Operating in Tehran during World War II, he tracked German commandos who had arrived to attack a summit attended by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.

Realizing they were being followed, the Germans called off the attack.

Robert Service is British historian and the author of a forthcoming book Spies and Commissars.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman. This is The World. Russians are remembering the Soviet era spy Gevork Vartanian. He passed away this week at the age of 87. President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to Vartanian’s widow who collaborated with her husband on missions. The legendary spy couple famously helped to derail a Nazi plot in 1943. British historian Robert Service says the goal was to assassinate allied leaders Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill as they gathered for a conference.

Robert Service: The western allies were meeting in Tehran in Iran because Stalin just wouldn’t leave the vicinity of the USSR. So, Roosevelt and Churchill had to fly to Iran to work out what they were going to do to prosecute the war effort. The Soviet Intelligence Agency was interested in keeping all of the allied leaders alive – Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, and one of the principal agents of the Soviet cause in Iran was an Iranian of Armenian descent called Vartanian, who has just died. He was only 16 when he was recruited. He was one of the most brilliant of the lot.

Werman: What made him so brilliant? I mean, he sounds, at least in Iran and this particular plot, long jump, he sounds like the perfect insider.

Service: Well, he was someone who got wind of what the Germans were up to. The Germans sent over a mission to prepare the way for the redoubtable Otto Skorzeny to fly into Iranian airspace and either abduct or assassinate all three allied leaders. This would have been a disaster for the allies in the Second World War. What Vartanian did was get the mission team arrested.

Werman: The Nazi mission team…just got them arrested.

Service: The Nazi mission team that was going to be put down in Tehran and would set about abducting or assassinating the allied leaders. So, he was a very practical, on-the-ground, very, very young man. I mean, he was only in his teens!

Werman: After World War II, when the KGB took over from Russia’s Intelligence Service, it’s interesting Vartanian wasn’t alone in a lot of his espionage. His wife was also a spy along with him – the husband and wife spies.

Service: Yes, the Soviet Intelligence Agency often did this sort of thing. It was a way of keeping the moral of an agent high while he was abroad, and Vartanian was, with his wife, a really primary agent. The thing that changed in 1945, of course, was the cooperation between the British and the Americans and the Soviets completely vanished. During the Second World War, there was a lot of cooperation and there was even a British liaison officer in Moscow working with what became the KGB. It’s an extraordinary story of cooperation, not just among the armies but among the intelligence agencies. It’s not really yet been fully told.

Werman: The Vartanians worked together through the ’80s. Do you know of a very late case that they worked on together that was probably lesser known than “Operation Long Jump?”

Service: Well, until the turn of the millennium, the Russian authorities have kept quiet about the details of what Vartanian got up to even in the Second World War and they’ve kept stum almost entirely about what he did next. What we do know for certain is that he got every medal in the book. I mean, he was a very highly regarded spy.

Werman: I guess his medals indicate that, for many Russians, Vartanian was a hero. I’m just wondering, what do you think current members of the KGB in Russia, how will they be reflecting on the late Gevork Vartanian?

Service: The FSB as it is now is the successive organization of KGB and, of course, Prime Minister Putin – soon-to-be President Putin, again – he too worked for the KGB. So, what he did in sending condolences to the wife of Gevork Vartanian was give a message, I think, from his heart. He’s still a KGB man at heart, the man who rules Russia.

Werman: Historian Robert Service, author of the forthcoming book “Spies & Commissars”, thank you very much.

Service: Cheers!

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: Former concentration camp sites in Germany offer a chance to learn about the horrors of life there from the prisoners’ point of view. Well now, some curators are creating exhibits that show the camps from the perspective of the Nazi SS officers. It’s been taboo in Germany to take an interest in the lives of the perpetrators. But that’s changing, as Daniel Estrin reports from the Ravensbruck concentration camp memorial, outside of Berlin.

DANIEL ESTRIN:  It’s an eerie feeling to walk around the two-story villa where SS officers lived with their wives and children.

CHRISTINE HOLDEN:  This is obviously original bathroom fittings here. The tile, the bathtub. Look at the bathtub, it’s huge.

ESTRIN: Christine Holden is a history professor from the University of Southern Maine, doing research on the Ravensbruck concentration camp. So, the SS vice commanders, the SS officers would be taking baths here?

