The spy who stole the war’s timetable in Tokyo
“The world war… exerted the deepest influence on my entire life. Whatever other factors may have affected me, it was solely because of this war that I became a communist.” — from his 1927 autobiography
A Soviet intelligence officer who worked under cover as a German correspondent in Tokyo. He warned of Operation Barbarossa and confirmed Japan's southward turn, enabling Siberian divisions to be thrown into the Moscow front. Executed in 1944; made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964.
Career timeline
- 1925–1929Comintern, then Red Army intelligence
- 1930–1933The Shanghai network
- 1933–1941Tokyo: the correspondent the German embassy trusted
- 1941.05–06Warns of Barbarossa; ignored
- 1941.09“Japan will not strike north”, the basis for moving the Siberian divisions
- 1941.10Arrested
- 1944.11Hanged in Tokyo
A staff general who turned from Soviet command to an anti-Soviet armed organisation
In the autumn of 1941, while a prisoner of war, he proposed to the German authorities the creation of units to strike 'railways, warehouses and the like' in the Red Army rear, disrupting supply and command.
Trukhin was a former Imperial Russian officer who built his career in the Red Army as a general responsible for military education and staff work. During Germany's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, he served in the operational command structure of the Baltic Military District and the Northwestern Front, but became a prisoner of war during the retreat. In captivity he collaborated with German authorities and became chief of staff of the armed forces associated with Andrey Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army and the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Transferred to Soviet custody after the war, he was convicted of treason and executed; his career shows how professional military expertise was redirected into German occupation policy and an anti-Soviet armed project.
Career timeline
- 1916–1917Officer in the Imperial Russian Army; served in the First World War
- 1918–1921Red Army company, battalion, and regimental commander in the Civil War
- 1922–1925Studied at the Red Army Military Academy
- 1932–1936Instructor and head of combat-training methodology at the Frunze Military Academy
- 1937–1940Senior course director and instructor at the General Staff Academy; promoted to major general
- 1940–1941Deputy chief in Red Army combat training, then chief of operations and deputy chief of staff of the Baltic Military District
- 1941.06Deputy chief of staff of the Northwestern Front; captured in Lithuania
- 1943–1945Head of the Dabendorf Russian Liberation Army school, then chief of staff of the committee's armed forces
