How Pro-Soviet Spies of the 'Red Orchestra' Laundered Money During WWII
It helped to have American friends in Switzerland.
The Western center of the Soviet Union’s anti-fascist intelligence (espionage) network during WWII was located in Switzerland. Here, dedicated “pianists”1 gathered and sent information from the secret Red Orchestra group to Moscow.
Only gradually — and relatively late in the game — did London and the Americans overcome their suspicions and show an inclination to get “in the loop” with this operation. The British also were tragically slow in recognizing their natural allies on several Eastern war/intelligence fronts, including Croatia, Serbia, Italy and Czechoslovakia. (In fairness, Stalin also disbelieved the Red Orchestra’s intelligence on Hitler’s plan for the military invasion of Russia.)
In reality, the spy group delivered tons of good information, gathered and transmitted by diverse (largely German-speaking) Europeans, male and female.
“Hardly any of the members of my group were Communists,” wrote the group’s Hungarian leader in 1971. “But they were united by the conviction that, in the struggle against Nazism, all forces must join hands, whether communist, socialist, liberal bourgeois, Swiss, German, Austrian, Italian, French, British, or Hungarian.”
1. ’Pianist’ was the term applied by the Nazi “brass” in Berlin for a secret telegraph- and radio-operator.