The Best Spy Of All Time.
James Bond’s father Ian Fleming called him “the most formidable spy in history.” The eminent American spy novelist Tom Clancy seconded the motion: “Richard Sorge was the best spy of all time.” And also, the acknowledged master of the spy business Kim Philby issued this succinct professional opinion: “His work was impeccable.”
The list of accolades may go on and on, and yet no Hollywood movie has ever been made about his exciting life, and, aside from a small bunch of dedicated buffs of espionage , his name remains virtually unknown in the United States, despite its enormous entertainment value. There has to be a reason for it, and there surely is...
There are two aspects to the Sorge story, one obtainable through various information sources, but the other so covert that I doubt if any investigative scholar would ever be able or even dare to uncover it. First, let us have the overt one.
Richard Sorge was born in 1895 in Azerbaijan, which was then, of course, part of the Russian Empire, to a German father and a Russian mother. His father was an engineer-contractor, who moved back to Germany with his family when his oil contract had expired.
In 1914 the young Sorge volunteered for military service in World War I. He served in the Western Front, and in 1916 was badly wounded, loosing three fingers and suffering broken legs. He received an Iron Cross and a medical discharge. He spent the remainder of the war studying economics, and in 1919 he received a PhD in political science. He also declared himself a Communist, and fled to Moscow, where he became a Comintern agent, which immediately turned him into a Soviet spy.
In this capacity, he traveled around Europe, returning to Germany in 1929, where he had been instructed to join the Nazi Party and to become a newspaper reporter, as a cover.
From 1930 to the end of 1932 he lived in China, and then, via Moscow and Berlin, moved to Japan, where he was to become indispensable. From 1933 to 1934, he built an amazingly effective spy network, gaining access to senior Japanese politicians and becoming fairly close with the German Ambassador to Japan Eugen Ott (meanwhile starting an affair with the Ambassador’s wife).
In May 1941, he famously informed Moscow of the exact date of the Operation Barbarossa, which was no less famously ignored. (In fact, it has been established that the allegation about the exact date of the German invasion was a deliberate falsification by Khrushchev, to besmirch Stalin. Regardless of that, see the reason for Stalin’s doing nothing, in my earlier entry Preparing For War.)
Toward the end of September 1941, he transmitted to Moscow information that Japan was not going to attack the Soviet Union in the East. It was allegedly this information, which made possible the transfer of the bulk of Soviet divisions from Siberia and the Far East, although the presence of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria still made it necessary for the Soviet Union to keep a certain minimal number of troops on the eastern borders. (Which would not have made much difference, though, had Japan really decided to attack the USSR.)
There is a speculation that this particular information led to the events which allowed the Soviet Union to turn the tide of war against the Nazis. This alone should make Sorge the most important spy of World War Two. Thus, another connoisseur of international espionage Frederick Forsythe comments: “The spies in history, who can say from their graves, the information I have 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.”
I am however convinced that Stalin had to have at least one more source, providing him with information regarding Japan's expected neutrality. My reader already knows, from previous readings, that Stalin was no spring chicken with regard to the Russian situation vis-à-vis Japan, and to presume that a single piece of secret information, or maybe two, on this vital subject, even if coming from Admiral Yamamoto through a master Soviet spy, could make such a difference as to alter the history of our planet, would be naive at best... The other source of Stalin's decision on pulling the Siberian divisions from the Eastern front had to be his intuition... And of course, the desperate state of Soviet defenses against the Germans made Stalin ever more willing to take risks...
Eventually, as the standard story goes, the Japanese counterintelligence wizened up to the special character of Sorge’s radio communications and started closing in. Sorge was arrested twice in October 1941, tortured, without revealing that he was a Soviet spy and eventually executed on November 7, 1944. (What symbolism must this have been, as this date coincided with the 27th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution! Even if the story of Sorge's execution is a lie, which, I suspect, it is, the date has been chosen with some flair!) Moscow was quick to disavow any knowledge of his actions, and Sorge himself was steadfast in disavowing any hint of his Soviet connection.
