Lucy Spy Ring

[vonwilson]

Does anyone here have any modern information about the 'Lucy Spy Ring' that opperated at the top levels of the german military and was a pipeline direct to Stalin.
Some people believe that it was leaked from Bletchley Park and made to look like it came from the Germans, other believe it was a high level leak from Canaris.
Anyone like to contribute?

[ljadw]

There is something on The Dupuy Institute :Soviet intelligence in the Battle of Kursk

[ljadw]

From what I have read as sofarI think that the importance of the Lucy spy ring has been much exagerated :exemple I have seen no proof for the wild stories that the Soviets knew all of the German plan of Citadelle (hundreds of pages )due to the Lucy spy ring . I think that this is one exemple of the innumerable and ineradicable myths about WW ii that are circulating today( Hitler sleeping at D Day,Radar decisive for the Battle of Brittain,Ultra decisive for the Battle of the Atlantic ,Fortitude ,........)

[ljadw]

From 'Der Spiegel ":'Werther hat nie gelebt' :a very long article,sadly enough in German ;some exemples of the "reliability " of the informations:in 1942 :FM von Bock was appointed commander in chief of the army,while Hitler occuoied these function since december 1941!1943 :Dietl commanding the 14th army ,the 1st Panzer army:VonKleist .....

[ljadw]

Again von Der Spiegel:Am 8 April meldete er,die Kursk Offensive sei"bis Anfang Mai" verschoben worden .In Wahrheit befahl Hitler erst am 15 April ,mit dem Angriff am 3. Mai zu beginnen . Am 20.April berecitte er,der Angriffstermin sei abermals von Amfang Mai auf ein späteres Datum verlegt worden .In Wahrheit besagte Hitlers Befehl zu jener Zeit noch,am 3. Mai sei anzugreifen .Am 29.April nannte er einen neuen Angriffstermin:12 Juni. In Wahrheit hatte Hitler zwei Tage zuvor den 5. Mai als Eröffnungstag festgelegt . Sclimmer noch für Moskau:Zehn Tage vor dem Losschlagen der deutschen Verbände sagte er Hitlers Großoffensive ab . A rough translation:On april 8,he was reporting that Citadelle was postponed till beginning may,in reality :only on may 15 Hitler ordered to begin with the attack on may 3 .On may 20 he reported D Day was again postponed from beginning may to a later day .In reality:Hitler ordered on that day to attack on may 3 . On april 29 he reported a new date for the attack:june 12 ;in reality Hitler fixed on april 27 the day for the attack as may 5 .Something worse for Moscaw:10 days before the attack he reported that Citadelle was cancelled .

[bf109 emil]

From what I have read as sofarI think that the importance of the Lucy spy ring has been much exagerated :exemple I have seen no proof for the wild stories that the Soviets knew all of the German plan of Citadelle (hundreds of pages )due to the Lucy spy ring . I think that this is one exemple of the innumerable and ineradicable myths about WW ii that are circulating today( Hitler sleeping at D Day,Radar decisive for the Battle of Brittain,Ultra decisive for the Battle of the Atlantic ,Fortitude ,........)

their are numerous books on the Lucy Spy Ring and the info it provided at different times to the Soviet Union...NOT a MYTH...information for Lucy Spy Ring was passed on by to the SU from Switzerland from information obtained by Gen Erich Fellgiebel from OKH, whom was hanged in Sept. 44 due to July 20th bomb plot


numerous facts also point to SU knowing prior to where the Kursk/Citadel attack was going to be, with the help of the Lucy Spy Ring enabling the SU to build To prepare for the defense, Zhukov summoned 300,000 civilians and built a series of defenses including tank traps, mine fields, and various defensive positions. Militarily, Zhukov wielded a strength consisted of 1,300,000 men, 3,600 tanks, 20,000 pieces of artillery, and 2,400 aircraft.
defensive position the SU would not have and could not have completed without prior knowledge about and where said battle was going to commence and exact date known and attack orders, thank to Gen. Fellgiebel

[ljadw]

From what I have read as sofarI think that the importance of the Lucy spy ring has been much exagerated :exemple I have seen no proof for the wild stories that the Soviets knew all of the German plan of Citadelle (hundreds of pages )due to the Lucy spy ring . I think that this is one exemple of the innumerable and ineradicable myths about WW ii that are circulating today( Hitler sleeping at D Day,Radar decisive for the Battle of Brittain,Ultra decisive for the Battle of the Atlantic ,Fortitude ,........)

