On March 13, 1970, Yuri Andropov sent a letter to Leonid Brezhnev, in which he proposed to destroy the remains of Hitler. Brezhnev approved the idea. So the covert operation Archive was launched.
What for?
It would seem, why seek and destroy the remains of Hitler? 24 years have passed since the burial, everything has long since turned to dust. The impetus for the operation was the disbandment of the military town on the territory of Magdeburg. The area was handed over to the German authorities and built up, the builders would certainly have found the remains. German meticulousness could lead to identification. This would become an information bomb and could give rise to semi-religious neo-Nazism.
Who was the initiator?
Operation Archive was initiated by Yuri Andropov. At the time, he headed the KGB. Andropov carried out the destruction of Hitler's remains in strict accordance with the concept of a "castle log" that must be pulled out to clear the blockage. In his youth, Andropov worked on timber rafting, so he knew the method. The congestion could have arisen for the very reason that for many years talk about a "living Hitler" did not stop, which irritated the Soviet leadership a lot, from Stalin to Brezhnev.
Promotional video:
Before the "Archive"
The bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun have undergone several reburials. Found on 4 May 1945 in a crater near the entrance to the bunker, the bodies were buried in Buch, near Berlin. Found them to representatives of "SMERSH" of the 3rd shock army. When the army needed to change its location, the remains were dug up and transported to the area of the city of Rathenov. Pines were planted in place for marking and camouflage. On January 13, 1946, the remains were secretly transported to Magdeburg and buried in the courtyard of house No. 36 on Westendstrasse, where the army counterintelligence department was located. The remains of Goebbels, his wife and six children are also buried there.
Was there Hitler?
Talk about the fact that in 1970 Soviet intelligence officers scattered the ashes of the wrong remains do not cease to this day. And today there are newspapers in which an elderly Latin American woman, especially for the newspaper “N”, tells how a “Hitler-like” man came to the village when she was still a girl, only without a mustache. How she and her friends came to visit him, and he fed them with German sweets. Another conspiracy myth is the tale "Hitler in Antarctica". As part of this story, Hitler is hiding in bases in Antarctica hidden in ice. A very harmful myth: given the association of ice with eternity, it is convenient to produce on it the idea that the Fuhrer is still alive. Andropov in 1970 understood that it was dangerous to transfer the cult from the area of newspaper sensations.
Cover Legend
The legend for the task force assembled by Andropov was operational information received from a dangerous criminal allegedly caught in the USSR. According to this "criminal", valuable archival documents were buried in Magdeburg. This legend was quite convincing and easy to execute. The task force arrived in Magdeburg, set up a tent. At first, it was guarded by soldiers, but before they started digging, they were replaced by KGB officers. To monitor the progress of the operation, an observation post was set up at a distance from the excavation site. They dug at night.
Special secrecy
Brezhnev responded to Andropov's letter three days later. The operation was deemed top secret. 4 people knew about her: Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorny and Andropov. Documents in the "Archive" belonged to the "K" category. This meant that they could not be handed over to the messenger or the secretary, they could not be left on the special mail "on demand", they had to be handed over personally. From Brezhnev, the document was carried by the head of the first sector of the General Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, that is, a person highly competent. Leaking information was simply impossible. It never happened. Everything went flawlessly. The acts were drawn up in a single copy and sent to Moscow to the KGB.
Act (single copy)
According to the plan of the "Archive" event, approved by the Chairman of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR on March 26, 1970, the task force consisting of the head of the 00 KGB military unit p / p 92626 Colonel N. Kovalenko and operational officers of the same department (names are omitted - V. L.) performed an autopsy of the burial of the remains of war criminals in a military town on Westendstrasse near house number 36 (now Klausenerstrasse). Three of them are from North to South, two others are from East to West. The boxes rotted and turned into dust, the remains in them mixed with the ground. During excavation, he was carefully examined and the remains (skulls, tibia, ribs, vertebrae, etc.) were deposited in a box. The degree of destruction was severe, especially of children's remains, and did not allow an accurate record of what was discovered. According to the tibia and skull count, the remains could have belonged to 10 or 11 corpses. After the removal of the remains, the place of their burial was restored to its original form. The seizure was carried out during the night and in the morning of April 4, 1970. Surveillance organized at the house adjacent to the place of work, where German citizens live, did not reveal any suspicious actions on their part. There was no direct interest in the work being carried out and the tent erected over the excavation site. The box with the remains of war criminals was under the protection of operational workers until the morning of April 5, when the physical destruction of the remains was carried out. According to the tibia and skull count, the remains could have belonged to 10 or 11 corpses. After the removal of the remains, the place of their burial was restored to its original form. The seizure was carried out during the night and in the morning of April 4, 1970. Surveillance organized at the house adjacent to the place of work, where German citizens live, did not reveal any suspicious actions on their part. There was no direct interest in the work being carried out and the tent erected over the excavation site. The box with the remains of war criminals was under the protection of operational workers until the morning of April 5, when the physical destruction of the remains was carried out. According to the tibia and skull count, the remains could have belonged to 10 or 11 corpses. After the removal of the remains, the place of their burial was restored to its original form. The seizure was carried out during the night and in the morning of April 4, 1970. Surveillance organized at the house adjacent to the place of work, where German citizens live, did not reveal any suspicious actions on their part. There was no direct interest in the work being carried out and the tent erected over the excavation site. The box with the remains of war criminals was under the protection of operational workers until the morning of April 5, when the physical destruction of the remains was carried out. The seizure was carried out during the night and in the morning of April 4, 1970. Surveillance organized at the house adjacent to the place of work, where German citizens live, did not reveal any suspicious actions on their part. There was no direct interest in the work being carried out and the tent erected over the excavation site. The box with the remains of war criminals was under the protection of operational workers until the morning of April 5, when the physical destruction of the remains was carried out. The seizure was carried out during the night and in the morning of April 4, 1970. Surveillance organized at the house adjacent to the place of work, where German citizens live, did not reveal any suspicious actions on their part. There was no direct interest in the work being carried out and the tent erected over the excavation site. The box with the remains of war criminals was under the protection of operational workers until the morning of April 5, when the physical destruction of the remains was carried out. The box with the remains of war criminals was under the protection of operational workers until the morning of April 5, when the physical destruction of the remains was carried out. The box with the remains of war criminals was under the protection of operational workers until the morning of April 5, when the physical destruction of the remains was carried out.
Head of the 00 KGB at the USSR Council of Ministers, military unit p / p 92626 Colonel Kovalenko
00 KGB officers at the Council of Ministers of the USSR military unit p / p 92626 (signatures)
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