Investigation of Soviet embassy in Berlin in 1941

[K.Kocjancic]

After the evacuation of Soviet diplomatic staff in 1941, Germans went to the embassy. In "Karawanken Bote" there was an article, that they found crematorium, cells, radio equipment, weapons, ... Does anyone know of any such report, as for me this is quite far-fetched?

Regards,
Klemen

[Bokkop]

David Irving makes the same claim, with some further detail, in respect of the Soviet embassies in Berlin and Paris -- cf Hitler's War, Germany 1939-45, ch 13.

Also see viewtopic.php?t=46073

[K.Kocjancic]

Hi! Thank you for the source. I got my copy and Irving wrote this (Hitler's War and the War Path, pp. 363-364):

Heydrich’s report to Ribbentrop related: ‘There were twenty-six Soviet Russians in the building. Five of them (four men and a woman) had locked themselves into strong rooms specially shielded by heavy armourplate steel doors; they were busy destroying documents and other materials in four furnaces specially constructed and installed in there. They could not be prevented from doing this, as even using special technical gear it would still have taken hours to force the rooms open.’
Heydrich’s officers were less impressed by the haul of radio gear, time fuses, detonators, and explosives than by the furnaces found in the special wing of the building used by the GPU, the Soviet secret police. Investigation indicated that they had been used for cremating bodies.
Ribbentrop brought this report to Hitler, but Hitler had already heard the details firsthand from Admiral Canaris, one of whose department heads had himself inspected the Paris building. He had recorded: ‘The completely isolated wing of the embassy in which the GPU’s offices and execution chambers were located can only be described as a criminals’ and murderers’ workshop of the most outstanding technical perfection: soundproof walls, heavy, electrically operated steel doors, hidden spy-holes and slots for guns to be fired from one room into another, an electrical furnace, and a bathtub in which the corpses were cut up, completed the macabre inventory of these rooms, in addition to housebreaking implements, poison capsules, and the like. Thus there is every probability that . . . many an awkward White Russian émigré or opponent of the Soviets in France vanished in this way – they literally “went up in smoke.”’
Hitler ordered the Soviet embassy buildings in Berlin searched. In the Soviet trade mission headquarters at Litsenburgerstrasse, the same armoured strongrooms with the same furnaces were found, and again there were stocks of guns and ammunition. In a cynical diary entry Goebbels wrote: ‘These Soviet embassies are in fact the refuges of criminals. If a criminal gang comes to power, then they will use criminal means to conduct their policies. It is a good thing that Bolshevism is being got rid of once and for all in our eastern campaign. There was, after all, no room for the two of us in Europe in the long run.’