their are numerous books on the Lucy Spy Ring and the info it provided at different times to the Soviet Union...NOT a MYTH...information for Lucy Spy Ring was passed on by to the SU from Switzerland from information obtained by Gen Erich Fellgiebel from OKH, whom was hanged in Sept. 44 due to July 20th bomb plot


numerous facts also point to SU knowing prior to where the Kursk/Citadel attack was going to be, with the help of the Lucy Spy Ring enabling the SU to build To prepare for the defense, Zhukov summoned 300,000 civilians and built a series of defenses including tank traps, mine fields, and various defensive positions. Militarily, Zhukov wielded a strength consisted of 1,300,000 men, 3,600 tanks, 20,000 pieces of artillery, and 2,400 aircraft.
defensive position the SU would not have and could not have completed without prior knowledge about and where said battle was going to commence and exact date known and attack orders, thank to Gen. Fellgiebel

Sorry,I don't buy it :that there are numerous books on the Lucy spy ring does not proof anything,there are still today books proclaiming that Prokhorovka was the biggest tank battle of WW II
That the Russians knew of Citadel,does not proof that it was due to the Lucy spy ring .
I should like to see some proof that
1)Fellgiebel,thiele and von Gersdorff were Soviet spies
2)that they were able
a)to obtain the detailed orders for Citadel
b)to encode these orders (hundred of pages )
c)to transmit these encoded orders (hundred of pages ) to Switserland
And in Switserland,Roessler had to decode these messages,to encode them again and to send them to Moscow .
You can imagine the time and staff needed for all this .
Last point :even von Manstein did not believe in his memoirs that the plans of Citadel were betrayed to the Russians (if there was anything true of it,he would have use it as an excuse for the defeat of Kursk )

[bf109 emil]

I should like to see some proof that
1)Fellgiebel,thiele and von Gersdorff were Soviet spies
2)that they were able
a)to obtain the detailed orders for Citadel
b)to encode these orders (hundred of pages )
c)to transmit these encoded orders (hundred of pages ) to Switserland
And in Switserland,Roessler had to decode these messages,to encode them again and to send them to Moscow .
You can imagine the time and staff needed for all this .

well since Fellgiebel was a staff officer and ahem (Chief of Signals in OKH ) when citadel was planned and at every meeting, which is indisputable might give him privy to detailed orders for citadel

the orders going to Switzerland where not coded and sent their...they where couriered

transmitting of said orders have been covered and where not coded as per say enigma, but based on a number system using 2 sets of 5 numbers, something the Gestapo never did get the key's for as these where based on lines from a familar book both used by server and receiver and in context where not as time consuming to send...

as for (Hundreds of pages) as you claim, i have not come across this, could you please provide a source?

Sorry,I don't buy it :that there are numerous books on the Lucy spy ring does not proof anything,there are still today books proclaiming that Prokhorovka was the biggest tank battle of WW II

unsure what one type of information being false has to do with others suddenly not being reliable??

That the Russians knew of Citadel,does not proof that it was due to the Lucy spy ring .

numerous sources point to this as being fact along with Fellgiebel whom sent this information to Switzerland and to Lucy to be transmitted...along with Russian units having prior detailed information on Panther tanks before German units even saw these for the first time!! or is this fiction as well?

No my friend Lucy Spy ring gave detailed information and is outlined in many sources and by historians

source V.E.Tarrant The Red Orchestra: The Soviet Spy Network Inside Nazi Europe
and judging by Tarrants research in his other works regarding U-boats, Kriegsmarine, HMS Hood reference book helps point to him being an able historian and researcher of his works.

even von Manstein did not believe in his memoirs that the plans of Citadel were betrayed to the Russians (if there was anything true of it,he would have use it as an excuse for the defeat of Kursk )

?? Not so according likewise to "The Gehlen Memoirs" by General Reinhard Gehlen...which quoted to OKH factors which point exclusively for this along with orders caught on a Russian list exact German troops and units and jumping off place prior to Citadel beginning p 85 along with Russian sources reporting to Gehlen and the Abwehr of tanks leaving factories at Kazan and Gorki directly heading to Kupyansk, Kursk, and Orel pg 82/83

