These men, as well as several others, reported extraordinarily sensitive information from key areas of the German bureaucracy in the German capital itself.
The Berlin-based Red Orchestra agents included Harro Schulze-Boysen, an intelligence officer assigned to the German Air Ministry, and Arvid von Harnack, an employee of the German Ministry of Economics. The Red Orchestra spy ring consisted of three main branches: the network in France, Belgium, and Holland the Berlin network and a remarkable group of agents, known as the "Lucy Ring," that operated from the relative safety of neutral Switzerland. At its height, the network carried out intelligence collection operations in Germany, France, Holland and Switzerland. In 1939 Leopold Trepper, an agent for the Soviet military intelligence service, established an intelligence network in Western Europe. However, the network that became known as the legendary "Red Orchestra" had humble beginnings. Intelligence professionals and historians alike have long regarded the Red Orchestra as one of the most successful spy rings that operated during the Second World War. These letters relate to early postwar efforts to ascertain the whereabouts of former German intelligence personnel, particularly members of the "Special Detachment Red Orchestra" ( Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle) who were believed to have extensive knowledge of the German investigation into the Red Orchestra espionage ring. Army file also contains several pieces of correspondence from British intelligence and U.S. Thus, the meeting with Roeder was intended to elicit information necessary to allow CIC agents to locate and exploit the Red Orchestra records. According to rumors, some "eight crates of documents" concerning the case had been hidden by German intelligence personnel in the LÜneburger Heide shortly after the war. At this time, the CIC was actively pursuing leads concerning the Red Orchestra case. The meeting, which took place in Hannover, Germany, was arranged through Graf Wolf von Westarp, a leading figure in the Sozialistische Reichspartei (Socialist Reichs Party, or SRP), a postwar German rightist party. Manfred Roeder, formerly the Judge Advocate of the German Air Force ( Luftwaffe) who served as the assistant prosecutor in the espionage case involving Red Orchestra agents. The report concerns a meeting between a special agent of the 66th CIC Detachment and Dr. One of the most interesting documents in the file is a report dated 11 February 1952. It is clear from the contents of the file that Allied intelligence officers were interested, not in possible Gestapo misdeeds (use of torture) in eradicating the Red Orchestra, but rather in what information about Soviet military intelligence practices might be gleaned from German files and from interrogating those Germans involved with the case.
Army's Investigative Records Repository (IRR) file on the Soviet espionage network, being released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, contains documents related to an investigation of the Red Orchestra case during the early postwar period. The Red Orchestra is perhaps one of the best known espionage cases of the Second World War. Report on the IRR File on The Red Orchestra Paul Brown
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