Death to Spies! Austrian Informants for Western Intelligence Services and Soviet Capital Punishment During the Occupation of Austria

Home , Butyrka prison, Douglas Botting, Peter Deriabin, Russian Liberation Army, SMERSH

DeatStelzlh-Marx to Spies!

Death to Spies! Austrian Informants for Western Intelligence Services and Soviet Capital Punishment during the Occupation of Austria

✣ Barbara Stelzl-Marx

I implore you—I who stand before you orphaned, stateless, without helpers or friends—only spare my wretched life—only spare me this grisly death. I beseech this High Court to have mercy on me, to recognize that my years, few as they are, have been spent in a desperate struggle for simple existence. And, should she but grant me this mercy and spare my life, I give the Russian State my sacred oath that I will pour out all my skills, all my work, all my diligence, every parti- cle of my goodwill for her and her alone. I will prove to you all in the Soviet Union that a young Viennese maiden can atone for her terrible error with the gift of her whole life, poured out for you in labor and with a good heart....I beg the members of the court to open their hearts to these words of mine and through their great mercy to spare me the grisly penalty of death.1

This desperate plea for mercy was sent to the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet by an Austrian, Hermine Rotter, in July 1951. A few days earlier, the 24-year-old accountant had been condemned to death in the picturesque town of Baden near Vienna by the Military Tribunal of the Central Group of Military Forces (Tsentral’naya gruppa voisk or TsGV) for “anti-Soviet espionage.” Her appeal for mercy went unheard. Rotter was sent to Moscow in a secret transport and shot in the local Butyrka Prison on 9 October 1951. Her executioner, Vasilii M. Blokhin, prepared for his task by dressing up as a butcher in a brown-tipped cap, a long leather apron, and gloves that reached past the elbows.2 Rotter’s corpse was burnt during the night in the Moscow

1. Appeal for Clemency from Hermine Rotter, July 1951, in State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), Fond (F.) 7523, Op. (Op.) 76, Delo (D.) 40, List (L.) 97. 2. Nikita Petrov, “Die Todesstrafe in der UdSSR: Ideologie, Methoden, Praxis: 1917–1953,” in

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crematorium of the former Donskoe Monastery, and her ashes were interred in a mass grave only a few paces away.3 Her relatives were not notiªed of her death until the late 1950s and then only with a fabricated “natural” cause of death. (The Soviet Union’s falsely anodyne death notiªcations were remi- niscent of the Nazi practice of appending invented natural causes to the notiªcations given to the families of victims of Hitler’s T4 program— “euthanasia.”) The true circumstances of Rotter’s death would not come to light for another ªve decades. Rotter was one of at least 89 people sentenced to death by the Soviet Mil- itary Tribunal of the Army Unit No. 28990 in Baden and executed in Mos- cow from 1950 until Iosif Stalin’s death in March 1953. Those put to death were primarily Austrians (at least 70), but also included several Germans, “stateless people,” and Soviet citizens. Furthermore, at least nine Austrians were executed after being convicted in Moscow, ªve were executed after being convicted by Soviet Military Tribunal No. 48240 in East Germany, and one German citizen living in Lower Austria was sentenced to death by Military Tribunal No. 26308.4 Not until 2009 did the Russian authorities disclose what had happened to these 104 people, whose remains are buried in Mos- cow’s Donskoe Cemetery.5 The total number of Soviet death sentences in Austria was, however, con- siderably higher. From 1945 to 1947 at least 72 more Austrians were sentenced to death by Soviet tribunals and executed. Where they are buried is unknown.6 The way a verdict was reached and carried out reºects the terror intrinsic to the Stalinist system. The political agenda behind these executions,

Andreas Hilger, ed., “Tod den Spionen!” Todesurteile sowjetischer Gerichte in der SBZ/DDR und in der Sowjetunion bis 1953 (Göttingen: V- and R-unipress, 2006), p. 58. The “Master of the Black Craft,” Vasilii Mikhailovich Blokhin, was later placed on an execution list by Lavrentii Beria, but Stalin did not agree to his execution: Blokhin’s “black work” was extremely important for the Communist Party. After Stalin’s death, Blokhin was transferred and later demoted. In 1955, he was buried near many of his victims in the Donskoe Cemetery. For more, see Peter Grimm, “Zum Erschießen nach Moskau: Fast 1000 Deutsche wurden zwischen 1950 und 1953 von sowjetischen Militärtribunalen in der DDR zum Tode verurteilt,” Horch und Guck: Zeitschrift zur kritischen Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Vol. 59, No. 1 (2008), pp. 18–21. 3. On Donskoe Cemetery, see Arsenij Roginskij, “Nach der Verurteilung: Der Donskoe-Friedhof und seine österreichischen Opfer,” in Stefan Karner and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer: Verschleppte und erschossene Österreicher in Moskau 1950–1953 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag—Oldenbourg Verlag, 2009), pp. 97–140. 4. See also Martin Florian and Harald Knoll, “Statistische Angaben über die Opfer aus Österreich,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 607–620. 5. Edith Petschnigg, “Stimmen aus der Todeszelle: Kurzbiograªen der Opfer,” in Karner and Stelzl- Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 301–588. 6. The fate of Karl Ortner has so far been the most comprehensively researched. See Stefan Karner, Pe- ter Ruggenthaler, and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, “Die sowjetische Besatzung in der Steiermark 1945: Zur Einleitung,” in Stefan Karner and Othmar Pickl, eds., Die Rote Armee in der Steiermark: Sowjetische Besatzung 1945 (Graz: Leykam, 2008), pp. 29–30; and Stefan Karner, “Schuld und Sühne? Der Prozeß gegen den Chef der Gendarmerie von Cernigov von 1941 bis 1943,” in Stefan Karner, ed.,

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the way in which they were carried out, and the inadequate procedures for the taking of evidence all ensured that the trials bore no resemblance to Western notions of due process. Using newly released sources from Russian archives, this article discusses the status of the Soviet-controlled zone of Austria during the postwar occupation as a principal spying ground in Central Europe.7 The Western occupation powers hired many Austrians to gather information about the deployments of the Soviet Army and the Soviet authorities’ exploitation of the “German assets” they had seized in their zone of occupation in 1946. The Austrians’ principal incentive to spy was ªnancial; they were well paid by their Western handlers. Austrian women got involved in love affairs with Soviet soldiers and ofªcers and then served as double agents for the West until the So- viet intelligence services caught up with them. Soviet counterintelligence ap- prehended many of these Western informants. From 1947 onward, some 500 Austrians disappeared within Stalin’s penal system after being detained as spies.8 First incarcerated and brutally interrogated by their jailers at the Soviet headquarters in Baden on the outskirts of Vienna, they were then sent to Moscow jails, where many were executed as “spies.” In retrospect the mis- match between the actions of these Austrian “spies” and the penalties meted out to them is striking. The story of how the Soviet penal system was exported to occupied areas during the Cold War in intelligence games against the West has been almost totally overlooked in Cold War scholarship. This essay aims to put the record straight.

“Traitors to the Fatherland, Spies, Subversives, Saboteurs”: The Reintroduction of Capital Punishment in 1950

With the liberation and occupation of Austria in 1945, the Soviet Union exported its judicial policies to the eastern part of the country for some ten

Graz in der NS-Zeit 1938–1945 (Graz: Selbstverlag des Vereins zur Förderung der Forschung von Folgen nach Konºikten und Kriegen, 1998), pp. 159–178. 7. In this respect, eastern Austria was second only to Berlin. See David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 8. A total of more than 2,200 Austrians were whisked away by the Soviet state security organs during this period. Most were kidnapped in broad daylight or from their apartments. Around 1,000 were given prison sentences—mostly long ones, which they served in the camps or prisons of the USSR’s notorious Gulag system. This corresponds to around 0.1 per cent of the population living in the So- viet Occupation Zone in 1946. The last of these so-called civil convicts returned home in December 1956, a year-and-a-half after the completion of the Austrian State Treaty. See Harald Knoll and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, “Sowjetische Strafjustiz in Österreich: Verhaftungen und Verurteilungen 1945–

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years. In Austria, as in Germany, Soviet judges began immediately after the entry of the Red Army to apply Soviet legal ideas, concepts of social order, and judicial practices. Soviet statutory norms steeped in a highly ideological worldview came into operation. “Counterrevolutionary” threats and “vermin” of all types had to be combated in the same way that the supposedly omni- present internal and external opponents were dealt with within the Soviet Union itself.9 In this context, the history of the death penalty in the Soviet Union against both Austrians and Germans divides into two phases. The ªrst begins with the invasion of the Red Army in the spring of 1945 and ends with the decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet of 26 May 1947 regarding the abolition of capital punishment.10 In the subsequent three years, “25 years’ imprisonment” was regarded as the maximum penalty. This break symbolized Moscow’s new internal and external self-conªdence and provided excellent propaganda.11 Were those sentenced during this interval “lucky” to face a mere 25 years in a labor camp? The sentence was still harsh, but before May 1947 and—in the case of political offenses such as “espionage”—after January 1950 a conviction could have meant death by shooting. On 12 January 1950 the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet adopted resolution no. 68/1 “On the Application of the Death Penalty against Traitors to the Fatherland, Spies, Subversives and Saboteurs.” This measure was initi- ated not by the court or by penal authorities but by Communist Party (VKP(b)) Secretary Georgii M. Malenkov and Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet Nikolai M. Shvernik. The VKP(b) Politburo ap-

1955,” in Stefan Karner and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich: Sowjetische Besatzung 1945–1955: Beiträge (Vienna: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2005), pp. 275–322; and Harald Knoll and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, “Wir mussten hinter eine sehr lange Liste von Namen einfach das Wort ‘verschwunden’ schreiben”: Sowjetische Strafjustiz in Österreich 1945 bis 1955,” in Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeitzner, and Clemens Vollnhals, eds., Sowjetisierung oder Neutralität? Optionen sowjetischer Besatzungspolitik in Deutschland und Österreich 1945–1955 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2006), pp. 169–220. 9. Andreas Hilger, “Staatsschutz versus Rechtssicherheit: Todesurteile der sowjetischen Justiz in der SBZ/DDR 1945–1955,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 255–257. 10. On the application of the death sentences of January and April 1950, see the relevant texts in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 621–630. 11. Arsenij Roginskij, “Um unverzügliche Vollstreckung des Urteils wird ersucht”: Letzte Dokumente über die von 1950 bis 1953 in Moskau erschossenen Deutschen,” in Arsenij Roginskij et al., eds., “Erschossen in Moskau . . .”: Die deutschen Opfer des Stalinismus auf dem Moskauer Friedhof Donskoje 1950–1953 (Berlin: Metropol, 2005), p. 42; Andreas Hilger, “Einleitung: Smert’ Špionam!—Tod den Spionen! Todesstrafe und sowjetischer Justizexport in die SBZ/DDR, 1945–1955,” in Hilger, ed., “Tod den Spionen!” pp. 30–31; and Nikita Petrov, “Die militärische Spionageabwehr in Österreich und die Todesstrafe: Struktur, Funktionen, Praxis,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 79–96.

