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I read half of Ben Macintyre's latest, Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy, while I was traveling last month, and then the e-book was cruelly ripped away from me in unrenewable fashion by the library [because of my library crimes, which I could not address while on vacation.]
Anyway, now I have addressed my library crimes, so I finished it last week and enjoyed it very much! It's kind of an interesting contrast to Macintyre's other books -- most of them spend a lot of time emphasizing the absurdist human detail and banal minutiae and foolish mistakes of spycraft, which is a large part of the reason why I like them. They're very funny! One has the sense of Macintyre sitting there with a twinkle in his eye telling you all his favorite anecdotes, inviting you to have a little chuckle at the expense of these undoubtedly daring and yet rather silly secret agents.
Agent Sonya is in a different and more respectful key: Ursula Kuczynski-Hamburger-Beurton's life as told by Macintyre is High Romantic Drama, all throughout. Possibly this is because Burton was also a romantic novelist, and a major source for this book is her autobiography as well as her significantly autobiographical novels ... anyway, I'm not saying he's wrong, her life certainly merits the Romantic Drama treatment and is stuffed full of incredible trope material.
Young Ursula was an ardent German Jewish communist, who was recruited into the USSR's spy network while living in Shanghai with her (also Jewish, but less politically committed) husband in the 1930s, and fell in love with her handler while operating a safe-house for secret Communist meetings and also parenting an infant, and very possibly also fell in love with Agnes Smedley, the American novelist and agent who introduced them (Macintyre notes that they clearly had Vibes but says the documentation cannot confirm or deny whether they were confirmed romantic or just gals being intensely pals.)
Meanwhile, her adoring husband, Rudy Hamburger, decided that he too was going to become a communist spy! Macintyre portrays this as an attempt to save the marriage; he did not succeed at saving the marriage but he did succeed at getting enlisted by Moscow for independent missions, although (Macintyre clearly feels very sorry for him and also cannot resist making fun of somebody even if he's not going to make fun of Ursula) does not seem to haave been particularly successful at spycraft.
As Ursula rose in the ranks, she was sent on a mission to Manchuria with her cover being a Fake Relationship with her mission partner, solid Soviet proletarian Johann Patra, that after some cross-class banter and sparks eventually turned into a real relationship and resulted in another infant which everyone agreed to tactfully pretend was Rudy Hamburger's; meanwhile, in full knowledge of all this, Johan Patra and Rudy Hamburger also collaborated on several missions, both during this period and later! Patra was also Rudy's handler on another post-divorce and post-romance mission! There is a full movie's worth of material in this alone! (Macintyre does not note whether or not Johan and Rudy had Vibes but given everything and the fact that they seem to have gotten along perfectly well during all these periods I feel like they must have??)
After the Manchuria mission she started operating another base in Switzerland, where she recruited a couple of British agents for daring missions into Germany and soon found herself in need of an escape route to Britain in the case of German invasion, the solution to which was of course a Marriage Of Convenience with one of the agents working under her, Len Beurton; they were told they could get divorced once they were safely back in England but in fact they stayed married for another fifty years! and good for them!
Also in the middle of all of this Ursula's beloved childhood nurse apparently became obsessed with Ursula's daughter and attempted to denounce Ursula and Len to the authorities so she could abscond with the child to Germany and parent her herself, which adds yet another of High Personal Drama to the already Highly Dramatic saga of Ursula's life -- and it is truly and genuinely impressive that absolutely none of this seems to have ever disrupted her spycraft; she seems to have just gone on setting up radio networks and recruiting agents and sending secret nuclear data off to Soviet Russia with perfect unflappable competence throughout.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Rudy whose earnest attempts at aiding the cause eventually end up getting him accused of counter-espionage and sent to the gulag. But he does make it out and survives to both write a memoir and (according to Wikipedia) get cranky about how Ursula downplays his contributions in her memoir -- which is probably fair, given that Macintyre also cannot resist portraying him as an endearing and tragic incompetent. He's simply such a perfect dramatic foil!
As a sidenote, this is the second nonfiction book set in/around/related to Nazi Germany that I've read this year in which one of my grandfather's Ullstein uncles makes a cameo appearance. Mildly disconcerting to suddenly see them popping up everywhere!
