"V-men"

[Alan Westrope]

"Zachary Haberer" <zhaberer at glasnet.ru> wrote:

> The Communist underground refers to the organization within
> Germany during the war, known as the "Rote Kapelle" (Red
> Orchestra).  Now what I want to know is why would well-known
> admirer of the Soviet NKVD, Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller call
> his undercover orchestral players "V men".  And the Rote Kapelle 
> itself sounds interesting-- if anyone knows anything about them 
> please send it along.

V-man is probably slang for Verbindungsmann -- "contact man."  I
found this in Tim Ware's Concordance, which is now functioning
nicely in hypertext form, so I'll take this opportunity to thank
Tim and commend his ever-expanding resource to the rest of you.

The Rote Kapelle derived its name from its many "music boxes" --
the Soviet term for radio transmitters -- sending encrypted messages
from 300 agents throughout occupied Europe.  David Kahn discusses it
briefly in his superb book _The Codebreakers_, stating on p. 657, "Its
tentacles slithered into into the most secret tabernacles of Naziism."

EEP!  Sound the Adenoid-and-Octopus-Alert sirens, Hermann!


Alan Westrope                  <awestrop at nyx10.cs.du.edu>
__________/|-,                 <adwestro at ouray.cudenver.edu>
   (_)    \|-'                  2.6.2 public key: finger / servers
PGP 0xB8359639:  D6 89 74 03 77 C8 2D 43   7C CA 6D 57 29 25 69 23