Basile Maximovitch

File:Professor_and_Artzin_Group.png. The "Artzin" group was the 4th group in the Trepper organisation and was run by Anna Maximovitch who collected intelligence from French clerical and royalist circles. The "Professor" group, run by Maximovitch that collected intelligence from German Wehrmacht and White Russian emigrant sources]]

Maximovitch was a Russian émigré who left Russia with his sister Anna Maximovitch in 1922 to escape the Russian Revolution. The couple along with their mother arrived via Constantinople to settle in Paris, France.{{cite book |last1=Perrault |first1=Gilles |title=The Red Orchestra |date=1969 |publisher=Schocken Books |location=New York |isbn=0805209522 |language=en |url=https://archive.org/details/redorchestra00perr_0|pages=171–172}}{{efn|Perrault refers to Basile Maximovitch as Vasili Maximovitch. Basil or Basile, the greek name corresponds to the Russian name of Vasili.}} In Paris, the couple received help from Auxiliary bishop Emanuel-Anatole-Raphaël Chaptal de Chanteloup, who helped Maximovitch to train as civil engineer and enter the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague as a teacher. Through Chaptal, Maximovitch developed extensive connections with white émigré communities in Paris and abroad.

On 31 May 1940, he was interned as a foreign suspect at Camp Vernet.{{cite book |last1=Perrault |first1=Gilles |title=The Red Orchestra |date=1969 |publisher=Schocken Books |location=New York |isbn=0805209522 |language=en |url=https://archive.org/details/redorchestra00perr_0|pages=174}} Maximovitch became an interpreter for the German officer in charge, Wehrmacht colonel Hans Kuprian, who was on a committee that processed prisoners from the Vichy government for slave labour, after the French armistice. He released Maximovitch in August 1940. In prison, Maximovitch met Belarusian Samuel Erlik, who had links to Soviet Intelligence. Erlik was encouraged to recruit Maximovitch by the Soviet embassy.{{cite book |last1=Bourgeois |first1=Guillaume |title=La véritable histoire de l'orchestre rouge |date=24 September 2015 |publisher=Nouveau Monde Editions |isbn=978-2-36942-069-9 |page=231 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-l_HDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT231 |access-date=5 October 2021 |language=fr}} Maximovitch became an informer out of a belief in Russian Nationalism and had no love for the Soviet Regime or communism.

Maximovitch had an affair with Margarete Hoffman-Scholz, secretary to Kuprian, and a niece to General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military commander of Paris.{{cite book |last1=Perrault |first1=Gilles |title=The Red Orchestra |date=1969 |publisher=Schocken Books |location=New York |isbn=0805209522|language=english|pages= 177–179 |url=https://archive.org/details/redorchestra00perr_0|url-access=registration }} At the time, von Stülpnagel was Commander of Greater Paris and this gave Maximovitch access to intelligence that came from the German High Command. With Maximovitch's help Hoffman-Scholz was steered through a number of different jobs in German agencies that enabled Maximovitch to access different types of intelligence.{{cite book |last1=Perrault |first1=Gilles |title=The Red Orchestra |date=1969 |publisher=Schocken Books |location=New York |isbn=0805209522 |language=en |url=https://archive.org/details/redorchestra00perr_0|pages=178}}

In November 1940, Maximovitch was introduced to Leopold Trepper, by a member of the French Communist Party.{{cite book |last1=Perrault |first1=Gilles |title=The Red Orchestra |date=1969 |publisher=Schocken Books |location=New York |isbn=0805209522 |language=en |url=https://archive.org/details/redorchestra00perr_0|pages=175}} At the time, Trepper was the technical director of a Soviet Red Army Intelligence unit in western Europe. Both Basil and Anna became very important to Trepper. Maximovitch ran the 3rd network of Trepper's 7 networks in Europe, supplying intelligence garnered from White Russians emigrant groups as well as from groups in the German Wehrmacht.{{cite book |editor1-last=Kesaris |editor1-first=Paul. L |title=The Rote Kapelle: the CIA's history of Soviet intelligence and espionage networks in Western Europe, 1936-1945. |date=1979 |publisher=University Publications of America |location=Washington DC |isbn=0-89093-203-4 |page=89 |url=https://archive.org/details/rotekapelleci00unit}}

Maximovitch was arrested with his sister on 12 December 1942{{cite book |editor1-last=Kesaris |editor1-first=Paul. L |title=The Rote Kapelle: the CIA's history of Soviet intelligence and espionage networks in Western Europe, 1936-1945. |date=1979 |publisher=University Publications of America |location=Washington DC |isbn=0-89093-203-4 |page=316 |url=https://archive.org/details/rotekapelleci00unit}} at 14 rue Émile Zola in Choisy-le-Roi. He was taken by French police to be interrogated at Rue des Saussaies by members of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle, a special Gestapo and Abwehr commission establish to track down members of the Red Orchestra in France, Belgium and Low Countries.{{cite book|author=Shareen Blair Brysac|title=Resisting Hitler : Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FWkZOB35KQcC&pg=PA441|access-date=6 October 2021|date=12 October 2000|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|isbn=978-0-19-531353-6|page=441}}{{cite book|author1=Richard Breitman|author2=Norman J. W. Goda|author3=Timothy Naftali|author4=Robert Wolfe|title=U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GnkBYN8ipYcC&pg=PA310|access-date=6 October 2021|date=4 April 2005|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-61794-9|page=310}} When the interrogation was complete, then were sent to Fresnes Prison. Maximovitch and his sister were betrayed by Leopold Trepper on the 5 December 1942, after he was captured by the Sonderkommando.{{cite book |last=Bourgeois |first=Guillaume |title=La Véritable Histoire de l'Orchestre rouge |publisher=Nouveau Monde |series=Le Grand Jeu |date=2015|isbn=9782369420675|oclc=922305775|pages=289–292}}

A trial was held on 8 March 1943 at 62-64 Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré by Luftwaffe Judge Manfred Roeder where he was sentenced to death by decapitation. He and his sister were taken to Plötzensee Prison where they were executed in July 1943.

• {{cite book |last1=Langeois |first1=Christian |title=Les chants d'honneur : de la Chorale populaire à l'Orchestre rouge, Suzanne Cointe (1905-1943) |date=2017 |publisher=Cherche midi |location=Paris |isbn=9782749150697 |language=French|oclc=982018539}}

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Category:1902 births

Category:1943 deaths

Category:French Resistance members

Category:Executed Red Orchestra members

Category:Executed White movement people

Category:People from Chernihiv

Category:People executed by guillotine at Plötzensee Prison

Category:Russian mining engineers

Category:Russian people executed by Nazi Germany

Category:White Russian emigrants to France