[ljadw]

I should like to see some proof that
1)Fellgiebel,thiele and von Gersdorff were Soviet spies
2)that they were able
a)to obtain the detailed orders for Citadel
b)to encode these orders (hundred of pages )
c)to transmit these encoded orders (hundred of pages ) to Switserland
And in Switserland,Roessler had to decode these messages,to encode them again and to send them to Moscow .
You can imagine the time and staff needed for all this .

well since Fellgiebel was a staff officer and ahem (Chief of Signals in OKH ) when citadel was planned and at every meeting, which is indisputable might give him privy to detailed orders for citadel

the orders going to Switzerland where not coded and sent their...they where couriered

transmitting of said orders have been covered and where not coded as per say enigma, but based on a number system using 2 sets of 5 numbers, something the Gestapo never did get the key's for as these where based on lines from a familar book both used by server and receiver and in context where not as time consuming to send...

as for (Hundreds of pages) as you claim, i have not come across this, could you please provide a source?

Sorry,I don't buy it :that there are numerous books on the Lucy spy ring does not proof anything,there are still today books proclaiming that Prokhorovka was the biggest tank battle of WW II

unsure what one type of information being false has to do with others suddenly not being reliable??

That the Russians knew of Citadel,does not proof that it was due to the Lucy spy ring .

numerous sources point to this as being fact along with Fellgiebel whom sent this information to Switzerland and to Lucy to be transmitted...along with Russian units having prior detailed information on Panther tanks before German units even saw these for the first time!! or is this fiction as well?

No my friend Lucy Spy ring gave detailed information and is outlined in many sources and by historians

source V.E.Tarrant The Red Orchestra: The Soviet Spy Network Inside Nazi Europe
and judging by Tarrants research in his other works regarding U-boats, Kriegsmarine, HMS Hood reference book helps point to him being an able historian and researcher of his works.

even von Manstein did not believe in his memoirs that the plans of Citadel were betrayed to the Russians (if there was anything true of it,he would have use it as an excuse for the defeat of Kursk )

?? Not so according likewise to "The Gehlen Memoirs" by General Reinhard Gehlen...which quoted to OKH factors which point exclusively for this along with orders caught on a Russian list exact German troops and units and jumping off place prior to Citadel beginning p 85 along with Russian sources reporting to Gehlen and the Abwehr of tanks leaving factories at Kazan and Gorki directly heading to Kupyansk, Kursk, and Orel pg 82/83

About the hundreds of paged :I thought it was obvious that the plans for such a big operation (more than 7OOOOO men ) must have contained hundreds of pages .
About Tarrant :beying an expert on naval affairs do not qualify you in advance as an expert on espionnage affairs
I am wondering what his sources are (Roessler died in 1957 without having said anything ) .I will try to obtain his book,but I remain suspicious .
About Gehlen :not a good example :when he was fired (the BND beying an annexe of the KGB ),he decided to write his memoirs ,and to sell them,he proclaimed that Bormann was a Russian spy :roll: ,by this he has disqualified himself (IMVHO )
P.Carrell has proclaimed that the defeat of Kursk was due to treason (classic excuse ) and I have seen even a name (Peter von Heydebreck )
Some retired officials of Bletchey Park wanted the glory for themselves,and have written a book with the content that the information came from Ultra (the British won the battle of Kursk )
L.Kilzer (Pulitzer price ) wrote a book ,claiming that the responsible was Bormann .
You will not be surprised that I am very sceptical .

[bf109 emil]

and to sell them,he proclaimed that Bormann was a Russian spy :roll: ,by this he has disqualified himself (IMVHO )

how so both him and Canaris formed this opinion, but i suppose Canaris finings are irrelevant since Hitler did away with him?

About Gehlen :not a good example :when he was fired (the BND beying an annexe of the KGB ),he decided to write his memoirs ,and to sell them

as did von Manstein, so i guess we can discredit his work also...also Gehlen never worked for the KGB but him and his staff worked for USA in east Germany afterwards.

