This is true spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.

Week by week, you'll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in.

You'll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know?

What are their skills?

And what would you do in their position?

I'm Rihanna Needs, and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios.

The Great Illegals, Part 1, The Whistler.

August, 1943.

The Soviet Red Army is locked in a grueling campaign to expel Germany's occupying forces from its territory, a campaign that has already cost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives.

And on the outskirts of Moscow, two more young communists are preparing to join the fight.

They're put in an unmarked plane,

which is camouflaged in grey, green paint and has no lights,

and it takes off from a military airfield outside Moscow

and heads west.

Inside the rattling tin can, the men are full of trepidation.

Their names are Nikolai Kockolov and Karl Klein Young.

But they have left those identities on the dirt runway behind them.

Carl and Nikolai have flight overalls on,

but underneath that they're wearing German military uniforms,

and they have documents, forged documents that they've been provided

that suggest that they are from the military secret police.

From this moment on, Nikolai is to become senior lieutenant Otto Wittgenstein.

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