"The Third Map" by Yulian Semenov, summary

The novel was created in 1973. Soviet intelligence officer Vsevolod Vladimirov, known by the name Maxim Isayev and the German rank of Obersturmbannführer Stirlitz, conducts operational work for the SD political intelligence service on the eve of June 22, 1941. The narrative combines documentary authenticity, archival materials, portraits of the Nazi elite, and the dramas of ordinary people.

The work is part of the author’s "Political Chronicles" series about the Soviet intelligence officer Stierlitz, ranking sixth in the chronology of events after "Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," "No Password Needed," "Tenderness," "The Spanish Option," and "Alternative." This novel has not received any awards or a separate film adaptation, but remains an important link in the author’s entire epic.

Interdepartmental struggle in Berlin and Stirlitz’s mission

In June 1941, a hidden confrontation between Nazi Germany’s departments unfolded in Berlin. Walter Schellenberg, head of political intelligence, plotted, on orders from Heinrich Himmler, to discredit the Wehrmacht leadership and the Abwehr military intelligence agency, led by Admiral Canaris. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists became instrumental in this intrigue. The elderly Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi unsuccessfully attempted to secure an audience with Hermann Göring’s secretaries, losing the last vestiges of his former influence.

The Abwehr and future Minister of the Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg support the Nachtigall Battalion under the command of Theodor Oberländer and Roman Shukhevych. They promise the leaders of the OUN factions the creation of a puppet state. However, Adolf Hitler rejects any Slavic statehood, viewing the east solely as territory for German colonists.

Schellenberg instructs Stirlitz to accompany OUN publisher Taras Omelchenko, a close associate of Skoropadsky, to Krakow. The official purpose of the trip is to assess the prospects for exploiting the nationalists. The Soviet intelligence officer’s primary objective is to gather precise information about the date of the attack on the USSR and discredit the OUN leadership in Berlin. On the Berlin-Krakow train, Stirlitz observes domestic squabbles between Omelchenko and his wife, Elena, noting the émigré leader’s morbid pride and insignificance.

Before leaving, Stirlitz reads an official TASS report from June 14, 1941, refuting rumors of an imminent war. The intelligence officer calculates with absolute precision the day of the invasion — June 22. During nighttime conversations with Nachtigall leader Theodor Oberländer, Stirlitz listens to the German’s cynical theories about turning the Slavic peasantry into an agrarian appendage of the Reich and the need to pit the intelligentsia against the land.

The tragedy of architect Hanna Prokopchuk

In occupied Paris, the tragedy of architect Hanna Prokopchuk, a student of Le Corbusier, unfolds. Hanna is Vsevolod Vladimirov’s cousin through his mother, Olesya Prokopchuk. Stirlitz is unaware of his relative’s fate and has no right to risk the state mission to find her.

Hanna left for Paris two years before the war, leaving behind her husband, Ladislav Stachurski, and their sons, Janek and Nikita, in Warsaw. Now she’s desperately searching for a way to return to her children in Krakow. The émigré activists Bohdanovich of the Paris Herald and Prokopovich of Petliura’s Rada refuse her. Prokopovich openly admits his powerlessness against the Nazis. A German commandant tricks Hanna into working in Germany, promising assistance.

Hanna finds herself in an SS architectural studio near Berlin. The studio’s director, Herbert Essen, appreciates her rare talent. During a trip to Auschwitz, Hanna accidentally sees her husband, Ladislav, wearing a striped prisoner’s uniform. He manages to shout from behind the wire that their children and elderly mother have been arrested and taken to a concentration camp.

The Stakhursky family was arrested by the Gestapo on the slander of Mykola Lebed, in order to preserve the OUN conspiracy, and their young children had already been killed. Essen tried to intercede for Hanna with his superiors, for which Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Economic and Administrative Office, demoted him to private and sent him to the front.

Hanna, driven mad by grief, falls under the command of a new warden, Frau Nobe. Instead of a typical concentration camp design, she draws a sunny orphanage with huge glass windows and sandboxes. She is declared insane and sent to Auschwitz to Dr. Mengele. Hanna dies during monstrous medical experiments, seeing her sons before she dies.

The feat of the German underground and the fate of Kurt Stramm

In Berlin, the Gestapo arrests the young anti-fascist Kurt Stramm for meeting with a Swiss contact. Kurt is tortured in a stone prison cell. Gray-haired Standartenführer Becker attempts to break the young man with polite conversation, threatening to interrogate his friends — Countess Engrid Boden-Grause, Hugo Schulze, and Egon von der Brehm.

Journalist Engrid Boden-Grause is placed under surveillance. She joins the anti-Hitler underground, linked to Moscow. To avoid betraying his comrades under torture or in a delirium, Kurt lifts his shirt and presses his bare back against the wet, icy wall of the punishment cell, giving himself severe pneumonia.

As the weakened Stramm is led down the corridor to the infirmary, he realizes the danger of testifying while unconscious. After attacking his guard, Kurt runs and slams his head against a stone wall, choosing death over preserving the organization’s secret.

Operational combinations in Krakow and the Lviv disaster

In Krakow, Stirlitz meets with the leaders of rival factions — Stepan Bandera of the OUN-B and Andriy Melnyk of the OUN-M. The intelligence officer notes their criminal past, their unbridled thirst for power, and their blind obedience to Nazi instructors. Melnyk considers Bandera a common bandit, while Bandera brands Melnyk a scoundrel. Through an underground channel, Stirlitz sends a radiogram to the Center confirming the date of the attack.

Stirlitz compromises Gestapo agent Dietz, finding him in a hotel room with Omelchenko’s wife. The resulting incriminating evidence allows the Soviet agent to neutralize the threat of an investigation against the arriving liaison — a strictly confidential teacher named "Magda" from Rostock.

On the night of June 22, 1941, the invasion begins. The Nachtigall Battalion, commanded by Oberländer and Shukhevych, crosses the border. The legionnaires commit mass reprisals against Soviet activists, communists, Jews, and Poles. In Przemysl, punitive forces kill postmaster Ostap Buryak. Mobile legionnaire Mykola Shapoval refuses to shoot his own uncle, for which he is later hanged by the Gestapo.

On June 30, 1941, Bandera’s forces occupied Lviv. Viceroy Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed an "independent Ukrainian state." The elderly Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky gave them his blessing, enduring deep inner doubts and the awareness of his own dependence on the occupiers. Legionnaires and Gestapo soldiers carried out a bloody operation, beating thousands to death, including Egyptologist Professor Dmytro Mykhailenko, surgeon Taras Malarchuk, and writer Tadeusz Boy-Zheleński.

The unauthorized declaration of "independence" infuriates Adolf Hitler. Himmler, Schellenberg, and Dietz use this pretext to crush the OUN-B and discredit the Abwehr. Bandera, Stetsko, and Lebed are arrested and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The Nachtigall Battalion is recalled from the front.

Stirlitz successfully completes the operation: he recruits a Rosenberg official named Focht, forwards to the Center photocopies of Rosenberg’s cannibalistic directives condemning the population of occupied Ukraine to hunger and lawlessness, and establishes contact with a new Soviet liaison, Dr. Opanas Miroshnichenko. The spy continues his service behind enemy lines.