Richard Sorge And Agent Sonya: A Legendary Spy's Unusual Recruitment In 1930S Shanghai

I’m currently reading Ben Macintrye’s Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy. 

One of the most interesting historical characters in his book on espionage history is Richard Sorge (seen in the above photo).

CrimeReads.com offers an excerpt from Agent Sonya about Richard Sorge.

Ian Fleming once described Richard Sorge as “the most formidable spy in history.” Despite being German and communist, and approaching middle age, in 1930 Sorge bore a distinct resemblance to the fictional James Bond, not least for his looks, appetite for alcohol, and prodigious, almost pathological, womanizing. Even Sorge’s sworn enemies acknowledged his skill and courage. After China, Sorge would move on to Tokyo, where he spied, undetected, for nine years, penetrating the innermost secrets of the Japanese and German High Commands and alerting Moscow to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. When he met Ursula, Sorge was just setting out on his espionage career in the Far East, a journey that would lead, eventually, to a place in the small pantheon of spies who have changed the course of history.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:    

 https://crimereads.com/a-legendary-spys-unusual-recruitment-in-1930s-shanghai/

Another interesting book on Richard Sorge is Gordon V. Prange's Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring.

An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent

Nicholas Shakespeare at the Spectator offers a review of Owen Matthews’ An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent.

Interviewed on the Today programme on 7 March, a former executive of the gigantic Chinese tech firm Huawei admitted: ‘It is the nature of humanity to spy, to conduct espionage.’ A gold-plated incarnation of this impulse is the tall, craggy-faced German journalist who was arrested in his pyjamas in his Tokyo house in October 1941. ‘I am a Nazi!’ he insisted to the Japanese police, who, before entering his study, had politely removed their shoes. On the sixth day of his interrogation, he finally broke. He raised his vigilant, deep-set blue eyes, which could have charmed the whiskers off Blofeld’s cat, and said: ‘I will confess everything.’

Over the course of 50 interrogation sessions, Richard Sorge removed the scabbard of ‘a slightly lazy, high-living reporter’, which had shielded him for 12 years, and revealed his inner steel: the blade of an unyielding communist and consummate dissembler, the only person in history in the reckoning of Owen Matthews, his latest and most thorough biographer, to have been simultaneously a member of the Nazi party and the Soviet Communist party. ‘No other agent had served Moscow for so well or so long.’

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/03/richard-sorge-the-soviet-unions-master-spy/ 

Kill Caesar: Assassination In The Early Roman Empire

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Rose Mary Sheldon’s Kill Caerar: Assassination in the Early Roman Empire for the Washington Times.

The truly professional service officers sworn to guard chiefs of state and other dignitaries — notably U.S. Secret Service officers — have a hard rule: Good intelligence is the key to saving the subject’s life.

When intelligence fails, the result can be disaster. And such certainly was the case in the Roman Empire. Despite the detailing of up to 9,000 men to guard the emperors, 85 percent of the men who sat on the throne were assassinated.

Even Rose Mary Sheldon, a professor of history at Virginia Military Institute, and our foremost authority on ancient intelligence, was startled at the body count.

Why and how did the Romans resort to assassination to rid themselves of rulers? Ms. Sheldon explores the fate of Julius Caesar and his four immediate successors to explore what went horribly wrong in Rome — how security failures and seemingly endless family wrangles cost so many lives.

Her case studies show that the Roman Empire was a boiling cauldron of conspiracy, where even an emperor’s brothers or sons were not beyond suspicion. She lists four broad groups an emperor had to control to feel safe: The aristocracy, the military, the populace and his own family.

More unsettling, “the very people who made up the emperor’s closest circle were also the ones who could endanger his security.” 

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/4/book-review-kill-caesar-by-rose-mary-sheldon/

Simon Schama On Tolstoy, Waugh And Chandler

The Globe and the Mail offers an interview with Simon Schama, the writer and narrator of the outstanding documentary A History of Britain.

Simon Schama is an award-winning author whose books include Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Landscape and Memory and Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution. His New Yorker columns earned him a National Magazine Award for criticism, and he is a contributing editor at the Financial Times. He is also a professor at Columbia University. Schama's latest book is Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492-1900.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

"Be brave," the last words of my father before he died.

Which fictional character do you wish you'd created?

