The Second World War is the worst in the history of mankind. As you know, to win it with the help of tanks alone was impossible - it took ingenuity, resourcefulness and a huge amount of effort. In this regard, each country trains and trains intelligence officers. The Soviet Union raised one of the best scouts of the century. It was Richard Sorge. He was a truly great man and scout. Richard worked in Japan undercover for about 7 years, and no one else could. It’s not easy to work as a scout in Japan, because the authorities carefully monitor that there is no leakage of information. However, during this time, no one was able to understand who Richard Sorge was.
Scout's childhood and family
Due to circumstances, in 1944, Richard Sorge managed to declassify the Japanese secret services. At that moment, even the country's authorities expressed hidden respect for him because for many years they could not find out who Richard Sorge was.
The scout’s biography begins on October 4, 1898 in the Baku province of the Russian Empire (now Baku - Azerbaijan). Richard's father was German Gustav Wilhelm, and his mother was a Russian woman Kobeleva Nina Stepanovna. The scout's family was large, but nothing was known about the sisters and brothers. Richard's grandfather was the leader of the First International and secretary of Karl Marx himself. When Richard was 10 years old, his family moved to live in Germany.
The first battles, injury and acquaintance with Karl Marx
An interesting fact is that during his stay in Germany, Richard voluntarily joined the German army during the First World War. The first fights he spent as part of artillery troops. Some time later (in 1915) he was wounded in the next battle near Iprom. Richard was sent to the hospital, where he passed the exams and received the next rank - corporal. After these events, Sorge was sent to another front - east, to Galicia. There, the scout participated in battles against the Russian army. Later, he was badly wounded by fragments from an artillery shell and lay on the ground for several days. After he was taken to the hospital, the scout underwent a serious operation, as a result of which one leg became shorter than the other. Because of this, Richard was commissioned on disability.
In between heavy battles, Richard Sorge got acquainted with the work of Karl Marx. It was then that he became an ardent Communist. Thanks to active party activity in 1924, Sorge moved to the USSR, where he received Soviet citizenship. As a result of unknown events, Richard was recruited by the Soviet intelligence services. Richard Sorge is a top-level intelligence officer, and many of his colleagues understood this. Thanks to the profession of a journalist and a German name, he could almost safely work in many countries of the world.
Alias and first arrest of Sorge
And yet, who was Richard Sorge in the countries he worked for?
Most often, he worked under the codename Ramsay and was called a journalist or a scientist. This gave him the right to ask questions that ordinary people could not even pronounce aloud. The first thing Sorge was sent to England to meet with the head of the secret intelligence service MI6. Her boss was supposed to tell Sorge secret information about which nothing is known to this day. However, a meeting between Richard and a British intelligence officer did not take place. Sorge was arrested by the police. Fortunately, even then his connections and he were not declassified.
Intelligence Agency of the Red Army
In 1929, Sorge was transferred to work in the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. In the same year he received an important special task. After Richard was sent to China, to the city of Shanghai, where his task was to create an operational intelligence group and search for reliable informants about the country's plans. In Shanghai, he was able to make friends with a journalist and part-time spy - Agnes Smedley. Sorge also met a born communist, Hotsumi Ozaki. In the future, these people became the most important and main informants of the Soviet Union.
Scout Sent to Japan
Sorge later placed himself well in Nazi circles. Because of this, the Soviet command made a difficult decision - to send Richard to Japan. The task was complicated by the fact that there none of the agents managed to gain a foothold and work well. Many do not know who Richard Sorge was in Japan. However, official sources claim that the scout came there as a journalist of one authoritative German publication. For this, before the trip, Sorge needed to visit the United States. For a short period of time, he received good recommendations from the Japanese embassy in America. Apparently, thanks to this, his career was well developed in Japan itself.
There, Sorge was able to get an assistant to the German ambassador Jugen Otto, who at that time was a general.
The indifference of the Soviet government to the fate of a scout
However, Sorge was shamelessly thrown by the Soviet government in Japan to its fate. The USSR had a suspicion that the information of Sorge was untrue and now it works against them. All letters to Sorge with a request to return to the Union were left without attention of the General Staff. At that time, they were not interested in who Richard Sorge was - an ordinary ordinary soldier or a high-class spy. He was just thrown.
October 18, 1941 Richard Sorge was declassified and arrested by Japanese police. For three years he was under investigation. In 1944, the scout was shot along with his agents.
So, after many years, more than one journalist and scientist asks himself who Richard Sorge was. The answer to this question can be given only by those who were well acquainted with his life and work.