Born in 1895, Richard Sorge fought, with great bravery, for Germany during the First World War, receiving the Iron Cross medal. He was wounded and while recuperating in hospital began a relationship with a nurse.
Richard Sorge Embraces Communism
Spartacus Educational notes that, “…he met and was influenced by the [nurse’s] Marxist father. Not fit enough to return to the frontline, Sorge was allowed to study at Berlin University. Later he recalled that he now ‘decided not only to study, but also to take part in the organized revolutionary movement.’ ”
After joining the German Communist Party he was fired from his job as a teacher. He fled to Moscow and was quickly recruited as an espionage agent.
Marxist.org reports that, “In 1921 he returned to Germany, married Christiane Gerlach, former wife of Kurt Gerlach, Director of the Frankfurt Institut, and moved to Solingen, in Westphalia. In 1922 the Comintern relocated him to Frankfurt where he gathered intelligence about [the] business community while assisting at the Frankfurt Institut building the library.”
But, this was all a small-time prelude to Sorge’s most important work.
Richard Sorge Moved to Asia
His marriage lasted only a couple of years and he was recalled to Moscow. His next assignment was in China. Working under the cover of a journalist for a number of German newspapers, Sorge began to establish contacts with government officials.
In 1933 he was posted to Japan with orders to build a spy network. He re-established contact with a Japanese journalist, Hotsumi Ozaki, who had met in China. Ozaki had close relationships with top Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye, and he agreed to copy secret documents for Sorge.
The Soviet spy was also busy building relationships with senior people in the German Embassy in Tokyo, to whom he passed on tidbits of information about Japanese foreign policy plans. According to The Spy Museum, “So impressed were the Embassy officials that they considered Sorge a trusted ally and provided him with significant information about the Japanese government. Sorge quickly passed this information along to Moscow...”
Sorge’s Intelligence Coups
Sorge’s network started to gather a harvest of very valuable intelligence. He was able to give Moscow advanced warning of:
- The 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact that declared Japan and Germany united in opposition to Communism;
- The German-Japanese Pact of 1940 that cemented a military alliance between the two countries; and,
- The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour of December 1941 (although now part of the alliance against Nazi Germany, Moscow seems not to have passed this intelligence on to the United States).
But Sorge’s greatest triumph was to give Joseph Stalin six months warning of Germany’s plan to attack the Soviet Union. However, Stalin had convinced himself that the Nazis would not attack until 1942 and he ignored the intelligence heads up, a decision that probably cost millions of lives.
Sorge was also able to tell Moscow that Japan did not intend to attack the Soviet Union, so it was able to withdraw troops protecting its eastern front and throw them into the battle with Germany in the west.
Sorge’s Network Unravelled
In August 1941, one of Sorge’s operatives, Yotoku Miyagi, was arrested. After prolonged torture, he revealed the identity of Hotsumi Ozaki and this led them to Richard Sorge. The spymaster was arrested, tortured, and held in prison for three years.
Despite the services he had performed for his country the Soviet Union refused to exchange Sorge for Japanese prisoners it held. Japan hanged Richard Sorge and Hotsumi Ozaki on November 7, 1944.
The Soviet mole in British intelligence, Kim Philby, said Sorge’s “Work was impeccable.”
Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein wrote that, “Somehow, amidst the Bonds and Smiley’s People, we have ignored the greatest of 20th century spy stories - that of Stalin’s Sorge, whose exploits helped change history.”
And, spy novelist Frederick Forsyth provided this accolade: “The spies in history who can say from their graves, the information I supplied to my masters, for better or worse, altered the history of our planet, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Richard Sorge was in that group.”
Sources
- “Richard Sorge.” Spartacus Educational, accessed January 30, 2012.
- “Glossary of People.” Encyclopedia of Marxism, Marxists.org, accessed January 30, 2012.
- “Richard Sorge.” Spymuseum.com, accessed January 30, 2012
- “1944: Richard Sorge and Hotsumi Ozaki.” Executed Today, November 7, 2007
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
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