Chandler's Philip Marlowe gumshoe as wise-cracker, supreme observer of the human condition. Nothing passes him by: poor taste in interior decoration; a smudge of lipstick; a certain something on someone's breath; the possibility of a decent cop; a telling touch of tinny in a nervous chuckle. And yet, he's also a hopeless sap, the hardest-boiled softest-centred romantic in fiction.  

… Which books have you reread most in your life?

War and Peace. Next time will be my tenth reading. Sometimes I skip around in translations, but they have to have kept the French passages untranslated. Pevear and Volokhonsky is by far the most satisfying version. Nothing important in human life is missing from Tolstoy's pages – the rage to power; the futile energy spent on schemes political and erotic; the swell and collapse of friendship. But the important things come at you sideways and often in sharp close-up like the fuzz on Lisa's upper lip, which is a tipoff to Andrei's irritation.

… Is there a book you consider a guilty pleasure?

Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole" – the line sings to me as I pass the Waugh shelf in my library – just one more hoot with Boot. Stupendously politically incorrect and generally outrageous, so all the more delicious on yet another reading. But there isn't much Waugh I don't love. Brideshead is a bit mushy, though has one of his great openings. But it was his endings which were startlingly brilliant, the place where he was most brilliant: the eye-poke ending of Vile Bodies; and the most terrifying of all in A Handful of Dust; so terrifying, in fact, that Waugh's American publisher demanded a different and less merciless conclusion, whereupon Waugh produced something ostensibly kinder but in fact a conclusion of ashen cynicism. Two endings, in bleakness competition – that's what I call a writer.

You can read the rest of the interview via the below link:

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/simon-schama-nothing-important-in-human-life-is-missing-from-tolstoys-pages/article36903502/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com& 

Hitler Ascent: 1889-1939

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Volker Ullrich's Hitler Ascent: 1889-1939.

Even at decades removed, historians remain fascinated with the why — and how — of Adolf Hitler’s rise to evil power, and the role of the German people in his horrendous assault on mankind. Many splendid works already exist, beginning with Alan Bullock’s 1952 masterpiece, and more recently, a two-volume work by Ian Kershaw in 1998 and 2000 (all of which I have read).

Now comes the German scholar/journalist Volmer Ullrich, with the first of two planned volumes, which offers keen insight into how Hitler perfected demography to sway audiences into hysteria. And Mr. Ullrich displays an insight into the making of Hitler that I did not find elsewhere.

When Hitler first dabbled in politics, he was a nobody, a slightly wounded war veteran who had served a jail term for trying to overthrow the government. He eked out a living selling postcards he painted in Munich. One person who saw him in those years later recollected, “When I first met him, he was like a tired stray dog looking for a master.”

But Hitler sensed that war-wrecked Germany ached for a “savior” who would restore to glory a nation defeated because of “Jews, communists and other traitors.” A passage in “Mein Kampf,” which he wrote in prison, revealed both his planned approach and the low mental esteem in which he held fellow citizens: “The receptivity of large masses is very limited. Their capacity to understand things is slight whereas their forgetfulness is great. Given this, effective propaganda must restrict itself to a handful of points, which it repeats as slogans as long as it takes for the dumbest member of the audience to get an idea of what they mean.”

Although his podium voice was shrill and unremarkable, Hitler displayed an ability to exploit the anger of a populace who felt they had been betrayed by their own leaders in war, and suffered from an unjust peace imposed at Versailles by the victors.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/28/book-review-hiler-ascent-1889-1939/

India's War: World War II And The Making Of Modern South Asia

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Srinath Raghavan's India's War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia.

In September 1939, the British viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, made a stunning radio announcement: the British Empire, including India, was now at war with Germany — a decision made without consultation with any Indian leader. Thus commenced a two-front struggle — one against the Axis powers, the other with Indian nationalists who felt, as Srinath Raghavan writes, “If Britain was truly fighting for democracy, then it should logically forsake its own empire and introduce full democracy toIndia.”

Such was not to be until 1947. In the interim, the British attitude toward Indian independence was sardonically expressed by Winston Churchill in an “after-dinner joke” in the 1930s — that the often-jailed nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi “should be bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and trampled upon by a huge elephant ridden by the viceroy.”

Nationalists such as Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru bedeviled Britain throughout the war, even going to jail for opposing their countrymen fighting. Gandhi even claimed in 1942 that the United States should have stayed out of the war, that it was “a partner in Britain’s guilt.”

