On February 12, 1945, two days before the Red Army took over Budapest, Kauder and his staff members were brought to Vienna. Austrian customs officers interrogated Kauder on suspicion of planning an escape to Switzerland.15 They confiscated his three metal boxes with cash, as well as an expensive stamp collection and jewelry that belonged to his mother and his mistress, Ivolia Kalman. Besides these valuables, Kauder declared that he had left 252 golden coins and 5,800 Swiss francs in the bank of Csorna.
Finally, Colonel Wiesel, head of Ast Vienna, arrested Kauder on Schellenberg’s order.16 SS-Hauptsturmführer Alfred Klausnitzer, who specially arrived from Berlin, continued interrogations, now about the Bureau. After being imprisoned for two months, Kauder was released because of the approaching Red Army.
Kauder’s Channels
While Kauder, Ivolia Kalman, Ira Longin, and General Turkul were caught by the Americans and British in 1945 and then intensely interrogated, SMERSH operatives arrested staff members of the ‘Klatt Bureau’, including Kauder’s wife, Gerda Filitz. This is known from a short description by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev of the still secret Soviet archival file ‘Klatt’ in their book The Crown Jewels.17 The file contains materials from the SMERSH/MGB investigation of the Kauder case conducted in 1945–47. The SD investigator Klausnitzer was also captured and interrogated by SMERSH. Additionally, Franz von Bentivegni, former head of the Abwehr III, and Otto Armster, former head of the Ast Vienna, were questioned about Kauder.
Recently several excerpts from the transcripts of interrogations of these prisoners were published in Russian.18 On April 19, 1945 Gerda Filitz testified: ‘The “Klatt Bureau” was subordinated to the central intelligence organ Luftwaffe-1 Abwehr [Ast] in Vienna. At first Klatt was in contact with Lieutenant Colonel [Roland] von Wahl-[Welskirch] and then with Colonel Wiese… Additionally, “Klatt” had a direct connection with Berlin through SS-Brigadenführer [Walter] Schellenberg.’19 Von Wahl-Welskirch, whom Filitz mentioned, headed the referat Abwehr I Luft (intelligence on the air force) in the Ast Vienna. He was a friend of Kauder’s mother and employed Kauder in the Abwehr in 1939.20
According to Filitz, Ira Longin (she called him Langin) played the main role in providing Kauder with information about the Soviet Union:
The White Russian emigrant Langin Ivan [?], alias ‘Longo’, a Russian, an officer of the old [Czar’s] and White armies, emigrated [from Russia] in 1919 and lived in Budapest… While the Bureau was located in Budapest, Klatt personally involved Langin in its work.
Langin was connected with a counterrevolutionary organization, located in the Soviet Union… At first Langin was in contact [with the organization] through messengers, but from 1942 on, he contacted it by radio.
There was an agent who radioed cables from a military detachment located in the town of Tiflis [Tbilisi, Georgia]. A Russian military counterrevolutionary organization provided him with materials, and he sent the information to the ‘Klatt Bureau’. I know that this agent worked with Langin until February 12, 1945, the day when the Gestapo arrested me.21
Later Filitz added that ‘Klatt didn’t know personally Langin’s people who provided him with information’.22 Valentina Deutsch, the arrested Kauder’s radio operator, added that Longin was subordinate to General Turkul. She described Kauder’s system of cables:
After receiving intelligence from the Soviet Union, Klatt used to personally look it through and make some changes, mostly editorial. Usually, Klatt took out the details that could have been unfavorable for the German high command. Then he gave the text of the radiogram to ciphering operators…
Klatt always marked Lang’s radiograms with the intelligence on the Soviet Union by [the name] ‘Max’…
Klatt marked the data about the British troops in the Near East by the name ‘Moritz’, the data about Turkey he marked ‘Anker’ or ‘Anatol’, and about Egypt, by the word ‘Ibis’.23
However, only Kauder, whom SMERSH interrogators did not have in their hands, could identify the meaning of his marks. Later he described to the British interrogators his system of sorting out cables from Turkey.24 ‘Ibis’ was a ship that sailed in the Black and Aegean seas, and Kauder paid the captain of this ship, who was a friend of Ira Longin, for gathering and transmitting the intelligence information. Most of these telegrams were sent to Sofia by the coastal police station in the port of the city of Burgos (Bulgaria).
In Ankara the Spanish pro-German diplomat Pedro Prat y Soutzo, a friend of General Turkul, agreed to use the Spanish Embassy for sending cables to Sofia. His assistant was trained in Sofia as a radio operator. George Romanoff, another of Ira Longin’s friends, used to bring the intelligence materials to the Embassy, and the Germans paid him for the information. These telegrams Kauder marked ‘Anchor’.
The same Romanoff also provided another of Kauder’s agents, his old friend Wilhelm Goetz, with the intelligence information. Goetz was a Jewish businessman from Budapest who had had problems with the Germans. With the help of Colonel Otto Hatz, the Hungarian Military Attaché to Sofia from 1941 and Ankara from 1943, Goetz was employed at the Hungarian Embassy in Ankara and sent cables from there. Kauder marked them ‘Islam’. However, in October 1944 Goetz defected to the British.
In his testimony Kauder mentioned that Hatz ‘was glad to help me, and he was generously rewarded for the help’. In fact, Hatz, a triple agent, was involved in many affairs. In Turkey he participated in the unsuccessful peace negotiations between Hungary and the Western Allies, about which he also informed ‘Dr. Delius’ (Wagner) and Adolf Beckerle, the German Ambassador to Sofia.25 In January 1944, Hatz even had a personal meeting with Admiral Canaris in an attempt to work out a joint strategy of negotiations with the Americans.26 Allen Dulles, head of the OSS office in Switzerland, reported to Washington: ‘Hatz is reliable pro-German. However, he is short in funds and has numerous affairs with women. There is also an unconfirmed report to the effect that he is in touch with Jews who are paid by Hungarian Intelligence and that he shares in the profits which he makes from smuggling currency.’27 Soviet military intelligence was also well informed about the Hungarian negotiations with the Western Allies in Turkey.
According to Kauder, cables were sent by radio only in urgent situations; more frequently information was delivered to Sofia by couriers who flew once a week by Lufthansa. The Press Attaché at the Spanish Embassy, Vladimir Velikotny, a White Russian, prepared the reports. They were sent in sealed envelopes from the Hungarian Military Attaché in Turkey to the Hungarian Military Attaché in Sofia, from whom Kauder received the reports. Apparently, Hatz organized this channel, but in October 1944, he was called back to Budapest and transferred to a commanding military post.
On November 7, 1944, Hatz defected to the Soviets by plane and brought with him documents about the Hungarian Army and military fortifications on the Danube River.28 Most probably, Hatz spoke Russian because in his SMERSH/MGB documents he is mentioned with a patronymic name, Otto Samuilovich Hatz, as was done for foreigners who knew Russian. Hatz wrote four leaflets in Hungarian and made a record addressing the Hungarian troops and asking them to follow his example and to surrender to the Red Army troops that encircled Budapest.29 In retaliation, the Germans arrested Hatz’s parents and brother and sent them to a concentration camp in Germany, where his mother died. After the Red Army took over Budapest, Hatz assisted at the Soviet Military Commandant’s Office. In April 1945, SMERSH operatives arrested him and from mid-May 1945, he was kept in Moscow investigation prisons. Interestingly, in October 1946 he was put for a while with Hans Piekenbrock, former head of Abwehr I.30