Richard Sorge

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Sorge, Richard (1895–1944),Soviet agent of German–Russian parentage who was one of the war's most effective spies.

Sorge went to Japan as the Frankfurter Zeitung's correspondent during the 1930s where, as a close friend and confidant of the German military attaché (later ambassador) in Tokyo, he became the German embassy's press attaché. A member of the Nazi Party who was, in fact, a dedicated communist, he established a network of agents, codenamed RAMSAY, which included Ozaki Hotsumi, a close adviser to the Japanese prime minister, Prince Konoe. Ozaki and other high-level contacts enabled him to obtain accurate intelligence which included indications, and eventually the date, of the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA). But Stalin was as sceptical of Sorge's warnings as he was of the other sources from which he received the same unwelcome news, and the head of Soviet military intelligence (see GRU), General Golikov, to whom Sorge reported, wanted him recalled and punished. But when, in September 1941, Sorge relayed that the Japanese had decided against attacking the USSR through Manchukuo and had decided to move southwards against the colonies of the western powers instead, his intelligence must have been received with interest. For it was then that Stalin decided to move his armies from Siberia, which were there to counter a Japanese offensive, so that they could help stem the German onslaught against Moscow.

In October 1941 Sorge and 35 members of his network were arrested by the Tokkō, and after being held in prison for three years he was executed. Twenty years later he was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union (see decorations).

Bibliography

Johnson, C. , An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring (rev. edn., Stanford, Calif. 1990).