page_title: Red Orchestra (espionage)
section_title: Rote Drei
hierarchical_section_title: Red Orchestra (espionage) / Switzerland / Rote Drei
caption_attribution_description: Diagram of the various members of the Rote Drei.
context_page_description: The Red Orchestra, as it was known in Germany, was the name given by the Abwehr Section III.F to anti-Nazi resistance workers in August 1941. It primarily referred to a loose network of resistance circles, connected through personal contacts, uniting hundreds of opponents of the Nazi regime. These included circles of friendship and discussion centred around Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, alongside many others. They printed and distributed illegal leaflets, posters, and stickers hoping to incite civil disobedience; helped Jews and opposition escape the regime; documented the crimes of the Nazi regime; and forwarded military intelligence to the Allies. Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership but a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. To date, about 400 members are known by name.
  The term was also used by the Gestapo to refer to an unassociated Soviet intelligence networks, working in Paris and Brussels, that were built up by Leopold Trepper on behalf of the Main Directorate of State Security. Trepper ran a series of clandestine cells for organising agents.
context_section_description: The Red Three (German:Rote Drei) was a Soviet espionage network that operated in Switzerland during and after World War II. It was perhaps the most important Soviet espionage network in the war, as they could work relatively undisturbed. The name Rote Drei was a German appellation, based on the number of transmitters or operators serving the network, and is perhaps misleading, as at times there was four, sometimes even five. 
  The head of the Soviet intelligence service was Maria Josefovna Poliakova, a Soviet 4th Department agent, who first arrived in Switzerland in 1937 to direct operations. The other important leader in the Switzerland group was Ursula Kuczynski, codenamed Sonia, a colonel of the GRU, who has been sent to Switzerland in late 1938, to recruit a new espionage network of agents that would infiltrate Germany. Poliakova passed control to the new director of the Soviet intelligence service in Switzerland, sometimes between 1939 and 1940. The new director was Alexander Radó, codenamed Dora, who held the secret Red Army rank of Major General.
  Radó formed several intelligence groups in France and Germany, before arriving in Switzerland in late 1936 with his family. In 1936 Radó formed Geopress, a news agency specialising in maps and geographic information as a cover for intelligence work, and after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, business began to flourish. In 1940, Radó met Alexander Foote, an English Soviet agent, who joined Ursula Kuczynski's network in 1938, and who would become the most important radio operator for Radó's network. In March 1942, Radó made contact with Rudolf Roessler who would become the most important source of information. Roessler was able to provide prompt access to the secrets of the German High Command. This included the pending details of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union and many more, over a period of two years. In a 1949 study by MI5 concluded that Roessler was a true mercenary who demanded payments for his reports that ran into thousands of Swiss francs over the course of the war year. This resulted in Dübendorfer being continually short of money, as Soviet intelligence insisted the link be maintained.
  Radó established three networks in Switzerland that became known as the Rote Drei.  The three main sources of information, in decreasing importance:
  The first network was run by Rachel Dübendorfer Sissy and who had the most important contacts of the three subgroups. Dübendorfer received intelligence reports from Rudolf Roessler Lucy via the cutout, Christian Schneider. Dübendorfer passed the reports to Radó who passed them to Foote for transmission. Roessler in turn received the information from sources code named Werther, Teddy, Olga, and Anna. It was never discovered who they were. A study by the CIA concluded that the four sources that were forwarding intelligence to Roessler were the Wehrmacht General Hans Oster, Abwehr chief of staff, Hans Bernd Gisevius, the German politician Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and an unknown man named Boelitz. 
  The second network was run by the French journalist Georges Blun Long. His sources could not match the production of Lucy's group in quality or quantity, but were nevertheless important.
  The third espionage network was led by Swiss journalist Otto Pünter Pakbo. Pünter's network was considered the least important.
  The three principal agents above were chiefly an organisation for producing intelligence for the Soviet Union. But some of the information that was collected for the Rote Drei was sent to the west through a Czech Colonel, Karel Sedláček. In 1935, Sedláček was trained in Prague for a year in 1935, and sent to Switzerland in 1937 by General František Moravec. By 1938, Sedláček was a friend of Major Hans Hausamann who was Director of the unofficial  Bureau Ha, a supposed press-cuttings agency, in fact a covert arm of the Swiss Intelligence. Hausamann has been introduced to the Lucy spy ring by Xaver Schnieper a junior officer in the Bureau. It was unknown whether Hausamann was passing information to Lucy, who pa
caption: Organisational diagram of the Rote Drei that was run by Alexander Radó
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