NKVD Archives

A propaganda poster depicts a polish officer being executed in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.

NKVD

The Soviet Secret Police & the Katyn Forest Massacre

By Richard Rule

On September 17, 1939, in the wake of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the Soviet Red Army crossed the Polish frontier from the east. Read more

In September 1944, Red Army soldiers wade through a marshy area during a patrol. Such terrain played an important role on the Taman Peninsula as both armies had to contend with mobility issues.

NKVD

Breaching the Blue Line: The Soviet Army at the Taman Peninsula

By Victor Kamenir

The charred remains of men and machines scattered through the Kursk salient in July 1943 signified the death knell of the last attempt by the German Wehrmacht to regain the initiative on the Eastern Front. Read more

With infantry charging alongside, a motorcycle unit of the Red Army roars into action against German positions in July 1942. The submachine gun appears to be the weapon of choice for these soldiers.

NKVD

Leningrad & Tikhvin: Nazi Winter Repulse During Operation Barbarossa

By Pat Mc Taggart

The men of Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb’s Heeresgruppe Nord (Army Group North) had little sleep during the night of June 21, 1941. Read more

German war artist Bruno Muller-Linow painted this image of an Allied coastal convoy under fire from German forces somewhere in the European Theater. The Soviet ships evacuating Tallinn were ravaged by German aircraft, heavy guns, and mines. (U.S. Army Art)

NKVD

The Soviet Dunkirk: The Tallinn Offensive

By Victor J. Kamenir

Early in World War II, a bitter joke circulated within the Soviet military. It ran, “What is the first thing Russia does when war is declared? Read more

NKVD

New Mexico: Atomic Spy Capital

By Richard Higgins

New Mexico and its capital of Santa Fe bring to mind some beautiful images. Stunning sunsets, unlimited vistas, a plethora of art galleries, the spectacular food enlivened with the local green chile, an ancient Native American culture that still thrives, and a Spanish heritage tradition going back to within 50 years of Columbus’s arrival all make for a unique cultural and physical environment. Read more

NKVD

Heinrich Himmler: The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Third Reichsführer-SS

By Blaine Taylor

On the evening of May 23, 1945, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, five men in a British Army jeep were driving down a dark road. Read more

NKVD

Wretched Misconduct of the Red Army

By Martin K.A. Morgan

The vast Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park commemorates 5,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in battle in the city in April and May 1945. Read more

NKVD

Operation Long Jump: The Nazi Assassination Attempt on the “Big Three”

By Mason B. Webb

In German it was called Operation Rösselsprung, which translates to “Long Jump.” Its goal was to kill or kidnap the Allies’ “Big Three” leaders––Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston S. Read more

NKVD

Opening the Venona Files

By Peter Kross

On February 1, 1943, a group called the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service, the forerunner of the modern-day National Security Agency (NSA), began a project to intercept and analyze diplomatic signal traffic sent by an ally of the United States: the Soviet Union. Read more

In Yak Attack, by artist Roy Grinnell, Roland de la Poype shoots down a German FW-190 over Russia on October 23, 1944. This was Poype’s 15th aerial victory, and the 182nd for the Normandie-Niemen Squadron.

NKVD

French Aces on the Eastern Front: The Normandie-Niemen Squadron

By Andre Bernole and Glenn Barnett

The world was understandably shocked when France capitulated to Nazi Germany in June 1940, but not all Frenchmen accepted their country’s humiliation. Read more

NKVD

Leningrad & Operation Spark: Breaking the Nazi Stranglehold

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

With the German Sixth Army in its death throes at Stalingrad in January 1943, Stavka, the Soviet High Command, sought to capitalize on the disaster by unleashing massive offensives along the entire German-Soviet front. Read more

NKVD

Joseph Stalin’s Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov: A Soviet Survivor

By Blaine Taylor

In the summer of 1941, as the Nazi German blitzkrieg rolled over the Russian Red Army defenses at the embattled city of Leningrad, today once more St. Read more

NKVD

Vyacheslav M. Molotov: Steel’s Hammer

By Blaine Taylor

The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Read more

NKVD

Tula: Hero City of the Soviet Union

By Pat McTaggart

In 1976, the Soviet city of Tula joined an elite group of nine other Soviet communities designated as “Hero Cities.” Read more

NKVD

The Russo-Finnish War: Why Stalin Tried to Invade Finland

By Arnold Blumberg

Prior to the Russo-Finnish War, problems were already setting in for Russia and Germany. The hugely cynical German-Soviet nonaggression pact, concluded in August 1939, assigned the Baltic region of eastern Europe to the exclusive sphere of influence of Communist Russia. Read more

NKVD

Leningrad: A Survivor’s Story

By Bob Kunzinger

Georgina’s mother sat next to me at her dining room table. She and her husband were veterans of the Great Patriotic War, and back in 1996 we all sat about the table on Victory Day and talked about the siege. Read more

Soviet soldiers storm the ruins of School # 6 in a photpgraph by Russian newspaper photographer Georgy Zelma.

NKVD

Stalingrad: Apocalypse on the Volga

By John Walker

After Adolf Hitler’s audacious invasion of Russia finally ground to a halt in December 1941 on the forested outskirts of Moscow, the exhausted German Army stabilized its winter front in a line running roughly from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. Read more

NKVD

Maskirovka: The Hidden Key to Soviet Victory

By Phil Zimmer

Promoted to full colonel in the German Army and an award of the prestigious Knight’s Cross were significant accomplishments, even in the waning days of World War II. Read more

NKVD

WWII Spies: the Soviet Cambridge Network

by Peter Kross

In the modern era, the majority of those accused of spying have done so for monetary purposes—the quick acquisition of wealth as opposed to ideological or philosophical reasons. Read more