The Soviet Union did not acknowledge Sorge until 1964, when he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Prior to that event, a 1961 French movie, Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur Sorge? came out in Europe, in collaboration with West Germany, Italy and Japan, which became very popular in Russia as well. And so our overt story ends, except for the following detail having been added to it:
An interesting, but little-known conspiracy theory of the Cold War held that Sorge had only been “mock-executed” by the Japanese and had actually returned to the Soviet Union, where he continued to work for the KGB. Though many mysteries of the Cold War have been solved (dah!) since the fall of communism in the USSR, no proof of this theory has emerged. In one of his novels, the American writer M.E. Chaber has his hero meet an unnamed Russian master-spy who, the book hints, is none other than Richard Sorge. (Taken from Sorge’s Biography at BookRags.com. I do not usually subscribe to Internet sources, except when they make good sense! The reason why I find the story of Sorge's alleged execution untrustworthy is to be explained very shortly.)
Well, enough of that. Here now is the hidden part of the Richard Sorge story, which sheds a new light on his large figure. Quidquid latet, apparebit!---
Such is the nature of the spy business that, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, only the stories of fictional spies are true, whereas those of the real spies are false by definition. Nations having to disavow their heroes as a matter of national interest cannot be expected to spill the truth at any time then or later on, for revealing the actual sources and methods of espionage has always been considered comme il ne faut pas.
Several parts of the overt Sorge story are true, of course, but they are actually the parts which do not really matter. It is also true that in 1964 Sorge was officially recognized as a Hero Spy of the Soviet Union, only it does not follow that this hero had ever been trusted by his country. As Stalin used to say, The better the spy, the less he must be trusted, because the best of them work not for their country, but for themselves.
Sorge is regularly depicted as a Marxist, seeped in Communist ideology, but in fact, he was an adventurer at heart and in spirit, first and foremost, seeking excitement in life, while all his personal façades, whether this was his penchant for Marxism, or his passion for Nazism, or his love for Western freedoms,-- all these were the masks of an habitual, yet sincere chameleon.
Like any good spy, he was always working outside the normal intelligence channels, but the supreme irony of his position was that several intelligence services knew that he was in their business, benefited from his help, and were essentially letting him be, to function as an independent operator. He did not even have to make a special effort to steal anybody’s secrets. The truth of the matter was that he was provided with these secrets, to pass on to others, in other words, he was an indispensable hub of topnotch intelligence information (often disinformation), and such was the environment in which he functioned, and thrived.
Even for the Germans, he provided certain delicate services, but his two primary activities were as a liaison between Moscow and Admiral Yamamoto (whom Sorge normally met in Japanese geisha houses, a strange, but effective manner of communication!) and as a spy for… the United States (about which---later!).
Now, finally, the circumstances of Sorge’s arrest and death are drenched in some muddy waters. Sorge was, indeed, arrested, presumably, for questioning, by the Japanese secret police at least a couple of times in 1941, but it is yet unclear how many times he was released and possibly rearrested since then. The fact that he was a well-established information facilitator helped him survive then and there, and ever since, he would continue his useful activities, only now keeping a very low profile. It was his later work, after his alleged incarceration in an undisclosed location in October 1941, which is particularly remarkable), and even Sorge’s overt biographers have pointed to his alleged 1942 report to Moscow that Japan may enter the war against Russia on Hitler’s side, should the Germans be successful in taking the city of Stalingrad. Needless to say, here is some fancy smoke from the legitimate fire of Stalin’s concern over Japan’s growing arrogance that required to be checked (at Midway?!), but this odd discrepancy about the date (how could he possibly report to Stalin about an event taking place in late 1942, when he was presumably tortured in a Japanese prison at that same time?) shows that the dates and events of the official Sorge story just do not compute.
