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Moscow—Poznan—Berlin<br />
part, I got the study with a sofa made up with crisp, clean sheets. In the study, a<br />
portrait of Hitler still hung on the wall, and on the desk was a pho<strong>to</strong>graph of an<br />
officer of undeterminable rank with his wife clinging <strong>to</strong> him.<br />
Before going <strong>to</strong> bed, wanting <strong>to</strong> jot down my first impressions, I sat at the writing<br />
desk and pulled <strong>open</strong> the <strong>to</strong>p drawer. Good grief! The former proprie<strong>to</strong>r of<br />
the study had left his Iron Cross (German medal for meri<strong>to</strong>rious combat service)<br />
and Walther pis<strong>to</strong>l with a full ammunition clip in the drawer.With these spoils in<br />
hand, I immediately paid a visit <strong>to</strong> my comrades, who were wallowing in their<br />
snow-white feather beds. For them it was quite unusual <strong>to</strong> use feather beds instead<br />
of ordinary blankets.<br />
“Give the pis<strong>to</strong>l <strong>to</strong> our general,” advised Smirnov, “and hand over the medal<br />
<strong>to</strong> Smersh.” 5<br />
In the morning, the general briefed us about the plan of action. Our first task was<br />
<strong>to</strong> perform a thorough inspection of “DVL,” the German Luftwaffe research center<br />
in Adlershof. 6 But Adlershof had not yet been taken. In the meantime we had <strong>to</strong> find<br />
maps, and we conversed with the army group’s intelligence representatives.<br />
The general was pleased with my gift.The Walther pis<strong>to</strong>l was much lighter than<br />
our TT. The Smersh representative showed no enthusiasm when he <strong>to</strong>ok the<br />
German medal.“We have quite enough of these,” he commented.<br />
The army group’s intelligence service officers did not brief us so much as try <strong>to</strong><br />
understand what we were interested in and what they needed <strong>to</strong> look for. They<br />
were competent combat officers, but clearly were not in the habit of dealing with<br />
scientific-technical intelligence matters.We were one of the first official echelons<br />
within the military for scientific-technical intelligence, which previously had been<br />
completely uncoordinated within the combat armies. Subsequently, many detachments<br />
of civilian specialists were sent <strong>to</strong> the occupied zones of Germany and called<br />
“trade union” or “civilian” officers.<br />
The Smersh military intelligence representative posed the following question <strong>to</strong><br />
us at a meeting: “The Germans have issued leaflets that say that we will not take<br />
Berlin, and that we will receive such a blow that there won’t be any bones <strong>to</strong><br />
gather. The Führer has a secret weapon in s<strong>to</strong>re so that the Red Army will be<br />
completely annihilated on German soil.What could that weapon be?”<br />
Indeed, what could it be? If it were the V-2, then no matter how many of them<br />
Hitler had “in s<strong>to</strong>re,” this weapon would not bother the Red Army.This much was<br />
clear <strong>to</strong> us. Chemical weapons? using them in any form on German soil would<br />
now be more dangerous <strong>to</strong> the Germans than <strong>to</strong> us.<br />
We decided that this was pure propaganda.And it turned out we were right. In<br />
the United States, Germany, and the USSR, a new, <strong>to</strong>p-secret weapon really was<br />
5. The organization SMERSH—Smert Shpionam (Death <strong>to</strong> Spies)—was the armed forces counter-intelligence<br />
agency whose primary task from 1943 <strong>to</strong> 1946 was <strong>to</strong> uncover spies and saboteurs in the military, screen<br />
all liberated Soviet POWs, and protect military fac<strong>to</strong>ries<br />
6. DVL—Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Institute).<br />
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