If this is true and all the bones of the adults, including both jaws, were in place, Shirokov and Kovalenko did not destroy the bones of Hitler, Eva Braun, and Magda Goebbels, but of somebody else. Also, it would be very unusual for a KGB officer like Kovalenko to misinform KGB leaders regarding the location where the ashes were thrown away. Therefore, there are still unanswered questions about what became of Hitler’s remains.
Back in 1945, SMERSH had many other problems besides finding Hitler’s body, including discipline in the Soviet troops. On May 11, 1945, Meshik, deputy commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front in charge of the management of civil affairs, reported to the Soviet high command in Berlin: ‘Despite Comrade Stalin’s [April 20, 1945] order about the necessity of having a more lenient attitude toward the Germans, unfortunately, robberies of the local population and rapes of German women continue.’42
Capturing Andrei Vlasov
Unexpectedly, after the fall of Berlin, fighting with the Germans continued in Prague. On May 5, the Czech resistance broadcast a call to the Czech nation to rise up against the Germans. The next day, the radio also appealed to the American troops that were not far from Prague. The Czechs did not know that the Americans and Soviets had agreed upon a line of demarcation according to which Prague was in the Soviet zone.
On May 7, Waffen SS and SS Panzer troops stationed outside the city launched several severe attacks on the insurgents. Within a few hours the situation had become grave for the resistance. Suddenly, the uprising gained support from the 1st Division of Andrei Vlasov’s Russian Liberation Army (ROA) under the command of Major General Sergei Bunyachenko.43 A. I. Romanov, a member of the UKR SMERSH of the 1st Ukrainian Front, recalled:
Vlasov’s men took Prague by storm, took many German prisoners, SS troops in particular, and raised two flags on the town hall roof; the Czech national flag and the blue and white flag of St. Andrew, the flag of Free Russia. Vlasov was well aware that he and his men could not remain in Prague. Our [Soviet] tanks were already within a day’s journey of the city. Behind the tanks came the Smersh operational groups of the First, Second, and Fourth Ukrainian Fronts.44
On May 7, Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner, appointed commander in chief of the German Army by Hitler on April 27, shortly before his suicide, ordered his troops to retreat to the west and deserted the army. He tried to escape to Bavaria by plane, but the plane crashed in Austria. In Prague, the SS troops continued to fight.
On May 11, troops of the three Ukrainian fronts completed the Prague Offensive. A week later Schörner was captured by the Americans, and on May 26, they handed him over to SMERSH.45 Schörner was sent to Moscow and became one of GUKR SMERSH’s important prisoners, along with Fritzsche, Voss, and Stahel, who were interrogated as possible defendants in Nuremberg.
SMERSH operatives of the three Ukrainian fronts immediately began making arrests in the city. Nicola Sinevirsky recalled the night before the SMERSH Operational Group of the 4th Ukrainian Front moved into the city: ‘The SMERSH men were preparing themselves for a big purge… Prague was… the headquarters for Russian émigrés, Ukrainian separatists, and Czech politicians of all shades and descriptions… SMERSH agents had begun to show a far greater interest in Czechs and the anti-Communist element in Russian émigré circles, than in the Germans.’46
Sinevirsky was right. Between the two world wars, Prague became a capital of Russian and Ukrainian émigré culture.47 In 1925, the number of emigrants from Russia was more than 25,000, 9,000 of whom were Ukrainians. Russian periodicals, literary magazines, and numerous books were published. There were Russian departments in Charles University, the Pedagogical Institute, the Institute of Agricultural Cooperation, the Institute of Commercial Knowledge, and there were also the Russian Public University, Archaeological Institute, the Russian Archive, the Museum of Russian Emigration, a gymnasium, and a seminary. These institutions were funded by the ‘Russian Action’ program of the Czechoslovak president, Tomas Masaryk, and his administration. Masaryk naively believed that the Bolshevik regime would not last long, and that after the fall of the Soviet Union the Russians from Prague would create an administration in the new democratic Russia. In 2003, the Czech government proclaimed May 11, 1945, as ‘the day of the destruction of Russian intellectuals’ in Prague.
Some SMERSH arrestees in Prague were immediately interrogated. Sinevirsky gave examples when he translated an interrogation that started during the day and continued through the night:
Vlasta sat silent, motionless, quiet.
‘Speak! You whore!’ The Captain [Stepanov] moved toward her and caressed her hair…
Vlasta wept silently.
‘Look here,’ Stepanov continued, ‘you are a beauty and there is nobility in your whole being. But if you are not going to answer my questions, I will simply beat all the teeth out of your goddamned mouth.’
[…]
Without a word of warning, the Captain slugged her. His fist smacked into the girl’s teeth. She reeled, but did not fall. He hit her a second time. This time she fell to the floor… The Captain kicked the prostrate girl in the face. His heavy boots left an angry mark and the blood began to flow from the cuts they left. He began trampling on her breasts in a mad dance. Blood streaked the girl’s face and ran down the front of her dress…
It was three o’clock the next morning before Captain Stepanov completed his preliminary questioning of Vlasta.48
Many arrestees were sent to Moscow, and their fates are not well known. Sergei Maslov, a leader of the emigrant Labor Agrarian Party, and Alfred Bem, a historian of Russian literature, were famous within the Russian community. SMERSH operatives arrested Maslov after he had just been released from a German concentration camp. According to rumors, the operatives executed him soon after his arrest. Bem was brought to Moscow and sentenced; he later died in a Soviet labor camp.
On June 9, SMERSH operatives arrested Prince Pyotr Dolgorukov.49 He and his twin brother, Pavel, were among the founders of the liberal Constitutional Democratic (Cadet) Party in Czarist Russia. After the Bolshevik revolution, Pavel became one of the organizers of the White movement. In exile, Pavel Dolgorukov continued his political activity. In 1926, after illegally crossing the Soviet border with Romania, he was arrested, charged with plotting the assassination of Pyotr Voikov in Warsaw (see Abakumov’s above-mentioned accusation of Kutepov Jr.), and executed in June 1927.
On account of his brother, Pyotr Dolgorukov’s fate was sealed. He was accused as follows: ‘In November 1920, he organized anti-Soviet and counterrevolutionary formations in Czechoslovakia, and from 1939 on, chaired the “Union of Russian Emigrant Organizations in Czechoslovakia.”’50 The OSO of the NKVD sentenced Dolgorukov to five years in prison. In September 1946, he arrived in Vladimir Prison.51 Three years later the OSO of the MGB extended his term, and on November 10, 1951, the 86-year-old prince died in the Vladimir Prison hospital.