My Amazon Review of Owen Matthews' "An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent

The Greatest Spy of the 20^th Century

Utilizing new Russian and Japanese sources journalist Owen Matthews has given us the best biography of Richard Sorge, perhaps the greatest spy of the 20^th Century. Born in Baku of German parents in 1895 Sorge becomes a communist after his World War I service and is recruited to become a spy for the Comintern in 1924. While in Moscow in the late 1920s he meets such Comintern big hitters as Zinoviev, Radek and Bukharin, all of whom would later be executed by Stalin. He is then recruited by the Red Army’s 4^th Department that has since been relabeled as the GRU. Yes, the same folks who released the DNC emails in 2016.

What makes Sorge so interesting is that he takes great risks as a spy. He drinks to excess and is a notorious womanizer including having affairs with his friends’ wives. But he is such a charmer that the wronged husbands continue to befriend him even after they find out about his affairs. He also was reckless on a motor cycle which caused a major hospitalization while he was carrying incriminating documents. You can hear the James Bond music in the background.

The 4th Department first sends him to China, but he makes his real bones in Japan. There he works as a correspondent for the Frankurter Zeitung and as an agent for the Reich. His reports to Berlin are vetted at the highest levels and he is regarded as the most informed foreigner in Japan. With his German connections he befriends Eugen Ott, the German military attaché who ultimately becomes ambassador. Sorge beds his wife. His information is so good that in the spring of 1940 he warns his masters in Moscow that Hitler was about to invade Russia and by June he knows the exact date. Stalin, of course, ignores Sorge’s and other warnings of the coming invasion.  

Sorge recruits Japanese journalist and leading intellectual Hotsume Ozaki into his ring. Ozaki becomes a leading member of Prime Minister Konoe’s brain trust. Indeed he becomes one of the inventors of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. His motive is not benign, because the main purpose of Sorge’s ring at the time was to prevent Japan from invading Siberia triggering a two front war for Stalin. Their goal was for Japan to move south not north. That is ultimately decided by America’s oil embargo which forces action on Japan’s part to seize the Indonesian oil fields. It was information from Ozaki in August 1941 of the Japanese decision to go south that enabled Stalin to transfer troops from Siberia to Moscow and Stalingrad that helped turn the tide of war.

Another interesting piece of information is that the German embassy in Japan using a sand table to map topography came up with a plan for Japan to attack the British naval base in Singapore on land via the Malay Peninsula. That information was relayed to Ozaki and it became the basis for the Japanese attack in 1942.

There are also tidbits as to how Sorge financed his operation and paid for all of his mistresses. It wasn’t only Moscow gold that financed the operation. Sorge’s radio operator Max Clausen set up a very successful blueprint business that generated profits above and beyond what Moscow was sending.

Sorge’s game ends when lower levels of his ring get caught and one by one his ring is rolled up by the Japanese police. Sorge, suffering from acute alcoholism, is arrested in October 1941 and after a lengthy trial he was hanged in 1944.

Matthews tells the story with great verve and drama and even though he goes into great detail, a reader will not lose interest. From the point of view of pure spy craft, Sorge was the greatest.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/RHRM5FPTQYGVF/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv