FACED WITH THE need to recognise that the Sorge ring had covered its activities with the greatest care by endeavouring to conceal their covert operations through the device of obtaining respectable professional employment and, in Sorge's case, also of pursuing an outwardly Bohemian style of social behaviour, Meisinger embarked on a course of vetting members of the German community to test the extent of their willingness to adhere to perceived National Socialist ideals and of their underlying support of the regime. With the outbreak of war, his congratulations to his hosts were accompanied by the submission of lists of German citizens deemed by him to be ‘unreliable’ – a term which covered a wide range of possibilities beyond the unacceptable norms associated with racial, political and social exclusion.

The rapid expansion of Japanese control in Asia also facilitated the restoration of German activities southwards and enabled him to arrange for the appointment of his predecessor, Huber, as police liaison in Thailand. Huber was linked in with the arrangements for co-operation with the Japanese Army's tokumu kikan, headed by Colonel Iwagurō Takeo, which had been initiated following the appointment of Colonel Scholl as military attaché at Bangkok in July 1941. These contacts were accompanied by efforts at the expansion of the Abwehr organisation in China and were also linked to secret efforts by Admiral Wenneker to make contact with the German vessels which had taken refuge at the outbreak of war in Portuguese India.

Huber called on the support of the Gestapo to vet the small numbers of German residents in Thailand and suspicion fell quite soon on the Austrian photo-journalist, Karl-Raimund Hofmeier, working for the Völkischer Beobachter, who had been given the unique opportunity as a non-Japanese to accompany invading Japanese forces, a role akin to that previously accorded to Ivar Lissner when working for the same newspaper in 1938. As it was discovered at this time that Lissner appeared to have obtained a close relationship with the Japanese Army covert intelligence service, there was a strong suspicion that both Lissner and Hofmeier were operating in Japanese interest and that their double life bore comparison with that now proven to be the case with Sorge and Clausen working for the USSR.

ONE OF THE principal features of the various historical accounts of the Sorge Affair that needs to be more accurately characterised is that of Sorge's relationship with Meisinger. It is clear that Meisinger was located in Tokyo for only a small part of his service as Police Liaison Officer prior to his recall by Ott from Shanghai following Sorge's arrest, as Meisinger and his new wife found Shanghai a much more attractive location within East Asia than Tokyo. Meisinger clearly was encouraged by Sorge to indulge in whatever fleshpots were available in Tokyo when he first arrived there in April 1941. Meisinger was clearly despatched to Tokyo before the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union and soon after the despatch of Wohlthat from the Four- Year Plan Ministry to negotiate a trade agreement with Japan at a time when it was recognised that steps would have to be taken to replace the land route through Russia for vital supplies of rubber for the German war economy. At first, it was hoped that the Japanese could be persuaded to despatch rubber on board Japanese vessels to Europe after the Japanese Naval Mission was delivered by the auxiliary cruiser, Asama Maru, and hopes were entertained of a Japanese assault on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies without the United States being drawn into the conflict.

If one examines Schellenberg's activities at this time, he was busily worming his way into the confidence of Counsellor Kramarz of the Military-Political Department of the German Foreign Ministry and subsequently suggesting that the liaison officer of the Abwehr, von Bülow, be replaced by someone with closer Party and Gestapo connections. The replacement was a close friend of Ribbentrop, Under-Secretary (Inland) Luther, who broached the suggestion put forward by Schellenberg that Abwehr officers in diplomatic missions abroad responsible for counter-espionage be replaced by police liaison officers. At the end of 1940, Meisinger was transferred from Warsaw for training within Schellenberg's department, but when he reached East Asia his telegrams and telephone contacts were always with Heinrich Müller, never Schellenberg.

IN DECEMBER 1936, Wenneker requested permission to pay a visit to Shanghai. But it is uncertain if this was allowed, though he paid a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine with Ambassador von Dirksen at the time of his farewell in July 1937. He returned home to be appointed captain of the so-called ‘pocket battleship’ Deutschland which saw service in the Mediterranean and provided support for Axis forces intervening in the Spanish Civil War. At this time, he made contact once more with Commander Ross serving with the British Mediterranean Fleet. But no record survives of any contact with Japanese Navy officers in Europe nor is there any evidence of contact between Wenneker and Sorge after departing from Japan at the end of his first tour of duty there. There is evidence, however, of the early establishment by Wenneker of the secret Supply Area in Japan and China (Etappe Japan) organised by a section of the Abwehr, which worked closely with the Foreign Ministry to establish arrangements for the logistical supply of and assistance to German merchant ships in the event of the development of international crises or the outbreak of war.

In his first tour, however, Wenneker primarily sought to develop contacts with members of the German business community in East Asia involving the shipping industry and providing support from time to time for German cruisers despatched on voyages round the world mainly for training purposes. Although such contacts had been pursued by the German Navy since about 1926, questions of naval intelligence had remained mainly matters of concern about international developments in Europe, but only began to have any relevance for East Asia from the time of the Ethiopian Crisis in the winter of 1935, when younger Japanese Navy officers began to urge their leaders that such European distractions provided encouragement for the expansion of Japanese influence in South-East Asia.

As Hitler's commitment to rearmament and to seeking to exploit anti-Communist and anti-Soviet sentiment in neighbouring states became increasingly evident, it was followed by a growing manifestation of friction and hostility towards those who were unprepared to make common cause against the USSR.

