The Sorge Spy Ring

by: Philipp Studt
 

Sakigun! (The Red Army)
Kokusai Kyosanto! (The International Communist Party)
Soviet Kyosanto! (The Soviet Communist Party)

Richard Sorge repeated his last words three times and, according to the Tokko’s official witness to the execution, spoke clearly and with conviction, lacking any show-off in his manner. He then snapped to attention, his executioners recognized the sure moment, and the trap was sprung.¹

Throughout history, intelligence about adversaries has affected the outcome of conflicts. Leaders’ decisions are, amongst many other factors, at least affected by, and more often dependent on, the information that they have access to. In this paper, it will be investigated under which circumstances and to what extent spy activity affected the outcome of Russia’s defense against the German invasion during World War Two. Situations will be explored when Stalin was provided with excellent and precise information but did not use it, investigating what caused him to ignore it. Equally, the battle of Moscow will be looked at more closely to show how immensely valuable spies can be if actually listened to. This essay will focus on Dr. Richard Sorge and the members of his Tokyo Spy Ring, arguably one of the most effective groups of the Second World War, second only to Werther and the Red Orchestra. Sorge’s spy ring will be assessed in detail, aimed both to show how they were able to build up and conduct their operations in the face of considerable counterintelligence, investigating the most important members’ backgrounds to help understand their motives and convictions and finally determining what factors contributed to their identification and arrest. Richard Sorge was the head of a spy ring for the Soviet Union from the time he arrived in Shanghai 1930 until his arrest by the Japanese Secret Service in 1941. In order to successfully operate for eleven years in a country as distrustful of foreigners and manically spy-conscious as Japan requires extraordinary talent, and that Richard Sorge doubtlessly possessed.

Born 1895 in Baku, Azerbaijan, to a German father and Russian mother, he followed his family to Germany in 1906. They were financially well off, and Sorge went through the normal academic curriculum. Immediately after the outbreak of World War One, he volunteered and joined the army.² Already disillusioned with Germany’s war aims, his first exposure to Communist doctrine occurred at a field hospital in Königsberg 1916 after being wounded for the third time. The doctor and nurse aiding his long recovery happened to be both radical socialists, and provided the bed-bound Sorge with political and economic literature. He left the hospital “an apostle of the revolutionary labor movement”³, joining the revolutionary Independent Social Democratic Party at Kiel University in 1918, recruiting and instructing sailors and dock workers in socialism and Marxist dogma. 1919, he changed location to Hamburg to pursue his Ph. D. in political science, rapidly advancing to the post of training chief and adviser to the Hamburg chapter of the German Communist Party, which by then had absorbed the Independent Social Democratic Party. Propaganda activities got him expelled from the Rhineland after he moved there to work in the coal mines, and the authorities almost immediately asked him to leave when he shifted his attentions to Holland. Further stations included Berlin and Frankfurt, where he made the acquaintance of high-ranking Comintern members, who were so impressed with him that they invited him to Moscow, where he arrived in 1924.⁴

Once in Moscow, Sorge changed his membership to the Soviet Communist party and obtained Soviet citizenship, but kept his German passport and did not inform his former home country’s authorities about the proceedings. Free of ties after separating from his wife in 1926, Sorge took his work for the Comintern’s Intelligence division, which he had assisted in expanding, one step further and became involved in espionage. This involved traveling all over Europe, where he gathered information about the countries’ Communist parties as well as the state of their economic, political and military affairs.

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1 Interview with Yuda, (conducted by Ms. Chi Harada on Prange’s behalf, January 18,1965), quoted in: Gordon W. Prange, Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1984), p. 510

2 Prange, Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, ( McGraw-Hill, New York, 1984), pp. 8, 9

3 Richard Sorge, Prison Memoir, (Iwanami Gendai Bunko, Tokyo, 2003), Part II, p. 30

4 Target Tokyo, pp. 12-14