But the vast majority of Indians chose to join the British fight against Germany and Japan. By war’s end, India had trained and deployed some 2.5 million men, “the largest volunteer army in history,” Mr. Raghavan writes. Nearly 90,000 were killed or maimed. The populace clearly did not wish to exchange rule by the British to subjugation to the Japanese.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/17/book-review-inidas-war-world-war-ii-and-the-making/ 

Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 And The Raid on Entebbe Airport. The Twentieth Century's Greatest Special Forces Mission

Martin Rubin reviews Saul David's Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport. The Twentieth Century's Greatest Special Forces Mission in the Washington Times.

Since the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, it has been fashionable in some circles to express nostalgia for the good old days of hijacking back in the 1970s. It is certainly true that nothing back then was even remotely comparable to Sept. 11, where the vicious destruction and sheer number of lives lost both in aircraft and on the ground would have seemed inconceivable in what were more innocent times in such matters. But the unknowable future cannot figure into events as they are happening. For people caught up in a protracted hijacking like that of Air France flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris in June and July of 1976, experiencing terror of imminent death, extreme discomfort and privation, beatings and all manner of psychological torture was a hellish experience all around.

The story of this ever more dramatic story culminating in the audacious successful rescue of the hostages by Israeli military forces thousands of miles from home in the hostile territory of the notorious Idi Amin’s Uganda has been told many times on page and screen. But never better than British historian Saul David does in this meticulously researched, vivid account. He has a knack for making the reader feel he is right there, sharing the feelings of everyone from the hapless passengers to the brave, disciplined commandos and the agonized government leaders back home who had to take the leap of faith and courage to authorize a mission they knew could so easily go awry.

The hijackers were threatening to kill the remaining passengers unless Israel freed several notorious terrorists. At that time, such a policy was anathema to it, but domestic pressure from the families — deeply concerned that by now only Israelis were at risk of death, having been separated from the others who had been let go — drove them to open negotiations. This was in part a delaying tactic until a rescue operation, if such a thing was possible. Which was very much in doubt, given the enormous obstacles.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/1/book-review-operation-thunderbolt-flight-139-and-t/ 

Church Of Spies: The Pope's War Against Hitler

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Mark Riebling's Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler.

One of the lingering controversies of World War II concerns the role of the Roman Catholic Church, and whether its leadership — specifically, Pope Pius XII — provided meaningful opposition to the Nazi regime. Jewish groups have been especially vocal in criticisms of Pius for his supposed “silence” about the Holocaust. And a recent memoir by German theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand offered a scathing indictment of the church for its failure to speak out more forcefully.

But a different picture emerges in this remarkable book by Mark Riebling, who writes frequently on intelligence, and who gained access to Vatican files apparently not viewed by any previous author. He takes a giant stride in refurbishing the status of Pius.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/30/book-review-church-of-spies-the-popes-war-against-/ 

The Great Leader And The Fighter Pilot: The True Story Of The Tyrant Who Created North Korea And The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way To Freedom

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Blaine Harden's The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lietenant Who Stole His Way To Freedom.

In September 1953, bold headlines dominated American newspapers. “Mystery Red MIG Lands Near Seoul,” trumpeted the San Francisco Chronicle. The North Korean pilot, Lt. No Kum Suk, aged 21, was so disgusted with the totalitarian state shaped by the Soviet-installed dictator Kim Il Sung that he broke off a training flight to land near Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Early press reports attributed the defection to “Operation Moolah,” the offer of $100,000 (about $900,000 in today’s dollars) to the first North Korean, Russian or Chinese pilot who defected in “a modern, operational, combat-type jet in flying condition” — meaning a Soviet-made MIG fighter, which USSR pilots were secretly flying on combat missions. U.S. planes littered North Korea with more than a million leaflets publicizing the offer.

But to the utter surprise of everyone involved, Lt. No had never heard of the reward. Rather than being a “Moolah Man” he was a brave person determined not to live in a totalitarian communist state. He defected for principle, not money.

Blaine Harden’s skillfully crafted book meshes two stories. First is how the Soviets installed Kim Il Sung as dictator of North Korea in 1945. Essentially a faux “hero” of the war against the Japanese, Kim’s utility was that of willing toady. With Soviet power at his command, he crushed any hopes of a free society, brutalizing his own people.

