What Stalin Knew (20 page)

reported later that ‘‘the German high command has no intention of attack-

ing Turkey.’’29

RESIDENCIES IN EASTERN EUROPE

83

The May 15 report from another residency network, Kosta, deals with

the return of German army units from the fighting in Greece. ‘‘Infantry,

motorized units of the Twelfth Army, are returning from Greece through

Sofia to Romania. . . . From May 20, Bulgarian military units will be sent to

Greece as occupation troops.’’30 On May 27, 1941, Boevoy reported that

‘‘German troops, artillery, and munitions are continuously moving from

Bulgaria to Romania . . . en route to the German-Soviet border.’’ In his

comment on the report, Golikov ordered the RU resident in Bucharest to

‘‘put people along the line of march of the German columns to observe and

report on them. Yeshchenko [the RU resident in Bucharest] is behind the

events.’’ Here again, Golikov displayed his lack of knowledge of the resi-

dency’s sources. Boevoy’s best source was Zhurin, who was a major gen-

eral, chief of the Military Justice Department of the Bulgarian Defense

Ministry, and a member of the Bulgarian Higher Military Council. It would

seem that Golikov or his Information Department could have devised bet-

ter tasks for Boevoy and the residency’s officers than standing by the side of

the road and watching German troops drive by.31

On June 13 Boevoy reported that ‘‘according to information from

Zhurin, the Führer has decided to attack the USSR before the end of this

month. The Germans have deployed more than 170 divisions on the Soviet

border.’’ RU Moscow replied by asking: ‘‘Who is the source of this informa-

tion?’’ The answer: ‘‘This was stated by [Bulgarian] Defense Minister Teo-

dosy Daskalov at a meeting of the Bulgarian Higher Military Council.’’

Clearly, Zhurin was the source of this important report. It is not known

how the Soviet leadership reacted to the information.32

The last available report from the Sofia residency before the June 22

invasion was provided by the Kosta network. On June 20, 1941, a German

emissary said that ‘‘a military clash is expected on June 21 or 22. There are

100 German divisions in Poland, 40 in Romania, 6 in Finland, 10 in Hun-

gary, and 7 in Slovakia. There are 60 motorized divisions in all.’’ A courier

from Bucharest reported that ‘‘mobilization in Romania has been com-

pleted, and military operations are expected at any minute.’’33

Bit by bit, a picture developed from reporting by RU residencies in

Eastern Europe of German preparations for an invasion of the Soviet

Union. Events in Greece and Yugoslavia had thrown off the original time-

table, but the reports made clear that there was no letup in these prepara-

tions, only a postponement of Day X.

∫

C H A P T E R

Who Were You, Dr. Sorge?

Stalin Never Heard of You.

The picture provided by the RU residencies in

Western and Eastern Europe would be reinforced by reports from Japan,

which became the principal playing field for the RU in the Far East in the

period immediately preceding the German invasion of June 22, 1941.

There was a legal residency in Tokyo under Ivan V. Gushchenko, who was

military attaché from February 1940 to June 1942. Two of his subordi-

nates—Sergei L. Budkevich (who served in Tokyo from 1936 to 1941) and

Viktor S. Zaitsev (who was employed there from July 1940 to February

1942)—served as links to the residency’s ‘‘crown jewels,’’ the network cre-

ated and run by the illegal Richard Sorge (code name Ramsay). Sorge was

Stalin’s bête noire, forever sending RU Moscow dire predictions of a Ger-

man invasion of the USSR, even warning Stalin of its exact date. Ironically,

Stalin, at war’s end, reportedly observed that Moscow had an agent in

Tokyo who was worth a ‘‘corps or even a whole army.’’ That is not what he

said about Dr. Sorge earlier.1

Sorge has been the subject of so many books, articles, films, and histor-

ical conferences that it would be impossible to cover every aspect of his life

in the same detail, but the broad outlines of his biography and a few events

are important here. Sorge was born in Baku, Russia, of a German father

and Russian mother on October 4, 1895. The family moved to Germany in

1897. Sorge served in the imperial German army in World War I, finished

university, and joined the German Communist Party in 1919. In 1924 he

WHO WERE YOU, DR. SORGE?

