The Most Important Man of WWII

Hitler?  Stalin?  Churchill? Roosevelt?  Patton? Rommel?  Perhaps none of the above.   Perhaps it was…Richard Sorge.

December 1941.  The Nazi hordes were knocking on the doors of Moscow.   German General Heinz Guderian advised Hitler that if Moscow fell, it would be game over for the USSR.   The Germans assaulted the Soviet capital from the south and west, and almost took it.  Almost.

Stalin was uncertain about bringing troops from the east back west to face the Germans, because he was concerned about Japanese plans in Manchuria (northeast China), which had traditionally been an area of mutual interest and conflict between Russia and Japan, going back to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. 

A German reporter in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, was ostensibly a German spy working for the Nazis.  Unbeknownst to the Germans, he was actually a double agent reporting back to Moscow.  And what he reported was that the Japanese actually had their hands full to the south and had no immediate plans in Manchuria.   This left Stalin free to transfer 15 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, 1700 tanks, and 1500 planes – including some very hardcore Siberian troops who were virtually immune to bitterly cold weather – westward to defend Moscow. 

Arriving in the fierce snowstorms of December 1941, these troops slammed into the Germans, smashing them away from Moscow.  The following spring, ignoring Guderian’s advice to resume the attack on Moscow, Hitler sent his forces southeast, towards the Caucasus and a city named Stalingrad.   That battle ended in February 1943 with the surrender of the Sixth Army, and by April 1945 the Red Army was in Berlin.

What might have happened, had Sorge not informed Stalin of Tokyo’s military intentions?  Very possibly, the Germans might have taken Moscow in December 1941.  From there, they could have consolidated their hold on the Russian capital and won the war on the Eastern Front. 

Having done so, Hitler could also transfer troops west to handle any possible Allied invasion of France.   The D-Day invasion might have been called off altogether, or attempted and failed.  It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Germans win the Eastern Front war but still lose against the Allies (although that’s exactly what happened in World War I).   Most alternative history stories featuring a victorious Germany – In the Presence of Mine Enemies (Harry Turtledove) and The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick) – assume that Germany defeated the Russians. 

This being the case, that makes Richard Sorge one of the most important men of World War II.  However, he did not live to see the VE Day in May 1945.  The Kempetai (Japanese secret police) became suspicious of him, arrested him, and tortured him.  Naturally he confessed.  Stalin refused to trade for him (note that Stalin also refused to trade with the Germans when his own son was captured by them), and the Japanese hanged Sorge in November 1944.  In the Japanese movie “Spy Sorge”, he’s played by Iain Glen, best known as Ser Jorah Mormont on HBO’s Game of Thrones.