CARL HOTTELET (1877-1991) writes “JUDE STACKPOLE’s contributions on deciphering (ENIGMA, ULTRA etc.), espionage and the treason around Hitler is well informed.

A while ago, David Kahn wrote in NEWSDAY that no crucial wartime decision ever had been made solely on the basis of espionage reports. Recalling Richard Sorge, where I had read about him in Major General Willouhby’s excellent ‘SHANGHAI CONSPIRACY’, I wrote Mr. Kahn asking if Richard Sorge may not have been an exception; that Stalin had withdrawn his Siberian divisions and thrown them against the Germans solely on the basis of information given him by Sorge. Mr. Kahn replied that Sorge had been a factor but not the only one that formed Stalin’s decision. As far as Sorge’s ‘espionage network’; as far as I remember, Sorge got his information from just one Japanese accomplice.

Richard Sorge seems to have been not so much an instance of Russian cunning as of German carelessness and stupidity. They knew he had a Russian mother and that he was a long-time Communist, and yet he was assigned as a reporter to the German Embassy with diplomatic immunity in - of all places - Tokyo!