We—I mean the British, French and Americans—simply could not figure out why he [Vyshinsky] kept coming to Nuremberg. In the end, not understanding much about the special features of the Soviet state structure, we decided that he was still the Procurator-General and this most likely explained why he was giving instructions during the trial to the prosecutors representing the Soviet side. Strictly speaking, there was nothing for him to do here in this capacity, instructions from Moscow could have been delivered another way, but, strangely enough, his visits somehow did not surprise us.22
In the absence of Vyshinsky, Rychkov chaired meetings of the Commission in Moscow. Ivan Lavrov was the Secretary of the Commission. Colonel of Justice Dmitrii Karev, a member of the Soviet team in Nuremberg, usually recorded notes of the meetings.
By August 29, the international list of the alleged major war criminals contained twenty-four names, starting with Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering.23 To bring Fritzsche safely to Nuremberg was the job of SMERSH.
The Likhachev Team
In early September 1945, Sergei Kartashov, head of the 2nd GUKR SMERSH Department, arrived in Nuremberg.24 He informed Nikitchenko and American officials that Fritzsche and Raeder would be presented in court. Back in Moscow, on September 10, Kartashov had written a detailed report to Abakumov giving his recommendations on how SMERSH representatives should organize their control of events at the pending trial.
A special group of investigators, culled from within GUKR SMERSH, would coordinate the preparation of materials for the trial.25 Led by the above-mentioned deputy head of the 6th Department, Mikhail Likhachev, it also included two main subordinates (mentioned in previous chapters): Pavel Grishaev of the 4th Department and Boris Solovov of the 2nd Department. They were young but experienced interrogators.
Mikhail Likhachev, born in 1913, joined the NKVD in 1937.26 During the war, he made his career in the Investigation Department of the UOO (by February 1942, he was already deputy head of this department) and then in the 6th Department of the GUKR SMERSH. Likhachev did not know German and spoke to the prisoners through a translator.
Pavel Grishaev, born in 1918, joined the NKVD in 1939 as a Kremlin Guard.27 In 1942–44, he served as investigator in the OO NKVD, then UKR SMERSH of the Central/1st Belorussian Front. In December 1944, Grishaev was recalled to the GUKR SMERSH in Moscow, where he became senior investigator in the 2nd Section of the 4th Department. Nikolai Kuleshov, head of this department, was known as one of the cruelest OO investigators who interrogated the Soviet military leaders arrested in June 1941. Possibly learning by example, Grishaev also became a ruthless interrogator.
Boris Solovov, even younger, was born in 1921. In 1941, at the beginning of the war, he joined the NKVD. In 1943–46, he was an authorized officer (operupolnomochennyi) in the 1st Section of Kartashov’s 2nd Department of the GUKR SMERSH. Both Grishaev and Solovov spoke fluent German.
In Nuremberg, the group became known as the Likhachev team. The other investigators of the 1st Section of Kartashov’s department, especially those with a good knowledge of German, were also involved in the work of this team in Moscow—Captain Daniil Kopelyansky, Lieutenants Gushchin and Oleg Bubnov, Junior Lieutenant Soloviev (not to be confused with Solovov), Authorized Officer Anna Stesnova, and a translator, Maria Potapova, prepared documents for the trial.28
On October 12, 1945, Bogdan Kobulov, Vasilii Chernyshev (NKVD Deputy Head), and Abakumov signed a joint letter addressed to Beria requesting his order to transport Fritzsche and Raeder from Moscow to Nuremberg. Three days later the Likhachev team brought Fritzsche to Berlin.29 Several cadets from the Military Counterintelligence School under Senior Lieutenant Gennadii Samoilov served as guards. The group also included a counterintelligence officer, Fyodor Denisov, and four female translators: Yelena Aleksandrova-Dmitrieva, Valentina Valitskaya, Olga Svidovskaya-Tabachnikova, and Elizaveta Shcheveleva-Stenina.30 These translators later assisted Soviet prosecutors and judges.
Before Raeder was taken to Berlin, he and his wife were held at one of the special NKVD mansions near Moscow. When the NKVD officers arrived to take him to the trial, they told him he would be back in a few days. Colonel Pavel Tupikov, head of the NKVD Counterintelligence Department Smersh, along with Turaev, a military translator, escorted Raeder separately from Fritzsche.31 After Tupikov left Nuremberg in January 1946, Grishaev continued to interrogate Raeder.
The two defendants and the Soviet security officers who held them lived in a mansion near Potsdam under the guard of military cadets who arrived with Likhachev. On October 18, 1945, Grishaev and Solovov presented the two defendants with the indictment signed by the Chief of Counsel of the International Military Tribunal. In response, Fritzsche immediately wrote the following:
I, Hans Fritzsche, have received today, October 18, 1945, at 19:50 Berlin time, the Indictment of the Chief of Counsel of the International Military Tribunal, a statement regarding my right to defense, a list of German lawyers, and the Rules of the International Military Tribunal in the German language. The above documents have been handed to me by Red Army Officer Grishajeff, acting on orders of the International Military Tribunal, who advised me in German on the contents of the documents and on my right to defense.32
Later, before the trial, Fritzsche expressed his opinion of the indictment: ‘It is the most terrible indictment of all time. Only one thing is more terrible: the indictment the German people will make for the abuse of their idealism.’33
Admiral Raeder, who, like Fritzsche, mentioned Grishaev in his statement about the indictment, later recalled in his memoirs: ‘This was the first time I had heard of war crimes.’34 After receiving the indictment, he asked for the notes he had left in Moscow. After a few days he received the notes and the text of the deposition he was supposed to sign. Raeder described the situation: ‘When I examined the notes and deposition, however, I refused to sign such a statement since it was [a] fabricated jumble of excerpts from my notes, taken out of context, erroneously translated, and generally misleading.’
Raeder continued: ‘A few days later Fritzsche and I were taken by automobile from Berlin to Nuremberg… Like the other defendants who had preceded us or who came after us, we were incarcerated in individual cells of the Nuremberg Criminal Prison, under glaring electric lights.’35
For the next five months, the Likhachev team became a SMERSH watchdog that controlled the Soviet delegation. Officially Grishaev and Solovov were assigned as investigators for the Chief Prosecutor of the USSR, General Rudenko. In fact, they intervened in the work of prosecutors. On November 16, 1945, at a meeting of the Vyshinsky Commission, Kobulov announced: ‘Our people, who are in Nuremberg at the moment, report to us… [that] Goering, Jodl, Keitel, and the others behave provocatively during interrogations, and that their answers frequently contain anti-Soviet declarations, while our investigator C.[omrade] [Georgii] Aleksandrov [head of the Soviet group of interrogators] responds to them weakly.’36
Three days later Vyshinsky rebutted: ‘Neither the defendants nor witnesses attacked the USSR or me personally during interrogations… The described incident took place on October 18 [1945] in my presence during the interrogation of the defendant [Hans] Frank [former Governor-General in Poland] by the American Lieutenant Colonel Hinkel. After the interrogation, Frank, in fact, called Hinkel ‘a pig’… In my opinion, this report [from Nuremberg] misinformed the government.’37