In the initial period of the Great Patriotic War, communication in general, and in particular encrypted communication, was carried out with great problems. Marshal Vasilevsky described the situation as follows: "From the very beginning of the war, the General Staff experienced difficulties due to the constant loss of communication channels with the fronts and armies." Also, the military commander talks about similar problems of the pre-war period: “… shortcomings in the interaction of combat arms in battle, command and control of troops (Lake Khasan, 1938); at the end of December 1939, the Main Military Council was forced to suspend the movement of our troops in order to more reliably organize management (war with Finland). " Marshal Baghramyan shares similar impressions: “The frequent bursts of telephone and telegraph lines, the unstable operation of radio stations forced us to rely, first of all, on the liaison officers who were sent to the troops in cars, motorcycles and airplanes … Communication worked well when the troops were stationary and when no one violated … And it was not only the complexity of the situation, but also the lack of proper experience of the headquarters in command and control of troops in combat conditions."
Soviet radio operators
Historian V. A. Anfilov in his writings about the Great Patriotic War writes:
“Communication was often disrupted due to damage to nodes and communication lines, frequent state movements, and sometimes reluctance to use radio communications. The main means of communication in the regiment-battalion link was considered to be wire communication. Although the radio stations available in the units were considered quite reliable, they were rarely used … Radio communications were allowed to be used only for reception … Apparently, they were afraid that foreign intelligence might overhear something … It should be noted that German intelligence on the eve of the war managed to learn a lot about our western border military districts … Radio conversations were so complicated by the long and laborious coding of the text that they were reluctant to resort to them. In view of this, the troops preferred to use wire communication … Frequent communication disruptions and the lack of technical means made it extremely difficult to control the troops …"
Radio sailors under fire
A paradoxical situation developed in the troops before the war - the units were equipped with radio equipment (albeit poorly), but no one was in a hurry to use them. And even the experience of the outbreak of World War II did not move things off the ground. Basically, everyone was guided by cable communication lines and telegraphs with the telephones of the People's Commissariat of Communications. Accordingly, having no experience with radio communications, the encryptors could hardly deal with direction finding and interception of enemy radio messages. Specialists from the special department of the 20th Army described the situation near Moscow in the winter of 1941:
"Connection. This section is a bottleneck in the work of the front units. Even under the conditions of a defensive battle, when no movement was made, communication with army units was often disrupted. Moreover, almost like the law, when a wire connection was broken, they very rarely turned to the help of the radio. We do not like radio communication and do not know how to work with it … All authorities have good equipment, but not enough. There are not enough radio operators, some radio operators are poorly trained. There was a case when radio operators were sent, but half of them had to be rejected and sent back due to insufficient training. It is necessary to take all measures to ensure that radio communication becomes the main form of communication for commanders of all levels, to be able to use it …"
However, the Russian ciphers of the Great Patriotic War showed themselves as real heroes, and the strength of the ciphers was largely ensured by their selfless bravery. And there are plenty of examples here.
Red Army radio operators
August 1942. Adolf Hitler's order on the Wehrmacht: "… whoever captures a Russian cipher officer, or captures Russian cipher technology, will be awarded the Iron Cross, home leave and provided with a job in Berlin, and after the end of the war - an estate in the Crimea." Such unprecedented measures to stimulate personnel were a necessary measure - Hitler's codebreakers could not read Russian radio messages encoded with machine ciphers. And since 1942, they abandoned this venture altogether and stopped intercepting the Red Army encryption programs. They decided to go from the other side and near Kherson organized a reconnaissance and sabotage school with the aim of training specialists for the extraction of encryption devices behind the front line. There is still very little detailed and reliable information about the activities of the school itself and its "graduates". The ciphermen of the Soviet Union during the war years were, perhaps, one of the most important combat units at the front, and the Nazis were hunting for them. The cryptographers of the USSR Embassy in Germany were the first to take the blow, when on June 22, 1941, they managed to quickly destroy the most important thing in the fires - ciphers. The Germans in Moscow began similar work in mid-May, and the day before the attack on the USSR, on orders from Berlin, they destroyed the last documents. History has preserved for us the name of one of the first heroes of the cryptographic war - the encryptor of the Soviet trade mission in Berlin, Nikolai Logachev. SS units on the very first day of the war in the morning began to storm the building of the Soviet mission. Logachev managed to barricade himself in one of the rooms and burned all the ciphers, while constantly losing consciousness from dense smoke. The Nazis nevertheless broke down the doors, but it was too late - the codes turned to ash and soot. The cipher officer was severely beaten and thrown into prison, but later exchanged for employees of German diplomatic missions in Moscow. But this was not always the case - more often than not, cryptographers died while protecting ciphers. So, the officer of special communications Leonid Travtsev, guarded by three tanks and an infantry unit, was carrying codes and documents near the front line. The land convoy was ambushed by a German and almost completely killed. Travtsev, with severe injuries to both legs, was able to open the safes, pour gasoline on the encryption documents and set them on fire. The special communications officer was killed in a shootout with the Nazis, keeping secret the keys to Soviet ciphers.
Battle leaflet informing about the feat of the radio operator-cipher officer
Award list for Elena Konstantinovna Stempkovskaya
Elena Stempkovskaya was on duty at the command post surrounded, where she was captured by the Nazis. The junior sergeant managed to shoot three attackers before being captured, but the forces were far from equal. Stempkovskaya was tortured for several days, the hands of both hands were cut off, but the code negotiation tables remained a secret for the Nazis. Elena Konstantinovna Stempkovskaya was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 15, 1946.
Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously) Stempkovskaya Elena Konstantinovna
The regulations of the Navy in relation to the official duties of encryptors are especially strict. This is how the seascape writer Valentin Pikul describes the fate of a cryptographer on a warship:
“The cipher who lives next door to the salon, it seemed, was not subject to statutory punishments, but only heavenly: if Askold was killed, he, embracing the lead code books, must sink and sink with them until he touches the ground. And the dead will lie down with the books. This is the law! That is why it is necessary to respect a person who is ready every minute for a difficult and voluntary death at a depth. At the very depth where the ashes of his encrypted messages are carried away from year to year …"
In this regard, one cannot but make a digression concerning the recent history of Russia. In August 2000, the Kursk nuclear-powered missile submarine was killed during an exercise, taking the entire crew to the bottom. It is noteworthy that for reasons of secrecy, the senior special communications specialist of the guard, senior warrant officer Igor Yerasov, was named in the final list of the dead as a supply assistant. Much later, the investigation team of the military prosecutor's office, during the analysis of the raised fragment of the Kursk APRK corps, found Igor Yerasov exactly where he should be - in the third compartment at the cipher post. The midshipman hugged a steel box on his knees, into which he had managed to put code tables and other secret documents … Igor Vladimirovich Erasov was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.