:beying an expert on naval affairs do not qualify you in advance as an expert on espionnage affairs

no he is a writer who is an expert on using facts and research!!

but if one wants to discredit sources, lets look at almost ebery source from the SU or from ones whom where tried at Nurenberg and forced to lie in order to save their own neck like Manstein

P.Carrell has proclaimed that the defeat of Kursk was due to treason (classic excuse )

of course by Felligiebel unless you are still trying to build a strawman saying the Soviet Union had no such knowqledge and all equipment, tanks ran directly from the factory, millions of mines laid, hundreds of miles of trenches, defensive fields of depth, i believe totaling 6 was all done by luck and by no prior knowledge on the impending attack and location? Wow what a lucky guess by Zhukov if what you say is correct

L.Kilzer (Pulitzer price ) wrote a book ,claiming that the responsible was Bormann .
You will not be surprised that I am very sceptical .

Bormann did for fact have a transmitter and was sending codes and when Ghelen and the Abwehr questioned this, Bormann retorted that this was used to confuse the enemy...more on this fact if you want it

Some retired officials of Bletchey Park wanted the glory for themselves,and have written a book with the content that the information came from Ultra (the British won the battle of Kursk )

yes it is revealed in Red Orchestra this same fact, but Stalin was reluctant to herald Ultra's advice as sourced by Winterbotham in Ultra secret...remember how he was told when and where Germany was going to launch Barbarossa and still felt it to be a British trick and satg on his hands watching the SU Troops being slaughtered

[desrtrat6]

I realize this post is a bit belated considering the last one was posted back in January, but I just joined so please forgive me.

I recently saw a History channel special on the Red Orchestra and the Lucy Spy Ring. Very interesting. I knew of the network, but never really paid much attention to it till now. The History channel piece touched on all the conclusions outlined in this discussion (i.e. Ultra, Bormann, etc); however, each has its own faults.

For example, the idea that Roessler's contact in Berlin was simply a cover for ULTRA intelligence to be passed to Stalin does not stand scrutiny. This theory fails to take into consideration that Bletchley Park only read a small fraction of Enigma traffic by November '42 when the Soviets launched Operation URANUS, the envelopment of von Paulus' Sixth Army at the gates of Stalingrad, and they certainly were not consistent enough in decrypting the traffic, breaking a sufficient quantity, or doing all of this in a timely fashion to 1) possess the entire German Order of Battle and 2) pass that intelligence to the Soviets in time so as to be actionable.

Kursk is a different story with respect to Allied code-breaking efforts; however, any second-year military academy student could have devised the tactics used by the Soviets at both Stalingrad and again at Kursk. In both cases the Germans used their favorite tactic, the double-envelopment, against a small, essentially, point target, and completely, and disastrously, ignored their flanks, thus allowing the Soviets to envelop them as they were bogged down. There was a study done in 2000 for the US military that outlines this in further detail and discusses the fact that the Soviet partisan network played a significant role in operational and tactical intelligence on the Eastern Front and as a result the Soviets correctly identified Kursk as the Germans’ objective and planned their defense accordingly.

This is not to say that the Brits did not share what Enigma decrypts they could with the Soviets, or at least felt secure enough to share considering the Germans were reading Allied traffic as well and could have deduced that the Allies were “reading their traffic” if too much was accidentally revealed by the Soviets.

Additionally there has been speculation, including on this board, that certain senior German officers provided intelligence to Roessler and the Lucy network. These include Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, General Erich Fellgiebel, General Fritz Thiele, Major General Rudolf von Gersdorff, Lieutenant von Heydebreck, and Reichsleiter Martin Bormann.

*The below analyses are based on the assumption whoever provided the information to the Lucy network, knew that information would be passed to the Soviets. Whether they knew this or whether Roessler and the Lucy operatives flew a “false flag” would obviously change the bottom-line of the analyses.

Admiral Canaris was an ardent anti-communist and came from and married into wealthy industrial families. While neither of these are solid evidence he never passed intelligence to the Soviets, I think he was already taking a great personal risk to pass intelligence to the Brits, he was under suspicion by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich and his boss Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, and would not have added to that risk by also passing intel to the Soviets. Some sources claim it was Heydrich’s suspicion of Canaris that led to the Brits to have him assassinated, but that is another discussion.

