Richard Sorge
| Richard Sorge | |
|---|---|
Richard Sorge in 1940
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| Nickname(s) | Ramsay |
| Born | October 4, 1895 Baku, Azerbaijan, Russian Empire |
| Died | November 7, 1944 (aged 49) Tokyo, Japan |
| Allegiance |
 German Empire (till 1918) USSR (starting 1920) |
| Service/branch |
Imperial German Army Soviet Army (GRU) |
| Years of service | Germany 1914–1916, USSR 1920–1941 |
| Awards |
Hero of the Soviet Union Order of Lenin Iron Cross, II class (for World War I campaign) |
| Spouse(s) | Christiane Gerlach (1921–1929) |
Richard Sorge (October 4, 1895 – November 7, 1944) was a Soviet military intelligence officer, active before and during World War II, working as an undercover German journalist in both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. His codename was "Ramsay" (Russian: Рамза́й).
Sorge is most famous for his service in Japan in 1940 and 1941, when he provided information about Adolf Hitler's plan to attack the Soviet Union, although he did not succeed in finding out the exact date of the attack.
In mid-September 1941, he informed the Soviet command that Japan was not going to attack the Soviet Union in the near future, which allowed the command to transfer 18 divisions, 1,700 tanks, and over 1,500 aircraft from Siberia and the Far East to the Western Front against Nazi Germany during the most critical months of the Battle for Moscow; one of the turning points of World War II.
A month later Sorge was arrested in Japan on the counts of espionage. The German Abwehr legitimately denied he was an agent; USSR repudiated him and refused three offers to spare him through a prisoner exchange. He was tortured, forced to confess, tried, and then hanged in November 1944. Two decades passed before he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964.
Sorge was born in the settlement of Sabunchi, a suburb of Baku, Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire (modern Azerbaijan). He was the youngest of nine children of Wilhelm Richard Sorge (d. 1907), a German mining engineer employed by the Caucasian Oil Company, and his Russian wife Nina Semionovna Kobieleva. His father's lucrative contract expired a few years later, and the family moved back to Germany. In Sorge's own words,
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