As for whether he was indeed executed by the Japanese in 1944, or secretly returned to Russia, this, again, is one of those delicate secrets, prying into which is definitely not comme il faut. One thought stands out, though: Richard Sorge must have been an enormous bargaining chip for Japan, and the Japanese must have realized it all along. Such men as Sorge are never put to death for the mere reason of spying, and thus the official story does not make any sense at all to me. I expect that it does not make sense to my reader, either!
Two postscripts to this story.
One is that the often cited “fact” that Sorge informed Moscow in early June 1941 about the exact date of the German attack on the USSR (on June 22, 1941), has never been verified and eventually has been relegated to the junk pile of Khrushchev’s inventions, to dramatize, in this case, Stalin’s prewar incompetence.
The other one is the information which I have recently picked up from a credible Russian website on Sorge (completely absent from all English-language websites on Sorge) about the existence, in Harvard University library, of an official US document dating back to August 9, 22, 23, 1951, about an investigation, conducted by the Committee on Un-American Activities of the US Congress, under the title Hearings on the American Aspects of the Richard Sorge Spy Case. The hearings were prompted by the testimony provided by General MacArthur’s Chief of Intelligence during WWII and in Korea, Major General Charles Andrew Willoughby (born Adolph Weidenbach in Germany and affectionately called “my pet fascist” by his boss). The available document is just beginning to scratch the surface of the matter, as the Committee, not surprisingly, went into an executive session after August 23, 1951, and no further transcripts have been declassified. But the gist of the matter is already clear from what I have been able to find out. General Willoughby contended that it was through Sorge that the USSR encouraged and facilitated Japan’s attack on the United States in 1941!!!
I salute the late General Willoughby for his extraordinary perspicacity, even if he did not succeed in getting everything right. But, apparently, this investigation never produced any fruit for cold-war public knowledge, nor has it ever come to light in America after the collapse of the USSR. I suspect that the truth in this matter has been deemed more hurtful to American national interest than silence.
James Bond’s father Ian Fleming called him “the most formidable spy in history.” The eminent American spy novelist Tom Clancy seconded the motion: “Richard Sorge was the best spy of all time.” And also, the acknowledged master of the spy business Kim Philby issued this succinct professional opinion: “His work was impeccable.”
The list of accolades may go on and on, and yet no Hollywood movie has ever been made about his exciting life, and, aside from a small bunch of dedicated buffs of espionage , his name remains virtually unknown in the United States, despite its enormous entertainment value. There has to be a reason for it, and there surely is...
There are two aspects to the Sorge story, one obtainable through various information sources, but the other so covert that I doubt if any investigative scholar would ever be able or even dare to uncover it. First, let us have the overt one.
Richard Sorge was born in 1895 in Azerbaijan, which was then, of course, part of the Russian Empire, to a German father and a Russian mother. His father was an engineer-contractor, who moved back to Germany with his family when his oil contract had expired.
In 1914 the young Sorge volunteered for military service in World War I. He served in the Western Front, and in 1916 was badly wounded, loosing three fingers and suffering broken legs. He received an Iron Cross and a medical discharge. He spent the remainder of the war studying economics, and in 1919 he received a PhD in political science. He also declared himself a Communist, and fled to Moscow, where he became a Comintern agent, which immediately turned him into a Soviet spy.
In this capacity, he traveled around Europe, returning to Germany in 1929, where he had been instructed to join the Nazi Party and to become a newspaper reporter, as a cover.
From 1930 to the end of 1932 he lived in China, and then, via Moscow and Berlin, moved to Japan, where he was to become indispensable. From 1933 to 1934, he built an amazingly effective spy network, gaining access to senior Japanese politicians and becoming fairly close with the German Ambassador to Japan Eugen Ott (meanwhile starting an affair with the Ambassador’s wife).
