Sorge — where to point the network?

Richard Sorge, Soviet intelligence agent under cover as a journalist

In Tokyo, , a respected German journalist and a familiar of the Reich embassy, was in reality one of the most effective Soviet intelligence agents of the war. His double position — confidant of the German ambassador and animator of a network penetrating Japanese governing circles — gave him access to first-rank secrets on the intentions of the 2 Axis powers in the Far East.

In the spring of 1941, the indications of an imminent German attack on the USSR piled up on his desk: confidences from diplomats, troop movements, dates being circulated. But Stalin, distrustful of anything that might be a British provocation aimed at setting him at odds with Hitler, stubbornly ignored the alerts reaching him — as he did those of other sources.

Sorge faced an agent's choice: to hammer home to Moscow the danger of a German attack, at the risk of being taken for an alarmist and burned; to concentrate instead his network on the question vital to the USSR — would Japan attack Soviet Siberia? — ; or to put the network into sleep mode out of caution, his cover growing fragile.