Hungarian communist cartographer who ran the Soviet military intelligence network Red Three in Switzerland
Born to a Jewish family in Újpest near Budapest, he joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1918 and served as a regimental commissar in the Red Army of the 1919 Soviet Republic. In exile he joined the KPD and took part in the failed 1923 Leipzig uprising, and ran map and press agencies in Berlin and Paris while working for the Comintern. From 1936 to 1945 he led the Soviet military intelligence network Red Three in Switzerland under the codename Dora, and in April 1943 passed to Moscow the plan for the Kursk offensive sent by one of Roessler's sources. Extradited to the Soviet Union after the war, he was sentenced without trial in 1946 to 15 years and held in the Lubyanka and in camps until his release in 1954. Back in Hungary he reshaped Hungarian geography on the Soviet model of cartography.
Also known as: Alexander Radó · Alexander Rado
Activities and affiliations
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1918–
Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP)
Security, intelligence and policing -
1922–
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
Security, intelligence and policing -
1936–1945
Soviet Union state institutionsHead of the Soviet intelligence network Red ThreeMain
Security, intelligence and policing
Career Timeline
- 1918Joins the Hungarian Communist Party
- 1919Commissar, 51st Infantry Regiment, Hungarian Red Army
- 1923Takes part in the Leipzig uprising
- 1936–1945Runs the Red Three in Switzerland
- 1946Sentenced to 15 years in the Soviet Union
- 1954Released