No Kum Suk chafed under Kim’s iron-hand rule. In the pre-World War II era, his father was an executive in an industrial plant owned by the occupying Japanese. The father accepted Japanese rule as a way of life, as did his son. Indeed, in the waning months of the war, Lt. No wanted to volunteer as a kamikaze pilot to attack American warships. “Are you crazy?” shouted his father.

Lt. No’s attitude toward America changed dramatically once Kim and his communist masters took over Korea. Heavy-handed propaganda was belied by the hungry misery of everyday life. (Nonetheless, more than two decades ago, research by CIA analyst Helen-Louise Hunter concluded that Kim Il Sung’s propaganda permanently influenced several generations of North Koreans).

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/30/book-review-the-great-leader-and-the-fighter-pilot/ 

The Fall Of The Ottomans: The Great War In The Middle East

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East for the Washington Times.

For obvious reasons, most English-language books published on the Great War of 1914-1918 are Eurocentric, focused on the grinding trench warfare of the Western Front. Even the occasional glances eastward seldom got beyond the Gallipoli campaign, and even these accounts stressed the role of Australian and New Zealander troops, not the Middle Eastern armies.

Now comes an absolutely magnificent account of the war from the viewpoint of the Ottoman Empire, which sided with Germany during the conflict and suffered a crushing defeat that turned much of the Middle East into British and French colonial satraps. Eugene Rogan, a British scholar now teaching at Oxford, lived in the Middle East for years. Importantly, he had the linguistic ability to do research in Turkish and other archives seldom visited by Western historians.

His account is geopolitical and military writing at its best — taut, anecdotal and extraordinarily researched. A tangled story, to be sure, one that both commands and rewards the reader’s attention.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/22/book-review-the-fall-of-the-ottomans-the-great-war/ 

Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War And The Hunt For The First Terrorist Cell In America

Gerard DeGroot reviewed Howard Blum's Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America for the Washington Post.

‘How’s the book?” my daughter asked when I was reading “Dark Invasion.”

“It’s okay,” I replied. “But it’s more like a crime novel than a history book.”

“So?” came her response. “You like crime novels.”

And therein lies my problem.

Professional historians are often suspicious of history books that seek blatantly to entertain. We’re a sober lot, which is a polite way of saying that we’re frequently dull. We have a remarkable talent for distilling the rich commotion of human experience into something boring and lifeless. The historian able to convey the drama of the past in a captivating yet accurate manner is unusual.

Given their oppressive solemnity, my colleagues will probably not like “Dark Invasion.” In style, it’s more like Lee Child than Richard Hofstadter. It breaks all the rules of historical writing, wantonly and repeatedly. Yet, partly for that reason, it’s wonderfully gripping.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dark-invasion-1915-the-hunt-for-the-first-terrorist-cell-in-america-by-howard-blum/2014/02/07/e1a29fce-851b-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html

Lawrence In Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly And The Making Of The Modern Middle East

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a review of Scott Anderson's Lawrence In Arabia: War, deceit, Imperial Folly And The Making of The Modern Middle East in the Washington Times.

For political scientists, and especially academics, intelligence is the dark angel of foreign affairs, eager to topple governments and betray other persons — including allies — through stealth and lies.

Oh, perhaps. The chronicles of spookdom certainly brim with case histories of chicanery. But in terms of flagrant international treachery, few episodes in diplomatic history surpass the sordid record of the allied powers — including the United States — in their dealings with Middle East nations during World War I, 1914-1918.

Much of what the average reader knows about intrigue during the period revolves around the British anthropologist-turned-intelligence-operative T.E. Lawrence, a covert agent for the Crown who strove to inspire the so-called “Revolt in the Desert,” an attempt to stir an Arabic uprising against Germany. Lawrence’s image benefited from his own books and from an adoring “biography” by Lowell Thomas, the famed radio commentator.

But Lawrence was far from being the only intelligence agent in the game. The United States, Germany, France, even stateless Israelis trying to form their own nation, vied for influence among the disparate tribes that occupied Arabia. The goal was to wean away Turkish support for Germany during the first years of the war so as to protect Britain’s routes to India.

Scott Anderson relates the story with vivid writing supported by a staggering amount of research — one of the more fascinating reads I have encountered in years. His cast of characters alone satisfies one’s appetite for how espionage really works in the field.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/11/book-review-lawrence-of-arabia/

My On Espionage Column: The Secret History of History at The International Spy Museum in Washington D.C.

You can read my column on the International Spy Museum here