and lithographer. He also performed illegal work as a member of
the German communist youth organization. Arrested by the Nazis
in 1933, he was released six months later and took refuge in Prague.
Besides smuggling political leaflets into Germany from his secret
printing shop, he returned to Berlin six times before the Nazi occu-
pation of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Although the Czech underground
helped him flee to England, the outbreak of World War II resulted in
his internment and later deportation to Australia. In November 1941,
Ruh made the voyage back to England and found employment as a
welder. He also became a member of the communist-dominated Free
Germany Committee of Great Britain based in Hampstead, as well as
a GRU agent under Ursula Kuczynski.
In the final stage of the war, realizing that behind-the-lines logisti-
cal information was lacking, the OSS in London organized Operation
hammer. In light of their Berlin roots, Ruh and his friend and fellow
exile Paul Lindner were asked to participate. In addition to parachute
training, they were instructed on the new wireless transmitter/receiv-
ers developed for the OSS and how to deal with the elite Waffen-
SS troops and military patrols. On 2 March 1945, their two-man
hammer team parachuted into Germany with communications gear,
forged work orders indicating their status as skilled defense workers
exempted from military service, and a roster of contacts in the un-
derground resistance. After refamiliarizing themselves with Berlin,
they began their reconnaissance work and succeeded in conveying
important information regarding bombing targets.
With the entry of the Red Army into Berlin, Ruh and Lindner were
held captive and underwent harsh interrogation by Smersh (Soviet
Military Counterintelligence). They were released to the U.S. Army
near Leipzig on 16 June 1945 and flown to Paris for debriefing.
Although the OSS recommended that both receive a military decora-
tion for their services, officials also concluded that their communist
background rendered them inappropriate for postwar military intel-
ligence work. Ruh returned to the Soviet sector of Berlin and became
involved with customs operations. Surviving the purges of the early
1950s of those Germans who had returned from the West, he rose
in the GDR hierarchy to become head of the Office of Customs and
Goods Controls and then, shortly before his death on 3 November
1964, the East German ambassador to Rumania. On 5 April 2006, the
RUH, ANTON • 381