RUSSIA

World War II

Richard Sorge

Chatel, Nicole, and Alain Guérin. Camarade Sorge. Paris: Juilliard, 1965.

Deakin, Frederick William, and G. Richard Storry. The Case of Richard Sorge. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. London: Chatto & Windus, 1966.

According to Pforzheimer, this "account of a leading Soviet [GRU] agent in China and Japan" prior to and during early World War II is written by "two distinguished Oxford scholars" and is based on documents and interviews.

Constantinides says this "is by and large an accurate account." The authors "conclude that they cannot prove or disprove" Schellenberg's assertion that Sorge was connected with German intelligence. See Walter Schellenberg, The Labyrinth: Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg (New York: Harper, 1956).

Writing in 1999, Warren Frank, IJI&C 13.1, notes that this work continues to be "the best and most balanced study of this important Soviet spy."

Bath, NIPQ 20.1, comments that the authors "provide[] a scholarly debunking of some the myths" that had arisen about Sorge.

Dementyeva, Irina A., Nikolay I. Agayants, and Yegor V. Yakovlev. Comrade Sorge. Springfield, VA: U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, 1972. Tovarishch Zorge. Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1965.

Rocca and Dziak: A "human-interest presentation of the Sorge biography in the revisionist light of the Sixties."

Johnson, Chalmers. An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964. Expanded ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. [pb]

Surveillant 1.1 notes that the expanded edition of Johnson's 1964 book includes new information on this World War II Soviet spy ring.

According to Boyd, I&NS 6.4, this edition includes much new evidence that has come to light since the original work. Johnson has produced "a scholarly, in-depth analysis of Ozaki, Sorge, and their place in the history of international espionage.... This is a remarkably sophisticated piece of scholarship."

Kuusinen, Aino. The Rings of Destiny: Inside Soviet Russia from Lenin to Brezhnev. New York: Morrow, 1974.

Pforzheimer notes that Kuusinen is the widow of the late Comintern luminary Otto Kuusinen. "This book is especially valuable for the insights given to the Shanghai phase, in the 1930's, of the intelligence activities of ... Richard Sorge and his successors in China. The work provides information and clues not available in other accounts of Sorge's operations."

Mader, Julius. Dr. Sorge Reports. East Berlin: Military Publications of the GDR, 1984.

Wilcox: "East German account of Richard Sorge."

Meissner, Hans Otto. The Man with Three Faces: The True Story of a Master Spy. New York: Rinehart, 1955. London: Evans, 1955.

Bath, NIPQ 20.1, notes that the author met Sorge while serving with the German Embassy in Tokyo. This book is "based on interviews with German diplomats and officials." It "gives the German spin to the Sorge story."

Mendelsohn, John, ed. The Case of Richard Sorge. New York: Garland, 1987.

Prange, Gordon W., et al. Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985.

For Bath, NIPQ 20.1, Prange's is "the most authoritative of the Sorge studies to date.... His information, drawn from accounts written in Japanese and from interviews with involved Japanese officials, adds substance to the tale."

Price, Ruth. The Lives of Agnes Smedley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

According to Peake, Studies 49.3 (2005), "Smedley traveled widely. In Germany, she worked for the COMINTERN under chief propagandist Willi Muenzenberg." In China, "she met and was captivated by Mao and other communist leaders." The author's research supports "the fact that Smedley ha[d] been Sorge's agent and a COMINTERN agent, and had worked in the Chinese Bureau of Information as well."

Ryan, I&NS 21.6 (Dec. 2006), finds that "the pained historian removes any reasonable doubt that Smedley served the world Communist underground from the later 1920s until 1941.... Thorough research in primary sources is easily the book's outstanding characteristic." In addition, "Price's writing holds the reader's attention well."

Schellenberg, Walter. The Labyrinth: Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg. New York: Harper, 1956. The Schellenberg Memoirs. London: André Deutsch, 1956. New York: Pyramid, 1958. [Abridged pb.] New York: Da Capo, 2000. [pb]

Constantinides suggests that it would be wise to heed the warnings about this book included in Alan Bullock's introduction. Bullock cautioned that "it would be wise not to accept Schellenberg as a trustworthy witness of events unless there is corroboration." There are inaccuracies, significant omissions, and gaps.

According to Pforzheimer, "Schellenberg headed the foreign intelligence department of the Sicherheitsdienst of the Nazi party's Security Administration," and in 1944 assumed control of the Abwehr as well. "In the light of later facts, this book should be read with caution."