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proved the measure on 9 January 1950.12 The motto “Death to Spies,” which in compressed form (SMERSH) became the designation of Soviet military counterintelligence during World War II, was both topical and apposite.13 Initially, the activity of the tribunals was characterized by a lack of clarity. The question was posed, for example, whether capital punishment should be applied even when the alleged deed had been committed prior to the issuing of the decree on 13 January 1950. Behind the scenes, discussion centered on which articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federation of So- cialist Republics (RSFSR) to invoke to impose the death penalty. Among these were Articles 58-1 (“treason against the fatherland”), 58-6 (“espionage”), and 58-9 (“sabotage”).14 Ukaz (Decree) No. 43, issued on 19 April 1943 to specify sentences for “war crimes,” had called for 25 years’ imprisonment.15 For extant cases, the decree of 12 January 1950 was to be applied only if the accused had not yet been convicted. This meant that prison sentences already handed down could not be converted to death sentences. Trials were to be carried out by military tribunals, and death sentences could be handed down only by district tribunals and courts-martial of the Soviet Army and Navy, not by lower courts.16 On 12 April 1950 the VKP(b) Politburo conªrmed the ruling of the Ple- num of the Supreme Court, which had stipulated that the death penalty could be passed in accordance with articles 58-2 (“armed revolt”), 58-7 (“sub- version”), and 58-8 (“terrorism”).17 Later that year, the executions in Moscow began again. At least 1,015 people were executed on the basis of death sentences passed in Germany and Austria alone.18 The Moscow-based human rights organization Memorial estimates the total number of victims secretly

12. Petrov, “Die Todesstrafe in der UdSSR,” pp. 66–67. 13. “SMERSH” is the contracted form of “Smert’ shpionam,” which literally means “death to spies.” On SMERSH, see Vadim J. Birstein, SMERSH—Stalin’s Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counter- intelligence in WWII (London: Biteback Publishing, 2011). 14. Petrov, “Die militärische Spionageabwehr in Österreich”; and Ol’ga Lavinskaja, “Das Militär- tribunal der Zentralen Gruppe der 80y Streitkräfte: Verurteilung von Personen nicht österreichischer Staatsangehörigkeit,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 205–224. 15. The ukazy of the Committee of the Supreme Soviet bore the designation “On Measures for the Punishment of German Fascist Evildoers, Guilty of Murdering and Maltreating the Soviet Civilian Population and Captured Red Army Soldiers, Spies, Traitors to the Fatherland among the Soviet Citi- zenry and Their Helpers.” Andreas Hilger, Nikita Petrov, and Günther Wagenlehner, “Der ‘Ukaz 43’: Entstehung und Problematik des Dekrets des Präsidiums des Obersten Sowjets vom 19. April 1945,” in Andreas Hilger, Ute Schmidt, and Günther Wagenlehner, eds., Sowjetische Militärtribunale, Vol. 1, Die Verurteilung deutscher Kriegsgefangener 1941–1953 (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2001), pp. 177–209. 16. Petrov, “Die Todesstrafe in der UdSSR,” pp. 66–69. 17. Petrov, “Die militärische Spionageabwehr in Österreich,” p. 85. 18. Roginskij, “Um unverzügliche Vollstreckung des Urteils wird ersucht,” pp. 43–44.

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buried in the Donskoe Cemetery at around 10,000. Short biographies of 5,065 of the people executed and buried there in the two decades from 1934 to 1955 have already been published.19

Military Tribunals of the Central Group of Military Forces: The Executioners

For both Austria and Germany a military tribunal of the Red Army’s TsGV was set up in June 1945 in Baden, 26 kilometers from Vienna.20 The tribunal operated under the designation “Military Tribunal of Army Unit No. 28990” or “Voennyi tribunal Voennoi chasti 28990” (VT V. ch. 28990). The TsGV established its headquarters (Army Unit No. 32750) in a former high school building in the center of Baden, with the counterintelligence directorate located in several neighboring villas.21 From the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1950 until the time immediately after Stalin’s death in March 1953, the military tribunal sentenced to death at least 90 people, most of them citizens of Austria. In at least ªve other cases the death sentence was passed but commuted to a prison sentence following appeal proceedings. Additionally, ªve Austrian citizens were shot in Moscow following conviction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Furthermore, nine Austrians were brought before the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District before also being executed in Butyrka Prison.22 The youngest of those convicted, Hartmut Fechner (1930–1951), had not yet turned 21 at the time of his execution. The oldest, Gustav Grimm (1887–1953), was 65. In his appeal for clemency, Grimm described himself as an “old man broken in body and soul.”23

19. L. S. Eremina, ed., Rasstrel’nye spiski: Moskva 1935–1953: Donskoe Kladbishche (Donskoe Krem- atorij): Kniga zhertv politicheskich repressii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2005). On this matter, see Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, and Alexander Sachse, Hingerichtet in Moskau: Opfer des Stalinismus aus Sachsen, 1950–1953 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlangsanstalt, 2007), p. 132. 20. Andreas Hilger, “Staatsschutz versus Rechtssicherheit: Todesurteile der sowjetischen Justiz in der SBZ/DDR 1945–1955,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 255–283. By order of the Stavka (the Soviet wartime command body) on 29 May 1945, the 1st Ukrainian Front was re- named the Central Group of Military Forces (TsGV) and transferred from Germany to Austria, Hun- gary, and Czechoslovakia. See Stavka Directive No. 11096 to the Commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, 29 May 1945, in Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense, F. 148a, Op. 3763, D. 213, Ll. 129–132, reprinted in Stefan Karner, Barbara Stelzl-Marx, and Alexander Tschubarjan, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich: Sowjetische Besatzung 1945–1955: Dokumente (Graz: Böhlau Verlag, 2005), Doc. 61. 21. Birstein, SMERSH, pp. 362–363; and Stelzl-Marx, “Verschleppt und erschossen,” p. 39. 22. Stelzl-Marx, “Verschleppt und erschossen,” pp. 25–28. 23. Appeal for Clemency from Gustav Grimm, 30 September 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 116, L. 140.

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Among those executed were ten women, all of whom had been sentenced to death for espionage. Half had come under suspicion because of their con- nections to Soviet occupation soldiers. For them, “hot love in the Cold War” proved fatal. The ªrst shootings of those condemned by Military Tribunal No. 28990 took place on 28 August 1950, when Lyudmila Zwinger and Egon Franz, condemned on 21 and 31 January 1950 respectively, were shot in Moscow’s Butyrka Prison and buried in the Donskoe Cemetery. The Military Tribunal of the TsGV in Austria was unusually quick in implementing the decree of 12 January 1950. By contrast, the Military Tribunal of the Soviet Occupation Troops in Germany (Military Tribunal V. ch. 48240) did not condemn its ªrst four Germans to death until May 1950.24 On 2 February 1953, some three years after the reintroduction of the death penalty, the last two Austrians, Walter Bittner and Franz Drechsler, were executed. With Stalin’s death the situation changed abruptly. The Mili- tary Council of the Supreme Court followed the general toning down of the policy of repression and commuted death sentences passed but not yet carried out to prison sentences, generally of 25 years.25

Death Sentences against Foreign Nationals in Austria

Military Tribunal No. 28990 was responsible for death sentences not only against Austrians but also against foreign nationals who had been arrested on Austrian territory.26 In the period 1950–1953, these included at least one German, a 25-year-old named Wilhelm Aichele from Oberboihingen/ Württemberg. On 25 December 1951 he was sentenced to death in Baden on a charge of espionage for the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). He had been arrested shortly before in Melk during a return journey from Vienna. The military tribunal accused Aichele of having passed on information regarding patrols on the Austria-Hungary border and the location of Soviet gar- risons in St. Pölten and Amstetten. He was shot in Moscow on 28 March 1952.27 In addition, Military Tribunal No. 28990 sentenced to death several

24. Petrov, “Die Todesstrafe in der UdSSR,” p. 74. 25. Hilger, “Einleitung: Smert’ Špionam!” p. 24. 26. Lavinskaja, “Das Militärtribunal der Zentralen Gruppe der Streitkräfte.” 27. Response of the Supreme Court to Wilhelm Aichele’s Appeal for Clemency, 22 February 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 80, Ll. 98–100; and Appeal for Clemency from Wilhelm Aichele, 28 December 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 80, Ll. 104–105.

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Soviet émigrés and Soviet soldiers stationed in Austria. At least nine such cases occurred during the period 1951–1953, including six Soviet soldiers. The charges related both to offenses committed during the occupation period (such as “treason against the fatherland” and “terrorism”) and to crimes committed during the Second World War. Thanks to a pardon conferred by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, an original death sentence was commuted to a prison sentence in two of these cases.

Reasons for Convictions

Most of the death sentences meted out by the Soviet tribunals against Austri- ans involved Article 58-6 (“espionage”) of the RSFSR Criminal Code. Simi- larly, this article predominated in the conviction of Germans, being cited in almost 90 per cent of the cases.28 By contrast, Articles 58-2 (“armed revolt”), 58-8 (“terrorism”), 58-10 (“anti-Soviet propaganda”), 58-11 (“counterrevolutionary organization”), and 58-14 (“sabotage”) and “Ukaz No. 43” (“war crimes”) did not serve as the basis for a single conviction.

