London: Soviet leader Josef Stalin wanted
to imprison and torture Nazis in secret after the end of World
War II in revenge for Germany`s betrayal of Russia, a new book
has claimed.
The book, titled `The Diplomatic Secrets of the
Third Reich`, details how Soviet secret agents kidnapped Nazi
diplomats after World War II so that they could imprison,
torture and secretly try them in Moscow.
In fact, the book draws on hitherto sealed Russian
archives concerning the dreaded Lubianka jail in Moscow where
the former top servants of German leader Adolf Hitler were
brought, the `Daily Mail` reported.
Alexei Matweyewitsch Sidnyew was the general in Soviet
intelligence tasked in the early summer of 1945 to exact
vengeance on Stalin`s behalf against the diplomats he believed
plotted the war against Russia, says the book.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had a pact that kept
the peace until Hitler decided to invade the country in June
1941. By war`s end, 27 million Soviet citizens were dead and
many of her major cities in ruins.
Stalin believed the foreign office diplomats who served
Nazis were responsible for the war. Consequently, he wanted to
take revenge.
The book, penned by WS Christoforow, chronicles how
Stalin issued directive 143c with a list of top Nazi diplomats
he wanted seized. Foreign minister under Hitler, Joachim von
Ribbentrop, was at the top but he was seized by the western
Allies, tried at Nuremberg, and hanged for war crimes.
But by August 1945, barely three months after the
war had ended, Stalin was cabled by Sidnyew informing him 374
diplomats had been seized in Germany and other European states
occupied by the Red Army.
Fritz Grobb, Hitler`s envoy in Baghdad, Carl Clodius,
his special representative in Romania, Herbert von Richthofen
and Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, both paladins of Third Reich in
Bulgaria, together with many military attaches and ambassadors
were seized and sentenced to 25 years in the gulag work camps.
The book also chronicles their pleas for mercy -- and of
the secret maneuvering of the foreign service to help Hitler
in his conquest of Europe.
PTI