In May 1941, he famously informed Moscow of the exact date of the Operation Barbarossa, which was no less famously ignored. (In fact, it has been established that the allegation about the exact date of the German invasion was a deliberate falsification by Khrushchev, to besmirch Stalin. Regardless of that, see the reason for Stalin’s doing nothing, in my earlier entry Preparing For War.)
Toward the end of September 1941, he transmitted to Moscow information that Japan was not going to attack the Soviet Union in the East. It was allegedly this information, which made possible the transfer of the bulk of Soviet divisions from Siberia and the Far East, although the presence of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria still made it necessary for the Soviet Union to keep a certain minimal number of troops on the eastern borders. (Which would not have made much difference, though, had Japan really decided to attack the USSR.)
There is a speculation that this particular information led to the events which allowed the Soviet Union to turn the tide of war against the Nazis. This alone should make Sorge the most important spy of World War Two. Thus, another connoisseur of international espionage Frederick Forsythe comments: “The spies in history, who can say from their graves, the information I have 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.”
I am however convinced that Stalin had to have at least one more source, providing him with information regarding Japan's expected neutrality. My reader already knows, from previous readings, that Stalin was no spring chicken with regard to the Russian situation vis-à-vis Japan, and to presume that a single piece of secret information, or maybe two, on this vital subject, even if coming from Admiral Yamamoto through a master Soviet spy, could make such a difference as to alter the history of our planet, would be naive at best... The other source of Stalin's decision on pulling the Siberian divisions from the Eastern front had to be his intuition... And of course, the desperate state of Soviet defenses against the Germans made Stalin ever more willing to take risks...
Eventually, as the standard story goes, the Japanese counterintelligence wizened up to the special character of Sorge’s radio communications and started closing in. Sorge was arrested twice in October 1941, tortured, without revealing that he was a Soviet spy and eventually executed on November 7, 1944. (What symbolism must this have been, as this date coincided with the 27th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution! Even if the story of Sorge's execution is a lie, which, I suspect, it is, the date has been chosen with some flair!) Moscow was quick to disavow any knowledge of his actions, and Sorge himself was steadfast in disavowing any hint of his Soviet connection.
The Soviet Union did not acknowledge Sorge until 1964, when he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Prior to that event, a 1961 French movie, Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur Sorge? came out in Europe, in collaboration with West Germany, Italy and Japan, which became very popular in Russia as well. And so our overt story ends, except for the following detail having been added to it:
An interesting, but little-known conspiracy theory of the Cold War held that Sorge had only been “mock-executed” by the Japanese and had actually returned to the Soviet Union, where he continued to work for the KGB. Though many mysteries of the Cold War have been solved (dah!) since the fall of communism in the USSR, no proof of this theory has emerged. In one of his novels, the American writer M.E. Chaber has his hero meet an unnamed Russian master-spy who, the book hints, is none other than Richard Sorge. (Taken from Sorge’s Biography at BookRags.com. I do not usually subscribe to Internet sources, except when they make good sense! The reason why I find the story of Sorge's alleged execution untrustworthy is to be explained very shortly.)
Well, enough of that. Here now is the hidden part of the Richard Sorge story, which sheds a new light on his large figure. Quidquid latet, apparebit!---
Such is the nature of the spy business that, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, only the stories of fictional spies are true, whereas those of the real spies are false by definition. Nations having to disavow their heroes as a matter of national interest cannot be expected to spill the truth at any time then or later on, for revealing the actual sources and methods of espionage has always been considered comme il ne faut pas.
Several parts of the overt Sorge story are true, of course, but they are actually the parts which do not really matter. It is also true that in 1964 Sorge was officially recognized as a Hero Spy of the Soviet Union, only it does not follow that this hero had ever been trusted by his country. As Stalin used to say, The better the spy, the less he must be trusted, because the best of them work not for their country, but for themselves.
