German Resistance Memorial Center - Topic 'The Red Orchestra'


	Topic - The Red Orchestra

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Persecution

Guillotine and gallows in the execution chamber in Plötzensee

The starting point for the investigations against the Berlin group was a radio message decoded in the summer of 1942. It had been sent in August 1941 from the Moscow center of the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU, to "Kent" (Anatoly Gurevich), the GRU Brussels agent. The message contained the addresses of Kuckhoff and Schulze-Boysen. "Kent" had visited Schulze-Boysen at the end of October 1941 and passed on information to Moscow via Brussels. Gurevich collaborated closely with the Polish communist Leopold Trepper, who had set up communications and espionage networks in France and Belgium in 1938 on assignment from Soviet military intelligence. These networks had been activated after the German invasion of Poland. In mid-December 1941 German radio counterintelligence located a transmission station of the "Kent" group in Brussels and arrested the radio operator. Trepper set up a replacement station which was able to operate until the end of June 1942. Meanwhile, radio counterintelligence and the Gestapo had given his organization the name "Red Orchestra". At the end of August 1942 Horst Heilmann heard about the decoded Soviet radio messages and tried to warn Harro Schulze-Boysen, John Graudenz and others. However, well over 120 members of the Red Orchestra were arrested within a very short period. Although "Kent" had only visited Berlin once, the Gestapo erroneously saw the Berlin group as part of Trepper's espionage organization. The National Socialist leadership was kept constantly informed about the investigations against the Red Orchestra. In the following months more than 50 persons from the groups around Harnack and Schulze-Boysen were sentenced to death and murdered by the unlawful National Socialist system of justice. Many of them were executed by hanging or the guillotine in Berlin-Plötzensee Prison. Since there were some officers and soldiers among those arrested, most of the trials were conducted before the Reich Court Martial.