The Unknown Spy Who Made Stalin Win the War

The spy Richard Sorge, in Japan in 1938.ullstein bild Dtl.

/ ullstein bild via Getty Images

Wars are not won only on the battlefield, but also in the slippery and dangerous world of espionage.

In World War II, some lone agents were as important as entire divisions.

One of them was Richard Sorge, who obtained crucial information for the development of the conflict - that Nazi Germany was going to invade the USSR in June 1941 - but Stalin did not believe him.

However, shortly afterwards, he made another exceptional discovery: that Japan was not going to invade the Soviet Union through Siberia and that, therefore, the Red Army could allocate all the necessary troops to save Moscow, at that time on the verge of falling into hands of the Nazis.

That movement changed the course of war and history.

The British journalist Owen Matthews, a veteran Moscow correspondent and writer specializing in Russian issues, has just published

An Impeccable Spy

(Criticism, translation by Luis Noriega), in which he traces the life of Sorge, a Soviet agent based in Tokyo with unparalleled sources.

Sorge was one of the most famous spies of World War II, but Matthews has handled unused reports so far, pulled from Soviet archives.

A single fact sums up his importance: he was surely the only person in the entire conflict who was within a single degree of separation from Adolf Hitler, the Japanese Prime Minister - Prince Konoe - and Stalin himself.

He had a direct relationship with sources who, in turn, spoke with them.

40 years ago Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union by surprise

"It is very difficult to think of such a well connected spy," explains Owen Matthews, 49, in a video call from Oxford.

“Perhaps Kim Philby [one of the most important double agents of the Cold War] was the only one who achieved something similar because he was the liaison officer between MI6, the British secret services, and the US Government.

But it was still a professional relationship.

Sorge is not that he was one degree apart from all the actors in WWII.

He also had direct and constant contact with important German officials and was very competent when it came to establishing a direct relationship with the ambassador and with many people who trusted him. "

Born in Baku, then in the USSR, on October 4, 1895 in a German family, he moved to his country when he was a child.

He fought in World War I and was wounded in the leg, causing a permanent limp, although he also achieved an Iron Cross.

He became a communist militant in 1919 and devoted his entire life to this ideology.

I spy for the USSR in her own country and then in Shanghai, where she was the lover of another famous agent, Ursula Kuczynski, about whom Ben Macintyre, author of a famous book on Kim Philby, has just published a biography,

Agent Sonya,

which Criticism will take out in April.

After building a solid cover as a Nazi and as a journalist, he settled in Tokyo in 1933, where he befriended the German military attaché, Eugen Ott, who would end up as ambassador at a crucial moment for the Third Reich, when the Nazis wanted to do everything. possible for Japan to enter the war.

Despite the fact that Sorge behaved like a complete fool, due to his partying and his constant romances, he was not discovered until October 1941, by a chance that had nothing to do with his alcohol deficits.

He was hanged in 1944. It says a lot about his way of operating that, when the Nazis sent the sinister Josef Meisinger, known as The Butcher of Warsaw for his cruelty, to investigate him, they ended up becoming friends and fellow partiers.

“The title is based on a phrase by Kim Philby, who said that Sorge's work was impeccable.

But, when you read the book, you see that the title is ironic because, in fact, he was a fool at his work.

There is no really convincing explanation for why he was not discovered earlier: he was very lucky and, above all, many people thought he was a spy, but from the Germans.

He had very close relations with the Nazi secret services.

When, for example, on the day of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, he got drunk and, before the Nazi community in Tokyo, climbed on a table and began to shout that this will be the end of Hitler, everyone laughed as if it was a grace ”.

Sorge managed an effective spy ring in Japan, which fell with him when he was discovered.

Until May 9, you can see in Madrid, at the Mapfre Foundation, an exhibition by the Japanese photographer Tomoko Yoneda, specialized in portraying places of memory, including the settings where Sorge met with his network of spies.

It was in Tokyo that Sorge obtained crucial information: that, despite his pact with Stalin, Hitler was going to invade the USSR on June 22, 1941, in the so-called Operation Barbarossa.

But the Soviet leader, installed in his murderous paranoia, after having ordered the execution of thousands of officers and spies of the Red Army, did not believe him.

It also contributed to the Soviet leader's skepticism that his top advisers downgraded the information for fear of the wrath of their dangerous boss.

However, once they saw that Sorge was right, they did buy his second key piece of information: that Japan was not going to invade the USSR.

"The interesting thing about writing this book is that no one had ever told the Soviet side of the story," says Matthews.

“There is one thing that is repeated in many espionage stories: you can have excellent agents on the ground, who give you very good information, but if you don't know how to use that information, it is worthless.

In 1941, the atmosphere of suspicion in Soviet espionage was so deep that no one was believed.

This is what happened to Sorge: on the one hand, by system, they distrusted him, on the other some of his information was used because it was very solid.

The story of Stalin, who did not believe neither Sorge nor the 18 other agents who also, although with less precision, warned him of Operation Barbarrosa, is a clear example of so-called tunnel vision: the inability to believe something that does not confirm your prejudices.

It is something that happens to all totalitarian regimes, including that of Putin ”.

There is a part of Sorge's story that intersects with that of the author of his biography.

The grandmother of Matthews's wife, who is Russian, had a dacha on the outskirts of Moscow.

In November 1941, German troops were barely two kilometers from that rest house and were preparing to launch the final offensive on Moscow.

However, when all seemed lost, thousands of Siberian soldiers appeared, halting the Nazi offensive.

That woman, who died in 2017, remembers suddenly hearing a strange and thunderous noise: it was the snoring of the Siberian troops, who slept on the snow.

Those Siberians were there thanks to what Sorge discovered.

Matthews: “Almost all the espionage of the 20th century focuses on detecting the activity of other spies, an agent betrays other agents, such as George Blake or Kim Philby.

The impact of your intelligence is tactical, not strategic.

Sorge was an exception.

De Gaulle detested spies and talked about the 'little spy stories'.

But Sorge was no small story.

He had essential information that changed history ”.