused to do so. There is an opinion that he called them the GRU of the USSR only before his death (December 11, 1958) - however, our special services do not comment on this. Even 70 years after the Battle of Kursk, the archives of the work of agent Luci are still classified, and this allows us to build a huge number of assumptions: who exactly was Agent Werther, who photographed the documents of the Citadel plan and transferred them to Switzerland through Olga ... and was he is he at all? The West German magazine Der Spiegel published an investigation in 1967, where it claimed that only one informant worked for Rössler in Berlin, and he simply invented the rest to emphasize his importance and "knock more money out of the Russians." Writer Helmut Rever in his book German and Soviet Espionage in World War II, he called Rössler a “hoaxer”: they say that Rudolf, obsessed with a thirst for fees, allegedly fabricated reports to Moscow and London from ... ordinary newspaper clippings. But neither "Spiegel" nor Revere bothered to explain - where did the "hoaxer" get the drawings of the Panther tank and the secret plan "Citadel" from? After all, even Colonel General Alfred Jodl, head of the operational leadership of the high command of the Wehrmacht, said at the Nuremberg trials: "Stalin received documents about our offensive near Kursk much earlier than they were on my desk."

Sex and intelligence

— The head of the Soviet intelligence group "Dora" in Switzerland Sandor Rado at one time he was also surprised: how can Rössler receive information from Hitler's headquarters with such speed? says Swiss journalist Pierre Laumier. - Later in his memoirs, he noted - it would take several couriers plying around the clock between Berlin and Lucerne, and this is physically impossible.

Rössler's apartment did not have a walkie-talkie, and he had not been trained as a radio operator. Possibly, Werther and Olga transmitted radiograms from Berlin to their confidant in Switzerland, who referred them to Rössler, and only then "Dora" sent the material to Moscow. The Germans, watching the work of Soviet intelligence on the German border, were furious. In 1943, they undertook a cunning maneuver: an Abwehr officer arrived in Switzerland. Hans Peters- a handsome man, who was called the "bed officer." Knowing how to court women professionally, Peters quickly seduced the Dora radio operator - 23-year-old Marguerite Bolly. During the night of love, she blurted out to him the name of the book used for ciphers - "It all started in September." On October 13, 1943, Bolli was arrested by the Swiss police, and in May 1944, the authorities detained Rudolf Rössler himself ...

Germany, foaming at the mouth, demanded that the Swiss authorities urgently extradite Luci - the secret services of the Third Reich were eager to find out the name of agent Werther, who ensured Hitler's defeat in the Battle of Kursk. However, during interrogations, Rudolph was silent, and by that time, things at the front had become very bad for Germany. Given this, the Swiss did not get involved with the USSR - after a few months, Rössler was fully acquitted. Margherita Bolli received a lenient sentence - 9 months probation and a fine of 500 francs.

For three days I tried to find Marguerite Bolli in Basel, where she moved with her husband in 1956. She must be 93 now. Whether the radio operator is still alive is hard to say, but there is no information in the press about her death. However, I could not find her address in the Basel help desk - perhaps she lives under a different name. Meanwhile, Bolli is the only (except Rudolf Rössler) member of the Dora group who knew the name and position of Werther's agent in Berlin. I have no doubt that this man existed. But what the hell is he?

“This is a person from the environment of the Fuhrer. Possibly a family friend." Adolf Hitler and Eva Brown introduced a Soviet agent? Read the continuation in the next issue of AiF.

Rudolf Ressler and his German generals

So who is he, Lucy's source? Under this pseudonym was Rudolf Ressler, a German born into a Protestant Bavarian family in 1897. He was a journalist and headed the People's Theater Union until 1933, when this organization, which attracted the attention of Alfred Rosenberg, was subjugated by the Nazis. A liberal conservative and pacifist, Ressler became a staunch opponent of the Nazi regime.

While living in Berlin, Ressler was a member of the prestigious Herren Klubb, where he met and befriended several army officers. Some of them later became his sources. Another valuable contact was Javier Schniper, who in June 1933 insisted that the journalist leave Germany before it was too late, and found an apartment for him and his wife, Olga, in Lucerne. He also helped Ressler establish Vita Nova Publishing Ltd, with offices in the old quarter of Lucerne.

