The Red Orchestra, as it was known in Germany, was the name given by the Abwehr Section III.F to anti-Nazi resistance workers in August 1941. It primarily referred to a loose network of resistance groups, connected through personal contacts, uniting hundreds of opponents of the Nazi regime. These included groups of friends who held discussions that were centred on Harro Schulze-Boysen, Adam Kuckhoff and Arvid Harnack in Berlin, alongside many others. They printed and distributed prohibited leaflets, posters, and stickers, hoping to incite civil disobedience. They aided Jews and resistance to escape the regime, documented the atrocities of the Nazis, and transmitted military intelligence to the Allies. Contrary to legend, the Red Orchestra was neither directed by Soviet communists nor under a single leadership. It was a network of groups and individuals, often operating independently. To date, about 400 members are known by name.
Wilhelm Guddorf was a Belgian journalist and resistance fighter against the Third Reich. Guddorf was a leading member of a Berlin anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. Guddorf was the editor of the Die Rote Fahne newspaper.
Arvid Harnack was a German jurist, Marxist economist, Communist, and German resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. Harnack came from an intellectual family and was originally a humanist. He was strongly influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but progressively moved to a Marxist-Socialist outlook after a visit to the Soviet Union and the Nazis' appearance. After starting an undercover discussion group based at the Berlin Abendgymnasium, he met Harro Schulze-Boysen, who ran a similar faction. Like numerous groups in other parts of the world, the undercover political factions led by Harnack and Schulze-Boysen later developed into an espionage network that supplied military and economic intelligence to the Soviet Union. The group was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. He and his American-born wife, Mildred Harnack, were executed by the Nazi regime in 1942.
Mildred "Mili" Elizabeth Fish-Harnack was an American literary historian, author, translator, and resistance fighter. After marrying Arvid Harnack, she moved with him to Germany, where she began her career as an academic. Fish-Harnack spent a year at the University of Jena and the University of Giessen working on her doctoral thesis. At Giessen, she witnessed the beginnings of Nazism. In 1930, the couple moved to Berlin and Fish-Harnack became an assistant lecturer in English and American literature at the University of Berlin. In the early 1930s, the couple became increasingly interested in the Soviet communist system. Harnack established a writers' group that studied the Soviet planned economy, and the couple were able to arrange a visit to the Soviet Union during August 1932 and by 1933 they were fully committed to Soviet ideology. Through contacts at the American embassy, Fish-Harnack became friends with Martha Dodd, who became a part of her salon where they discussed current affairs. In 1936, Fish-Harnack's translation of Irving Stone's biography of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life, was published.
Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen was a left-wing German publicist and Luftwaffe officer during World War II. Schulze-Boysen became a leading German resistance fighter as a member of a Berlin anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. He was arrested and executed in 1942.
Libertas "Libs" Schulze-Boysen, born Libertas Viktoria Haas-Heye was a German aristocrat and resistance fighter during the Nazi regime. From the early 1930's to 1940, Libs attempted to build a literary career, initially as a press officer and later as a writer and journalist. Initially sympathetic to the Nazis as her family has close links to the senior levels of the regime, she changed her mind after meeting and marrying Luftwaffe officer Harro Schulze-Boysen.
Maria "Mimi" Terwiel was a German resistance fighter, active in a group in Berlin that wrote and distributed anti-Nazi and anti-war appeals. As part of what they conceived as a broader action against a collection of anti-fascist resistance groups in Germany and occupied Europe that the Abwehr called the Red Orchestra, in September 1942 the Gestapo arrested Terwiel along with her fiancée Helmut Himpel. Among the leaflets and pamphlets they had copied and distributed for the group were the July and August 1941 sermons of Clemens August Graf von Galen which denounced the regime's Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia.
Hans Coppi Jr. is a German historian. His parents, Hilde and Hans Coppi, were active in the German Resistance and were both executed by the Nazis.
KLK Calling PTZ – The Red Orchestra is a 1971 East German film about the history of the Red Orchestra espionage ring.
The Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht was the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces of the German Armed Forces before and during World War II. OKW/Chi, within the formal order of battle hierarchy OKW/WFsT/Ag WNV/Chi, dealt with the cryptanalysis and deciphering of enemy and neutral states' message traffic and security control of its own key processes and machinery, such as the rotor cipher machine ENIGMA machine. It was the successor to the former Chi bureau of the Reichswehr Ministry.
