![]() As Sorge’s chief task was to determine whether Japan would attack the Soviet Union, it was crucial to know who was really in charge in Tokyo. Like many Germans that had suffered through massive inflation and food shortages, the Japanese, collectively speaking, were turning to nationalists versus socialists to rescue them from hardship, but these nationalists varied in their extremism and outlook. The economic downturn following the crash on Wall Street, plus a dramatic crop failure, contributed to the intensity of the situation and the scrutiny applied to foreigners. In the previous year, the prime minister, finance minister, and several leading industrialists had been assassinated by young Army officers. Just like in Germany, a brief experiment with democracy had come up short. And despite any outward appearance of tranquility, the Japan of 1933 was, in truth, a cauldron of infighting and intrigue. The country’s profound suspicion of outsiders had its roots in centuries of isolation. In Tokyo, Sorge’s chief tasks were to ascertain Japanese military readiness and Japan’s designs with regard to the Soviet Union. It was there that Sorge honed many of the talents and techniques that would make him such a formidable spy in Tokyo from 1933 to 1941, the focus of the book. Part of what made him a tantalizing candidate for recruitment was that he had, in the intervening years since his military service, achieved “academic and journalistic credentials that would serve as a perfect ready-made cover for foreign assignments.” 6 His illustrious overseas spying career began with a colorful and highly effective stint in Shanghai in 1930. In the years that followed, Sorge was recognized for his innate talents and skills and recruited for clandestine work in support of his motherland (Russia), rather than his fatherland (Germany). When he had learned to walk again and received his discharge from the Army, he dove headlong into the socialist enterprise within Germany. He became enamored with communism, which he described as “this most difficult, daring, and noble ideology to eliminate the causes, economic and political, of this war and any future ones by means of internal revolution.” Russian Revolution cemented those burgeoning socialist convictions. Laid up in a bed and unable to walk, he began to read, in search of “the” truth. His last wounding resulted in two thoroughly shattered legs. “I was plunged into an intense confusion of the soul.” 3 He experienced a revulsion of the worn idealism touted by nations at war and became convinced “that a violent political change was the only way of extricating ourselves from this quagmire.” 4 Like so many who endure combat, he would undergo a sort of rebirth that called into question so many foundations of the world he had previously known. His last, near-fatal wounding, coupled with the loss of family and friends, crushed any lingering illusions he had. At roughly the same time, he learned two of his brothers had been killed in combat. He would eventually be wounded three times and receive a medical discharge. To Sorge’s surprise-and likely distress-his soldier buddies, despite the horrors they witnessed, seemed to have little interest in examining the root causes of the conflict in which they had become meat for the grinder. As such, this “bright young contrarian, found his reason beginning to rebel against the pointlessness of the conflict.” 2 But that shock would manifest itself in different ways for different people. It was both profoundly formative and shocking for so many of his generation. For him, the experience was like going from the schoolhouse to the slaughter block. 1 But any illusions he may have held about the glory of war were quickly, decisively, and brutally shredded, along with many of his friends, on his first day of action. ![]() No doubt, “the shadow of his late father’s stern patriotism” played a part in his decision to join the fight. Not long after, World War I broke out, and Sorge enlisted. ![]() Later, the family would relocate to Germany. ![]() His father was German, his mother Russian, having met in Baku. Sorge was born in 1895 in the rich, corrupt, and violent boom town that was Baku, part of the sprawling Russian Empire, at the dawn of the oil boom. Fleming called Sorge “the most formidable spy in history.” Le Carre said he was the “spy to end spies.” How then, had I missed this story? But when reading the dust jacket commentary, with splashy quotes from the likes of Ian Fleming and John Le Carre, I became intrigued with the subject. This book, An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent, was one I came across by accident. ![]()
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