“Anti-Soviet Espionage” The quadripartite division of Vienna, and of Austria as a whole, into zones of occupation made the country an ideal venue for espionage in the decade from 1945 until the occupation ended in 1955.29 Austria emerged as an operational territory and front line in the game of espionage played out against the back- drop of the Cold War, pitting the intelligence agencies of the two superpowers and their allies against those of the other side.30 Austria was less the aim than the setting for the two blocs’ military intelligence operations.31 The Western intelligence services increasingly shifted their focus from the security-political

28. Andreas Hilger and Nikita Petrov, “‘Im Namen der Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken’: Sowjetische Militärjustiz in der SBZ/DDR von 1945 bis 1955,” in Roginskij et al., eds., “Erschossen in Moskau . . . ,” p. 31. 29. Kid Möchel, Der geheime Krieg der Agenten: Spionagedrehscheibe (Vienna: Rasch und Röhring, 1997). 30. Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence (New York: The Overlook Press, 2002), pp. 180–205. 31. Günter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945–55: The Leverage of the Weak (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Erwin A. Schmidl, ed., Österreich im frühen Kalten Krieg 1945–1958: Spione, Partisanen, Kriegspläne (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2000); and Harald Irnberger, Nelkenstrauß ruft Praterstern: Am Beispiel Österreich: Funktion und Arbeitsweise geheimer Nachrichtendienste in einem neutralen Staat (Vienna: ProMedia, 1983).

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ªeld and denaziªcation at the end of the 1940s to the Soviet occupation forces and the combat strength of the Soviet and East European militaries.32 Carrying through these challenging tasks was made much harder from the end of 1945 by a manpower shortage and a lack of language skills among key personnel.33 As a result, the intelligence services increasingly relied on na- tives, who were much better versed in the ªeld of operations, though they did not always prove trustworthy.34 The situation was no different for the Soviet Union. According to a former ofªcer of the Soviet Ministry for State Security (MGB), Petr Deriabin, who operated in Vienna from September 1953 and defected to the Americans in 1954, the MGB foreign intelligence service’s operations in Austria were based at the Soviet embassy, which was in contact with approximately 40 Austrian and Soviet informants. Until the early 1960s, more than 4,000 “collaborators” in Austria were at the disposal of Soviet agencies.35 U.S. diplomat Coburn Kidd estimated in October 1950 that one-quarter of the population of Salzburg was cooperating with at least one of the many

32. Siegfried Beer, “Von Alfred Redl zum ‘Dritten Mann’: Österreich und Österreicherinnen im internationalen Geheimdienstgeschehen 1918–1947,” in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. 16 (1997), pp. 3–25; Siegfried Beer, “Rund um den ‘Dritten Mann’: Amerikanische Geheimdienste in Österreich 1945–1955,” in Schmidl, ed., Österreich im frühen Kalten Krieg, pp. 73–99; Siegfried Beer, “Moni- toring Helmer: Zur Tätigkeit des amerikanischen Armeegeheimdienstes CIC in Österreich 1945– 1950: Eine exemplarische Dokumentation,” in Emil Brix, Thomas Fröschl, and Josef Leidenfrost, eds., Geschichte zwischen Freiheit und Ordnung: Gerald Stourzh zum 60. Geburtstag (Graz: Styria, 1991), p. 231; Klaus Eisterer, Französische Besatzungspolitik: Tirol und Vorarlberg 1945/46 (Innsbruck: Haymon, 1991), pp. 169–172; Pierre Jardin, “Französischer Nachrichtendienst in Deutschland in den ersten Jahren des Kalten Krieges,” in Wolfgang Krieger and Jürgen Weber, eds., Spionage für den Frieden? Nachrichtendienste in Deutschland während des Kalten Krieges (Munich: Günther Olzog Verlag 1997), pp. 103–118; Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, America’s Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter Intelligence Corps (London: Grafton, 1989), pp. 275–276; Felix Schneider, “Zur Tätigkeit des militärischen Geheimdienstes FSS und des Public Safety Branch in Graz 1945–1947,” in Friedrich Bouvier and Helfried Valentinitsch, eds., Historisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Graz, Vol. 25, Graz 1945 (Graz: Landesdruckerei, 1994), pp. 215–233; and Sebastian Meissl, Klaus-Dieter Mulley, and Oliver Rathkolb, Verdrängte Schuld, verfehlte Sühne: Entnaziªzierung in Österreich 1945—1955 (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1985). 33. Schneider, “Zur Tätigkeit des militärischen Geheimdienstes,” p. 215; and Harald Knoll and Di- eter Bacher, “Nachrichtendienst und Spionage im Österreich der Besatzungszeit,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, p. 162. 34. Eisterer, Französische Besatzungspolitik, pp. 169–170. On the unwritten guidelines for the selection of informants, see James V. Milano and Patrick Brogan, Soldiers, Spies and the Rat Line: America’s Un- declared War against the Soviets (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1995), pp. 143–144. The intelligence services also recruited former members of the SS. See Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, p. 181. 35. Peter S. Deriabin and Joseph Culver Evans, Inside Stalin’s Kremlin: An Eyewitness Account of Brutal- ity, Duplicity, and Intrigue (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1998), p. 198; Peter Deriabin and T. H. Bagley, KGB: Masters of the Soviet Union (London: Hippocrene Books, 1990), p. 208; Dieter Bacher, “Die KPÖ und die sowjetischen Nachrichtendienste: Zweiseitige Kontakte im frühen Kalten Krieg,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, p. 191; and Harald Knoll and Dieter Bacher, “Spione und Stalinopfer: Die Rolle österreichischer Zivilisten in den Aktivitäten ausländischer Nachrichtendienste in Österreich 1950–1953,” Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies, Vol. 2 (2008), pp. 99–108.

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intelligence services operating in Austria. According to Kidd, payments to Austrians for espionage activity represented “the main invisible export from Austria, which saves the country’s otherwise adverse, unfavorable balance of payments.”36 In the difªcult economic environment in Austria in the immediate postwar period, employment as an informant constituted an important source of income that could mean the difference between starvation and having a reasonably decent life. At the end of the 1940s in particular, when the black market was no longer ºourishing in centers like Vienna and Berlin, “intelligence was certainly the major industry” in the absence of other gainful occupations.37 Most of the Austrians sentenced to death by the Soviet military tribunals cited their economic distress, not realizing that the Soviet authorities regarded a ºow of money from Western intelligence services as additional proof of guilt. However, only “anti-Soviet” espionage was so perilous that it could in the worst case be punished with death. By August 1948, Soviet kidnappings in Austria had reached alarming proportions. At least 90 people had by this time been sentenced to long prison sentences for espionage.38 Many escaped the death penalty only because it was in abeyance. The CIC identiªed several kidnapping programs and concluded in a study analyzing the pattern that Most of the abductions involved persons suspected of espionage or of associa- tions with the United States or other Western intelligence activities. Such kidnappings were the result of Soviet counter intelligence activity, primarily out of considerations of military security. Former German intelligence personnel were added to Western agents on the Soviet wanted lists....Aspecial objective of the kidnappings was to destroy networks of Austrian informants employed by CIC. The Russians were relentless in the abduction of their own informants who were believed to have doubled as agents for the West.39 The Soviet authorities’ response was especially severe when the alleged espionage activities related to the stationing and transfer of Soviet occupation troops in eastern Austria, the activity of headquarters or censorship posts, the patrol of borders and zone checkpoints, the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ), the Directorate for Soviet Property in Austria (USIA), and the Soviet Petroleum Administration (SMV) in Austria.40 The death penalty was also

36. Günter Bischof, “‘Austria Looks to the West’: Kommunistische Putschgefahr, geheime Wiederbewaffnung und Westorientierung am Anfang der fünfziger Jahre,” in Thomas Albrich et al., eds., Österreich in den Fünfzigern (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 1995), p. 198. 37. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, p. 205. 38. Knoll and Stelzl-Marx, “Sowjetische Strafjustiz in Österreich,” p. 289. 39. Quoted in: Sayer and Botting, America’s Secret Army, p. 358. 40. Siegfried Beer, “Target Central Europe: American Intelligence Efforts Regarding Nazi and Early

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leveled against former prisoners of war who had provided information on the situation in the USSR. Even rummaging through rubbish bins near Soviet troop locations was deemed to be espionage.41 Regardless of the actual value of the information provided, the “spies” paid for it with their lives. The information passed on to Western intelligence services largely related to areas that were commonly accessible. From today’s perspective, they constituted neither military nor state secrets. Even during the occupation period, many of the so-called agents were not aware of the potential consequences of their activities. For example, Isabella Lederer, who was condemned to death, made this declaration: “I do not plead guilty to having conducted this alleged espionage, inasmuch as the information that I obtained was already known in Graz.”42 Facing accusations of “espionage activity” in regard to a U.S. Infor- mation Agency shop in Baden, Michael Maczejka declared: “These questions and my answers seem to me to be completely harmless, considering that all these things were witnessed publicly and were generally known.”43 August Heinrich defended himself in a similar way: “I also did not think that I was committing any crime when I passed on the names of approximately twenty Communists from Baden, because with many of them it is a matter of ofªcial record.”44 Nevertheless, during this tense early phase of the Cold War, Soviet ofªcials viewed such activity as a capital offense. Indeed, Western intelligence agencies did attach extraordinary importance to all military and economic information from the Soviet occupation zone in Austria and from East Ger- many. Like pieces of a jigsaw, the individual bits of information could be put together to form a much larger picture. Seemingly trivial observations regarding the location of Soviet troops, military goods transports, vehicle license plates, or even members of the military could facilitate intelligence analysis in the West.45 The CIC was particularly interested in the Soviet spies active in

