The events in the spring of 2018 in the quiet rural setting of the city of Salisbury in Wiltshire provided a sharp reminder of the highly significant role accorded since time immemorial by the Russian state apparatus to members of the country’s covert military intelligence agencies over the past millennum and recalled the past achievements of the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie) within the Soviet defence establishment.[1] Arguably its most celebrated covert intelligence agent in the 20th century was Dr. Richard Sorge (1895-1944), born in Baku but of German parentage, whose role was only officially recognised in 1964 with his naming as a ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’.[2] Knowledge of Sorge’s role initially stemmed from the publication of documentary evidence linked to questioning of officials of the Japanese Tokkö, the Special Higher Police, and of the Japanese Ministry of Justice following the surrender of Japan at the end of the Pacific War in August 1945.
Immediate exploitation of Sorge’s activities was available to the US Occupation and was channelled into developments arising from the onset of the American-Soviet Cold War between 1945 and 1991 and also entwined in the domestic US political controversy surrounding the enquiries into the outbreak of hostilities at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.[3] As Sorge himself served in both China and Japan as director of the GRU espionage groups there from 1930 to 1941, there are a large number of individuals with whom he made contact as a journalist and corresponding numbers of personal observations have appeared in print. One of the fullest accounts, based on German and Japanese sources, was published in 1966 by Sir William Deakin and Professor Dick Storry and there is a parallel study by Chalmers Johnson based primarily on Japanese sources on the career of Sorge’s principal informant, Ozaki Hotsumi, which appeared in 1990. [4]
Some
knowledge of Sorge’s activities in Japan between 1934 and October 1941 was
clearly also gained from the German and Japanese communities and was of direct
significance to members of the German diplomatic and press communities. Perhaps most affected was the representative
of the German secret police within the German Embassy in Tokyo since April
1941, SS-Sturmbannführer Meisinger,
who had played a significant role at Gestapo
headquarters in the cases undertaken against high-profile figures in German
political life, such as Ernst Röhm and the associated assassinations of
Generals von Schleicher and von Bredow in 1934 and against Field-Marshal von
Blomberg and General von Fritsch in 1938, but which of course took no account
of the many other individuals accused of homosexuality or fraud both within and
outside the Nazi Party between 1933 and 1939. [5]
As Meisinger had spent almost six months in China rather than in Tokyo until
recalled there in November 1941, however, he had almost no knowledge of the
German community in Japan and was wholly ignorant until this point of
diplomatic or legal circles in Japan. Meisinger
appears to have been recalled from Shanghai by the German ambassador in Tokyo,
Major-General Eugen Ott (1889-1977), and his arrival is recorded in the war
diary of the German Naval Attaché in Tokyo, Rear-Admiral Paul W. Wenneker
(1898-1979). [6] Meisinger ordered the detention on the
blockade-running ship, Osorno, and
compulsory transport to Europe of the German exchange student, Claus Lenz, who
had been working alongside Sorge on the German Embassy’s local newssheet, Deutsche Dienst, which was based on the
press cables of the Transocean News Agency. [7] When
two memoranda written by Sorge in Sugamo prison were supplied to the German
Embassy in Tokyo in early January 1942, these were shown to Meisinger, who was
reported to have concluded that he was ‘doubtful if the author is knowledgeable
about the intelligence service of the Comintern.’ [8]
[1.] The case was raised in the Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives under the title Hearings on Un-American Aspects of the Richard Sorge Spy Case. Washington DC, USGPO, 1951 and an extensive monograph was published by Major-General C.A. Willoughby (1892-1972), General Macarthur’s chief of intelligence staff, as Shangai Conspiracy – The Sorge Spy Case. Boston, Western, 1952. Willoughby appears to have been of German origin and this was of some value when dealing with the many Japanese Army staff officers seconded to Germany between 1919 and 1945. However, his reputation as an intelligence officer was characterised as low by Macarthur himself and by most more recent analysts.
[2.]For coverage of some of the history of the complementary covert arrangements involved in Russian codebreaking, see D.Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, “Tsarist Codebreaking Some Background and Examples,” Cryptologia 22/4 (October 1998): 342-353. Sorge was credited with gaining access to German enciphered radio signals in China and in Japan, as well to the early naval war diary for East Asia in World War II until this was withheld by Admiral Wenneker when he returned to Tokyo in 1940.
[3.] The initial Soviet announcements appeared in Pravda on 4.9.1964 and in Izvestiya on 5.9.64. A monograph by M. Kolesnikov: Takim Byl Rikhard Zorge. Moscow, Voennoe Izdatelstvo Oborony SSSR, 1965was published shortly afterward and this author was able to borrow a copy from the Soviet mission in Tokyo. Subsequently, the East German state registered its input in a book by Julius Mader et al.: Dr.Sorge Funkt aus Tokyo. East Berlin, Deutscher Militärverlag, 1966, with a second edition, Dr.Sorge Report. East Berlin, 1985, a copy of which was kindly made available to this author by Fräulein Ingeborg Krag.
[4.] F.W. Deakin & G.R. Storry, The Case of Richard Sorge. London: Chatto & Windus, 1966; Chalmers Johnson, Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring. Stanford UP, 1990.
[5.] Meisinger produced a handwritten account of his police career which was translated and typed up and indicates the very large numbers of prosecutions in which he was involved between 1933 and 1941: see NAW: RG 319: Meisinger Dossier: 16-60 & 100-172 and prosecutions are all cited at 290-6.
[6.] See J.W.M. Chapman, ed., The Price of Admiralty – The War Diary of the German Naval Attaché in Japan, 1939-1943: Ripe, Saltire House Publications, 1990, Vol.4: 744. Vols.1-4 were produced in print versions, but Vol.1 has recently been revised and expanded in electronic form and Vols.5-7 have also been translated with additional central documents in similar fashion.
[7.] The background to events in Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor lay in the super-secrecy demanded to achieve surprise at the opening of the Pacific War. The final phase of preparations was marked by the appointment of General Tôjô Hideki in place of Prince Konoe as premier and this was welcomed by Japanese Navy officers, not least because when he was appointed War Minister in July 1940, Tôjô, a former head of the kempeitai in Manchuria, had been instrumental in ordering the arrest of 12 British nationals as spies. These included the Reuters correspondent, Melville Cox, who jumped to his death while in police custody. The counter-espionage drive was spearheaded by the civilian police and Sorge was tracked down through his contacts with members of the Japan Communist Party and the accusations levelled at the large number of arrestees concentrated on claims that they were agents of the Comintern rather than, as was later discovered, of the Soviet military as the latter charge would have stimulated demands for control on the part of the kempeitai.
[8.] Ott (Tokyo) secret Tel.No.60 of 9.1.1942 at: Auswärtiges Amt (AA): BRAM: ‘Dr. Richard Sorge’. The file was initially maintained by Dr. Karl-Otto Braun (1910-88), the head of the East Asian Section in the Political Department (Pol VIII) before being transferred to the Press Department in the hands of Secretary of Legation Bassler (PVIII) when its classification rose from Secret to Top Secret and it was passed on to officials in Ribbentrop’s Secretariat in late February 1942.
Other Views:
There is a review by Nicholas Shakespeare in the Spectator of 14.3.2019 of the book by Owen Matthews An Impeccable Spy published by Bloomsbury. This may be located at <https:/spectator.co.uk/2019/03/richard-sorge>.