was to France as Alexander Orlov’s assistant. Because he had been
mentored by men shot in the Yezhovshchina, he was fired in 1938—
often the first step to execution. Korotkov challenged the decision
and demanded a hearing. Somehow, he was cleared.
He was then assigned to Berlin; his assignment was to contact a
German espionage apparatus that had been abandoned during the
purge of foreign intelligence. He traveled to Berlin in 1940 to contact
Arvid Harnack, a dedicated communist who had been recruited sev-
eral years earlier. Harnack, whose code name was “Corsican,”
worked with Korotkov to rebuild a ring of agents that formed the core
of the Red Orchestra. Karnack surprised Korotkov by revealing that
in the two years he had been out of touch with the NKVD, his group
had grown from 16 to 60 potential agents. He had only been waiting
to be contacted by Moscow. On 16 June 1941, five days before Op-
eration Barbarossabegan, Korotkov reported: “all German military
measures for the attack on the Soviet Union have been fully com-
pleted, and the blow can be expected to fall at any minute.”
The German section of the Red Orchestra was prepared to operate
secretly and without the active participation of Soviet intelligence of-
ficers after war broke out. It is to Korotkov’s credit that it functioned
for more than a year with minimum support and supervision by So-
viet illegals. It lasted for almost a year before Karnack and the rest of
his ring were compromised by the Gestapo. It is clear that the ring
could not have operated let alone survived in the capital of Hitler’s
Reich without Korotkov’s work.
After the war, Korotkov established Karlshorst, an area in Berlin,
as a base for KGB illegal activities in Germany. Before his death, he
served as chief of Service S, the First Chief Directorate component
responsible for illegals, and then as KGB rezident at Karlshorst as a
general officer. As rezident, Korotkov worked closely with the Stasi’s
young chief of foreign intelligence, Markus Wolf. Korotkov recog-
nized that the Stasihad far better access to the West German target,
and he encouraged his young colleague and his organization to oper-
ate in Berlin, West Germany, and NATO states.
Korotkov died in 1961 after a series of confrontations with KGB
Chair Aleksandr Shelepin. Shelepin, who had had no experience
in foreign intelligence, attacked Korotkov’s work in Germany
for neglecting the recruitment of agents by Soviet case officers. HeKOROTKOV, ALEKSANDR MIKHAILOVICH (1909–1961)• 13706-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 137