Alexander Rado

Infobox Writer
name = Alexander Rado
birthname = Sándor (Alexander) Rado (Radó)
caption = Sandor (Alexander) Rado
birthdate = 1899
birthplace = Ujpest, Hungary
deathdate = death year and age|1981|1899
deathplace = Budapest, Hungary
occupation = geographer, Soviet military intelligence agent during World War II

Sandor (Alexander) Rado (Hungarian Radó Sándor 5 November 1899, Újpest – 1981 – Budapest) was a Hungarian-born Soviet military intelligence agent during World War II.

Rado was born in a Jewish family in Újpest near Budapest. His father was a manager in a trading firm and then became a businessman. During World War I, after graduation from gymnasium (high school) in 1917, Rado was drafted into Austro-Hungarian army. He was sent into a fortress artillery officer training school. After graduation from the officer candidate school in 1918, he was assigned to an artillery regiment. While serving, he was also a correspondence student of the law faculty of the University of Budapest.

In December 1918, after the fall of Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Rado joined Hungarian Communist Party. When the communists came to power in Hungary in March 1919, he was appointed a cartographer on the staff of a Hungarian Red Army division. While at serving on the division staff, the political commissar of the division -- Ferenc Munnich -- appointed him commissar of the division's artillery. He took part in fighting against Czechoslovak forces and then in fighting against anti-communist insurgents in Budapest.

On 1 September 1919, after the fall of the communist regime in Hungary, Rado fled to Austria. He studied geography and cartography at Vienna University and wrote articles on military matters in a German-language magazine “Kommunizmus” which was published by Hungarian political emigrants in Austria. In July 1920 he established “Rosta-Wien”, an information agency which was used to spread propaganda materials broadcast from Soviet Russia. They were received through the bribed head of Vienna radio station. Information bulletins based on these materials were distributed to left-wing newspapers and organizations in various countries.

In 1922 Rado moved to Germany and returned to his studies, first at Jena and then at Leipzig. In October 1923 he became the military chief of the communist forces in Leipzig which planned to take part in an uprising which was aborted at the last moment. After that, fearing arrest in Germany, Rado went to the Soviet Union in September 1924, where he worked first for the All-Union Society for Cultural Contacts with Abroad (VOKS) and then for the World Economy Institute of the Communist Academy. In 1926, Rado returned to Germany and established the Berlin cartographic agency “Pressgeography” while also lecturing at a Marxist school on economic geography, labour movement and imperialism.

After Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Rado and his wife Lena fled through Austria to France. In Paris, Rado established “Inpress” (an independent anti-Nazi press agency). In 1935, during a visit to Moscow, Rado was approached by the deputy chief of Soviet military intelligence Artur Artuzov and the Soviet military intelligence chief Semion Urizkiy, and recruited as an intelligence agent with the main task of obtaining intelligence on Nazi Germany. Following instructions, he unsuccessfully tried to obtain a residence permit in Belgium, but in 1936 he received a residence permit in Switzerland and moved to Geneva. There he established the cartographic agency “Geopress”.

In 1937, Rado made a visit to Italy in order to collect intelligence about the Italian military support of Francist forces during the Spanish civil war. This intelligence was sent to Moscow through Paris Soviet military intelligence station. In 1938 Rado contacted Swiss journalist Otto Puenter, a Soviet agent in Berne. Through Puetner Rado obtained military intelligence on Italy and its military support of Franco's forces from “Gabel”, a Yugoslav serving as Spanish Republican consul in Sushak, Yugoslavia and military intelligence on Germany from “Puasson”, a German Social Democratic political emigrant living in Switzerland with sources in Germany.

In 1940, Rado made contact with Alexander Foote, an Englishman who was already a Soviet agent in Switzerland. Foote became a radio operator for Rado’s intelligence network, and in March 1941 established radio communication with Moscow Centre from Lausanne. In his radio communications, Rado used the codename “Dora”. In the first half of 1941, Puetner supplied information obtained (from “Luiza”, a Swiss intelligence officer), that many Wermacht divisions were being concentrated in the East.

After Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Rado’s network continued to provide Soviet General Staff with valuable intelligence on German forces. Some of it was supplied through Puetner by “Zalter”, a press officer of the French embassy in Switzerland who was dismissed by the Vichy government, and by “Long”, a French intelligence officer who fled to Switzerland after the capitulation of France. Both had sources in Germany. One was Ernst Lemmer, the editor of a German foreign policy bulletin (codename “Agnessa”).

The intelligence provided by Rado’s network was very useful to the Soviets, perhaps as valuable as that provided by the “Rote Kapelle”, Leopold Trepper's network. One of the most valuable pieces of intelligence provided by Rado’s network to the Centre came in March 1942. It was an information about the exact date when the summer German offensive aimed at the occupation of Caucasian oilfields would begin (between 31 May and 7 June 1942). It came through “Long” from General Hamann at the OKW. However, the Soviet command did not use the intelligence properly.

In November 1942, through Christian Schneider a German lawyer who worked in the International Labour Bureau in Switzerland, Rado made contact with Rudolf Roessler, a German political emigrant living in Lucerne. Roessler (codename “Lucy”) apparently had extraordinary sources in Germany who provided valuable military intelligence. It appears that Roessler was the conduit that the British used to transmit results of their codebreaking of German cipher traffic (operation Ultra) to the Soviets without revealing them the fact that they were able to break the German code.

At the end of 1942, the Abwehr and Gestapo exposed the “Rote Kapelle”. Since it had had some contact with Rado in 1940 through Anatoli Gurewitsch (alias "Kent"), a Soviet undercover intelligence officer, the Germans learned of the existence of Rado’s network in Switzerland. They even obtained the radio cipher used by Rado’s network which enabled them to decrypt some of Rado’s radio communications from Switzerland.

Meanwhile Rado’s network continued to supply Moscow Centre with valuable intelligence. For example, in April 1943 -- through a Roessler source in Germany (codename “Werter”) -- Rado supplied intelligence about the planned German offensive near Kursk.

In the second half of 1943, the Germans persuaded Swiss authorities to act against Rado’s network. Using mobile radio direction finders, Swiss police tracked down one of Rado's radio transmitters operated by Swiss agents Edmond and Olga Hamel. They were arrested on 14 October 1943. On the same day another of Rado's radio operators, Margarita Bolli an Italian emigrant living in Switzerland, was arrested. Rado went into hiding. On 20 November 1943, Alexander Foote was arrested. Christian Schneider and two other of Rado's contacts in Switzerland were arrested on 19 April 1944. Rudolf Roessler was arrested on 19 May 1944.

On 16 September 1944, Rado and his wife illegally crossed the Swiss-French border on a French train with the help of the French Maquis from Upper Savoy. On 24 September 1944, they reached Paris. There Rado contacted a Soviet military intelligence agent.

On January 1945, Rado and Leopold Trepper were evacuated via plane to the Soviet Union. Due to military operations in Germany, a direct fight to the Soviet Union from Paris was impossible, so the plane flew over Northern Africa. During a stopover in Cairo Rado, suspecting that on arrival in the Soviet Union he would be arrested on false charges, escaped, entered the British embassy under an alias, and applied for political asylum. The asylum application was denied and Rado tried to commit suicide, but was only injured and was hospitalized (2). After that, Rado was extradited by Egypt to the Soviet Union based on a false accusation, and in August 1945 he was brought to Moscow under guard. (2,3). In December 1946, without trial, he was sentenced by Special Council of MGB to 10 years on espionage charges (3).

In November 1954, after the death of Stalin, Rado was released and was allowed to return to Hungary. In 1956, he was officially rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. In 1955, Rado was appointed chief of the Hungarian cartographic service. In 1958, he was appointed to the chair of cartography in Budapest Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences. In 1971, he published his memoirs in Hungarian, which has been translated into several languages (1). The first uncensored edition, based on the original manuscript, was published in 2006 in Budapest.

ources

* [http://militera.lib.ru/memo/other/rado_s/index.html Rado’s memories “Pod Psevdonimom “Dora””(in Russian)]
* [http://www.sem40.ru/ourpeople/destiny/13595/ Russian Jewish site]
* [http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/bio_r/rado_shandor.html Russian history site]