Anyway, now I have addressed my library crimes, so I finished it last week and enjoyed it very much! It's kind of an interesting contrast to Macintyre's other books -- most of them spend a lot of time emphasizing the absurdist human detail and banal minutiae and foolish mistakes of spycraft, which is a large part of the reason why I like them. They're very funny! One has the sense of Macintyre sitting there with a twinkle in his eye telling you all his favorite anecdotes, inviting you to have a little chuckle at the expense of these undoubtedly daring and yet rather silly secret agents.
Agent Sonya is in a different and more respectful key: Ursula Kuczynski-Hamburger-Beurton's life as told by Macintyre is High Romantic Drama, all throughout. Possibly this is because Burton was also a romantic novelist, and a major source for this book is her autobiography as well as her significantly autobiographical novels ... anyway, I'm not saying he's wrong, her life certainly merits the Romantic Drama treatment and is stuffed full of incredible trope material.
Young Ursula was an ardent German Jewish communist, who was recruited into the USSR's spy network while living in Shanghai with her (also Jewish, but less politically committed) husband in the 1930s, and fell in love with her handler while operating a safe-house for secret Communist meetings and also parenting an infant, and very possibly also fell in love with Agnes Smedley, the American novelist and agent who introduced them (Macintyre notes that they clearly had Vibes but says the documentation cannot confirm or deny whether they were confirmed romantic or just gals being intensely pals.)
Meanwhile, her adoring husband, Rudy Hamburger, decided that he too was going to become a communist spy! Macintyre portrays this as an attempt to save the marriage; he did not succeed at saving the marriage but he did succeed at getting enlisted by Moscow for independent missions, although (Macintyre clearly feels very sorry for him and also cannot resist making fun of somebody even if he's not going to make fun of Ursula) does not seem to haave been particularly successful at spycraft.
As Ursula rose in the ranks, she was sent on a mission to Manchuria with her cover being a Fake Relationship with her mission partner, solid Soviet proletarian Johann Patra, that after some cross-class banter and sparks eventually turned into a real relationship and resulted in another infant which everyone agreed to tactfully pretend was Rudy Hamburger's; meanwhile, in full knowledge of all this, Johan Patra and Rudy Hamburger also collaborated on several missions, both during this period and later! Patra was also Rudy's handler on another post-divorce and post-romance mission! There is a full movie's worth of material in this alone! (Macintyre does not note whether or not Johan and Rudy had Vibes but given everything and the fact that they seem to have gotten along perfectly well during all these periods I feel like they must have??)
After the Manchuria mission she started operating another base in Switzerland, where she recruited a couple of British agents for daring missions into Germany and soon found herself in need of an escape route to Britain in the case of German invasion, the solution to which was of course a Marriage Of Convenience with one of the agents working under her, Len Beurton; they were told they could get divorced once they were safely back in England but in fact they stayed married for another fifty years! and good for them!
Also in the middle of all of this Ursula's beloved childhood nurse apparently became obsessed with Ursula's daughter and attempted to denounce Ursula and Len to the authorities so she could abscond with the child to Germany and parent her herself, which adds yet another of High Personal Drama to the already Highly Dramatic saga of Ursula's life -- and it is truly and genuinely impressive that absolutely none of this seems to have ever disrupted her spycraft; she seems to have just gone on setting up radio networks and recruiting agents and sending secret nuclear data off to Soviet Russia with perfect unflappable competence throughout.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Rudy whose earnest attempts at aiding the cause eventually end up getting him accused of counter-espionage and sent to the gulag. But he does make it out and survives to both write a memoir and (according to Wikipedia) get cranky about how Ursula downplays his contributions in her memoir -- which is probably fair, given that Macintyre also cannot resist portraying him as an endearing and tragic incompetent. He's simply such a perfect dramatic foil!
As a sidenote, this is the second nonfiction book set in/around/related to Nazi Germany that I've read this year in which one of my grandfather's Ullstein uncles makes a cameo appearance. Mildly disconcerting to suddenly see them popping up everywhere!