A road sign in Lucerne demonstrates not only Switzerland's position as the heart of Europe, but also its central role in the espionage war on the continent.

On May 30, 1939, Ressler visited two of his acquaintances from Herren Klubb, General Fritz Thiel, Deputy Head of the Encryption Department of the Wehrmacht High Command, and his colleague, Baron, Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff, who later became Head of the Intelligence Department of Army Group Center on the Eastern Front . The two men brought with them an Enigma cipher machine and a German shortwave transmitter of the latest model. Thiel intended to transmit critical information to Ressler, who was to decipher the messages using the Enigma. Thiel's office was located in the Bendlerblock on the Bendlerstrasse, where the headquarters of the services of the high army command were located. Hundreds of Enigma machines worked around the clock in two huge halls of this building, sending out encrypted messages. Thiel's boss, General Erich Felgiebel, also joined the conspiracy, with whose permission Thiel involved in the case a small group of carefully selected telegraph operators who were supposed to send messages to the call sign ILNB (Ressler). Telegraph operators were not privy to the secrets of the conspirators and simply did their job, not knowing what and to whom they were transmitting.

In September 1939, Ressler advertised an open position for a proofreader at his Vita Nova publishing house. Luckily, Taylor (Schneider) answered the ad. For 18 months - maybe more - the two were unaware of each other's intelligence work. Only in April 1941 - and again by chance - did Ressler make it clear to his proofreader that the information from his contacts in Germany, entering the Ha Bureau, was still not being used properly against the Nazis. Schneider replied that he could help, since he was connected with Soviet intelligence agents operating in Switzerland, who would be able to use intelligence to a greater advantage. Ressler agreed with him, but insisted that his identity remain a secret. In the future, Taylor made regular trips from Lucerne to Geneva, where he transmitted the information received from the source to his controller, Snesi. She, in turn, passed information to Rado, and he, through Fut and Hameln, to the Moscow Center. On the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 20–21, 1941), Lucy/Dora submitted to the Center detailed data on the forces concentrated on the border with a total of 148 divisions, including 19 armored and 15 motorized divisions. (The information is almost accurate. Against the USSR, the Germans deployed 153 calculated divisions (152 divisions and 2 brigades), including 33 tank and motorized ones. To this we must add 37 calculated (2 brigades are equated to 1 division) divisions of Germany's allies. A total of 190 divisions, 5.5 million people against 170.5 Soviet settlement divisions and 2.9 million people at the western borders of the USSR (the entire USSR had 303 divisions and 22 brigades before the start of the war, that is, 314 settlement divisions. - Ed.) The general plan of the war provided for the destruction of the Red Army west of the Dnieper and Dvina in order to prevent the Soviet troops from retreating to the east. A staunch communist and Stalinist, Rado passed on the information, although he did not believe that the Germans would start a war against the USSR. In Lucy, he suspected an agent of the Abwehr. In Moscow, the received data was marked as coming from an “unreliable source”.

The German attack on the Soviet Union ended suspicions and doubts. From June 23, 1941, Lucy/Dora became Moscow's most reliable source of information about Germany, messages from which were marked with the heading "Urgent, decipher immediately." The Moscow Center paid Lucy 7,000 Swiss francs a month and kept a communication channel open around the clock. Taylor stopped working in the Geneva bureau and met daily with Ressler, who spent evenings and nights transcribing the information flowing from the Bendlerblock. The deciphered information went further along two channels: to the SAR (which, ignoring the policy of neutrality proclaimed by Switzerland, sent them to London) and, through Taylor / Sissi, to Rado. Moscow received data on the latest orders for German troops on the Eastern Front. Lucy also confirmed that Japan had abandoned its intention to attack the USSR, which allowed the Soviet command to transfer reinforcements from the Far East and launch a counteroffensive near Moscow on December 5, 1941. In the spring of 1942, the flow of messages increased so much that Otto Pünther had to mobilize his entire network. Rado recruited twenty-two-year-old Margrit Boly, Sophie's agent, who had been trained by Foot to operate the transmitter. Sophie became the third and last "pianist" in the Swiss "Red Three", as the Germans called them.

