The Spy Who Was Overlooked

Title: Agent Sonya

Rating: 4 Stars

This was actually a very good biography. In fact, I probably would have given it five stars except for the fact that I (and this, I understand, is totally on me) don’t really enjoy biographies that much. I’m much more of a narrative history person, even though the reality of history doesn’t really match a narrative form. History doesn’t really have a beginning, a middle, and an end. For instance, when does WWII start? Well, most Americans would say Pearl Harbor. If you’re British or French, you probably think the invasion of Poland. If you’re Chinese, you probably go even further back and point at Japan’s invasion. Of course, there are historians that think that WWII is just a continuation of WWI. And so on and so on. Even so, I like my histories to feel like a story.

Besides the fact that biographies start with a birth and end with a death, the narrative thread isn’t as compelling. A biography is essentially a series, she did this and then she did that and then she went ahead and did some other thing. Even in the most exciting of lives, there are periods where not a lot happens. Sometimes when something does happen, it’s due to some external factor that isn’t really relevant to the person, so it seems kind of random.

So, all of that to say, if you are a fan of biographies, then I think that you will really enjoy Agent Sonya. Even though I’m not a fan, I did enjoy reading it and some sections of it were quite compelling.

That’s not particularly surprising. Ben Macintyre has pretty much made a career out of writing about spies (eg Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat, A Spy Among Friends, The Spy and the Traitor). I found A Spy Among Friends to be particularly good. His one flaw, and I’ve mentioned it before in previous posts, is that he tends to fall in love with the spies that he writes about. His writing sometimes border on the hagiographic. You see this occasionally in Agent Sonya, although in fairness, she did lead a pretty amazing life.

You can say that Ursula Kuczynski was born to be a socialist spy. Born in Germany to a Jewish family in 1907, as a teenager she saw the fierce battles between communists and fascists in Germany’s young republic. Her family were all anti-fascist, so there was no question that she’d take up the banner of communism. In 1929, she married an architect named Rudi Hamburger. With architectural jobs scarce in Germany, her husband jumped at a job opportunity in China.

While in China, she met Richard Sorge. If you do not recognize the name, he is considered one of the top spies in the twentieth century. The leading Soviet spy, after his time in China, he ended up in Japan. There, posing as a drunken German Nazi, he wormed his way into the higher echelons of Japanese government. It was Sorge that told Stalin that Japan had no plans to invade the Soviet Union. Stalin used that information to shore up his Western defenses. It was also Sorge that told Stalin that Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union. I believe he even told Stalin the date. For whatever reason, much to his regret, Stalin ignored Sorge. Ultimately, Sorge was discovered by the Japanese, horribly tortured, and executed. Interestingly, the Japanese were willing to trade Sorge for some of their captured spies but the Soviets continued to deny knowledge of Sorge. It’s believed that Stalin ordered this so that Sorge’s invasion warnings, which would have been very embarrassing to Stalin if exposed, would stay hidden.

Back in China, Sorge recruited Ursula to spy for the Soviet Union (and also became one of her lovers). Codenamed Sonja, this became her life for twenty years. Starting in Shanghai, she also spied in the Chinese city of Mukden, Warsaw, London, Geneva, and Oxford. During this time, she also made several trips to Moscow for additional training.

Amazingly enough, for a good chunk of this time, her husband Rudi did not know that she was a spy. Ultimately, he did learn of her double life and decided to join her. By this time, their marriage was finished so they never spied together. Given how singularly incompetent Rudi was at spying (he was usually immediately discovered and was so ineffectual that the Soviets suspected him of being a double agent and he spent many years in a Soviet Gulag), this was probably for the best for Ursula.

Even though her marriage to Rudi ended, she did have several more relationships. She eventually ended up having three children from three different men. All during the time that she was spying, she was also the dutiful mother doing her best to raise her children.

Her time in Geneva was the period of time before the general European war broke out. A devoted anti-fascist, she infiltrated a couple of agents into Berlin. Amazingly enough, the two agents would eat lunch at the same restaurant as a lightly guarded Hitler. They began to form plans to assassinate him. Before they could, Germany and the Soviet Union signed their non-aggression pact. Considering Ursula’s lifelong anti-fascist philosophy and the horrible things that the Nazis were already doing to its Jewish population, this was a tough pill for her to swallow.

Ultimately, she ended up in England. There she was the spy handler for one of the most notorious spies of the twentieth century, Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was a brilliant physicist that made substantial contributions to the development of the atomic bomb. However, he was upset by the American and British plans to collaborate on the development and to exclude their WWII allies, the Soviet Union. Thinking that this was unfair and dangerous to world peace, he turned over hundreds of pages of detailed atomic plans to Ursula, who promptly forwarded them onto the Soviet Union. Doing so accelerated the Soviet’s development of atomic weapons by at least five years. Her reports were so important that they crossed Stalin’s desk.

In her two decades of spying, she was never caught. One major reason was her sex. It was hard for the spy catchers to imagine that a woman, especially that was, by the time she was in England, raising three children, could have the courage and ability to do such dangerous work.

Another reason was incompetence. She was a known communist. Her family, several of whom were part of her spy network, were all communists. This was not a secret. It was known that Fuchs handler was a woman. Even a semi-serious search would have yielded incriminating evidence like radio transmitters in or around her house. There were people in MI5 that were suspicious of her. She was even interviewed by the head spy catcher of MI5. Despite his fearsome reputation, he interviewed her and never seriously considered her a suspect.

When Fuchs was arrested, Ursula knew that her time was coming to an end. Although convinced that MI5 was breathing down her neck, she, along with her children, was able to board a plane to East Germany. There she was feted like a hero.

She was born in 1907 and died in 2000. She risked her freedom, her life, and her children’s freedom to serve the Soviet Union, a country that came into being after she was born and disappeared before she died. Ursula was a fascinating woman that was recruited by one of the most significant spies and then later handled another of the most significant spies of the twentieth century.