Postwar Austria 1941–1947,” Working Papers in Austrian Studies No. 97/1, 1997, p. 5; and Dieter Bacher, “Die KPÖ und die sowjetischen Nachrichtendienste: Zweiseitige Kontakte im frühen Kalten Krieg,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 189–204; and Walter M. Iber, “Wirtschaftsspionage für den Westen: Erdölarbeiter im Spannungsfeld des Kalten Krieges,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 169–188. 41. Such bins might include sensitive documents that had mistakenly been discarded. Moreover, empty envelopes from Soviet military personnel could indicate the names of occupation troops or numbers of troop units. Both Wilfried Hejl and Roman Ryzewski were accused of such “espionage activity.” 42. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Isabella Lederer and Rolf Ravenegg, 23 August 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 108, L. 146. 43. Appeal for Clemency from Michael Maczejka, 19 January 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 15, L. 158. 44. Appeal for Clemency from August Heinrich, 23 January 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 102, L. 23. 45. On East Germany, see, for example, Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, and Alexander Sachse,

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Austria, as well as Soviet deserters, refugees, and defectors from neighboring Communist states.46 U.S. intelligence ofªcers, for their part, kept Soviet spies under system- atic surveillance. A prominent example is the scientist Engelbert Broda, who carried out nuclear weapons espionage for the Soviet Union. Soviet intelligence materials reveal that Broda, a brother of Austrian Minister of Justice Christian Broda, transferred thousands of pages of highly classiªed documents from the British and U.S. nuclear research program to his Soviet handlers. In August 1943, Soviet foreign intelligence even described Broda as “at pres., the main source of info. on work being done on E. [“Enormous,” the code name for the Manhattan Project], both in England and in the USA.”47 Broda was also in touch with Kim Philby of the “Cambridge Five” informants recruited at Cambridge University by Soviet intelligence ofªcials.48 In 1948, Broda ended his exile in Britain and returned to Austria, where despite his ªrst-class academic reputation he received only a minor teaching assignment at the Institute for Physics of the University of Vienna.49 The Brit- ish Security Service regarded him as suspicious but was unable to ªnd solid enough evidence: “We feel sure that Broda was engaged in espionage during the war, although we have no proof of it.”50 In 1950, the CIC recruited a stu- dent, Karl Engelmann to spy on Broda (who was Engelman’s doctoral super- visor), to read his letters, to make note of every correspondent, and to observe his private and professional contacts. However, Engelmann fell victim to the Soviet state security organs before he could complete his assignment. He was arrested on 5 September 1951 at the demarcation line near Gaºenz, sentenced to death on 10 November 1952 by Military Tribunal No. 28990, and

Verurteilt zum Tode durch Erschießen: Opfer des Stalinismus aus Sachsen-Anhalt, 1950–1953 (Magde- burg: LStU in Sachsen-Anhalt, 2006), p. 40. 46. Siegfried Beer, “Nachrichten- und Geheimdienste in Österreich, 1945–1955,” in Stefan Karner and Gottfried Stangler, eds., Österreich ist frei! Der Österreichische Staatsvertrag 1955: Beitragsband zur Ausstellung auf Schloss Schallaburg 2005 (Vienna: Verlag Berger, 2005), p. 223. 47. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, with translations by Philip Redko and Steven Shabad (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 67. See also John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, “Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and the Documentation of Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2009), pp. 6–26. 48. Christopher Andrew and Wassili Mitrochin, Das Schwarzbuch des KGB: Moskaus Kampf gegen den Westen (Munich: Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag, 2001), pp. 84–101; and Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievskij, KGB: Die Geschichte seiner Auslandsoperationen von Lenin bis Gorbatschow (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1990), pp. 252–256. 49. Christa Zöchling, “‘Nicht die Finger verbrennen’: Zeitgeschichte: Ein Verdacht wird erhärtet: Der Wissenschafter Engelbert Broda, Bruder des legendären Justizministers Christian Broda, hat Atomspionage für die Sowjets betrieben,” Proªl, 18 May 2009, pp. 30–33. 50. Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, Spies, p. 68.

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shot in Moscow on 31 December 1952.51 Broda died a free man in Austria in 1983, and his espionage activities on behalf of Stalin were not conclusively demonstrated until the release of Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks in 2009.52 From the other side of the fence, Soviet intelligence agencies used all means at their disposal to collect information. In the spring of 1949, Soviet Minister for State Security Viktor Abakumov urged the Ministerial Council of the USSR to maintain censorship in Austria. He argued that his ministry (the MGB) had uncovered and exploited “an impressive number of materials on underground organizations active against the USSR, traitors to the fatherland and war criminals, on the activity of American and English secret service organs etc.”53 On the ground, the Military Counterintelligence Directorate (UKR) of the MGB attached to the TsGV countered “hostile” espionage activity and was responsible for arrests and interrogations. In early 1950 the UKR chief, Mikhail I. Belkin, informed Abakumov about the activities of U.S. intelligence agencies in Austria. They were recruiting agents among the local population to smuggle “criminals” into the Western occupation zone or to organize “hostile activity” against Soviet troops. The MGB’s counterespionage organs had arrested some people who, on behalf of the United States, had taken “hostile elements” such as GDR refugees over the demarcation line. Abaku- mov claimed “that the American occupying power in Austria is systematically violating the agreements regarding the occupation regime.”54 The individual organs of the Soviet occupation apparatus worked together closely in this area. In 1951, the VKP(b) Politburo called on the Soviet Section of the Allied Commission for Austria (SChSK) “to take all necessary measures to intensify the struggle against espionage and sabotage by the Aus- trian and foreign secret services and against other hostile elements in the So- viet petroleum extraction facilities and in the industrial territories of the

51. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Karl Engelmann, 26 December 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 72, Ll. 152–156; Appeal for Clemency from Karl Engelmann, 29 November 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 72, L. 158; and Petschnigg, “Stimmen aus der Todeszelle,” pp. 360–363. In March 2001 the Main Ofªce of the Military Public Prosecutor of the Russian Federation (GVP) announced Engelmann’s rehabilitation. 52. Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, Spies, p. 68. 53. Abakumov to Molotov, regarding censorship in Austria, 26 March 1949, in Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), F. 82, Op. 2, D. 1120, L. 19. 54. Abakumov to Molotov, regarding the activity of the UKR MGB and the American intelligence agencies in Austria, 10 March 1950, in RGASPI, F. 82, Op. 2, D. 1120, Ll. 42–44. On Belkin, see also Nikita Petrov, “Kurzbiograªen der Leiter der Verwaltung für Spionageabwehr des MGB der CGV und ihrer Stellvertreter,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 589–606; and Rudolf Maurer, Befreiung?—Befreiung! Baden 1945–1955 (Baden: Selbstverlag des Rollettmuseums, 2005), p. 87.

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Soviet occupation zone in Austria.”55 Soon afterward, the VKP(b) Foreign Policy Commission criticized the situation by stating that the “intelligence agencies of the Austrian and foreign espionage organs” were “active in the So- viet zone and in particular within Soviet enterprises.”56 Western intelligence agencies were also active in recruiting “spies.” Countless appeals for clemency contain references to pressure and blackmail. August Heinrich described his ªrst contact with a member of the CIC as follows:

At the end of January 1949 I was sitting drunk and alone in a Vienna tavern. An American I’d never seen before took up with me. After he had gotten me blind drunk, he exploited my condition and got it out of me that I worked as an ofªcer of the criminal police in Baden. Using base and crude moral blackmail and threatening reprisals against my family, he forced me into the espionage activities I subsequently carried out.57

A similar description was provided by Rudolf Lixl, who claimed to have been forced into the role of “double agent” for the Soviet MGB and the American CIC. He landed in a Soviet prison for the ªrst time in April 1948. MGB ofªcers pressured him to turn over information to Soviet counterespionage about his work for the CIC, warning him that he should never forget that his mother was living in the Soviet occupation zone. He reported his agreement with the MGB to the CIC, only to be detained by the latter: “When I was not released, I told them the truth on the 5th day. During the subsequent interrogation I was beaten badly, sustaining a nasty head wound and a perforated eardrum. I suggested to the Americans that I should work as a double agent.” Appealing for clemency, Lixl emphasized: “I did not do all this out of loyalty to the Americans, but out of fear that something would indeed happen to my mother in the event that I did not turn up at the arranged meeting place with the Soviet ofªcers.”58 If the agents fell into the clutches of Soviet counterintelligence, neither they nor their families could expect any U.S. help or ªnancial assistance. Fol-

55. Politburo Resolution No. 84 (215)-op, “On Measures for the Improvement of the Work of the So- viet Section of the Allied Commission for Austria,” 1 November 1945, in RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 162, D. 47, Ll. 11–13, reprinted in Karner, Stelzl-Marx, and Tschubarjan, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich, Doc. 77. 56. “Informal Report from V. Grigor’yan to Stalin on the Implementation of the Resolution of the Po- litburo from 1 November 1951 ‘On Measures for the Improvement of the Work of the SChSK,’” 28 March 1952, in RGASPI, F. 82, Op. 2, D. 1,117, Ll. 111–115, reprinted in Karner, Stelzl-Marx, and Tschubarjan, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich, Doc. 79. 57. Appeal for Clemency from August Heinrich, 23 January 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 102, Ll. 22–23. 58. Appeal for Clemency from Rudolf Lixl, 25 April 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 27, L. 10.

