What was the Red Orchestra?
The Red Orchestra was an espionage group composed of three different branches: 1) the Trepper Group, based in Belgium, France, and other areas of western Europe, 2) the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group in Germany, and 3) the Red Three, based in Switzerland. The name 'Red Orchestra' was an umbrella term used by the Nazi German Reichssicherheitsharptampt or the RSHA, the counter-intelligence arm of the SS, who referred to resistance radio operators as 'pianists', their transmitters as 'pianos', and their supervisors as 'conductors'. The 'Red' part of the name refers to the group's ties to the Soviet Union (or USSR), who's army was called the Red Army.
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The Trepper Group
USSR propaganda poster reading 'Beat Hitler!'
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The Trepper group was led by Leopald Trepper, a Polish born Jew and a communist activist who joined the Red Army intelligence service during World War II, and was later assigned to the NKVD, the USSR's espionage and secret police unit. Before the outbreak of World War II, Trepper had already established a group of communist sympathizers and leftist political activists, which he converted into a spy ring that gathered Nazi secrets for the Red Army after the war began. In 1939 Trepper was sent to Brussels, Belgium, posing as a Canadian industrialist, to establish a commercial cover for a spy network. After Belgium fell to the Germans, he was moved to Paris where he established the cover companies of Simex and Simexco. In France, Trepper controlled 7 GRU (Russian main intelligence agency) units. As the head of the company Simex, he was able to communicate with highly placed Germans, and collect data on German troop deployments, industrial production, raw material availability, aircraft production, and tank designs. Simex also communicated with the Todt organization (a large Nazi engineering group) which gave him information on German military fortifications, troop movements, and supplied some of Trepper's units with useful passes to let them travel safely through western Europe. Trepper was arrested in Paris December 5, 1942. He agreed to work for the Germans and began sending disinformation to Moscow, but it is likely that this disinformation was laced with hidden warning signals. He finally managed to escape and hid with the French Resistance in 1943. Operations by the Trepper Group ended by spring of 1943. Even though most of Trepper's agents were executed Trepper managed to survive the war.
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The Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Group
The Schulze-Boysen/Harnack Group was created through the merging of the groups led by Arvid Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen. Members ranged from Communists and social democrats to former Nazis, and to people without a political party. There were blue and white collar workers in the group, as well as students and servicemen. The group was based primarily in Berlin. Harro Schulze-Boysen hated the Nazis but decided to join the Luftwaffe (Nazi air force) as a kind of cover, and he later joined the Nazi party as well as further cover. The group was also led by Arvid Harnack, who had studied legal science and political economy in college but was no longer allowed to publish after the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The group was eventually broken up, but not before giving intelligence findings to the U.S. embassy in Berlin, posting anti-Nazi posters in railway stations and helping people to flee Germany.
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Harro (left) and wife Libertas (right) Schulze-Boysen
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The Red Three
Alexander Radó
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The Red Three, based in Switzerland, was led by Alexander Radó (code named DORA) and had ties to Russian intelligence. Though Radó was the group's leader, there were three subgroup leaders, Rachel Dübendorfur (codename SISSY), Georges Blun (LONG), and Otto Pünter (PAKBO). The Red Three sent an estimated 5,000+ messages in three years to Russian intelligence, gathering information in Switzerland and from a few contacts in Germany. Radó was also in touch with the Lucy Spy Ring*, which had very valuable contacts in Germany. In 1944 and 1945, Radó was recalled to the USSR and charged with spying for Britian and the U.S.A. He was imprisoned for eight years, but released after USSR leader Josef Stalin's death in March of 1953.
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*The Lucy spy ring was another group based in Switzerland that had ties to British intelligence.