Journalist, International Espionage Figure. Sorge, the son of a mining engineer, was born in Baku, Russiam (now Azarbaijan). He moved to Germany and joined the Germany army for the First World War. He served on the Western Front where he received serious combat wounds. After studying in Berlin, Kiel and Hamburg he became a journalist working for the "Frankfurter Zeitung." He also secretly joined the German Communist Party, and while working in Japan in 1933 began working as a spy for the Soviet Union. Sorge assembled a team of carefully selected spies with Hotsumi Ozaki, journalist of the Asahi newspaper, and Yotoku Miyagi, a painter, that had access to senior politicians and he was able to obtain good information about Japan's foreign policy. He also posed as a loyal Nazi and worked as an espionage agent for the German embassy in Japan. This enabled him to find out information about Germany's intentions towards the Soviet Union. Sorge was able to give Joseph Stalin advance warning about the Anti-Comintern Pact (1936), the German-Japanese Pact (1940) and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. His most important contribution was to advise Russia of Operation Barbarossa as early as December, 1940. Despite the efforts of Sorge, Joseph Stalin did not believe that the German Army would attack at that time and did not take the necessary action. At the end of August, 1941, Sorge was able to tell Stalin that Japan would not attack the Soviet Union that year. Two months later Sorge was arrested in Tokyo and held in prison for three years. The Soviet Union refused to exchange Sorge for Japanese prisoners they held and he was executed. After the war, the Sorge event was often utilized by the Japanese goverment as anti-communist propaganda. Sorge is now recognized as a significant Russian hero and there is a large monument in his honor in Moscow. In Japan, his name is begging for recognition as an anti-fascist and the movie "The Spy, Sorge" is now in production by Masahiro Shinoda, one of Japan's most famous film directors. Both Sorge and Ozaki rest at Tama Cemetery.