- V –
VADIS, ALEKSANDR ANATOLEVICH (1906–1968). Vadis was or-
phaned during the Russian civil war, entered the security service
from the Red Army in 1930, and somehow survived the
Yezhovshchina. In 1942 he entered counterintelligenceand was
drafted into Smershin 1943. He ended World War IIas a lieutenant
general, having served as the Smershcommander of the Second
Byelorussian Front, which captured Berlin. Vadis was one of Joseph
Stalin’s favorite military counterintelligence chiefs. He took control
of Adolf Hitler’s corpseand Eva Braun’s after they were discovered
by a Smersh patrol in Berlin on 5 May 1945. Vadis informed Stalin of
the news, had the bodies autopsied, and shipped the corpses to the So-
viet Union. Vadis warned the military and medical personnel that this
secret had to be kept forever. (Marshal Georgi Zhukovwas not in-
formed about the disposition of Hitler’s remains until 1965.)
Following the war, Vadis held positions in the MGBin Moscow
and the Far East. He was purged at the same time as his boss in
Smersh, Viktor Abakumov, but never imprisoned. He was sus-
pended in 1951, then removed from the service in 1954 and reduced
in rank “for disgracing himself.”VASSALL, WILLIAM JOHN CHRISTOPHER (1924– ).The son of
an Anglican clergyman, Vassall went to Moscow in the early 1950s as
a clerk in the Naval Attaché’s Office. He was quickly identified as a
homosexual by the KGBand blackmailed into working for Soviet in-
telligence. On his return to London, Vassall was promoted by the Ad-
miralty and continued to work in place for the KGB. He was caught
in 1962, tried, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was paroled af-
ter serving 11 years. Vassall, along with Harry Houghton, provided
Moscow with a tremendous amount of top secret information about
British and NATO military plans. It was important to the Soviet
Union, which at the time was building a modern blue-water navy.VAUPSHASOV, STANISLAV ALEKSEEVICH (1899–1976). One
of the most strikingly successful partisanleaders, Vaupshasov joined
the Red Army at age 19 and began working as a partisan behind
White lines during the civil war. He entered the NKVD’s foreignVAUPSHASOV, STANISLAV ALEKSEEVICH (1899–1976)• 27506-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 275