One man put a stop to Hitler’s march across Europe: not Stalin, Churchill, or Roosevelt, but a German Communist called Richard Sorge. Sorge was a re

The Secret Life of Communist Richard Sorge, Hitler’s Nemesis and the World’s Greatest Spy

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2021-06-22 21:00:08

One man put a stop to Hitler’s march across Europe: not Stalin, Churchill, or Roosevelt, but a German Communist called Richard Sorge. Sorge was a real-life spy whose exploits surpassed any fictional creation, and one of the twentieth century’s great heroes.

German Communist Richard Sorge, who spent nearly a decade in Tokyo posing as a Nazi to infiltrate Japan’s ruling circles, in Japan around 1938. (Photo by ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Eighty years ago today, the Nazis launched their invasion of the Soviet Union. From the very start, Operation Barbarossa was a war of unprecedented savagery, bent on reducing tens of millions of people to slavery and rooting out Hitler’s “Judeo-Bolshevik” enemy. Heroic resistance to the invasion turned the tide of the entire war, but the Soviet people had to pay a terrible price, with countless millions of soldiers and civilians losing their lives. To mark the anniversary, Jacobin is publishing several articles today about the Soviet experience of war.

For two years between 1939 and 1941, the Wehrmacht swept triumphantly across the capitals of Europe, from Warsaw to Brussels, Copenhagen to Belgrade. The English Channel and the fighters of the Royal Air Force kept German soldiers out of London, but Hitler could pose triumphantly for a photo in front of the Eiffel Tower and ponder razing Paris to the ground. Soon afterward, his troops hoisted the swastika over the Acropolis.

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