HOLDEN: Yes, while the prisoners had maybe no chance for shower after the first one when they came.

BETTINA FELZMANN: The whole energy is strange for me in this area.

ESTRIN: That’s Bettina Felzmann, visiting from Austria. We spoke in the kitchen, where an SS officer’s wife would prepare dinner. Not too far from the prisoner barracks. For decades, visitors have been coming to Ravensbruck to see where the prisoners lived and died. But this SS officer’s house was off limits to the public until a few months ago. Showing a glimpse into the perpetrators’ everyday lives is a relatively new concept at concentration camp memorials in Germany. Ravensbruck opened the first exhibit in 2004 about female camp guards. Memorial director Insa Eschebach says some of her colleagues were apprehensive.

INSA ESCHEBACH: The first discussions I remember, they were really very full of doubt. Oh, you will have right wing people here, to come and they will honor the SS, once you show pictures of them, and once you tell their stories, and huge fears.

ESTRIN: But a year later, another concentration camp memorial, near Hamburg, followed suit with a similar exhibit. Eschebach says curators are responding to a rising interest in the stories of the Nazi perpetrators, especially from family members.

ESCHEBACH: More and more grandchildren of SS men come here. I mean I had a woman sitting here, bursting into tears because her uncle had been an SS man here in Ravensbruck.

ESTRIN:  Eschebach says that it’s only been in the past ten years that descendants have contacted her. One man who did some family research is Berthold Schneiderheinze.

BERTHOLD SCHNEIDERHEINZE: I was born in 1950 in Furstenberg. And everybody in Furstenberg knew that there were a concentration camp.

ESTRIN: During the war, Schneiderheinze’s grandfather took tourists boating on the lake in front of the concentration camp. And his aunt delivered mail to the camp. Finding out that his relatives were bystanders filled him with guilt. So he started attending a weekly support group with other children and grandchildren of bystanders and perpetrators. In recent years, an increasing number of this second and third generation have been openly discussing their family history and even publishing books about it. But social researcher Stephan Marks says Germans still need to hear more from the so-called first generation involved Nazis.

STEPHAN MARKS: Those people who had been active as members of the Nazi party, SA, SS or Wermacht, they went into retirement during the last 10 or 20 years. There are still many around. There are still several million. Senior citizens who have conscious memories of national socialism.

SPEAKING GERMAN

ESTRIN: Here’s an example. Marks tape-recorded this interview with an elderly man who was active in the Hitler Youth movement. Marks often plays this recording when he lectures to groups on the psychology of the Nazis.

MARKS: This interview, the very first sentence goes, “When I was young we the young people went through life with open eyes, really open eyes. I remember Adolf Hitler’s visit in Freiburg. And we Hitler Youth went there and he went by us and he looked each one in the eyes.”

ESTRIN: Marks thinks it’s important to hear testimonies like this. He says it can teach Germany’s newer generations to stand guard against other fascist movements in the future.

MARKS: It’s not fun to listen to these stories, but that should not be a reason to keep too much of a distance. So, it’s like, going into the shoes of a perpetrator for 2 minutes. And then getting out again, and talking, how it is, how did it feel? This is learning from history.

ESTRIN:  But Eschebach, director of the Ravensbruck memorial, believes in keeping a certain distance.

ESCHEBACH: I think it’s an illusion to stand inside the shoes of anyone who has been here in Ravensbruck. Be it as an inmate, and also be it the SS. Because I think it is unimaginable. We cannot stand inside their shoes. We can only try to approach them and try to understand parts of what was going on.

ESTRIN: The horrors of World War Two are still fresh in the minds of many Germans. They’re interested to learn more about who committed the crimes, but for many, it’s not easy. The way Eschebach sees it, walking through a house, where SS officers used to eat breakfast and take baths, can be a first step. For The World, I’m Daniel Estrin, Ravensbruck concentration camp memorial.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• See photos
• BBC coverage

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Tens of thousands of German soldiers defied the Nazis during World War Two, and they were convicted of treason. This month Germany overturned their sentences. The move comes too late for most of the fighters. Almost all of them were executed, or died in concentration camps, or were killed in so-called death battalions during the war. Still, exonerating these rebellious ranks has symbolic importance for a country that’s still dealing with its Nazi past. The World’s Gerry Hadden met one of the three surviving German traitors.

