Heinrich Scherhorn

Heinrich Gerhard Scherhorn (1897–?) was a German officer in World War I and World War II. On March 23, 1945 he received the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes).

Scherhorn was born in 1897 in Apelern, Schaumburg, Lower Saxony. In 1913, he graduated from Scharnhorst High School (Gymnasium) and joined the Imperial Army as an Officer Cadet. During the war, he was promoted to lieutenant and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class for bravery. Wounded twice, he was made a prisoner of war by the French in 1918. In 1919, after the Armistice, he was repatriated.

Serving as a major at the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he was head of the personnel department of the military recruiting station Hanover County. From 1943 on, he served in the headquarters of the 286th Sicherungs Division. In the same year, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. On June 20, 1944 was appointed commander of the Sicherungs-Regiment 36 and won the Military Merit Cross with Swords 2nd Class and the Iron Cross 1st Class.

In 1944, when the German Army Group Center (Heeresgruppe Mitte) was crushed, Scherhorn was made prisoner of war by the Soviets near Minsk. As a staff officer speaking French and English besides German, he came to the attention of the NKVD and, as a special case, was brought to central prison camp 27/1 in Moscow. Kept in solitary confinement in the infamous Lubyanka prison and constantly interrogated, he was given the choice of either cooperating with the NKVD or face charges for alleged war crimes due to the fact, that his regiment had performed anti-partisan duties.

From August 1944 to May 1945 Scherhorn cooperated with Soviet intelligence service under the agent alias Shubin in one of the major Soviet counterintelligence operations of the war, named "Operation Berezino" in Russian, masterminded by General Pawel Sudoplatov and Colonel Leonid Eitingon, both NKVD and both involved with the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico in 1940.

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