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Richard Sorge (October
4,
1895 -
October 9,
1944) was a
German journalist and a
spy for
Soviet Union in
Japan before and during
World War II.
Richard Sorge was born in
Adjikent,
Baku,
Russia. He was one of the nine children of the German mining engineer
Wilhelm Sorge and his Russian wife Nina. His family moved to Germany when
he was three. His uncle had been a secretary for
Karl Marx.
In October 1914 Sorge volunteered to service in the
World War One. He joined a student battalion of the 3rd Guards, Field
Artillery. During his service in the
Western Front he was severely wounded in March 1916 when shrapnel
broke his both legs, causing him a lifelong limp. He was promoted to
corporal, received an
Iron Cross and a discharge.
During his convalescence he read Marx and adopted communist ideology.
He spent the rest of the war studying economics in universities of
Berlin,
Kiel and
Hamburg. In 1920 he graduated with a Ph.D. in political science. He
also joined the
KPD, the German communist party. His political views, however, got him
fired from both a teaching job and coal mining work. He fled to Moscow
where he became a junior agent for
Comintern.
1921 Sorge returned to Germany, married Christiane Gerlach and moved to
Solingen, in
North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1922 the Communists relocated him to
Frankfurt where he gathered intelligence about business community.
After an attempted communist coup in October 1923 he continued his work as
a journalist.
In 1924 he moved to
Moscow where he officially joined the International Liaison Department
of Comintern,
OMS, also a OGPU intelligence gathering body. Apparently his
dedication to duty lead to a divorce. In 1928 he was transferred to
GRU duties and 1930 sent to
Shanghai to gather intelligence and foment revolution. Officially he
worked as the editor of German news service and for the
Frankfurter Zeitung. There he met Ozaki Hozumi, a Japanese
journalist working for
Asahi Shimbun. In January 1932 Sorge reported on fighting between
Chinese and Japanese troops in the streets of Shanghai. In December he was
recalled to Moscow.
Sorge was decorated and remarried. In 1933 he was sent to Berlin with
the code name "Ramsey", to reform contacts in Germany so he could pass for
a German journalist in Japan. He arrived to
Yokohama on September 6, 1933.
1933-1934 Sorge built a network to collect intelligence for
NKVD in Japan. His agents had contacts with senior politicians and
through that, to information of Japan's foreign policy. He also
recontacted Ozaki Hozumi who developed a close contact with the prime
minister
Fumimaro Konoye. Ozaki copied secret documents for Sorge.
Officially Sorge joined the Nazi party and worked with the local
embassy and ambassador
Eugen Ott as an agent for
Abwehr. He used the embassy for double-checking his information.
Stress also increased his drinking.
Sorge supplied Soviets with information about
Anti-Comintern Pact, the
German-Japanese Pact and warning of
Pearl Harbor attack. 1941 Sorge informed them of Hitler's intentions
to launch
Operation Barbarossa. Moscow answered with thanks but little was done.
Before the battle for Moscow, Sorge transmitted information that Japan
was not going to attack Soviet Union in the East. This information allowed
Zhukov to redeploy Siberian troops for the defense of Moscow.
Japanese secret service had already intercepted many of his messages
and begun to close in. Ozaki was arrested in October 14 and interrogated.
Sorge was arrested in October 18 in Tokyo. Sorge was not exchanged for
Japanese prisoners of war, although reason for that is unclear. He was
incarcerated in
Sugamo Prison.
Both Ozaki and Sorge were hanged on October 9 1944. The Soviet Union
did not acknowledge Sorge until 1964.
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