85

went to work for the Comintern in Moscow. He was recruited for Soviet

military intelligence by Jan Karlovich Berzin and in 1930 was sent to

Shanghai, China, and then in 1933 to Japan. He made a visit to the Soviet

Union in 1935, returned to Tokyo, and remained there until his arrest in

October 1941 and his execution in November 1944. While working in To-

kyo as a journalist for the
Frankfurter Zeitung,
he became a member of the

Nazi Party and was completely trusted and accepted by the German mili-

tary attaché (and later ambassador), Eugen Ott, and other officials of the

German embassy. He would often help Ott draft dispatches and was shown

sensitive, classified communications from Berlin.

Sorge scored a major triumph in 1938 when he cultivated the German

counterintelligence officer sent from Berlin by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris

to participate in the Japanese interrogation of NKVD General G. S. Lyu-

shkov, who had defected to the Japanese army in Manchuria. In a telegram

to Sorge on the Lyushkov defection, the RU urged Sorge to ‘‘do everything

and use every available means to get copies of the documents to be re-

ceived by Canaris’s special envoy from the Japanese army. Get copies of the

documents received by the envoy from Lyushkov.’’2 Sorge promptly copied

much of the long report and sent it to Moscow.3 The Lyushkov debriefing

revealed how the NKVD evaluated the defenses of the Red Army in the

border area between Manchuria and Mongolia, the state of its equipment,

and the low morale of the Soviet forces. Improvements made over the

summer and the arrival of General Georgy K. Zhukov, however, enabled

the Red Army to defeat the Japanese decisively in September 1939 at the

battle of Khalkin Gol on the border between the Mongolian People’s Re-

public and Japanese-occupied Manchuria.

On November 18, 1940, Sorge was one of the first to report on German

preparations for war against the USSR; on December 28, he reported that a

new reserve army of forty divisions had been created in the Leipzig area.4

That same day, in messages 138 and 139, he commented that each new

arrival at the German embassy from Berlin spoke of the eighty German

divisions deployed on the Soviet border with Romania. He stated that the

purpose was to influence Soviet policy. If the USSR ‘‘begins to develop

activities against German interests, as happened in the Baltic, the Germans

could occupy territory on a line Kharkov, Moscow, Leningrad. . . . The

Germans know that the USSR would not risk this, as the Soviet leadership

is aware, particularly after the Finnish campaign, that it will take twenty

years for the Red Army to become a modern army like that of Germany.’’5

On March 1, 1941, Sorge reported that twenty German divisions had been

86

WHO WERE YOU, DR. SORGE?

moved from France to the Soviet border—these were in addition to the

eighty divisions already there.6

Another series of telegrams described the complications arising from

differing Japanese and German interests insofar as relations with the

USSR were concerned. A March 10, 1941, message revealed that ‘‘the Japa-

nese are interested in a surprise attack on Singapore as a way of giving

Japan a more active role in the Anti-Comintern Pact. The Germans, how-

ever, would only be interested in a Japanese attack on Singapore if Amer-

ica remained out of the war and if Japan could no longer serve to put

pressure on the USSR.’’ On March 15 Sorge reported the contents of a

message to Ambassador Ott from Ribbentrop: ‘‘I ask you to do everything

within your power to persuade the Japanese to commence an immediate

offensive against Singapore.’’ Ott added that ‘‘the German general staff

considers the onset of military operations against Singapore the only guar-

antee against a Red Army attack on Manchuria.’’7 An RU memorandum

summarizing several Sorge messages reported on discussions between

Ambassador Ott and Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye of Japan. When

Konoye did not raise the issue of an attack on Singapore, the ambassador

asked about it. The prime minister remarked that the Singapore question

seemed to interest everyone. Later, in a discussion with Sorge, the ambas-

sador asked if Sorge could push the Japanese into attacking Singapore.

