His Name Meant Sorrow

THE MAN WITH THREE FACES (243 pp.) -- Hans-Otto Meissner--Rlnehart ($3.50). Certain families have the ruling habit--the Adamses and Roosevelts in the U.S., Cecils, Churchills and Stanleys in Britain. The Sorge family is one of the first in history with a hereditary link to international Communism.

Friedrich Adolf Sorge, the German-born music teacher and agitator who lived in the U.S., appeared as an American delegate at one of the first get-togethers of the Communist International at The Hague in 1872; he became a protege of Karl Marx. His grandson, Richard Sorge, was deeply involved in the onset and outcome of World War II, and once boasted: "If I had worked for the Allies, history would record my name in the same breath ... as Churchill and Roosevelt."

Blue-Eyed Giant. Sorge, under cover of being a Nazi journalist in Japan, operated a fabulously successful spy ring during more than seven critical years until his detection in 1941. With the accent of wonder which belongs to those who have been involved in a frightful event without understanding it, Hans-Otto Meissner, a German embassy attache in Tokyo until he was called to war duty, details Sorge's coups for Communism. Sorge and his accomplices told the Russians: P:That Japan had rejected a German proposal for an alliance against the U.S.S.R. and Great Britain, which edged Russia into the pact with Hitler, thus triggering World War II.

P:The date, almost to the day, of Hitler's attack on Russia.

P:The fact that the Japanese intended to invade Southeast Asia rather than hit the Russians in Siberia. Result: the Russians were able to unleash their Far East army when the Germans had virtually captured Moscow.

P:The following message (which may or may not have reached Moscow) that Sorge had in his possession the day before his arrest by the Japanese on Oct. 15, 1941: "Japanese carrier air force attacking U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor probably dawn November 6 stop source reliable."

Much of this story has been told by the U.S. Department of the Army and by Major General Charles Willoughby, Mac-Arthur's chief of intelligence. Author Meissner fills in some of the human reality from the point of view of a loyal German officer (he later commanded a tank against the Russians) who was completely hornswoggled by a master spy. In Tokyo in the late '303, Attache Meissner became friendly with "Correspondent" Sorge, who even was a guest at Meissner's wedding. Later, as a P.W. in an Allied camp, Meissner met others who had crossed Sorge's devious path, and from his own and their experiences, assembled his story.

From it emerges the picture of a "blueeyed giant," ruthless in his personal relations--he was, for instance, coldly unmoved by the attempted suicide of a rejected mistress. Sorge was clever, resourceful and convinced that his dedication to world Communism gave him the right to commit any crime.

Lesson for Tomorrow. Meissner's story differs from Willoughby's official account in two important respects. The U.S. Army believes that Sorge was betrayed to Tokyo's secret police by a Japanese Communist. Meissner credits Sorge's downfall to the work of a certain Colonel Osaki of the Japanese secret police who, in the best tradition of melodrama, tripped Sorge over the pretty foot of a nightclub dancer.

U.S. Intelligence seems to accept the Japanese statement that he was executed in 1944. Meissner suggests that the death sentence against Sorge was never carried out. He cites these items: a French diplomat claims to have seen him since; his execution, if it took place, occurred without a witness from the condemned man's own country, although such a witness is required by Japanese law; nor were his remains made available to friends or relatives. The German ambassador in Tokyo at war's end, Heinrich Stahmer, believed that Sorge survived to direct the Far Eastern Department of the Red army's Fourth Bureau (Intelligence).

Whatever the facts, Meissner's story has two morals. The first, which Author Meissner calls "an ominous and sinister lesson for tomorrow," is that, despite the many sensational spy cases since the war, no ring quite as formidable and versatile as Sorge's has been uncovered--though there is no reason to assume that none exists.

The other moral is one of irony. The Japanese secret police were convinced that all foreigners were spies. In such circumstances, a real spy had the advantage of going about his business without attracting any more suspicion than the next fellow.

Richard Sorge left private misery and public ruin in his spoor; history may remember him for a bitter, accidental play on words. His name in German spells "sorrow." As Sorge went about his dreadful career, Pope Pius XI was preparing his famous German-language encyclical against totalitarianism, whose opening words are: "Mit brennender Sorge [With burning sorrow]."

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