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Ressler Rudolf. 11/22/1897, Kaufbeuren, Germany - 12/11/1958, Kriens, Switzerland.

German. From employees. He graduated from the public school and gymnasium (1916) in Augsburg, near Munich.

Participant World War I in the German army (1916-1918).

After the war, he was actively engaged in journalism and publishing. Correspondent for the Munich-Augsburger-Abendzeitung and Allgemeinen Zeitung newspapers. In 1922 he founded the Augsburg Literary Society, from 1925 he edited the journal Form und Zinn, from 1929 he directed the Bünevolksbund, the People's Theater Union in Berlin, and published the journal National Theatre. After the Nazis came to power, he left Germany (1934) and settled in neutral Switzerland.

He founded and headed the Vita Nova publishing house in Lucerne, which published classical works. Collaborated with the Swiss intelligence unit "BureauH" (1939-1944), where he was greatly appreciated. The German sources of his extremely valuable information remain unknown to this day, and the method of transmitting information that arrived in Switzerland very quickly is also unknown.

In the summer of 1942, on his own initiative through intermediaries - Christian Schneider (Taylor) and Rachel Dubendorfer(Sisi) - began to transfer his materials to illegal residency S. Rado(Dora), and since the autumn of 1942 he has already collaborated with her. His information, in particular, contributed to the victory at Stalingrad. On January 22, 1943, the Center radioed Rado: “Express our gratitude to Luci for the good work. Your group's information about the Central Sector of the Front is very significant. His data played a role in the defeat of the Nazis near Kursk and in ensuring the further offensive of the Red Army. The information provided also concerned, as S. Rado noted, "the political and diplomatic maneuvers of the rulers of Nazi Germany and its satellites."

Arrested by the Swiss counterintelligence in connection with the Dora case in May 1944, but released four months later. In October 1945, a military court granted amnesty to him.

Later he collaborated with the Czechoslovak intelligence service (1947-1953), was again arrested on 03/09/1953 and brought to trial on 11/02/1953. Sentenced to one year in prison. Due to financial difficulties, he was forced to part with his publishing house.

He was buried in the cemetery of Criens, Switzerland.

Alekseev M.A., Kolpakidi A.I., Kochik V.Ya. Encyclopedia of military intelligence. 1918-1945 M., 2012, p. 650-651.

Read further:

"Persons in civilian clothes" (a biographical guide to the employees of the Soviet special services).

World War II 1939-1945. (chronological table).

- December 11th, Switzerland) - one of the most effective agents of the Second World War, who collected intelligence in favor of Switzerland, Great Britain, the USA and the USSR, agent pseudonym Lucy(eng. Lucy). He was the highest paid agent of Soviet intelligence throughout the Second World War.

Rudolf Rössler
Date of Birth	November 22(1897-11-22 )
Place of Birth	Kaufbeuren, Germany
Date of death	December 11th(1958-12-11 ) (61 years old)
Place of death	Switzerland
Citizenship	Germany Germany
Occupation	scout, publisher, resistance fighter

Biography

Before World War II

He was friends with many representatives of the arts persecuted by the Nazis, and thus himself became an opponent of the National Socialist regime. His publications of this period were conservative-Catholic and anti-Nazi. Because of this, in June 1933 he lost his position as a member of the supervisory board of Südwestdeutschen Bühne G.m.b.H. and the position of director of the Bühnenvolksbundverlag G.m.b.H. Rössler was also banned from working as a playwright and publisher. In 1934 he was forced to emigrate to Switzerland. After settling in Lucerne, Rössler opened a small book publishing house, Vita-Nova.

Activity as a scout

It was Rössler who transmitted to Moscow data on the medium (according to the Soviet classification - heavy) Panther tank, including information on the thickness of the armor, armament features, production volumes, as well as the location of manufacturing plants.

In 1943, through Shandor, Rado transmitted to Soviet intelligence data on Operation Citadel (the Battle of Kursk). The source of information appeared under the pseudonym "Werther" and remained unknown for a long time. According to Rössler, the data came from high-ranking members of the German high command whom Rössler knew from before the war.