Anyone have information on "SMERSH"?

Anyone know anything about SMERSH?


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMERSH

From what I understand, and this is all from bits & pieces that I have read over the years, SMERSH is supposedly the Communist gangster mob...the late Ian Flemming referred to them on occasion in his '007' James Bond books...when I say mob, I mean just that, a Communist gangster network used for money laundering, murder, drug dealing, prostitution etc...whether SMERSH still exists is unknown...my feeling is it has 'morphed' into a bigger network of Intelligence service related mafias, who work together worldwide: i.e. CIA, MI6, Mossad, Russian Intelligence, CHinese Secret Police etc...many of the above perform 'legitimate' intelligence gathering, but the master of these are always the gangsters who have no qualms about murder.

I was not aware it was a real gang.

Track down Soviet war criminals, Ukrainian group urges

Facts on SMERSH.

· Founded April 14 1943; disbanded in 1946
· Was the main counter- intelligence directorate of the U.S.S.R.'s People's Commissariat of Defence
· SMERSH units re-established Soviet administration in territories liberated by the Red Army;
· SMERSH was a division of the NKVD (the pre-cursor to the KGB) that reported directly to Stalin

Sources: The Oxford Companion to World War II, © 2001, World War II: A Statistical Survey, © 1993

carleton.ca/jmc/cnews/27092002/n5.shtml

Nope ,Smersh ( for Smiert Spionin/Death to Spys)was very real,and actually had direct(though granted,slightly less agresive,but not by much) counter parts in the Allied armies of GB and US,the units on the western allied sides were ad hoc groups of inteligence officers,proffesional criminals(safe crackers and such) and special forces types that took part in various "escapades" in front of or just behind the shifting allied lines,tracking down loot,assasinating nazis and trying to capture top scientists to kidnapp for the western allies use before the Red Army got hold of them. Ian fleming of the above mentioned James Bond fame was involved in this type of work for Royal Navy inteligence during the war,presumibly giving him the idea for the ,by the time of the books and films,fictitious Smersh of Bond fame.

The rea Smersh was also deeply involved in tracking down serving then former AK officers.

Thanks I don't like to trust wikipidea but they had alot on them. I wonder why they are not brought up more?

The SMERSH was directly involved in the collection, interrogation, and execution of tens of thousands of Polish military officers, clerics, and political leaders at the Katyn Forest Massacre. The SMERSH was also actively involved in the capture, of tens if not hundreds of thousands of suspected disloyalists, anti-Soviets, and White Partisans in the Soviet Union such as forced repatriation, and execution of Soviet citizens who had been active in anti-communist armed groups fighting on the side of Nazi Germany such as the Russian Liberation Army, the Cossack Corps of Pyotr Krasnov, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. This also included eastern POWs and eastern workers. Finally, SMERSH handled the capture and interrogations and executions of hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese POWs as well as the capture of thousands of American, British, Australian, New Zealand, Dutch, French and Nationalist Chinese soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, as well as expatriates. Though a few thousand of the German and Japanese PoW's were released after Stalin's death in March, 1953, the "Allied Disappeared" were never seen again. The USSR, and the present Russian Federation, claim to know nothing about these many thousand "Allied Disappeared."[citation needed] The USSR feared these members of the Allies that ended up on the USSR's territory would tell what they saw, and Stalin feared a cutoff of the Arctic and Persian supply convoys.[citation needed]

not sure about "thousands" of western allied disapearing,a few maybe but on the main western allies who found themselves behind the advancing russian lines were given little or no help to get somehow back to their own lines,there are accounts of US and GB soldiers/airmen etc actualy joining up with Russian units and fighting westwards ,some of these men spent some time (a few days to a couple of weeks) as "guests" of the NKVD before being handed over to western allies. As for the rest the Soviets were not bothered at that time of allied troops discovering their nasty "secrets" (after all,Stalin had openly told Churchil and Roosevelt that he would excecute X number of german officers) ,some soldiers tell about escorting Cossaks and such to the Red army lines,handing the Cossaks over ,seeing them being led behind trees and hearing shooting straight away,NKVD border guards grinning and pulling fingers across throats.

Operation Keelhaul

This is an example of a SMERSH activity...but remember, there was much participation by the West, in this case Eisenhower, and surely the OSS, pre-cursor to the CIA, in these activities...as I said, international gangsters.

Two views on this:

thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=114
fff.org/freedom/0295a.asp

They were hidden well.

The military counter-intelligence also oversaw the deportation of entire ethnic groups within the Soviet Union. Many died en route or perished later in the camps.

Smersh was gradually absorbed into what was to become the KGB, and many of its operations still remain shrouded in secrecy.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2960709.stm

The Soviet Union was a Frankenstein creation...really, you should read some Solzhenytsin, as he is the greatest living historian on what really happened there...I know, some of his books are what you would call 'intimidating' because they are so big and detailed, but he was there...'A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch' is a good place to start, as it is relatively short, but incredible...and Solzhenytsin does not play 'blame games', he just lays it out...and, from what I read, he still believes in God.