Questions about Richard Sorge
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who was Richard Sorge and why is he considered important?
Richard Sorge was a German-Russian journalist who worked as a Soviet military intelligence officer before and during World War II. He is considered historically significant because his intelligence from Japan in 1941, reporting that Japan would not attack the Soviet Union, helped enable the transfer of Soviet divisions from the Far East to defend Moscow, where the German Army suffered its first strategic defeat of the war. Ian Fleming called him "the most formidable spy in history" and Tom Clancy named him "the best spy of all time".
What was Richard Sorge's codename and which agency did he work for?
Sorge's codename was "Ramsay" (Рамзай in Russian). He worked for the Red Army's Fourth Department, the body later known as the GRU (Soviet military intelligence), which he joined in 1929 at the invitation of department head Yan Karlovich Berzin.
How did Richard Sorge build his spy network in Japan?
Sorge arrived in Japan in September 1933 posing as the Tokyo correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung. His network included radio operator Max Clausen, Japanese journalist Miyagi Yotoku, French magazine journalist Branko Vukelic, and most critically Hotsumi Ozaki, a Japanese man with access to Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe's inner circle. Sorge also cultivated the German ambassador Eugen Ott, eventually drafting cables that Ott sent to Berlin under his own name.
Did Richard Sorge warn Stalin about Operation Barbarossa?
Sorge reported to Moscow on the 30th of May 1941 that Berlin had informed the German ambassador that a German attack would commence in the latter part of June, with the ambassador 95 percent certain war would commence. Stalin ignored these warnings, as he did similar reports from other sources. The historian Gordon Prange concluded in 1984 that the closest date Sorge actually reported was the 20th of June, not the correct date of the 22nd of June.
How was Richard Sorge caught and what happened to him?
The Kempeitai, Japan's secret police, intercepted increasing numbers of encrypted radio messages and began closing in. Sorge's network member Hotsumi Ozaki was arrested on the 14th of October 1941. Sorge himself was arrested in Tokyo on the 18th of October 1941. He was held in Sugamo Prison, tortured, and forced to confess. The Soviet Union denied he was their agent and refused three Japanese offers to trade him for a Japanese spy. Sorge was hanged at 10:20 Tokyo time on the 7th of November 1944 at Sugamo Prison, nineteen minutes before he was pronounced dead.
When did the Soviet Union officially recognize Richard Sorge?
The Soviet Union officially acknowledged Sorge in 1964, twenty years after his death, awarding him the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The KGB claimed him as a "hero spy" in a propaganda campaign, even though Sorge had worked for the GRU, not the KGB. The Soviets concealed the fact that they had independently broken Japanese codes in 1941 and already knew Japan would not attack the Soviet Union, preferring to present Sorge as the sole source of that intelligence.