Richard Sorge
Soviet spy in Germany and Japan (1895－1944) · Russia · Journalists · Died at 49
Richard Sorge is read about 1,370 times a day, in 53 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 22 October 2026
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Something wrong?A German journalist filing dispatches from Tokyo who was actually a Soviet spy - and who told Stalin, in September 1941, that Japan wouldn't attack from the east. The intelligence freed divisions to stop the Wehrmacht at Moscow.
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Photos 8
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1985-1003-020, Richard Sorge
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H1106-0026-001, Berlin, Namensgebung Richard-Sorge-Straße
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-Z0519-022, Richard Sorge und Erich Correns
Dzierzynski Abzeichen_Richard_Sorge.jpg?width=1200)
Gedenktafel Weidenweg 29 (Frhai) Richard Sorge
Group-photo Geraberg 1923
Memorial plaque of Richard Sorge in Baku
R SorgeAwards
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About this person
Richard Sorge was born in 1895, a German-Russian who became a Soviet military intelligence officer working under the codename "Ramsay." He went undercover as a German journalist, first in Nazi Germany and later in the Empire of Japan. In 1940 and '41, from Tokyo, he passed word of Hitler's coming invasion of the Soviet Union - then, in mid-September 1941, sent the message that mattered most: Japan would not open a second front in the near future. A month later Japanese authorities arrested him for espionage. He was tortured, forced to confess, and tried. Stalin refused to intervene. Sorge was hanged in November 1944, and the Soviet Union named him Hero twenty years later.
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