Richard Gustavovich Sorge
Рихард Густавович Зорге
The spy who stole the war’s timetable in Tokyo
“The world war… exerted the deepest influence on my entire life. Whatever other factors may have affected me, it was solely because of this war that I became a communist.” — from his 1927 autobiography
A Soviet intelligence officer who worked under cover as a German correspondent in Tokyo. He warned of Operation Barbarossa and confirmed Japan's southward turn, enabling Siberian divisions to be thrown into the Moscow front. Executed in 1944; made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964.
Career timeline
- 1925–1929Comintern, then Red Army intelligence
- 1930–1933The Shanghai network
- 1933–1941Tokyo: the correspondent the German embassy trusted
- 1941.05–06Warns of Barbarossa; ignored
- 1941.09“Japan will not strike north”, the basis for moving the Siberian divisions
- 1941.10Arrested
- 1944.11Hanged in Tokyo