Basile Maximovitch (2 July 1902,Chernigov - c. 6 July 1943,Plötzensee Prison, Berlin) was a Russian aristocrat and civil mining engineer. He became a Soviet agent by choice and subsequently became an important member of theRed Orchestra organisation inFrance duringWorld War II.[1] Maximovitch was the son of a Cavalry officer Baron Maximovitch, who held the rank of General, on the staff ofImperial Russian Army.[2]
Maximovitch was a Russianémigré who left Russia with his sisterAnna Maximovitch in 1922 to escape theRussian Revolution. The couple along with their mother arrived viaConstantinople to settle in Paris, France.[3][a] In Paris, the couple received help fromAuxiliary bishop Emanuel-Anatole-Raphaël Chaptal de Chanteloup, who helped Maximovitch to train as civil engineer and enter theLycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague as a teacher.[2] Through Chaptal, Maximovitch developed extensive connections with white émigré communities in Paris and abroad.[2]
On 31 May 1940, he was interned as a foreign suspect atCamp Vernet.[2][4] 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 theFrench armistice. He released Maximovitch in August 1940.[4] In prison, Maximovitch metBelarusian Samuel Erlik, who had links to Soviet Intelligence.[2] Erlik was encouraged to recruit Maximovitch by the Soviet embassy.[5] Maximovitch became an informer out of a belief in Russian Nationalism and had no love for the Soviet Regime or communism.[2]
Maximovitch had an affair with Margarete Hoffman-Scholz, secretary to Kuprian, and a niece to GeneralCarl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military commander of Paris.[6] At the time, von Stülpnagel was Commander of Greater Paris and this gave Maximovitch access to intelligence that came from the German High Command.[1] 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.[7]
In November 1940, Maximovitch was introduced toLeopold Trepper, by a member of theFrench Communist Party.[8] At the time, Trepper was the technical director of a SovietRed Army Intelligence unit in western Europe. Both Basil and Anna became very important to Trepper.[1] Maximovitch ran the 3rd network of Trepper's 7 networks in Europe, supplying intelligence garnered fromWhite Russians emigrant groups as well as from groups in the GermanWehrmacht.[9]
Maximovitch was arrested with his sister on 12 December 1942[10] at 14 rue Émile Zola inChoisy-le-Roi.[2] He was taken by French police to be interrogated atRue des Saussaies by members of theSonderkommando Rote Kapelle, a special Gestapo and Abwehr commission establish to track downmembers of the Red Orchestra in France, Belgium and Low Countries.[11][12] When the interrogation was complete, then were sent toFresnes Prison.[2] Maximovitch and his sister were betrayed by Leopold Trepper on the 5 December 1942, after he was captured by the Sonderkommando.[13]
A trial was held on 8 March 1943 at 62-64Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré by Luftwaffe JudgeManfred Roeder where he was sentenced to death by decapitation. He and his sister were taken toPlötzensee Prison where they were executed in July 1943.[2]