It was proposed by Joseph Stalin, drafted by Mikhail Maklyarsky [ru] and executed by Pavel Sudoplatov and his NKVD subordinates, assisted by German antifascists and communists.
In 1941, NKVD operative Alexander Demyanov [ru] (Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Демья́нов, Soviet codename Heyne), who disguised himself as a disgruntled bohemian socialite, established contact with the German resident in Moscow.
In December 1941, Demyanov "defected" to the Germans and showed up at the Abwehr field office in Smolensk, a city in western Russia near the border with present-day Belarus.
For more than two years, Demyanov supplied Reinhard Gehlen, the head of Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East) department with carefully scripted "military plans."
According to Sudoplatov, the German success in repelling Operation Mars was, in part, influenced by "correct" information fed to Gehlen through Demyanov.
Shortly before the beginning of Operation Bagration, he summoned Victor Abakumov, Vsevolod Merkulov, Fyodor Fedotovich Kuznetsov, and Sudoplatov and ordered a new disinformation campaign.
[note 3] Stalin's instructions, recorded by Sergei Shtemenko, shifted the objective toward methodical physical destruction of German special forces and their intelligence capability.
[1] The new operation, codenamed Berezino, was drafted by colonel Mikhail Maklyarsky and approved by Stalin, NKVD chief Lavrenty Beria and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.
NKVD officers Nahum Eitingon, Willie Fischer, Mikhail Maklyarsky, Alexander Demyanov and Yakov Serebryansky departed to Belarus with a group of ethnic German antifascists.
More pro-Soviet Germans, earlier engaged in mopping up Polish and Lithuanian forest brothers, joined them at the base camp some 100 kilometres (62 mi) east of Minsk.
[note 4] German communist Gustav Rebele assumed the role of Scherhorn's aide, watching his "commander" day and night.
According to German sources, colonel Hans-Heinrich Worgitzky of OKH Counter-intelligence suspected a Soviet funkspiel and refused to commit his men to rescue "Scherhorn".
Gehlen intervened and demanded full support to "Scherhorn" which he thought would ideally fit Otto Skorzeny's plan of guerilla action behind the front line.
[5] Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, Armed forces High Command) Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl instructed Skorzeny to begin the rescue operation.
The fourth one (Einsatz P) reported that they landed far off the drop zone and had to reach it on foot, wandering through the forests infested with NKVD and Soviet deserters but contact was soon lost.
One of the pilots attempted to land despite the commotion on the ground but immediately before the touchdown the NKVD men extinguished the runway lights, forcing both planes to abandon their mission.
Fyodorov, one of the few Soviet recipients of the Nazi Iron Cross, was well known to the Luftwaffe and the Abwehr and could have indeed been a perfect double agent, had it not been for his explosive, outspoken personality.
NKVD men impersonating Belarusian nationalists and Russian monarchists kidnapped Fyodorov, took him to their camp in the forest and pressed him to change sides.
Willie Fischer served as a KGB spy in the United States from 1948 until his arrest in 1957 under the alias Rudolf Abel, in what became known as the Hollow Nickel Case.