The Man with Three Faces - Hans-Otto Meissner

1957 paperback with 188 pages in very good condition.

"The Man with Three Faces" recounts the exploits of Soviet master spy Richard Sorge in WWII Japan. Posing as a German correspondent living a bohemian lifestyle in pre-war Tokyo, he leverages his high IQ and stolen secrets to gain friends in high places and his hypnotic personality to enchant the most desirable women in the land.

Stalin's USSR wins information unavailable to other major powers in the war, resulting eventually in the defeat of Germany at the gates of Moscow due primarily to Sorge's verified information that Japan will not attack in Siberia, freeing Stalin to move armies west to Moscow just in time. The author, a German embassy official who knew Sorge personally in Tokyo during this era, manages to convey the tension and suspense felt inside the spy ring, its near misses and triumphs, in a manner that reads like a James Bond novel.

The spy story itself makes the book worth reading. But there is more. Published in 1956 a decade after the end of the war, the author (who viewed the war from the vantage point of a German diplomat) includes very interesting details about the intentions and internal conflicts of the major combatants in WWII that are not part of conventional history teachings about that era. Numerous decisions and coincidences occurred that, if changed, might have altered the outcome of the war.