GERRY HADDEN:  It was 1942 in German-occupied France. A 21-year-old German sailor named Ludwig Baumann was stationed in the port of Bordeaux. His assignment was to pace the deck scanning the sea for enemy boats. He had a lot of time to think, he says, and that’s when he began to question Hitler’s war.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] I was non-political at the time, but whenever I heard Hitler on the radio demanding more room for our people in the east I wondered, what about the people already living there? Are they going to be destroyed or what? Then our army began invading country after country. I saw newsreels of hundreds of soviet prisoners huddling in a field in winter. I thought, those people are surely going to freeze to death. I didn’t want to be part of this great crime. I just wanted to live.

GERRY HADDEN:  In Bordeaux Baumann and another young sailor named Kurt Oldenburg became friends with some of the French dockworkers. When the Germans told them they were thinking of deserting, the French offered to help.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] One night after dark we left the ship. Our French friends were waiting for us in a truck around the corner. They gave us civilian clothes and Basque hats, and drove us to the no man’s land between occupied and non-occupied France. They dropped us there and drove back to town.

GERRY HADDEN:  The plan was to slip past German patrols and reach a safe house, then continue on to Morocco and finally to the United States.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] But unfortunately we walked right into the arms of a German patrol. We had our side arms locked and loaded. We could have shot them right there on the spot but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. They took us back to base and that’s where our suffering began.

GERRY HADDEN:  Like tens of thousands of German deserters, Baumann and Oldenburg were sentenced to death by a military court. Awaiting execution, they spent the next several months in prison where they were starved and tortured.

[SOUND CLIP]

GERRY HADDEN:  Baumann is eighty-eight years old today. His wartime story does not end in prison, but the frail, white-haired man takes a break from the telling. He’s still traumatized by his

experiences, he says, as he prepares coffee for visitors at his modest home in the suburbs of Bremen.

[SOUND CLIP]

GERRY HADDEN:  He then pulls out two documents. One, his death sentence, the other his pardon. After a year on death row his sentence and Oldenburg’s were commuted. But it wasn’t clemency. The two had been assigned to one of Hitler’s death battalions. They were to be sent on suicide missions designed to hold off the Soviet army.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] Hitler once said, German soldiers at the front might die, but the deserters must die.

GERRY HADDEN:  The death battalions were usually wiped out in a matter of weeks. The troops were forced out into the torched fields and towns the retreating Nazi’s left behind. Baumann says they became cannon fodder.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] One day we were under siege in a vast wasteland of ashes in Belarus. Most of us were killed, including my good friend Kurt Oldenburg. I only escaped because I was badly wounded and sent to the hospital.

GERRY HADDEN:  Baumann took a bullet in the back defending the very army he’d tried to desert. When the war was over, he figured he’d paid for his crime on the battlefield, but that was not the case.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] On the contrary, we were called cowards and deserters. I myself received threatening phone calls at home, my father too. He died of a broken heart. I myself, I took to drinking.

GERRY HADDEN:  Baumann says even German civilians who’d opposed the Nazis branded him a traitor. German historian Wolfgang Eichweder says such treatment was common.

WOLFGANG EICHENWEDER:  Because in the public memory of Germany, in the fourth decades after the Second World War, we made a strong difference between the regime of Hitler and the German army. A lot have been convinced for lot of years, that the German army has acted as normal soldiers. That means more or less in an honorable sense.

GERRY HADDEN:  Ludwig Baumann’s honor seemed lost forever. In the decades after his father’s death, he was shunned by society. He didn’t get sober until he was widowed and left with six kids to raise. He joined Germany’s peace movement, and founded an association called The Victims of Nazi Justice. He fought to clear his name but encountered obstacles. For years various German governments argued that desertion was an official crime at the time and therefore the convictions must stand. The second argument, Baumann says, struck him as scandalous.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] It went like this: an act of treason might have endangered the lives of other German soldiers, therefore we can’t absolve you. But what I say is, if only more soldiers had committed treason so many millions of lives could have been saved, in the concentration camps and so on. You can’t place the lives of some soldiers above all those millions who died. And until Germany recognizes this, it will not have broken with its Nazi past.

GERRY HADDEN:  Germany has in fact recognized this. Last month, it finally overturned the Nazi traitors’ convictions. Today Baumann is the only ex-convict left to relish this final legal victory, two others are still alive but suffer from severe senility. Baumann says there’s been no celebration.

