SD officer Klausnitzer, who had questioned Kauder in Vienna, testified during the SMERSH/MGB interrogations: ‘Klatt was arrested [in Vienna] on suspicion of playing a double game. He was accused of having been in contact with British intelligence and feeding the German intelligence with British disinformation. Additionally, Kauder was accused of embezzling and taking for himself the money he received from the German intelligence.’31 Apparently, Klausnitzer was well informed about Kauder’s contacts with the British through Bandi (Andor) Grosz (aliases André György, Andreas Greiner, and ‘Trillium’ in the American Dogwood spy network created by Alfred Schwartz).32 Grosz was a Czech Jew and a shady triple agent who from January 1942 onwards was a go-between for Jewish organizations in Hungary and other German-occupied territories and Allied intelligence circles in Turkey. As for embezzling, the valuables confiscated by the Austrian customs supported this accusation.
However, Kauder told his British interrogators that Klausnitzer questioned him mostly about the Hungarians, Hatz, and Momotaro Enomoto, a Japanese journalist and spy in Sofia, whom Kauder knew well.33 Possibly, Klausnitzer also mentioned Hatz and Enomoto during interrogations in SMERSH because later MGB investigators accused Hatz of spy contacts with Kauder and Enomoto. In any case, Klausnitzer insisted that ‘based on interrogations, I had an impression that Klatt did not collect intelligence, and the information he sent out was just a creation of his imagination… Klatt frankly said that he would not have been working for the German intelligence if he was not able to make a lot of money. I concluded that Klatt was an adventurer, a swindler and he gambled for getting big money’.34
Klausnitzer considered Longin (Lang, as he called him) to have been more important in the spy network than Kauder:
According to the photo I’ve seen, Ira Lang has a high forehead, wide face, is snub-nosed, has deeply positioned eyes, wide mouth, he is about 48–50 years old. He should have been an officer. Klatt recruited him in Budapest and brought him to Sofia. Apparently, he sent people equipped with radio transmitters… from there to Russia through Romania…
Lang was the main person, while Klatt was only an impresario… [Lang] received 220 pieces of gold per month. With the help of Turkul’s organization he obtained very important information that immediately was sent to Berlin. It was noticed that he got the exceptionally valuable data that influenced the German tactics.35
The ‘pieces of gold’ meant coins. As Kauder told the British, ‘beginning in November 1944, Longin refused [to accept] hundred dollar bills. He demanded his salary in gold coins—napoleons. Longin began his spy career at 207 coins a month; the last payment… was 350 gold napoleons’.36 Therefore, the whole business was quite profitable for Longin.
After interrogating Klausnitzer and the other ‘Klatt Bureau’ prisoners in 1945, in the spring of 1946 SMERSH operatives tried to kidnap Kauder in Salzburg, in the American occupational zone of Austria, but this attempt failed.37
In July 1947, after analyzing all information the investigators collected, the MGB sent a 61-page-long Memorandum on the KLATT-MAX Case to Stalin.38 It included the following main conclusions.
First, only eight percent of all ‘Max’ messages contained real information, while most of them were far from reality. This was not something new. Already in April 1944 Beria signed a report to Stalin that stated that the analysis of radio messages sent from Sofia to Budapest and from Sofia to Vienna from autumn 1941 until spring 1944, intercepted by the NKVD, NKGB, and SMERSH, demonstrated that most of Klatt’s data on the Red Army detachments and their movements were pure fantasies.39
Second, according to Soviet counterintelligence radio control, there were no attempts to send radio messages from Soviet territory to Sofia during the war. Additionally, contrary to Wagner’s suspicion, the MGB investigators found that Kauder and Longin did not receive information from the Soviet Legation in Sofia.
The MGB investigators suggested that Kauder might have prepared messages by himself, possibly using three main sources. He could receive eight percent of reliable information from the Russian émigrés who interrogated Soviet POWs for the Germans. The émigrés who worked in foreign embassies in Sofia could also have access to information on the Soviet Union. The MGB report mentioned the Swedish Legation as an example. Possibly, Sweden was singled out because at the end of 1943, the Soviet Foreign Affairs Commissariat asked the Swedes to recall their minister and military attaché from Moscow, accusing them of supplying the German Supreme Command with secret information about the Red Army.40 Finally, Kauder might have bought some information from German intelligence officers. Therefore, the MGB investigators basically concluded that Kauder concocted or invented the texts of his cables to Vienna and Berlin. However, it is hard to believe that one person could create thousands of cables by himself during a short period of time.
Still a Mystery
In the meantime, Kauder, Longin, and General Turkul were investigated by the American and British security services. In 1946 and 1947, the American officer Arnold Silver and the British MI5 officer ‘Klop’ Ustinov (the father of Peter Ustinov, the actor) interrogated these three individuals. Ustinov’s real name was Jona Baron von Ustinov, but for some reason he hated his name so much that he amazingly called himself ‘Klop’ which means ‘a bedbug’ in Russian. The two interrogators concluded that the whole of Kauder’s network was a creation of Soviet intelligence through which it fed the Abwehr and FHO with sophisticated disinformation.41 According to Kauder, already in 1941 he suspected that Joseph Schultz, his contact with Turkul and the network that Turkul and Longin supposedly had in the Soviet Union, was a Soviet agent.42 Kauder claimed that Schultz admitted this himself at the end of the war. However, Schultz disappeared and could not be traced. It is also possible that Schultz was Kauder’s invention, a ‘red herring’ to distract Silver and Ustinov’s attention to Longin and Turkul.
Despite the conclusions of the Soviet and Anglo-American investigators, it is still unclear where Kauder’s information originated from and what part Kauder played in creating the texts of cables. Apparently, through his people Longin controlled most of the materials that were sent from Ankara to Sofia. As the American investigator Silver characterized him, Longin was capable of any trick: ‘Ira Longin was an intelligent liar who could spin off 60 cover stories in as many minutes.’43 Interestingly, in March 1944 when Turkul came to Budapest, he began to suspect Longin of working for the Soviets.44 However, there is still no conclusive proof that Soviet intelligence ran Longin.
Finally, the notorious Pavel Sudoplatov, head of the NKVD/NKGB terrorist directorate during the war (its function was similar to the Abwehr II), created more confusion, claiming in his memoir that his Moscow agent Aleksandr Dem’yanov (alias ‘Heine’) was Kauder’s ‘Max’.45 But the memoir of Dem’yanov’s wife, who was also a Soviet agent, as well as other Russian recollections, do not support this identity.46 Additionally, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Kauder had already sent 600 ‘Max’ messages to Vienna, and the Abwehr clearly identified two ‘Max’ agents, referring to ‘Heine’ as ‘Max North’, and to Kauder, as ‘Max South’.47 Therefore, Dem’yanov had nothing in common with Kauder’s ‘Max’.