10 Real-Life Spies More Badass Than James Bond
2. Richard Sorge Knew All The Axis Secrets
Most of these awesome spies, much like James Bond, worked for British forces. Richard Sorge was a communist sympathiser, meanwhile, and yet he basically managed to halt the forward march of the Nazis across the globe single-handedly.
How did one man manage such a feat? Well, because he was the man running an whole network of Japanese and European agents in Tokyo during the Second World War. For eight years. Without Japan's secret police cottoning on. It was through these contacts that he could know all about Japan and Germany's plans, including the Pearl Harbour attack and the German invasion of the Soviet Union - information which he reported back to his superiors, but apparently Stalin and co. didn't care so much for the life-risking work he was doing, mostly ignoring it.
Still, the bits people did pay attention to and which filtered throughout the Allied movement - which Sorge was technically doing solely for the benefit of Red Army intelligence - was so important in bringing down the Nazis that Ian Fleming referred to him as "the man whom I regard as the most formidable spy in history." And yet Stalin's blind eye and callous nature carried over to when Sorge was found out by Japanese forces in 1944, refusing to secure his release;he was subsequently hung.