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lowing the “disappearance” of Roman Ryzewski, his son received nothing more than a box of sweets. After that, all contact was broken off.59

The “Honey Trap” Love affairs between Austrian women and Soviet occupation troops proved to be particularly dangerous.60 The women were accused of using their personal contacts on behalf of Western intelligence agencies to obtain secret information or to induce Soviet military personnel to defect. As early as July 1945, Soviet counterintelligence ofªcials criticized relationships between Soviet soldiers and foreign women as “politically momentous” and the men in question as “morally unstable.” The Soviet ofªcers warned that the Austrian women would elicit military and state secrets from “enchanted” soldiers during “inti- mate relations.”61 Traditional Stalinist ways of thinking and concepts of the enemy prevailed here. After all, thousands of U.S., British, and French occupation soldiers married Austrian women and took their brides back to their home countries.62 Falling in love with a Soviet soldier or ofªcer, however, might land the woman concerned in prison or in a mass grave. Hermine Rotter failed to grasp this risk when she emphasized her relationship with Soviet employees of USIA as an extenuating circumstance in her appeal for clemency: She explained that a Soviet accountant in the me- chanical engineering department at USIA

fell in love, as he said, with me and so we became closer. I felt a lot of affection for this man and often talked with him, although his German was poor. Surely this proves that I was no enemy of the Russians; I’d hardly have done such a thing if I were. In December 1950, I took up a post with the USIA ORS [Department for Work Assignment] as an accountant and went on to enjoy

59. Paul G. Roberts, information provided to Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Vienna, 24 April 2009. 60. On this, see Barbara Stelzl-Marx, “Freier und Befreier: Zum Beziehungsgeºecht zwischen sowjetischen Besatzungssoldaten und österreichischen Frauen,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich, pp. 432–434; and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Stalins Soldaten in Österreich: Die Innensicht der sowjetischen Besatzung 1945–1955 (Vienna: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2012), pp. 466– 558. 61. “Directive No. 00811 of the Head of the Political Section of the NKVD Troops for the Protection of the Rear of the 3rd Ukrainian Front Regarding an Improvement in the Educational Work among the Rank-and-File,” 4 July 1945, in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Arkhiv, F. 32902, Op. 1, D. 11, Ll. 158–159, reprinted in Karner, Stelzl-Marx, and Tschubarjan, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich, Doc. 64. 62. On this, see Ingrid Bauer and Renate Huber, “Sexual Encounters across (Former) Enemy Border- lines,” in Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, and Dagmar Herzog, eds., Sexuality in Austria (New Bruns- wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), pp. 65–101.

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good relations with the main accountant there, Kozlov, and ended up having an affair with this man.63

The Supreme Court was unconvinced by these arguments and conªrmed her sentence.64 Western intelligence services did use such sources of information. For example, the Soviet military tribunal accused Rosalia Dederichs of recruiting Viktoria Lohmar, the girlfriend of a Soviet occupation employee, as a British agent.65 In her appeal for clemency, Dederichs described the event as follows: “In October 1949, he [Johann Birner] asked me whether I know a girl or a woman who was acquainted with Soviet ofªcers or soldiers, and I brought him Viktoria Lohmar.”66 Birner had apparently been commissioned by the British intelligence service to recruit Austrian women in liaisons with Soviet military personnel. Military Tribunal No. 28990 thereupon sentenced Vik- toria Lohmar on 12 January 1951 to twenty years’ imprisonment for “anti- Soviet” espionage.67 On 12 January 1951, Dederichs, together with Birner, Michael Mac- zejka, and Johanna Vozelka, was condemned to death in Baden for “espionage.” The Soviet authorities accused Vozelka of having systematically “exploited her acquaintance with soldiers of the Red Army and her knowledge of the Russian language.” These contacts, the authorities claimed, allowed the British Secret Intelligence Service to learn the training location of a tank division, biographical details of Soviet ofªcers, and other matters.68 In a similar fashion, Hungarian-born Georg Berényi was commissioned by U.S. intelligence to persuade Soviet military personnel to desert to the American occupation zone in Austria. He reportedly recruited the two Aus- trian women Gerda Swirak and Albina Redman. The Soviet Military Tribunal accused the two women of trying, in vain, to entice Soviet ofªcers to commit

63. Appeal for Clemency from Hermine Rotter, Ll. 94–95. 64. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Karl Berger and Hermine Rot- ter, 31 August 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 40, Ll. 70–74. 65. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Johann Birner, Rosalia Dederichs, Michael Maczejka, and Johanna Vocelka, 6 March 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 15, L. 136. On the British Secret Service and Austria, see Anthony Clayton, Forearmed: A History of the Intelligence Corps (London: Brassey’s, 1993), pp. 201. 66. Appeal for Clemency from Rosalia Dederichs, 17 January 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 15, Ll. 149–150. 67. Lohmar was released from prison on 25 June 1955 and rehabilitated in 1998. See Notiªcation of Rehabilitation for Viktoria Lohmar, 18 August 1998, in GVP, 5uv-44901-50. 68. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Johann Birner, Rosalia Dederichs, Michael Maczejka, and Johanna Vocelka, Ll. 136–137.

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“treason against their homeland.”69 Redman was nevertheless sentenced on 7 October 1950 to 25 years in the gulag for “anti-Soviet espionage.”70 A relationship with a Soviet ofªcer also sealed the fate of Ingeborg Louzek, who as a 19-year-old from Vienna, became romantically involved with Captain Venyamin Kolesnikov in Austria in mid-1946.71 After being de- mobilized in 1947, Kolesnikov eluded repatriation to the Soviet Union and remained hidden in Louzek’s apartment, but in April 1947 he was arrested as a “traitor to the fatherland.” Nonetheless, two months later, Kolesnikov escaped with Louzek’s help to the American zone. Louzek soon followed him and was allegedly recruited by the CIC as an agent for “espionage against the Soviet occupation forces in Austria.”72 Louzek traveled back to Vienna and allegedly recruited Edeltraude Kolacek-Grešková and another Austrian woman for the CIC and brought them to the American occupation zone. The Soviet authorities accused Louzek of then helping deserters from the Soviet Army to ºee.73 In March 1950 the military tribunal in Baden sentenced Kolacek-Grešková to death for “espionage.” Her appeal for clemency was dismissed by the Supreme Court, which further alleged that she had established contact with French intelligence as early as March 1947 and that in May 1948 she had recruited “the former Soviet Army serviceman and traitor to his homeland Kostikov [Koles- nikov] for the U.S. secret services.” The indictment did not mention that Kolacek-Grešková had supposedly been recruited by Louzek. On the contrary, when appealing for clemency, Kolacek-Grešková claimed to have ties to French and U.S. intelligence: “And once again, by an unfortunate coincidence I met the deserter Kostikov [Kolesnikov], who, as he told me, had been hiding himself already for a year and wanted to ºee because an Austrian woman was pregnant with his child and he wanted to marry her. I brought him to the French and received money in return.”74

69. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Georg Berényi, 30 June 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 31, L. 139. 70. Albina Redman, born in 1906 in Bruck on the Leitha, died on 13 November 1951 in Soviet imprisonment. The Main Ofªce of the Military Public Prosecutor of the Russian Federation rehabilitated her on 15 April 1999. See Notiªcation of Rehabilitation for Albina Redman, 15 April 1999, in GVP, K-101047; and AdBIK, Database of Austrian Civil Convicts in the USSR, compiled in Graz. 71. According to another version, the name of the ofªcer was “Kostikov.” See Response of the Su- preme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Aleksandr Achtyrskij, Alois Kolber, and Edeltraude Kolacek-Grešková, 19 April 1950, in GARF, F. 7532, Op. 66, D. 102, Ll. 45–48. 72. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Ingeborg Louzek, 6 December 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 121, Ll. 108–109. 73. Ibid., Ll. 109–110. 74. Appeal for Clemency from Edeltraude Kolacek-Grešková, 16 March 1950, in GARF, F. 7532, Op. 66, D. 102, Ll. 54–55.

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Louzek was arrested on 12 August 1950 and on 21 October was condemned to death by Military Tribunal No. 28990 based on Articles 58-6 (“espionage”) and 17-58-1a (“aiding and abetting treason against the fatherland”). She was executed on 9 January 1951 in Moscow. Kolesnikov had already been sentenced to death in April 1950 by the Military Council of the USSR Supreme Court. His interrogation, like those of Aleksandr Achtyrskii and Kolacek-Grešková, had allegedly “convicted Louzek of the charges against her.” With the execution of Louzek and Kolesnikov, their two-and-a-half-year old son became an orphan.75 Nearly sixty years later, in April 2009, the son contacted the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War’s Conse- quences (BIK), where he learned for the ªrst time not only about the execution of both parents but also his father’s name and some information about him.

“National Alliance of Russian Solidarists”: NTS Contact with the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Narodno-trudovoi soyuz, or NTS, meaning literally “People’s Labor Union”) sealed the fate of many Austrians. This anti-Communist organization was established in the early 1930s by White Russian émigrés to resist the Stalinist dictatorship and continue the White Army’s military struggle against Soviet Communism through ideological means. The NTS distributed anti-Soviet leaºets in Rus- sian in the Soviet occupation zones of Germany and Austria, as well as materials aimed at persuading army personnel to desert. After 1945, the NTS received U.S. ªnancial assistance and conveyed information about the Soviet Union to the CIC.76 The verdict against Isabella Lederer underscores Moscow’s view of the NTS as a “terrorist and anti-Soviet organization.” NTS agents had allegedly given Lederer many tasks:

To detect the location of Soviet formations and their supply centers; to compile a diagram of the locations of the formations and the organizational designations as well as the most suitable place for the dissemination of writings in their vicin- ity; to induce Soviet military personnel to cross the demarcation line; and to recruit women who are at least 25 years old and men who are at least 35 years old to disseminate writings for the NTS.77

75. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Ingeborg Louzek, Ll. 108, 110. 76. Helmut Roewer, Stefan Schäfer, and Matthias Uhl, Lexikon der Geheimdienste im 20: Jahrhundert (Munich: Herbig, 2003), p. 322. 77. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Isabella Lederer and Rolf Ravenegg, 23 August 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 108, Ll. 141–142. On Isabella Lederer and

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Lederer was arrested on 1 May 1952 in a Vienna hotel, together with her 17- year-old son, Horst, and his schoolmate Norbert Kern. That same day, the So- viet authorities arrested Rolf Ravenegg, an NTS go-between and associate of Lederer’s brother, Richard Ernst. On 18 July 1952, Military Tribunal No. 28990 sentenced Lederer and Ravenegg to death on the basis of Articles 58-2 (“armed revolt” or “inªltration of Soviet territory”), 58-6 (“espionage”), 58-8 (“terror”), 58-10 (“anti-Soviet propaganda”), and 58-11 (“membership of a counterrevolutionary organization”).78 Kern acted during closed proceedings as a witness and was released without punishment.79 Horst Lederer, who had helped his mother to distribute leaºets only once, was sentenced to 25 years in the Gulag.80

