永遠の今eternal now

November 7, 1944. In a Tokyo prison, the Japanese hang a man who was arguably the most important spy of the entire war, and they do it, pointedly, on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Richard Sorge had sent Stalin the intelligence that may have saved Moscow, and his reward, from the Soviet side, was to be disowned and abandoned, and from the Japanese, the noose. Sorge was a German, a committed communist, who worked as a journalist in Tokyo, a respected correspondent moving easily in German and Japanese official circles, trusted even by the German embassy. It was the perfect cover, because Sorge was in reality a Soviet spy, running one of the most successful intelligence networks in history, gathering secrets from the very heart of the German and Japanese establishments in Tokyo. He gave Moscow two pieces of intelligence of enormous importance. First, in the spring of 1941, he warned Stalin of the coming German invasion of the Soviet Union, giving a strikingly accurate picture of Operation Barbarossa, including its approximate timing. Stalin, in one of the great blunders of the war, refused to believe the warnings pouring in from Sorge and many other sources, and the invasion caught the Soviet Union disastrously unprepared. But it was Sorge's second great report that mattered most, and that connects directly to the story I just told you. As the Germans closed on Moscow in the autumn of 1941, the agonizing question for Stalin was whether Japan, Germany's ally, would also attack the Soviet Union, striking into the Soviet Far East. If it did, the Soviet divisions stationed in Siberia and the Far East to guard against Japan would have to stay there, and they could not be used to defend Moscow. Sorge, from inside the circles of power in Tokyo, learned the answer and sent it: Japan would not attack the Soviet Union. Japan had decided to strike south instead, against the United States and the British and Dutch empires, for the oil and resources of Southeast Asia, the decision that would lead to Pearl Harbor. That intelligence was gold. Reassured that his eastern frontier was safe, Stalin was able to transfer fresh, tough, well-equipped divisions from the Far East to the west, and those Siberian troops arrived at Moscow in time to stiffen the defense and to form the spearhead of the December counteroffensive that drove the Germans back from the capital. It is one of the strongest cases in the whole war for a single spy's intelligence changing the course of events. Sorge's report helped make possible the salvation of Moscow. His own end was grim. The Japanese secret police closed in on his network, and Sorge was arrested in Tokyo in the autumn of 1941, even as his greatest reports were doing their work. He was interrogated, held for years, and tried. And here is the bitter part: the Soviet Union, for which he had risked and given everything, disowned him. Stalin's government denied that Sorge was their agent, refused to acknowledge him or to try to exchange him, and left him to his fate, perhaps out of embarrassment, perhaps out of Stalin's characteristic suspicion of his own most valuable people. Abandoned by the country he had served so brilliantly, Sorge was hanged by the Japanese on the 7th of November 1944, the Revolution's anniversary. Only long after the war, in the 1960s, did the Soviet Union finally acknowledge him and make him, posthumously, a Hero of the Soviet Union, putting his face on a postage stamp, the master spy belatedly claimed by the nation that had let him die. Richard Sorge is remembered now as perhaps the most consequential spy of the Second World War, the man in Tokyo whose secrets helped hold Moscow, hanged on this day, disowned by the very cause he had saved.

In August 1940, a few lost German bomber crews dropped their bombs in the wrong place. That mistake may have saved Britain. By late summer 1940, the Luftwaffe was going after the Royal Air Force head on. Airfields, radar stations, sector control stations. The goal was to wipe out Fighter Command so Germany could control the skies and invade Britain. And it was working. Airfields in southern England were getting cratered. Planes were being destroyed on the ground. The RAF could build new fighters, but it was losing pilots faster than it could replace them. Men were flying several missions a day and falling asleep in their cockpits between sorties. Hitler had given one clear order: do not bomb London. He still hoped Britain might agree to peace, and he didn't want to give Churchill a reason to escalate. Then on the night of August 24, some German bombers sent to hit targets outside the city got lost in the dark. They ended up over London and dropped their bombs anyway. Homes were destroyed and civilians were killed. Churchill was furious. The next night he sent RAF bombers to hit Berlin. The damage was small. But Berlin had been told it was safe. Göring had supposedly once boasted that if a single enemy bomber ever reached Berlin, people could call him Meyer. The RAF kept going back to Berlin over the next several nights. Hitler lost it. On September 4, he gave a speech in Berlin promising to "erase" British cities. Three days later, on September 7, the Luftwaffe shifted its main effort to London. Hundreds of bombers hit the city and the Blitz began. It was a nightmare for Londoners. But for the RAF, it was the break they needed. The pressure came off the airfields. Ground crews could repair runways. Exhausted pilots got a little room to breathe. Fighter Command was able to rebuild. On September 15, the Luftwaffe threw a huge daylight raid at London expecting the RAF to be nearly finished. Instead British fighters rose to meet them in force. The Germans took heavy losses and their crews had been told the RAF was almost gone. Two days later, Hitler postponed the invasion of Britain indefinitely. It never happened. Historians still argue over how close the RAF really was to breaking, and the switch to London wasn't only about revenge. But it all started with a handful of German crews who couldn't find their target in the dark.