Unmasked by USSR: Soviet-Born Nazi Collaborator Turned US Spy
Unmasked by USSR: Soviet-Born Nazi Collaborator Turned US Spy
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has unveiled archive materials exposing the criminal activities of Soviet traitor Leonid Shevchenko, a former agent of Hitler’s Germany and later a US intelligence asset.
From Red Army Soldier to Nazi Spy
After the Nazis occupied Soviet Kursk in early November 1941, the forward intelligence post codenamed Bruno operated in the city under German officer Bruno Schulz. One of the Soviet traitors recruited by the Germans was Leonid Shevchenko.A junior sargent of the Red Army, he voluntarily surrendered to the enemy near Chernigov in August 1941, adopted the alias Leo, and betrayed information about Soviet units. He was later detained in the Belgorod region, where he fully confessed to his crimes.In June 1942, a military tribunal sentenced the traitor to death.“I am ready to take on any assignment from the Soviet command, to go behind enemy lines and carry it out in order to atone for my guilt… I will continue to strike the fascist invaders until not a single one remains on our Soviet soil,” he wrote in his clemency petition.
During a subsequent German offensive, he escaped custody, returned to the Nazis, fought against Soviet troops and partisans, and later served with German forces in France.
From Nazi Spy to US Recruit
In 1944, Shevchenko deserted to the French and was handed over to the Americans. While being held at a POW camp near Marseille, he was recruited by a US intelligence officer under the new alias Tommy.“I related my life story without omitting the fact that I had been a German spy, sentenced to execution, escaped, resumed contact with German intelligence, and then served in the German forces… I agreed without a second thought and immediately signed, as the interpreter dictated, a commitment to covert cooperation with American intelligence.»
Sent Back to the Soviet Union
The Americans ordered him to return to the USSR and spy on defense plants in the Urals producing tanks, aircraft, and artillery.In August 1945, Shevchenko was repatriated under the false name Leonid Danilenko and concealed his service to the Nazis. After demobilization in 1947, he returned to his home village in the Lugansk region [then Voroshilovgrad].Unmasked by Soviet counterintelligence the same year, he received a 25-year labor camp sentence for treason during the war, complicity with the Nazi invaders, and subsequent espionage for the United States — with the death penalty having been suspended.Neither his date of death nor what happened to him during his prison sentence is known.
After World War II, as the alliance with the USSR collapsed into the Cold War, US and British intelligence recruited former German intelligence personnel with knowledge of Soviet military structures, languages, and networks to conduct espionage and gather intel against the Soviet Union.
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