SMERSH (Russian: СМЕРШ) was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943.

The formal justification for its creation was to subvert the attempts by Nazi German forces to infiltrate the Red Army on the Eastern Front.

Joseph Stalin coined the name СМЕРШ (SMERSH) as a portmanteau of the Russian-language phrase Смерть шпионам (Smertʹ shpionam, "Death to spies").

Originally focused on combating German spies infiltrating the Soviet military, the organization quickly expanded its mandate: to find and eliminate any subversive elements—hence Stalin's inclusive name for it.

The rest of GUGB was abolished and staff was moved to newly created People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB).

After losing most of the operational units to the NKGB, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) was still a very powerful government apparatus.

It was responsible for public order in USSR by using heavily armed police in each corner of the country, running the largest penal labour camps under the Gulag Directorate, POWs camps and NKVD troops with loyal and well-equipped soldiers, that by the end of the war the numbers of NKVD troops were 1½ million strong with their own air force, armored and cavalry units.

This organization was known as the Navy UKR SMERSH and headed by Peter Gladkov and his two deputies Aleksei Lebedev and Sergei Dukhovich.

OKR SMERSH (Counterintelligence Department) of the NKVD USSR was subordinate to Lavrentiy Beria, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs.

The GKO officially created SMERSH to ensure the Soviet Union's security from internal political threats and foreign espionage, although it carried out a wide variety of other tasks between 1943 and 1946 as well.

Other SMERSH activities included: exposing collaborators in areas recently captured by the Red Army; exposing and punishing economic crimes such as black market activity; protecting secret material and headquarters from enemy agents and saboteurs; and determining the "patriotism" of those captured, encircled, and those who had returned from foreign countries.

[16] SMERSH would then arrest and neutralise anti-Soviet partisans, saboteurs, spies, conspirators, mutineers, deserters, and people designated as traitors and criminal elements at the combat front.

[17][18] In March 1946, SMERSH Chief Directorate was resubordinated to the People's Commissariat of Military Forces (Наркомат Вооруженных Сил, NKVS).

Red Army officers and SMERSH agents reportedly found Hitler's partially burned corpse near the Führerbunker after his suicide and conducted an investigation to confirm his death and identify the remains that were secretly buried at SMERSH headquarters in Magdeburg until April 1970, when they were exhumed, completely cremated, and dumped.

(...) The Smersh organs inform Military Councils and commanders of the corresponding units, troops, and organizations of the Red Army on the matters of their work: on the results of their combat with enemy agents, on the penetration of the army units by anti-Soviet elements, and on the results of combat against traitors of the Motherland, deserters, and self mutilators.At the end of the Second World War, American forces examining captured German intelligence sources determined that SMERSH was composed of six directorates, six departments, and three other branches.

The OKR at the division level consisted of 21 men, including a head, his deputy, a ciphering officer, investigators, commandant, and a platoon of guards.

SMERSH utilized a number of different counterintelligence tactics: informants, security troops, radio games, and the passing of disinformation, ensuring both the reliability of the military and the civilian population.

Informants reported those sympathetic to the Germans, desertion, unpatriotic attitudes, and low morale and were authorized to take "immediate corrective action" if the need arose.

In order to secure the Red Army's rear, SMERSH evacuated civilians and set up checkpoints so as to assert physical control.

Compared to its predecessor (Directorate of Special Departments – UOO), SMERSH was mostly focused on enemies spies, although Red Army servicemen were still under suspicion.

In later works Fleming abandoned the use of SMERSH as his chosen antagonists, introducing the purely fictional villainous organization SPECTRE.

[24][25][26][27][28] In all Bond films based on Fleming's works that featured SMERSH, the agency was either changed to SPECTRE or omitted altogether.

Also, an operation 'smiert shpionam' ('death to spies') forms part of the plot of The Living Daylights, but this was organized by a Russian General acting without approval of the Soviet Government.

Hubbard proposed to defeat the alleged SMERSH infiltration by smuggling Sea Organization members into Switzerland, taking over the World Federation of Mental Health in Geneva, and then discrediting psychiatry by using the front organization to promote eugenics and mass euthanization to the United Nations.

The Committee for State Security had a special "KGB Award in the field of literature and art" honoring depictions of an intelligence work.