The figure of Stirlitz is a collective image. Yulian Semenov combined in him the features of various Soviet intelligence officers. But which of them, like Stirlitz, acted in the very lair of the enemy, the Main Directorate of Imperial Security? How did the career of Stirlitz’s main opponent, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, develop? What were the relationships between the individual leaders of the Third Reich? What were the events and historical background reflected in the novel and film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”? The answers to these and other questions are provided by the new work of the famous writer-historian Valery Shambarov. The book is based on strictly documentary materials and tells about the intense battle between Soviet and Nazi intelligence services during the Great Patriotic War.