General der Nachrichtenaufklärung was the signals intelligence agency of the Heer, before and during World War II. It was the successor to the former cipher bureau known as Inspectorate 7/VI in operation between 1940 and 1942, when it was further reorganised into the Headquarters for Signal Intelligence between 1942 and 1944, until it was finally reorganised in October 1944 into the GdNA. The agency was also known at the OKH/Gend Na, GendNa or Inspectorate 7 or more commonly OKH/GdNA. Inspectorate 7/VI was also known as In 7 or In/7 or In 7/VI and also OKH/Chi.
Heinrich Scheel was a German left-wing historian and longtime vice president of the East German Academy of Sciences. Scheel was notable for putting forward a theory of German radical at the time of the French revolution, in an attempt to determine an alternative tradition in Germany. Scheel was most notable for being a German resistance fighter who was a member of a Berlin based anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during the Nazi regime.
Horst Heilmann was a German resistance fighter who was a member of the anti-fascist resistance group that formed around Harro Schulze-Boysen. This group and many others were bundled together and later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. Heilmann was also a student and a wireless operator who worked at the Referat 12 that was in the Inspectorate 7/VI.
Anatoly Markovich Gurevich was a Jewish Soviet intelligence officer. He was an officer in the GRU, known as a scout in Soviet intelligence parlance. Gurevich was a central figure in the anti-Nazi Red Orchestra in France and Belgium during World War II.
Wolfgang Kreher Johannes "John" Graudenz was a German journalist, press photographer, industrial representative and resistance fighter. Graudenz was most notable for being an important member of the Berlin-based anti-fascist resistance group that would later be named by the Gestapo as the Red Orchestra and was responsible for the technical aspect of the production of leaflets and pamphlets that the group produced.
Gisela von Pöllnitz was a German journalist, communist, and resistance fighter. She was a notable member for the Berlin based anti-fascist resistance group around Harro Schulze-Boysen, later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during the Nazi regime. Throughout her life, von Pöllnitz had a lung condition, that progressively worsened, after being arrested several times by the Gestapo. On her final arrest by the Gestapo, she contacted tuberculosis after 5 months in custody. Her physician Elfriede Paul arranged a sanitarium in Switzerland, but she never recovered.
Erwin Gehrts was a German conservative socialist, resistance fighter, journalist and colonel in the Luftwaffe. Trained as a teacher, Gehrts was conscripted as a flying officer during World War I. During the interwar period, he became a journalist. However, with the emergence of the Nazi states, his newspaper, the Tägliche Rundschau, was banned. Finding work with the Luftwaffe, he became disillusioned with the Nazis. He became associated with a Berlin-based anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr and an informer to Harro Shulze-Boysen, passing secrets from the air ministry.
Herbert Gollnow was a German resistance fighter, consulate secretary and later second lieutenant in the Luftwaffe. Gollnow career was influenced by Harro Schulze-Boysen while Gollnow studied at the Faculty for Foreign Studies of the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, and as rose through the ranks of the Luftwaffe, he became a counter-intelligence officer in the Luftwaffe and an informer to Schulze-Boyen. Gollnow became a member of a Berlin anti-fascist resistance group that was associated with Schulze-Boysen, that was later called the Red Orchestra. He was later arrested and executed in 1943.
Friedrich Rehmer was a German factory worker and resistance fighter. While attending an evening school in Schöneberg, Rehmer met a group of friends that included Ursula Goetze, Otto Gollnow, Hannelore Thiel, Liane Berkowitz, John Rittmeister and Werner Krauss. In December 1941, he become part of an anti-fascist network after meeting Harro Schulze-Boysen through Wolfgang Rittmeister, brother to John Rittmeister, that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. Rehmer was executed in 1943.
Walter Husemann was a German communist and resistance fighter. As a young man, Husemann trained an industrial toolmaker, before training as a journalist. He became interested in politics and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). With the arrival of the Nazis in 1933, he became a resistance fighter and through his wife, the actor Marta Husemann, he became assoociated with an anti-fascist resistance group around Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Gestapo. Along with John Sieg whom he met in the KPD and Fritz Lange, Martin Weise and Herbert Grasse he wrote and published the resistance magazine, The Internal Front Die Innere Front.