INITIALLY, AFTER SORGE'S arrest by the Japanese Metropolitan Police on 18 October 1941, the German response in the Tokyo community tended towards a sceptical point of view. In distant Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry at first relied on information from members of the Japanese Embassy: on 4 November 1941, for example, the arrest was confirmed as having been based on written evidence by Counsellor Kase Shunichi (1897–1956) who was told by the German Foreign Ministry desk officer, Dr Karl-Otto Braun, that his superiors ‘are most urgently interested in immediate clarification of the affair and in Sorge's release’ and Under-Secretary Ernst Woermann (1888–1979) wired Ott in Tokyo a promise on the part of Ambassador Ōshima Hiroshi (1886–1975) in Berlin to support his efforts for Sorge's release.

Efforts by Ott to obtain more details of the accusations from the Foreign Ministry and diplomatic access were blocked by the Japanese prosecution and efforts by other German correspondents in Tokyo to do likewise were frustrated, apart from the supply of comforts. In spite of Gaimushō secretiveness, Ott was able to learn that some 300 Japanese citizens had been arrested and this was not followed up until 9 January 1942 when Ott suggested that Ozaki Hotsumi, a former adviser of ex-Premier Prince Konoe, was the main target of Japanese enquiries and that perhaps Sorge ‘got himself ensnared in the intrigues’ involved. Dr Braun also had a conversation with First Secretary Ushiba Nobuhiko (1909–1984) on 18 November 1941 in which Braun put forward as his ‘personal solution’ the suggestion that Sorge's arrest should be rescinded and he be allowed ‘to leave Japan without attracting any attention’, especially as the arrest had been reported by wire to Washington by the German-American journalist, Karl H. von Wiegand (1874–1961) of the Hearst Press, as evidence that ‘all is not well in the camp of the Axis Powers’.

INITIALLY, AFTER SORGE'S arrest by the Japanese Metropolitan Police on 18 October 1941, the German response in the Tokyo community tended towards a sceptical point of view. In distant Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry at first relied on information from members of the Japanese Embassy: on 4 November 1941, for example, the arrest was confirmed as having been based on written evidence by Counsellor Kase Shunichi (1897–1956) who was told by the German Foreign Ministry desk officer, Dr Karl-Otto Braun, that his superiors ‘are most urgently interested in immediate clarification of the affair and in Sorge's release’ and Under-Secretary Ernst Woermann (1888–1979) wired Ott in Tokyo a promise on the part of Ambassador Ōshima Hiroshi (1886–1975) in Berlin to support his efforts for Sorge's release.

Efforts by Ott to obtain more details of the accusations from the Foreign Ministry and diplomatic access were blocked by the Japanese prosecution and efforts by other German correspondents in Tokyo to do likewise were frustrated, apart from the supply of comforts. In spite of Gaimushō secretiveness, Ott was able to learn that some 300 Japanese citizens had been arrested and this was not followed up until 9 January 1942 when Ott suggested that Ozaki Hotsumi, a former adviser of ex-Premier Prince Konoe, was the main target of Japanese enquiries and that perhaps Sorge ‘got himself ensnared in the intrigues’ involved. Dr Braun also had a conversation with First Secretary Ushiba Nobuhiko (1909–1984) on 18 November 1941 in which Braun put forward as his ‘personal solution’ the suggestion that Sorge's arrest should be rescinded and he be allowed ‘to leave Japan without attracting any attention’, especially as the arrest had been reported by wire to Washington by the German-American journalist, Karl H. von Wiegand (1874–1961) of the Hearst Press, as evidence that ‘all is not well in the camp of the Axis Powers’.

RESEARCH ON THIS subject area of relations between Germany and Japan in the first half of the twentieth century was initially begun in 1960, when a choice was being made of a doctoral degree topic for study at the University of Oxford. That it was a researchable topic was confirmed by the availability of verified primary evidence with reference to German military archives held at the US National Archives in Washington DC and diplomatic archives held in the Foreign Office Library in London. With the assistance of the Hon. Dr Margaret Lambert and Professor John Erickson, contact was made with Sir William Deakin and Professor Dick Storry at St Antony's College, Oxford, who were then preparing a monograph from German and Japanese source materials on the Sorge case.

Given the history of the racist fanaticism manifested in the inter-war era by the Nazi Party, the possibility of collaboration with non-Aryan societies was curious, at least superficially, and especially as there were numerous complaints voiced by individuals of Japanese nationality about their treatment on German streets in the early 1930s. Further researches in London, Washington and Tokyo in archives were accompanied by interviews and correspondence with a number of individual witnesses of events between 1930 and 1945. This period of research coincided with extensive press coverage of the trial of Admiral Paul Wenneker in Hamburg, which elicited strong denials of any intentional wrongdoing on the part of a personality whose whole career had hitherto been marked by a widespread recognition of his professional and personal integrity.

After his death in 1979, many of Wenneker's friends and colleagues continued to question the whole basis of the prosecution case and in the course of the publication of the first four volumes of the war diaries of successive German naval attachés in Japan, which had been obtained with the surviving records of the German Navy from Coburg by the British Admiralty in 1945, the family and many of these friends and colleagues kindly provided this author with access to reminiscences and photographs relevant to these years. In this phase of research, access was obtained rather slowly to many of the records which were not available to Wenneker's defence team in the 1960s, who helpfully permitted copies of all the defence documents to be made available to the author.