…Few super-spies, however, can match the exploits of Richard Sorge. Born in Russia and raised in Germany, he became a Communist and, working as a newspaperman, carried out undercover assignments for Soviet intelligence in England, Scandinavia, China and Japan.
In 1934, Sorge joined the Nazi party and cultivated friendships among highly placed diplomats and military men in Germany’s new hierarchy. These contacts ended up paying off handsomely. Sorge not only warned Stalin of Hitler’s plan for the invasion of the U.S.S.R. but also informed him of Japanese intentions to push south rather than invade Siberia.
Richard Sorge. 1940′s. Image:WIKI. Sorge was executed in 1944 by the Japanese…
Sorge, along with Wilhelm Steiber, Sidney Reilly and Reinhard Gehlen could all be considered super spies. Still, just to keep things in perspective, let’s not forget that the real master spies are those who will forever remain anonymous and we will never hear about.
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…Renowned among espionage aficionados for supposedly forewarning Moscow of the exact date of Germany’s planned surprise attack in 1941, Richard Sorge‘s work in the pregnant years leading up to World War II produced multiple intelligence coups and could lay claim to the uncommon distinction of having materially affected the course of the war.
His signal achievement was establishing, as a foreigner in a highly xenophobic Japan, a spy ring that for years penetrated the highest levels of the Japanese government and the German embassy, giving Moscow an inside look at Axis planning.
Working under the cover of journalism in the German expat community — he had grown up in a mixed German-Russian household in Berlin and won the Iron Cross for his service in the Kaiser’s army in World War I before embracing communism — Sorge struck Hitler from half a world away. His access to the German embassy was untrammeled — indeed, he had an affair with the ambassador’s wife. His lead Japanese collaborator Hotsumi Ozaki was a major public intellectual similarly privy to sensitive information through his contacts.
The two, along with several other Japanese and foreign collaborators, produced a steady diet of top-shelf intelligence, including the (ignored) forecast of Operation Barbarossa. But the ring’s most important coup — arguably a decisive one in the history of the war as a whole — was to inform Moscow in September 1941 that Japan did not intend to attack the Russian Far East. Relieved of the nightmare prospect of a two-front war, Stalin transfered desperately needed Siberian divisions to help throw back the German advance on Moscow.Read More:http://www.executedtoday.com/2007/11/07/1944-richard-sorge-and-hotsumi-ozaki/
COMMENTS