Sorge, in turn, put the question to the RU in Moscow. In two telegrams

dated May 10, one based on a report from the German naval attaché and

the other from Ambassador Ott, Sorge made it clear that ‘‘as long as Japan

continued to receive raw materials from the United States, it would not

attack Singapore.’’ Despite German urging for action against Singapore,

the Japanese continued to stall.8

The principal question, that of German-Russian relations, would not

remain in the background for long. On May 2, 1941, Sorge discussed the

question with Ambassador Ott and the naval attaché. They agreed that

after the completion of the operations against Yugoslavia there would be

two critical dates in German-Soviet relations: ‘‘The first date—the time for

completion of the harvest. After the harvest is in, a war against the USSR

can start at any moment, as all that will remain for Germany to do will be

to gather the harvest. The second critical moment will be the negotiations

between Germany and Turkey. If the USSR creates any difficulties with

regard to the acceptance by Turkey of German demands, war will be inevi-

table.’’ The two Germans then added: ‘‘The possibility of war at any mo-

ment is very great because Hitler and his generals are convinced that war

WHO WERE YOU, DR. SORGE?

87

with the USSR will in no way interfere with the conduct of the war with

England. German generals judge the combat capabilities of the Red Army

to be so low that they calculate the Red Army will be defeated in several

weeks.’’9

On May 5, 1941, Sorge passed on a microfilm of a telegram from

Ribbentrop to Ambassador Ott with the news that ‘‘Germany will begin a

war against the USSR in the middle of June 1941.’’ On May 15 he reported

that the war would begin on June 20–22!10 On May 19–20 new German

representatives arriving from Berlin were reported by Sorge to have de-

clared that ‘‘war will begin at the end of May because that is the time they

have been ordered to return to Berlin.’’ They also stated that ‘‘for this year

the danger might pass’’ but added that ‘‘Germany has nine ‘army corps’

against the USSR, containing 150 divisions. One army corps is under the

command of the well-known [Walther von] Reichenau.’’ Golikov asked

whether Sorge meant army corps or armies. ‘‘If he meant army corps, then

it is not in keeping with our understanding of a corps.’’11 This comment

does not say much for Golikov’s order of battle competence. Reichenau

commanded the Sixth Army under Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group

South. It would have been obvious that the Sorge message was intended

to mean armies, not corps. Perhaps Golikov was merely needling him.12

Probably in answer to Golikov’s query, Sorge reported on June 13: ‘‘I re-

peat: nine armies with a strength of 150 divisions will begin an offensive at

dawn on June 22, 1941.’’13 On June 11 a German courier told the military

attaché that he was ‘‘convinced war against the USSR is probably being

delayed until the end of June.’’ Sorge saw the beginning of a communica-

tion to Berlin to the effect that, ‘‘if a German-Soviet war breaks out, it will

take the Japanese about six weeks to begin offensive operations against the

Soviet Far East . . . but the Germans consider that it will take more time

because this conflict will be both on land and on sea.’’14 Ambassador Ott

told Sorge on June 20 that ‘‘war between Germany and the USSR was

inevitable. . . . Invest [Ozaki Hotsumi, the leading Japanese member of the

Sorge network] reported that the Japanese general staff was already con-

sidering the position it would take in case of war.’’15

Stalin could not abide this ominous reporting from Sorge. When he

received the May 19 report predicting an attack by 150 divisions under

nine armies by the end of that month, he accused Sorge of being ‘‘a little

shit who has set himself up with some small factories and brothels in

Japan.’’16 Stalin’s nasty remark shows well enough that he already knew of

Sorge. A report from the RU based on Sorge information received by Stalin