LUDWIG BAUMANN:  [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] There was no one left to witness the reversal of the sentences. All of them are dead, executed. But these were people who morally and ethically acted in an honorable fashion. Some of them hid Jews or helped prisoners. They took great risks, so they should be especially honored. For us to be the last group of victims to have our sentences reversed is an outrage.

GERRY HADDEN:  An outrage, he says, that it took more than half a century. But Baumann says this was his dream. His honor has been restored. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden, Bremen, Germany.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP:  A story of reconciliation today.  The story involves a former Nazi soldier named Heinrich Steinmeyer.  He’s eighty five years old now and he’s reaching out to a community in Scotland where he was held prisoner during World War II.  Steinmeyer says he wants to thank the village of Comrie in Scotland for the kindness he was shown during his time as a POW.  To show his appreciation, Steinmeyer is donating his life savings to the village.  Eighty year old George Carson lives in Comrie and is a World War II veteran himself.  He’s been in touch with Heinrich Steinmeyer for the past seven years.  Mr. Carson, it’s nice to speak with you, sir.

GEORGE CARSON:  Just call me George.

SHARP:  Alright, George.

CARSON:  Now how can I help you, my dear?

JEB SHARP:  How do you feel about Mr. Steinmeyer’s offer of reconciliation?

CARSON:  I feel it’s a wonderful example of how putting the past behind you and showing appreciation for the kindness he received.  When he came to Comrie as a prisoner of war, he was treated with kindness and that is him repaying that kindness.

SHARP:  Do you now consider this former enemy a friend?

CARSON:  Oh, he’s a very, very much, a close personal friend.  Very, very much so.

SHARP:  How did you get to know him?

CARSON:  My late wife, when she was a girl, felt sorry for one of the young German prisoners of war named Fritz.  Now I don’t know where Fritz is now but he was only seventeen.  He had been Hitler Youth then recruited into the Army and he was allowed out on certain occasions, out of the camp and he wanted to go to the cinema in Kries, seven miles away.  So they put him in a school uniform, took him in a bus to the cinema.  They bought him fish and chips, took him back home, back to Comrie and they put a camp uniform on again and got back into the camp and nobody knew anything about it.

SHARP:  George Carson says that story was typical of the way locals treated some of the POW’s in 1945.  But he says his late wife never met Heinrich Steinmeyer, another of the four thousand POW’s who spent time in Coltie Bragen Camp.  Seven years ago, Steinmeyer came forward with an unusual favor to ask.

CARSON:  And Heinrich Steinmeyer asked me if I knew anyone who could scatter his ashes when he died in the hills beyond the camp where he was taken prisoner because that’s where he wanted his ashes scattered.  Although I am eighty, I’m a keen hill walker and I said I would do it and I’ve agreed to scatter his ashes on the hill.

SHARP:  Now when you go out walking, do you pass the Coltie Bragen POW camp?

CARSON:  Oh, very, very often, yes.

SHARP:  What was the camp like back in the day?  I mean if they could sneak somebody out to the movies and back, it must have been a more …

CARSON:  Well, it must have been, at the time, I’m sorry my late wife’s not here, she could answer it, but Heinrich must have been allowed out for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon but he would not be allowed to go beyond the boundaries of the village you know, to purchase a few things like soap and things from the local shops.  And some of these prisoners of war, they had very little money and some of the people in the village used to give them, they’d give them a few you know, a few schillings to buy a little extra for themselves.

SHARP:  It sounds remarkably friendly.  Does everyone feel warmly towards the former prisoners the way you do?

CARSON:  Well, I highly consider it to be.  I know two condone personally old folks club, a club for the elderly.  I mean it was very well received by them, including the Payne, an ex-Scottish prison guard and he got very friendly towards Heinrich as well.

SHARP:  So you don’t find people who have more trouble forgiving?

CARSON:  No, absolutely not and I’ll give you an example.  Another prisoner of war, and he had a pub and the soldier from the Army come, used to come to his pub and he said, I’m a soldier and you’re a soldier, although we fought on opposite sides, we were still soldiers doing duty for our country and people are very, very understanding. It’s all in the past.

SHARP:  George Carson speaking to us from Comrie in Scotland.  Thanks again.

CARSON:  It’s been a pleasure speaking to you, right.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.