Sorge is regularly depicted as a Marxist, seeped in Communist ideology, but in fact, he was an adventurer at heart and in spirit, first and foremost, seeking excitement in life, while all his personal façades, whether this was his penchant for Marxism, or his passion for Nazism, or his love for Western freedoms,-- all these were the masks of an habitual, yet sincere chameleon.
Like any good spy, he was always working outside the normal intelligence channels, but the supreme irony of his position was that several intelligence services knew that he was in their business, benefited from his help, and were essentially letting him be, to function as an independent operator. He did not even have to make a special effort to steal anybody’s secrets. The truth of the matter was that he was provided with these secrets, to pass on to others, in other words, he was an indispensable hub of topnotch intelligence information (often disinformation), and such was the environment in which he functioned, and thrived.
Even for the Germans, he provided certain delicate services, but his two primary activities were as a liaison between Moscow and Admiral Yamamoto (whom Sorge normally met in Japanese geisha houses, a strange, but effective manner of communication!) and as a spy for… the United States (about which---later!).
Now, finally, the circumstances of Sorge’s arrest and death are drenched in some muddy waters. Sorge was, indeed, arrested, presumably, for questioning, by the Japanese secret police at least a couple of times in 1941, but it is yet unclear how many times he was released and possibly rearrested since then. The fact that he was a well-established information facilitator helped him survive then and there, and ever since, he would continue his useful activities, only now keeping a very low profile. It was his later work, after his alleged incarceration in an undisclosed location in October 1941, which is particularly remarkable), and even Sorge’s overt biographers have pointed to his alleged 1942 report to Moscow that Japan may enter the war against Russia on Hitler’s side, should the Germans be successful in taking the city of Stalingrad. Needless to say, here is some fancy smoke from the legitimate fire of Stalin’s concern over Japan’s growing arrogance that required to be checked (at Midway?!), but this odd discrepancy about the date (how could he possibly report to Stalin about an event taking place in late 1942, when he was presumably tortured in a Japanese prison at that same time?) shows that the dates and events of the official Sorge story just do not compute.
As for whether he was indeed executed by the Japanese in 1944, or secretly returned to Russia, this, again, is one of those delicate secrets, prying into which is definitely not comme il faut. One thought stands out, though: Richard Sorge must have been an enormous bargaining chip for Japan, and the Japanese must have realized it all along. Such men as Sorge are never put to death for the mere reason of spying, and thus the official story does not make any sense at all to me. I expect that it does not make sense to my reader, either!
Two postscripts to this story.
One is that the often cited “fact” that Sorge informed Moscow in early June 1941 about the exact date of the German attack on the USSR (on June 22, 1941), has never been verified and eventually has been relegated to the junk pile of Khrushchev’s inventions, to dramatize, in this case, Stalin’s prewar incompetence.
The other one is the information which I have recently picked up from a credible Russian website on Sorge (completely absent from all English-language websites on Sorge) about the existence, in Harvard University library, of an official US document dating back to August 9, 22, 23, 1951, about an investigation, conducted by the Committee on Un-American Activities of the US Congress, under the title Hearings on the American Aspects of the Richard Sorge Spy Case. The hearings were prompted by the testimony provided by General MacArthur’s Chief of Intelligence during WWII and in Korea, Major General Charles Andrew Willoughby (born Adolph Weidenbach in Germany and affectionately called “my pet fascist” by his boss). The available document is just beginning to scratch the surface of the matter, as the Committee, not surprisingly, went into an executive session after August 23, 1951, and no further transcripts have been declassified. But the gist of the matter is already clear from what I have been able to find out. General Willoughby contended that it was through Sorge that the USSR encouraged and facilitated Japan’s attack on the United States in 1941!!!
I salute the late General Willoughby for his extraordinary perspicacity, even if he did not succeed in getting everything right. But, apparently, this investigation never produced any fruit for cold-war public knowledge, nor has it ever come to light in America after the collapse of the USSR. I suspect that the truth in this matter has been deemed more hurtful to American national interest than silence.
No comments:
Post a Comment