Richard Sorge, An Impeccable Spy: Owen Matthews (1941)
In this thrilling episode, Owen Matthews takes us back to 1941 to see Richard Sorge, the ‘spy to end all spies’, operating in the most dangerous months of the Second World War.
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Two events in 1941 did more than anything else to settle the shape and outcome of the Second World War. The first was the most fateful decision of Adolf Hitler’s life: the launching of Operation Barbarossa against the USSR on 22 June. The second was the surprise Japanese aerial attack on the US naval base of Pearl Harbour, six months later on 7 December.
These events appear crystal clear to us in retrospect, but for many living at that time they came like a flash out of the blue. A few people, though, did know what was coming. One of them was one of the most extraordinary communist underground operatives of the twentieth century: Richard Sorge. Sorge ran a Soviet spy group in Tokyo from the 1930s onwards that achieved astonishing access into the Nazi war machine.
“A good spy can decide the outcome of a battle or the course of crucial negotiations - but of course only if he is believed.” Boris Gudz told an interviewer in 1999. “It is a very difficult psychological state when you are not believed, when you have obtained secret information that turned out to be right.”
A drinker, a womaniser, a risk-taker, all on a breath-taking scale, Sorge thrived as a duplicitous agent. He is perhaps the only person in history to have simultaneously been a member of the Soviet Communist Party and the German Nazi Party. One journalist has classified Sorge ‘as an example of the rare species we might call Homo undercoverus – those who find the dull, unclassified lives that the rest of us lead simply not worth living.’
Our guest on Travels Through Time today is Owen Matthews, author of a new biography of Sorge. Owen studied Modern History at Oxford. His book, Stalin's Children, was translated into twenty-eight languages and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
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Click here to order Owen Matthews’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Listen to the podcast here
Show notes:
Scene One: 31 May 1941, The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Richard Sorge receives final confirmation that Operation Barbarossa will shortly be launched.
Scene Two: 22 June 1941. The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Sorge’s bitter fury when he hears news of the German invasion.
Scene Three: One night in August, 1941. The Embassy Ballroom with Sorge and Eta Harich-Schneider
Memento: Richard Sorge’s lighter
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest; Owen Matthews
Producer: Maria Nolan
Editorial: Artemis Irvine
Titles: Jon O
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Richard Sorge: Spy Gallery
What you will learn in this episode
How Sorge turned the trauma of World War One to his advantages as a spy in the years that followed
About the failed mission of Josef Meisinger, the Butcher of Warsaw
The perilous realities of being a Soviet spy in the Stalin Era
How you can’t play Moonlight Sonata on a harpsichord
How Sorge’s intelligence in 1941 changed the course of world history
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Click here to order An Impeccable Spy by Owen Matthews from our friends at John Sandoe’s Books.
Ian Fleming described Sorge as “the most formidable spy in history”. This new life draws on recently declassified Russian material and has been widely praised. (John Sandoe’s)