Mader, Military Intelligence 30.2 (Apr.-Jun. 2004), notes that Schellenberg concludes that the failures of Nazi intelligence in Word War II were "not due to a lack of ability but rather to a lack of historical integration of intelligence into the command structure."

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities. Hearings on American Aspects of the Richard Sorge Spy Case. 82d Cong., 1st sess., 1951. Washington, DC: GPO, 1951.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Security Laws. Testimony of Charles A. Willoughby, Major General, Chief of Intelligence, Far East Command and United Nations Command. 82d Cong., 1st sess., 1951, pp. 353-401. Washington, DC: GPO, 1951.

In this testimony, General Willoughby repeated the charges he had made previously that Agnes Smedley had been a member of the Richard Sorge espionage organization.

U.S. Far East Command. Military Intelligence Section. A Partial Documentation of the Sorge Espionage Case. Tokyo: 1950. [http:// carlisle-www.army.mil/usamhi/RefBibs/intell/ww2/ sorge.htm]

Werner, Ruth. Sonjas Rapport. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1977. Sonya's Report: The Fascinating Autobiography of One of Russia's Most Remarkable Secret Agents. London: Chatto & Windrus, 1991.

Surveillant 2.1 identifies Sonya's Report as the autobiography of a "Soviet agent and associate/lover of Richard Sorge." It is the "professional memoir of a Communist intelligence agent.... Her greatest coup: the passing of British A-bomb secrets from Klaus Fuchs to Stalin."

Ruth Werner (born Ursula Ruth Kuczynski in Berlin in 1907) died in Berlin on 7 July 2000 at the age of 93. Her obituary, "Ruth Werner," Times (London), 10 Jul. 2000, 27, termed her "[o]ne of the most effective agents for the Soviet Union in the early, tension-filled years of the Cold War." Werner's skills as a Soviet agent are illustrated by the continuation of her work dispatching Klaus Fuchs' take to Moscow for two years after her cover had been blown to British security. After fleeing the United Kingdom in 1949, she became "a key member" of the bureaucracy of the East German Communist Party, "in which she served for several decades."

See David Binder, "Ruth Werner, Colorful and Daring Soviet Spy, Dies at 93," New York Times, 23 Jul. 2000, 27; "Cold War Spy Ruth Werner," Washington Post, 9 Jul. 2000, C6; "Ruth Werner, Soviet Spy, Died on July 7th, Aged 93," The Economist, 13 Jul. 2000, 26; and Michael Hartland, "Sonia, The Spy Who Haunted Britain," Sunday Times, 15 Jul. 2000, 1, 3.

For more on Werner's life in the world of Communist espionage, read Benjamin B. Fischer, "Farewell to Sonia, the Spy Who Haunted Britain," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 15, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 61-76. Fischer notes that, strictly speaking, Werner "was not ... a spy. As a GRU ... agent and illegal who served as liaison between the Moscow Center and the real spies, she was rather a spy-handler." As SONIA of the Venona transcripts, she handled both Klaus Fuchs and Melita Norwood, work that "put[s] her in the superstar category" in espionage history.

Whymant, Robert. Stalin's Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring. London: Tauris, 1996. New York: St. Martin's, 1998.

Andrew, Spectator, 7 Dec. 1996, finds this a "very readable biography." Although Whymant's work "does not change the broad picture of Sorge's career as it has emerged from previous studies, it adds much interesting detail."

To Nish, I&NS 12.3, Whymant's "narrative flows along smoothly," and provides "a thorough, comprehensive, indeed gripping, account of Sorge's activities.... But we still do not know how much weight they carried at destination or the use to which they were put."

Bath, NIPQ 20.1, notes that this work "adds the dimension of information drawn from Soviet Defense Ministry and KGB files released in the post-Cold War era. It also delves in greater depth into Sorge's psychological make-up and his relationship with others."

For Frank, IJI&C 13.1, the author has a "breezy, readable style," but the "book suffers from shoddy scholarship.... The reference notes ... do not provide dates for the several interviews which Mr. Whymant conducted. Innumerable references to 'Russian Archives' offer no further clarification or description."

Willoughby, Charles A. Shanghai Conspiracy: The Sorge Spy Ring. New York: Dutton, 1952. Sorge: Soviet Master Spy. London: William Kimber, 1952.

Clark comment: This book is based on a report compiled by Willoughby's staff (he was MacArthur's intelligence chief, 1941-1951) in Japan.

Constantinides says that Deakin and Storry, The Case of Richard Sorge, is "far superior." Bath, NIPQ 20.1, notes that this work relies "in the main on captured Japanese police records of the investigation, interrogation -- apparently without torture or undue pressure -- and confessions of the conspirators."

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