“War Crimes”

After January 1950 four Austrian civilians were executed for war crimes or crimes against humanity. Soviet courts prosecuted “German-fascist evildoers guilty of murdering and maltreating the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers” on the basis of Ukaz 43 of 19 April 1943.81 Al- though war crimes against non-Soviet persons did not fall within the Soviet courts’ jurisdiction, roughly 90 Austrian civilians were arraigned before Soviet criminal judges during the decade of occupation for crimes against Soviet civilian workers and prisoners of war and almost 110 for war crimes in the USSR. Among the latter were 50 former policemen who had maltreated and murdered Jews in Galicia. The usual penalty was 25 years of hard labor.82 Two former Austrian policemen, Josef Dunkl and Erwin Linauer, who initially were held in Austrian custody, were condemned to death for actions

her son Horst, see also Johannes Ebner, “‘Über Nacht zum Spion’: Die Lebensgeschichte von Horst W. Lederer,” seminar paper, University of Graz, 2007; and Petschnigg, “Stimmen aus der Todeszelle,” pp. 447–451. 78. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Isabella Lederer and Rolf Ravenegg, 23 August 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 108, L. 140. 79. Criminal Case Records for Isabella Lederer, Horst Lederer, Richard Ernst, and Rolf Ravenegg, Bill of Indictment, 3 July 1952, in TsA FSB, P-2633, Vol. 2, Ll. 335–344. 80. Tessa Szyszkowitz, “‘Ihr Hunde, lassts den Vater da!’ Die Perspektive der Angehörigen,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 225–228. 81. Hilger, Petrov, and Wagenlehner, “Der ‘Ukaz 43,’” p. 177. 82. Knoll and Stelzl-Marx, “Sowjetische Strafjustiz in Österreich,” pp. 303–304; and Barbara Stelzl- Marx, “Ein ganz normaler Kriegsverbrecher? Der Prozesse gegen den ehemaligen Lagerkassier des Stalag XVII B Krems-Gneixendorf,” in Stefan Karner and Vjaceslav Selemenev, eds., Österreicher und Sudetendeutsche vor sowjetischen Militär- und Strafgerichten in Weißrussland 1945–1950 / Avstrijskie i sudetskie nemcy pered sovetskimi voennymi tribunalami v Belarusi 1945–1950 gg. (Graz: Selbstverlag des Vereins zur Förderung der Forschung von Folgen nach Konºikten und Kriegen, 2007), pp. 368–406.

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in Galicia.83 They had been transferred to Soviet custody in October 1950 together with ªve other former policemen. The Baden Military Tribunal accused Dunkl of having taken part “actively in crimes” against Soviet citizens, in particular the murder of Jews, as a policeman in Ivano-Frankivs’k (Stanys- laviv). He was said to have been involved at the end of 1942 in the transporta- tion from the ghetto to the Ivano-Frankivs’k railway station of about 2,000 Soviet Jews, who were taken from there to an extermination camp. During the march from the ghetto, shootings took place. The relevant witness testi- mony had been recorded by the Austrian police in 1947 and 1948 and pre- sumably passed on to the Soviet authorities. New interviews of the witnesses were infeasible because they were living in the western occupation zones.84 On 28 January 1952, Military Tribunal No. 28990 condemned Dunkl and Linauer to death in accordance with Ukaz 43 and Articles 54-2 (“armed inªltration of the USSR”) and 54-11 (“counterrevolutionary activity”) of the Ukrainian SSR.85 The reason for invoking the criminal code of Ukraine—and not, as was otherwise customary, of Russia—may well have been that the crime scene was Galicia, within Ukrainian territory. The execution of Dunkl and Linauer took place on 28 May 1952. In the 1990s the Main Ofªce of the Military Public Prosecutor of the Russian Federation rejected any rehabilitation of either man.86

“Terror and Treason against the Fatherland” Military Tribunal No. 28990 in Baden also meted out death sentences against several Soviet occupation soldiers and Soviet émigrés. Two of the military personnel were convicted of murder: Leonard Volkov, a decorated war veteran, allegedly murdered a Hungarian on 13 August 1950 during an argument, whereupon he ºed his unit and hid in Austria. In Wiener Neustadt, he was ar-

83. On the conviction of more than 50 former policemen by Soviet tribunals, see Knoll and Stelzl- Marx, “Sowjetische Strafjustiz in Österreich,” pp. 306–308. On the murder of Jews in Galicia, see Tuviah Friedmann, Schupo-Kriegsverbrecher von Stanislau vor dem Wiener Volksgericht: Dokumenten- sammlung (Haifa: Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, 1957); Michael Alexander Kranewitter, “Grenzpolizeikommissariat Stanislau: Die Vergehen einer Sicherheitspolizeistelle in Ostgalizien und die juristische Verfolgung der Täter in Österreich, der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der DDR,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Vienna, 2004; Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1996); and Thomas Sandkühler, “Endlösung” in Galizien: Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz 1941–1944 (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1996). 84. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clemency from Josef Dunkl and Erwin Linauer, 22 April 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 89, L. 177. 85. Ibid., Ll. 172–173. 86. AdBIK, Database of Austrian Civil Convicts in the USSR.

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rested by two Soviet soldiers, whom he proceeded to shoot with stolen pistols in a “terrorist act.” On the night of 15 August, he killed an Austrian chauffeur in his car. Around a week later, the deserter was arrested following “the usual search actions.” Volkov, who had been on duty with the occupation troops in Austria and Hungary since 1945, was also accused of “being systematically in contact with foreign women and of drinking.” On 30 October 1950, Military Tribunal No. 28990 sentenced him to death in accordance with, among others, Article 58-1 (“treason against the fatherland”), Article 58-8 (“terror”), and Article 2 of the Resolution of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet of 4 June 1947 “On Penal Responsibility for the Robbery of State and Public Property.” His appeal for clemency was rejected by the Supreme Court.87 Military Tribunal No. 28990 accused a former collective farmer, Ivan Sychev from the district of Kursk, of “treason against the fatherland” and “anti-Soviet propaganda.” According to the tribunal, he facilitated the seizure of Soviet partisans during the war and served in the Russian Liberation Army (ROA). After the war, he joined the army “by hushing up his service for the Germans and his real date of birth.” In December 1950, when he was serving with the Soviet occupation troops in Austria, he plotted, according to the Su- preme Court, “with his partner, the Austrian Oberger Margarita,” and “aimed to ºee to the American occupation zone in Austria. He could not carry out this plan because he was arrested on 13 December 1950.”88 During Sychev’s imprisonment in Baden, another charge—“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”—was added to the accusation of “treason against the fatherland.” In his cell, Sychev was said to have told “anti-Soviet” jokes, praised the “capitalist system,” and denounced the party leadership and the whole Soviet government. He testiªed during the inquiry: “When I found myself with cellmates in the cell, I regaled them with anecdotes of a counterrevolutionary nature. I denigrated the Soviet system and showered the Soviet party and government leadership with insults as I spoke. At the same time, I praised bourgeois structures, in particular life in Austria. I declared that my home was not the Soviet Union but Austria.” Witnesses veriªed the “anti- Soviet remarks” in court.89 On 9 May 1951, Military Tribunal No. 28990 sentenced him to death in accordance with Articles 58-1 (“treason against the fatherland”) and 58-10

87. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Leonard Volkov, 6 December 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 121, Ll. 101–103; and Appeal for Clemency from Leonard Volkov, 30 October 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 121, Ll. 104–107. On the murders, see also “Dreifacher Mord eines russischen Ofªziers,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, 17 August 1950, p. 3. 88. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Ivan Sychev, 11 July 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 28, L. 83. 89. Appeal for Clemency from Ivan Sychev, 9 May 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 28, L. 77.

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(“anti-Soviet propaganda”) and also ordered that the valuables seized during his arrest be conªscated and that he be stripped of the medal he had been awarded for “30 Years of Service with the Soviet Army and Navy.” In Moscow, his appeal for clemency was rejected.90

The Procedure from Arrest to Execution

Even in Austria, Stalinist legal practice was characterized by almost complete secrecy: “One day, he went out early in the morning and never came back,” is how Anna-Maria Melichar recalls the day her brother, Emil Dallapozza, was arrested.91 Upon being arrested, detainees simply “disappeared.” Neither relatives nor the Austrian authorities received any information about their fate.92 The “kidnappings,” as the Socialist Arbeiter-Zeitung dubbed the arrests that generally took place in mysterious circumstances, were followed by months and years of waiting and oppressive uncertainty for the families of those who had vanished.93 Anna-Maria Melichar had to wait until 2007 to learn what happened to her brother. Despite the tragedy, she expressed relief: “One feels a kind of liberation when one knows what happened. It is good to be able come to terms with it at last.”94 From the moment of arrest, the mills of the Soviet judicial apparatus and the bureaucracy began to grind—and they ground thoroughly. Although most of the prisoners remained in Austria until their conviction, they were trapped in a Soviet microcosm with its own rules, hermetically sealed off from the outside world. Protracted examinations and interrogations, secret de- brieªngs of witnesses, and identity line-ups systematically demoralized the accused. The prevention of all contact with the outside world was deliberate. In most cases, a confession of “guilt” by the “criminal” was only a matter of time. The criminal case records preserved in the former Soviet state security archive document the meticulously conducted proceedings down to the last de- tail.95 Hundreds of pages, mostly archived in one or two volumes, allow a

90. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Ivan Sychev, Ll. 75–78. 91. Tessa Szyszkowitz, “Stalins letzte Opfer,” Proªl, 12 February 2007, p. 34. 92. On the analogous approach in Germany, see Andreas Hilger, “Strafjustiz im Verfolgungswahn: Todesurteile sowjetischer Gerichte in Deutschland,” in Hilger, ed., “Tod den Spionen!” p. 97; and Frank Drauschke, “‘Diese Ungewissheit ist eine Qual’: Die lange Suche der Angehörigen in Deutsch- land,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 283–300. 93. “Doppelter Menschenraub in Wien,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, 8 April 1951, p. 3. 94. AdBIK, Anna-Maria Melichar, information provided to Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Vienna, 17 March 2008. 95. Vasilij Christoforov, “Kalter Krieg und sowjetische Spionageabwehr in Österreich: Todesurteile im Spiegel von Archivdokumenten,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 141–156.

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detailed look at the ordeal of those concerned.96 The uniformity of the proceedings indicates that the verdicts were preordained. For almost all of those condemned to death, appeals for clemency can be reconstructed from the records stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. All such cases were eventually handled by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.97 The procedure was similar in all cases: arrest in the Soviet occupation zone by Soviet state security forces or on their behalf, exhaustive compilation of personal details, body search, interrogations, identity line-ups with co-de- fendants, selection of potential witnesses or suspects, transfer of the case to the TsGV Military Tribunal, indictment, conªnement in a holding facility, closed court proceedings in Baden, death sentence, appeal for clemency to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, submission of evidence by the state security organs, transfer of the appeal to the Military Council of the USSR Supreme Court, draft judgment rendered by the Supreme Court, decision by the Soviet Politburo, reafªrmation by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, execution by shooting in Moscow’s Butyrka Prison, immediate incineration in the crematorium of the Donskoe Cemetery, and burial of the ashes in a mass grave located there.98 All the leading Communist Party and government authorities interacted

96. The Central Archive of the FSB permits relatives of rehabilitated convicts to “acquaint themselves” with the criminal case records in the reading room of the archive. Thanks to authorization forms certiªed by a notary from relatives of executed Austrians, I obtained access to these criminal case records in June 2007. From November 2007, the archive made the ªrst copies available, for which I am grateful. The family of Leo Thalhammer even received the original documents that had been removed upon his arrest: the identity card, the Allied Travel Permit, and an ÖBB-Ausweis, now stored in AdBIK. See Helmut Thalhammer, Letter to the BIK, Katzelsdorf 1 November 2007. 97. The appeals for clemency from people condemned to death by Military Tribunal No. 28990 and the relevant proposals of the USSR Supreme Court regarding the appeals were made accessible during the research project “The Red Army in Austria” (“Die Rote Armee in Österreich”). For this I am grateful to Nikita Petrov and Ol’ga Lavinskaya of Memorial. See also Knoll and Stelzl-Marx, “Sowjetische Strafjustiz in Österreich,” p. 279; Ol’ga Lavinskaja, “Zum Tode verurteilt: Die Gnadengesuche österreichischer Zivilverurteilter an den Obersten Sowjet der UdSSR,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich, pp. 324–337; and Ol’ga Lavinskaja, “Gnadenverfahren des Präsidi- ums des Obersten Sowjets der UdSSR, 1950 bis 1953: Eine archivalische Beschreibung unbekannter Quellen des Spätstalinismus,” in Hilger, ed., “Tod den Spionen!” pp. 79–94. 98. In some cases, the Military Tribunal made its decision several days before sentencing to transfer the accused after conviction as a “socially dangerous personality” to a special penal camp to serve out the sentence. See, for example, Criminal Case Records for Margarete Henºing, Decision on the Im- prisonment of the Convicted in an MVD Special Camp, 29 March 1951, in TsA FSB, P-2194, Ll. 338–339. In the case of Henºing, the sentence was not passed until 7 April 1951. As the example of Georg Berényi demonstrates, the Politburo was informed of the details of the death sentences of the military tribunals. Even the individual facts of the case were listed. In the case of Berényi, the case summary stated that the CIC had commissioned him to persuade Soviet occupation troops to ºee to the American zone in Austria. “Berényi, for his part, recruited two Austrian women, who met Soviet ofªcers and wanted to persuade two of them to commit treason against their fatherland.” See the relevant documents in RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 162, D. 1089; RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 163, D. 1591; and Deci- sion of the Politburo P 82 (477-op) and materials, 16 July 1951, in RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 166, D. 839, Ll. 36–37.

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in the passing of death sentences. Usually, two to six weeks elapsed from the time the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet rejected an appeal for clemency and the execution. Even before a ªnal decision was made, the condemned prisoner was brought to Butyrka Prison, a fortress-like barracks from the eighteenth century that served from 1879 on as a holding facility for political prisoners.99 Convicted “spies” whose appeals for clemency were rejected were normally transported in groups to the Soviet Union and executed within a month. Usually, the group of condemned prisoners were shot to death simultaneously or in rapid succession.100 The Soviet judiciary and state security organs informed neither relatives nor the Austrian authorities about these executions. Such extreme secrecy was inherent in the Soviet justice system. Since the mid-1930s the Soviet security apparatus had systematically kept all information from the relatives of prisoners.101 Not until 1955, two years after Stalin’s death, did the Soviet Main Ad- ministration of the Militia—Archive for Records of Civil Status start to pro- vide “certiªcates of death” to foreign governments (the Austrian included) for their citizens who had been executed by Soviet forces. These “sugar-coated” notiªcations made no mention of execution: “military tuberculosis,” “cancer of the bladder, septicemia,” “tuberculosis meningitis,” “peritonitis,” “ulcerous mastoiditis with complications brought on by meningitis,” “endocarditis, septicemia,” “abscess of the liver,” or occasionally “rupture of the aorta,” a cir- cumscription of the cause of death that is as cynical as it is, strictly speaking, correct. In the case of the Austrian victims, the stated date of death usually was the actual date.102

Act of Grace by the USSR Supreme Soviet

The military tribunals attached little weight to the appeals for clemency and rejected the vast majority of them. When rare exceptions occurred, the rea-

99. Rudolph, Drauschke, and Sachse, Verurteilt zum Tode durch Erschießen, p. 69. 100. Lavinskaja, “Zum Tode verurteilt,” pp. 335–336. The appeals for clemency that were rejected on any one day were all entered into a protocol of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. For example, Johann Birner, Rosalia Dederichs, Michael Maczejka, and Johanna Vocelka were convicted together on 12 January 1951 by Military Tribunal No. 28990, the Supreme Court of the USSR rejected on 6 March their appeals for clemency from 17 and 19 January, and the Presidium of the Su- preme Soviet of the USSR composed on 30 March the deªnitive decision regarding their execution. All four were executed on 5 May 1951. See: Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeals for Clem- ency from Johann Birner, Rosalia Dederichs, Michael Maczejka, and Johanna Vocelka, Ll. 134–138. 101. Hilger, “Strafjustiz im Verfolgungswahn,” pp. 102–103. 102. This is evidently in contrast to the victims from Germany and the Soviet Union, where Moscow intentionally provided false dates of death. Only from 1963 did the Soviet authorities inform Soviet citizens about the actual circumstances of the death of their relatives. With foreigners (including Aus-

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sons were often murky. The pardon in the case of Hermine Valdevit illustrates this point. Her appeal for clemency from 18 January 1952 comprised the following sentence: “I, Valdevit, Hermine, accused, request that the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet grant me a pardon.”103 The chairman of the Su- preme Court of the USSR noted: “In her appeal for clemency, Valdevit begs for her life, although she makes reference neither to the crimes committed nor to any motives. I consider the verdict of the military tribunal to be correct.”104 The Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet overruled the Supreme Court’s recommendation and changed Valdevit’s verdict to twenty years in the Gulag on 26 April 1952. She returned to Austria in December 1956 and was rehabilitated in 2001.105 In the phase that started in 1950, at least seven Austrians and two Soviet citizens sentenced to death by the Baden Military Tribunal escaped with their lives. The last two Austrians to be sentenced to death by Military Tribunal No. 28990 were indirectly helped by Stalin’s death and the resulting relax- ation of the policy of repression: Pius Lintner and Walter Brunner had been sentenced to death on 20 May 1953 for espionage for the CIC, yet the Presid- ium of the Supreme Soviet pardoned them two months later. Ultimately, there had been “no necessity to apply the maximum sentence in his [Lintner’s] case.”106 The argument that “Lintner, on his own initiative, had ended relations with American intelligence at the end of 1950” was new.107 Before Sta- lin’s death in March 1953, such an argument would almost certainly not have led to commutation.108

Motives in the Looking Glass of Appeals for Clemency

I beg you, the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union, and all your people for humble forgiveness in the name of my relatives, I beg for my young life, I want

trians), such information was not provided until the downfall of the Soviet Union. See Hilger, “Strafjustiz im Verfolgungswahn,” p. 104; Jörg Rudolph, “‘Verstorben auf dem Territorium der UdSSR’: Das lange Warten auf die Wahrheit,” in Arsenij Roginskij et al. eds., “Erschossen in Moskau . . . ,” pp. 74–75. 103. Appeal for Clemency from Hermine Valdevit, 18 January 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 86, L. 76. 104. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Hermine Valdevit, 27 March 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 86, Ll. 72–74. 105. Stelzl-Marx, “Verschleppt und erschossen,” p. 75. 106. Personal File Pius Lintner, Decision of the Supreme Court of the USSR, 11 July 1953, in RGVA, F. 461, D. 193537, L. 49. 107. Ibid. 108. AdBIK, Database of Austrian Civil Convicts in the USSR.

