A dubious achievement …

…A Spy for Stalin. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Sorge was, Matthews writes, "a raging intellectual snob," with a German doctorate, who somehow took his ideology in the name of the working class—and his psychological milieu in "the casinos, whorehouses, and dancehalls of pre-war Shanghai and Tokyo." When the SS grew suspicious of Sorge, they sent a man named Josef Albert Meisinger to investigate. Although Meisinger had the nickname "the Butcher of Warsaw" (and pause for a moment to consider what it takes for the SS to label someone a butcher), by the time Sorge was done carousing with the visiting German, Meisinger gave his masters in Berlin a glowing account of a faithful Nazi who was the real intellect behind the German ambassador.