Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Military History
Episode: James D. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025)
Description: Richard Sorge is one of history’s most famous spies. This hard-drinking, womanising, motorcycle-crashing Soviet officer penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo during the 1930s and gathered intelligence credited with changing the course of the Second World War. It is an intriguing tale; but Sorge’s spy ring was just one chapter in a much longer history of Russian and Soviet espionage in and against Japan.
Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge (Hurst, 2025) by Dr. James D Brown tells the extraordinary full story of Russian intrigue targeting Japan, from first...