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to atone for my grievous guilt through honest work in your country. Please be magnanimous and grant me my life, help me to lead my youthful, confused senses to the light, for the rest of my life I want to be your devoted servant. My spirit and my soul are not criminal in nature, I had never previously been convicted. Through work I want to atone for what I have done, if you grant me my life, the life to which every human being clings. As a ridiculous little agent, I could not imagine the consequences, I did not work out of political or any other kind of conviction; when I realized what terrible mistakes I had made it was already too late. But not too late to make up for these mistakes, provided that I am given the opportunity to do so. I beg you, the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union, your great nation, for mercy; for my life. With tears in my eyes, hoping and begging for your great mercy—Beck, Josef.109

With these words, the 24-year-old from Vienna concluded his appeal for clemency to the USSR Supreme Soviet on 9 February 1951. Beck’s willing- ness to show regret and atonement stemmed from his awareness that his life was at stake. He knew that shows of contrition could play an important role in appeals. His emphasis on having become a “ridiculous little agent” for ªnancial and not political reasons was intended as a mitigating circumstance. In no way, he stated, could he have measured the consequences of his actions—the debrieªng of former prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Like most of the condemned, he had probably underestimated the danger posed by contacts with foreign intelligence ofªcials. Beck’s appeal for clemency was turned down, and he was executed on 5 May 1951.110 In this context, one is confronted with the question of what circumstances and motives led to cooperation with Western intelligence or to “anti- Soviet” activity. One thing is clear from the available documents: In the case of convictions for espionage, there had generally been at least a certain ºow of information to the West relating to the Soviet Union.111 The fact that sentences bore no relation to the damage caused and that the majority of those executed have been rehabilitated in recent years and cleared of all guilt points to the excesses of the Stalinist perception of legality. The appeals for clemency by those condemned to death from 1950 on often allow a direct insight into their outlook. Only a few limited themselves to putting down in writing the mere request for mercy. Appeals that were kept short are similar in style and even choice of words, perhaps based on a tem-

109. Appeal for Clemency from Josef Beck, 9 February1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 17, Ll. 150–151. 110. Eremina, ed., Rasstrel’nye spiski, p. 43. 111. Harald Knoll and Dieter Bacher, “Nachrichtendienst und Spionage im Österreich der Besatzungszeit,” in Karner and Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer, pp. 157–168.

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plate. By contrast, Ingeborg Louzek emphasized: “Excuse me for not writing everything exactly, for not putting things together properly, my apologies that the style is not always smooth, but I have not the faintest idea of how one writes such things.” She added: “What mental torments have I borne, how in- wardly bewildered I was; this I cannot write; to convey this is impossible.”112 Alois Kolber dispensed with this option. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet returned his case to the Supreme Court “without appraisal” because he “has not requested a pardon.”113 Most of the others, however, highlighted the poverty and other adverse conditions that had allegedly induced them to work for Western intelligence agencies. Many emphasized that they had not wanted to damage the Soviet Union and had not acted out of ideological or political conviction. Only a few claimed to have cooperated with Western secret services out of ideological ide- alism or a personal desire for revenge against the Soviet regime. One example is Josef Hassler, in whose case personal disappointment and anger at the So- viet occupation appear to have been decisive. Following his dismissal from the Soviet censorship ofªce in Vienna, he contacted the CIC, passed on information about his work at the Soviet censorship ofªce, and was allegedly recruited as an “agent for espionage activities against the USSR.”114 Half of the women who were executed for anti-Soviet espionage had been involved in love affairs with Soviet soldiers. They were a particularly valuable target group for Western intelligence services, who lured them by offering to solve their money problems for seemingly harmless transfers of information. Soviet ofªcials were aware of the Western efforts and were particularly suspicious of these women.115 The bulk of the appeals for clemency give the impression that a certain naïveté or a fatal underestimation of the potential consequences played a decisive role. “He did not think anything of it,” Helmut Thalhammer said of his father, Leor.116 The majority were lured by what looked like easy money at a time of severe economic hardship.

112. Appeal for Clemency from Ingeborg Louzek, end of October 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 121, L. 122. 113. Chancellery Chief of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, N. Kozlov, to the Chairman of the Military Council of the USSR Supreme Court, A. A. Cheptsov, regarding Alois Kolber, 14 July1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 102, Ll. 44. 114. Criminal Proceedings File of Josef Hassler, Interrogation Protocol of Josef Hassler, 20 July 1950, in TsA FSB, P-2172, S. 29–34; and Criminal Proceedings File of Josef Hassler, Indictment, 25 Octo- ber 1950, in TsA FSB, P-2172, Ll. 389–394. 115. Stelzl-Marx, Stalins Soldaten in Österreich, pp. 487–495. 116. Ebner, “Der hat sich dabei nichts gedacht,” p. 54.

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Economic Upheaval and Financial Lures

It was the money that lured me into espionage. I saw only the money; I never thought about the consequences that these criminal activities could have. From the company I received 650 shillings and the work was very hard; but through espionage I received 2,500 to 3,000 shillings and hardly had to do anything physical at all.117

Richard Rupitsch of Carinthia, accused of espionage, attempted with these words to gain clemency. His plea for the Supreme Soviet to “take notice of” his motives was of no avail.118 Many other appeals suggest that the promise of money was a key motive. The Austrian postwar economy was in the doldrums, the black markets were thriving and bore no relation to wages, and housing shortages were acute. Famine threatened Vienna in 1945. An egg cost 230 shillings on the black market, one-third of the monthly income of Stefan Buger, an employee of the Austrian Railway. After being arrested by Soviet forces, he argued that his “ªnancial and material hardship” had been “meanly and shamefully” exploited by a French intelligence ofªcer in 1946:

I had a monthly income of 690 shillings and received nothing on food ration cards; everything had to be bought on the black market. 1 kg lard: 400 shillings; sugar: 220 shillings; ºour: 45 shillings; a single egg: 230 shillings; meat: 300– 350 shillings. Our farmers sold goods for a lot of money. My family was under- nourished; my children were hungry and we did not have even the required amounts of bread and butter at home. . . . This spy “Fucsek” [Fuczik] gave me 100 shillings as a gift the second time we met and 50 shillings the third time, until I succumbed at the fourth meeting.119

In return for information on the frequency and cargo of Soviet goods trains on the Eastern Railway Line, Buger allegedly received “4,000–5,000 shillings in the form of money or as commodities such as lard, ºour, sugar, etc. at the contraband price.”120 In 1948, following the “disappearance” of Fuczik, Buger broke off all contact with foreign intelligence. What he did not know was that Fuczik had already been sentenced to 25 years in the gulag on

117. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Richard Rupitsch, 11 October 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 114, L. 3. 118. Appeal for Clemency from Richard Rupitsch, 14 September 1950, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 66, D. 114, L. 6. 119. Appeal for Clemency from Stefan Buger, 1 April 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 95, Ll. 74– 76. 120. Ibid.

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espionage charges and had testiªed against Buger.121 Four years later, Buger appeared before the Soviet Military Tribunal in Baden. His execution took place on 11 July 1952. Like Buger, many of those sentenced to death stated during interrogation or in their appeal how much they had supposedly been paid by U.S., British, French, Swiss, or Yugoslav intelligence services or the NTS. The alleged payments constituted up to 10,000 shillings. Some claimed they had received 250, 500, 1,000 or even 4,700 shillings a month. According to Soviet data, 4,700 shillings would have been ten times the average monthly income of an Austrian carpenter at the end of 1947. Soviet ofªcials estimated that a four-person Austrian family spent around 400 shillings a month, although food ration cards rather than black market prices served as the basis for this calculation.122 “The earnings from espionage activity were the main source of income in my life,” the Viennese journalist Raimund Strangl explained to the Soviet military tribunal.123 The Supreme Court interpreted such comments as a further confession of guilt. In the case of Margarete Henºing, for example, the court stated: “For the passing on of espionage information, Henºing received up to 250–300 shillings each month from Cadouse [a French intelligence ofªcial] and 400 shillings from von Schachner.”124 The daughter of Ernst Feichtinger, Jutta Weissböck, remembers invitations to her family from a CIC ofªcer and the food her father received: “He of course brought something with him from the CIC, . . . he brought these doughnuts every day. Then pure coffee and other foodstuffs, for example, chocolate frosting. Other people could only dream of these things. He had a car. It was all worth having.”125

Conclusions

During the ten years of postwar occupation, Austria and especially Vienna became an arena for every major intelligence service. Soviet forces knew full well

121. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Stefan Buger, 1 April 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 95, L. 67. 122. Report of the head of the Social Administration of the SChSK, A. Pigin, regarding the average income and outgoings of an Austrian worker in December 1947, January 1948, in RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 128, D. 301, L. 47. 123. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Raimund Strangl, 18 May 1952, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 94, L. 198. 124. Response of the Supreme Court to the Appeal for Clemency from Margarete Henºing, 16 May 1951, in GARF, F. 7523, Op. 76, D. 24, L. 72. 125. Stefan Röck, “Ernst Feichtinger (16 October 1914–1 March 1952),” seminar paper, University of Graz, 2007, p. 20.

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that Western intelligence services were trying to hire Austrian informers to spy on Soviet troop deployments in Austria and Eastern Europe and to track Soviet economic exploitation of “German assets” in eastern Austria. Some Austrians spied for the West to gain compensation at a time of often desperate poverty and hardship, whereas others acted out of political or personal moti- vations. Women who had become romantically involved with Soviet soldiers were often especially useful as sources of intelligence for the West. Although the information these alleged spies provided was trivial in most cases, the penalties they faced under Soviet occupation were drastic: kidnapping, incar- ceration, and in some cases execution. Most of the Austrians had never antici- pated the risk of death. After almost eight years of occupation, the executions of Austrian civilians in Moscow came to an end. Following Stalin’s death in March 1953, Military Tribunal No. 28990 imposed no more death sentences. Austrian civilians who had been sentenced to death and were then pardoned were able to return to Austria in 1956. That year, relatives of the executed received the ªrst notiªcation from the Soviet Union—with falsiªed causes of death. The declassiªcation of materials from the former Soviet state security archive and the assistance provided by the Memorial center have been crucial in tracing what happened to these Austrians as well as other victims of Stalinism in Austria. The plaque commemorating the Austrian victims of Stalinist repression, unveiled at Donskoe Cemetery in September 2009, is a reminder of the cruelty of the Stalinist regime and the Soviet occupation.126

Acknowledgments

Parts of this article draw on Barbara Stelzl-Marx, “Verschleppt und erschossen: Eine Einführung,” in Stefan Karner and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, eds., Stalins letzte Opfer: Verschleppte und erschossene Österreicher in Moskau 1950–1953 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag—Oldenbourg Verlag 2009), pp. 21–78. I would like to thank Alex J. Kay for translating the manuscript into English and David Sinclair-Jones for copyediting the text.

126. On this, see, for example, Eduard Steiner, “‘Natürlicher Tod’ war Genickschuss: Gedenkstein für österreichisches Stalin-Opfer auf Moskauer Friedhof enthüllt,” Die Presse, 10 September 2008, p. 7.

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