On August 30, 1943 Stalin ordered the troops of the 2nd Ukrainian Front to continue on the move, while part of the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front stayed in the city. In Bucharest, the Romanians handed the German diplomats-detainees over to operatives of the UKR SMERSH of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, while the Swedish ambassador, Patrik Reuterswärd, who took over German interests in Romania, ceded the building of the German mission to the Soviet military representatives.19 Interestingly, in 1943, he offered himself to the German Ambassador Killinger as a go-between in the proposed secret negotiations between the British and German representatives on a separate peace agreement.
Additionally, SMERSH operatives arrested all German military diplomats on September 2, 1944, including General Erik Hansen (head of the mission), Admiral Werner Tillessen (head of the navy mission), and General Alfred Gerstenberg (head of the air force mission) (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com).20 General Stahel was also taken prisoner. Stalin considered the capture of the German military diplomats and generals a great success of the 2nd Ukrainian Front’s high command.21 The arrested German diplomats, along with Stahel, were sent to Moscow. This varied group included the above-mentioned Gustav Richter and Willy Roedel, a devoted Nazi and Killinger’s assistant on intelligence matters. Later both became cell mates of the Swede Raoul Wallenberg.
General Karl Spalcke, German military attaché to Romania from 1942 to 1944, was also among those arrested. SMERSH was especially interested in him because in the 1920s–30s, Spalcke was involved in the joint Soviet–German military program and personally knew Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky who was executed in 1937. Spalcke, a specialist in modern Russian history, hated the Nazi Party and despised both Richter and Roedel. Max Braun, Spalcke’s assistant, later told the MGB interrogators:
After Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on Hitler [on July 20, 1944], Killinger cursed Stauffenberg at the meeting of the Legation’s staff. He called Stauffenberg ‘a pig’ and said that he would personally shoot to death any member of the Legation who was involved in Stauffenberg’s affair.
General Spalcke had the courage to tell Killinger, in the presence of members of the Legation, that Stauffenberg is not a pig, but he is a courageous officer of the General Staff who had proven that in a battle…
Killinger and the staff members were stunned by Spalcke’s speech, but Killinger did nothing against Spalcke because Spalcke was not involved in the assassination attempt.22
Later in March 1945, SMERSH operatives arrested Spalcke’s wife and 13-year old son in East Prussia and took them to Moscow. Until April 1950 they were kept together in a Lefortovo Prison cell. In 1951 they were convicted as ‘socially dangerous elements’ to eight and five years of imprisonment respectively. They were released in December 1953. General Spalcke, who was imprisoned in Vladimir Prison, was released in October 1955. I am happy to report that I found General Spalcke’s son on the internet and contacted him through a German colleague of mine. Despite his terrible experience during his teenage and young adult years, he became a prominent West German diplomat.
There was also Josias von Rantzau, an anti-Nazi (although in 1938 he joined the NSDAP) and a friend of Adam von Trott and Ulrich von Hassell, anti-Hitler resistance members in the German Foreign Ministry.23 Kurt Welkisch, press attaché of the German legation, was also sent to Moscow. He was a secret Soviet agent of the Red Orchestra network with the alias ‘ABC’.24 Welkisch’s reports to Moscow’s military intelligence HQ during 1940 and 1941 kept Soviet intelligence well informed about the staff of the German Legation in Bucharest.
On September 7, 1944, the last transport of the detained German diplomats arrived in Moscow. It consisted of fifteen people, including Counsel Gerhard Stelzer, who replaced von Killinger for a short time as head of the legation.25 Stelzer was important for SMERSH because in the 1930s, he had served at the German Embassy in Moscow. His wife, Renata, was also arrested and arrived with him at Moscow prison.
A similar Soviet attempt to arrest the Hungarian diplomats failed. Lieutenant General Sergei Shtemenko, head of the operational directorate of the general staff, wrote in his memoirs: ‘There was a signboard on the door of the Hungarian Embassy: “Swedish Embassy.” Later it became known that this protective sign was installed with the approval of the Swedish Ambassador.’26 However, SMERSH operatives managed to arrest Alfons Medyadohy-Schwartz, Hungarian chargé d’affaires (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com).
On August 31, a group of Romanian Communists, who had been keeping in custody the eight high Romanian officials arrested on King Mihai’s order, handed them over to the commanders of the 2nd Ukrainian Front.27 Three days later Marshal Malinovsky, commander of this front, reported to Moscow that the Romanian prisoners had been sent to Moscow via special train.
The group included Ion Antonescu and his wife Maria; Mihai Antonescu, the Romanian foreign minister; General Kristia Pantasi, Defense Minister; General Konstantin Vasiliu, Inspector of Gendarmes; Eugen Kristesku, general director of the Special Information Service; Gheorghe Alexianu, governor of the Romanian-occupied Soviet territory; Radu Lekka, general Commissar on Jewish affairs; and some others. A special team of SMERSH operatives was in charge of guarding the prisoners and bringing them to Lubyanka.28 The prisoners were told that they were being taken to Moscow for negotiations regarding the conditions of the armistice.
This was a lie. All these people were intensively interrogated in the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th GUKR SMERSH departments.29 Abakumov considered Kristesku’s information about British intelligence in Romania so important that he ordered Sergei Kartashov, head of the 2nd GUKR department, to prepare a special report for Stalin.30
Apparently, it was planned to try these Romanians for the atrocities committed by the Romanian troops against Soviet civilians in 1941–43. On October 16, 1941, Romanian troops occupied the city of Odessa in Ukraine. Four days later the building that housed the Romanian military command was blown up and 60 Romanian officers and soldiers died. The explosion was caused by a radio-operated mine left by an NKVD diversion group. In retaliation, Ion Antonescu ordered the execution of 200 hostages for every dead Romanian officer, and 100 hostages for every dead soldier. About 5,000 hostages, mostly Jews, were hanged and shot in the streets of Odessa. Additionally, on October 23–25, approximately 20,000 Jewish men, women and children were burnt alive, and from 5,000 to 10,000 Jews were shot. In Transistria, the area near Odessa, about 250,000 Jews were exterminated in concentration camps during the Romanian occupation.31 But SMERSH’s plan for a trial was never implemented.
On April 9, 1946, Ion and Mihai Antonescu and Generals Pantasi and Vasiliu were handed over to the Romanian secret police to stand trial in Bucharest.32 Later Alexianu was also transferred to Romania. These five were sentenced to death along with another eighteen defendants, and they were all accused of betraying the Romanian people on behalf of Nazi Germany, supporting the German invasion of the Soviet Union, murdering political opponents and civilians, and other crimes. Ion and Mihai Antonescu, Vasiliu, and Alexianu were executed on June 1, 1946; for the others, the death sentence was commuted to imprisonment. In December 2006, the Bucharest Court of Appeals overturned Ion Antonescu’s conviction for certain crimes.33 It decreed that the war against the USSR to free Bessarabia (Moldavia) and northern Bukovina (taken by the Soviets in 1939) was legitimate.