General Fellgiebel would be a great candidate for being the mole due to his position as head of the signal corps; however, he was implicated in the July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler and was executed 4 September 1944. According to some sources, the Lucy network continued to receive intel from their highly placed source(s) in the German high command, which obviously would have dried up had Fellgiebel been the mole. Additionally, the July 20th plotters were not about to support the Soviets and would have been extremely hard pressed to allow any of their cohorts to do so, at least knowingly.

The same can be said of General Thiele who was also a member of the July 20th plot and was also executed on 4 September.

Major General Rudolf von Gersdorff also plotted to kill Hitler and had a minor role in the July 20th plot. Fortunately for him, his role was kept out of the hands of the interrogators of his cohorts and he survived the war. But more importantly, he came from nobility and thus would not have fit in with communists. This is not to say rich people have not heeded the call to revolution and threw in their lot with the Reds, but according to the sources I have read and seen von Gersdorff was not one of these “guilt-ridden” capitalists.

Lieutenant von Heydebreck would have had the best motivation for passing intel to the Soviets. His father, a senior officer in WWI and founder of a Freikorps unit named in his honor, was killed during the Night of the Long Knives because he was a senior leader in Rohm’s Sturmabteilung (SA), or Brownshirts. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a lot of info on him and am thus unable to put him firmly in either category. However, I cannot believe a son, so devoted to his anti-communist father, would then turn around and support the same people his father despised. Finally, I have not been able to find much on von Heydebreck, so I can only assume, without knowing his actual position or rank, that someone of such a low rank would not have had access to the materials the Lucy network passed on to the Soviets.

This brings me to Reichsleiter Bormann. I saved him for last because he is the most intriguing and, in my opinion, the most likely person, at least out of this group, to be the source of the Lucy Ring’s information. At their core, Nazism and communism share very similar goals; the rights and freedom of the worker; the welfare, literally, of the people; and, the state as the purveyor of all. Based simply on ideology alone, Bormann, an ardent Nazi, would seem to be the ideal candidate among those in this immediate group. The others, as military officers, saw themselves as the core of Germany, the stabilizing factor in German politics and society. Bormann was never really a soldier; his loyalties lay with Hitler, at least until Stalingrad, and then with Nazism alone. While there is no concrete evidence of Bormann’s treason, the fact that he had an army of typists transcribing everything Hitler uttered, which of course included military and political planning, means he absolutely had the material to pass to Allied intelligence. What remains to be understood, or identified, are his motives behind it. If, in fact, Paul Manning is correct and Bormann convened a meeting in mid-1944 of 12 of the top German industrialists to discuss how to go about moving German capital and industry to neutral countries in order to keep it out of the hands of the victors, then the question must be asked, if he was in fact a closet-communist, why did he not just have everything move to Russia? Bormann was not a stupid man and I am sure he could have seen, just as most did by mid-1944, the coming of a bi-polar world with the Soviets being master of one pole.

Obviously, without hard evidence of a specific senior German officer or some technological explanation, this is all simply my opinion and conjecture and I am throwing it out there to see what others think.

[Carl Schwamberger]

desertrat... My thought is the Soviet agents in Switzerland were working multiple sources in Germany. Some of high level some low. I've also wondered what other nations besides Switzerland the USSR had groups of agents working from? Has anyone searched the Soviet archives for information on this?

[Bokkop]

I have also long been interested in the Lucy ring. As far as I can gather, the best informed speculation was done by the CIA -- they had the sources and also the expertise. The study has been declassified and is available on

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... p_0001.htm

You should also note a dissenting view at

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... p_0001.htm

[ljadw]

I have also long been interested in the Lucy ring. As far as I can gather, the best informed speculation was done by the CIA -- they had the sources and also the expertise. The study has been declassified and is available on

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... p_0001.htm

You should also note a dissenting view at

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... p_0001.htm

your first source is mentioning Oster as a possible source:I am very dubious :the war in the east depended of the OKH,and the Abwehr was a part of ..the OKW ,which had no business in the east. Btw:the source is mentioning that Oster was fired on 31 march 1944,it was on 31 march 1943 ,thus we can exclude Oster as a source for Zitadelle .

[bf109 emil]

:the war in the east depended of the OKH,and the Abwehr was a part of ..the OKW ,which had no business in the east.

The OKW reported regularly to OKH if i'm not mistaken. and although they might not have had any business in the east, historically they did have numerous agents such as Richard Gehlen, whom did meet and report to OKH.