July 5, 1943. 2:59. The German command is fully determined to inflict a crushing blow on the Soviet troops in the area of the formed ledge near Kursk during Operation Citadel. Thus, Hitler not only planned to turn the tide of the war, but also to make his troops feel not a local victory, but a victory of such a scale that could become an equilibrium victory for the Red Army in Stalingrad.
According to the plan of the command of the Wehrmacht, the united group of German troops numbering up to 900 thousand servicemen, with the active support of aviation and armored units, was supposed to ring the troops of the Central and Voronezh fronts under the command of K. K. Rokossovsky and N. F. Vatutin, respectively. For the attack from the side of Hitler's troops, three main directions were chosen, which were supposed to turn the resulting territorial arc into a real cauldron capable of absorbing up to 1.3 million Soviet soldiers. These directions looked as follows: the Alkhovatskoye direction, the Gniletskoye and Malaya Arkhangelskoye. The ultimate goal is the connection of the northern and southern directions in the immediate vicinity of Kursk and the defeat of the Red Army.
However, all these grandiose plans, in the preparation of which Hitler himself took part, as we all know perfectly well, were not destined to come true. The total defeat of the Nazi troops in the greatest battle near Kursk had many reasons, the main of which, of course, lies in the immense courage and heroism of Soviet soldiers, in the painstaking analysis of the operational-tactical situation at the front on the part of the high command.
But he was the blacksmith of this victory and at least one other person, whose name remained for a long time in the historical annals, as they say, with seven seals. The man's name was John Kerncross. Scottish by nationality, he lived a long life, some of which he devoted to his personal struggle against the brown plague, which was capable of plunging the whole world into grand chaos. Kerncross is called one of those who forged the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany. And besides, he was assigned a very high rank of the most effective intelligence officer of the Second World War. And our great luck is that this intelligence officer worked on the side of the USSR.
It would seem that a highly educated British young man, who successfully graduated from Cambridge University, and the Soviet Union, which was not only thousands of kilometers from his native Scotland, but also the majority of the citizens of the Land of the Soviets professed far from the same ideology, could have in common. which was generally accepted among the subjects of the British crown …
But Kerncross was not like most of his countrymen. The thing is that even while studying at Cambridge University, Cairncross became interested in the communist idea, and in 1937 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. It was at that time that the later famous "Cambridge Five" began to form, which, in addition to John Kerncross himself, included four other top-level intelligence officers: Guy Burgess, Donald McLean, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby.
Without exception, all Soviet special agents who had the honor to cooperate with Kerncross, many years after the war, declared that this Briton had done so much for the Soviet Union that they could well name streets in the cities of the Union and erect monuments by his name. But what are the achievements of Kerncross, and how does he fundamentally differ from many other intelligence officers who worked in the USSR during the war?
The fact is that thanks to his education, he, like the rest of the members of the same "Cambridge Five", received the right to work directly in the British power system. In particular, Kerncross managed to work at the British Foreign Office, as well as at MI6, where he was entrusted with the holy of holies - the place where the German Enigma encryption machine was located. The place was called Bletchley Park. During World War II, it was here that a top-secret laboratory was located, in which the decryption of information used for strategic planning of military operations by German generals and Hitler himself was carried out.
Access to the Enigma in Bletchley Park was so selective that, in addition to Kerncross himself, who was codenamed Moliere by Soviet intelligence in honor of his special love for the work of the French writer, enter the room where this cipher and decryption monster was located (Enigma), no more than half a dozen people were allowed.
As you can understand, only a truly outstanding person could be at work in such a laboratory. People who became candidates for work at Bletchley Park passed the strictest selection. They had to be fluent in languages, they had to have perfectly developed logical thinking (the candidate's logic was tested in chess matches with the best British chess players of that time). In addition, these people must have had an excellent understanding of the technique and use of cryptography. With all the requirements, candidate Kerncross was just fine, except for technical savvy. One of the Soviet agents in Britain says that when it was decided to buy a car for Kerncross so that he could keep up with meetings for the transfer of information on time, he several times could not pass the exam for obtaining a driver's license, and even when Kerncross got his license, he drove the car like this, that one could expect anything from him, just not confident driving … However, such technical uncertainty, oddly enough, did not serve as an obstacle for Kerncross ("Moliere") to end up in Bletchley Park, where he was entrusted with decoding German encoded materials.
At this time, he was already actively cooperating with Soviet intelligence, and through a network of agents transmitted decoded information to Moscow.
A few months before the beginning of the Battle of Kursk, John Kerncross transmits to Moscow extremely important information that the German production workshops (workshops of the Henschel company) released a new modified version of the Tiger tank, which had phenomenal armor at that time and a mass of almost 57 tons. And although the first "Tigers" were used by the Germans in August 1942 near Leningrad, their improved versions were planned as a weighty counterargument to the forces of the Red Army in the Battle of Kursk. Information about the upgraded Tiger tanks received from Bletchley Park made it possible to order the creation of weapons capable of hitting these German vehicles. The Soviet factories began to produce armor-piercing shells that could open the seemingly invulnerable armor of the Tigers. Soviet tanks were also modernized.
By the way, it must be said that little was known about the Battle of Kursk before the information from Kerncross appeared in Moscow. It was Moliere, thanks to the data received and decoded through Enigma, that reported not only the exact date and time of the start of the German counteroffensive, but also the coordinates of the location of all Luftwaffe base airfields, without exception, in the territory adjacent to the Kursk-Oryol territorial bulge. The accuracy of the information Kerncross transmitted to the Soviet Union was astounding. It remained to skillfully dispose of this information, which was done by the Soviet command.
At a time when Hitler's generals were just preparing to give the order for an offensive in three directions, the artillery of the Red Army unleashed a real barrage of artillery and rocket launchers on the enemy. This preemptive strike led the fascist German troops into a kind of stupor, after which the Nazis rushed to attack, as they say, blindly, which had never happened before in the history of the Wehrmacht on such a scale. In addition, Soviet pilots in their winged aircraft effectively "walked" the very airfields that were indicated in the intelligence from Moliere, which did not even allow many German aircraft to take to the skies. It was a kind of revenge by the USSR for the Soviet aircraft destroyed at the airfields in the first days of the war.
The Nazis were surprised a lot during a large-scale tank battle near Prokhorovka, when they suddenly learned that the armor of those very "invulnerable" "Tigers" was easily penetrated by Soviet shells. At that moment, no one could have imagined that this armor was breaking through, including thanks to a graduate of the University of Cambridge, John Kerncross …
Kerncross died in 1995, and during the second half of his life was repeatedly attacked by the British authorities and the press for his active cooperation with the Soviet Union. Apparently, for critics of Kerncross, it was his cooperation with the NKGB of the USSR that overshadowed and overshadows the invaluable contribution of this man to the common struggle against fascism …
