On April 26th at 10:35 p.m. on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – In 1941, a woman arrives in Oxford as a Jewish refugee. She has no money, no place to stay and seemingly no local connections. But she has a secret – she is a Soviet spy who operates under the code name “Sonja”. Ruth Werner alias Ursula Kuczynski is considered the Soviet Union’s most successful scout during World War II. It serves the military reconnaissance of the Red Army and even informs Stalin in good time about the planned attack by the German Wehrmacht. And:
She steals Britain’s nuclear secrets and gives them to the Soviets. With “The Spy of the Century – Agent in the Service of Stalin”, “Universum History” will show an exciting documentary by Hannah Veale (directed by Bill Thomas) about a contrasting agent and her life on Friday, April 26, 2024 at 10:35 p.m. on ORF 2 was anything but straight.
In 1919 the German Communist Party was formed. The members dream of a just, socialist society and call for a return to the “true” Marxist traditions. The catastrophe of the First World War gives their revolutionary plans a particular urgency. During this time, Ursula Kuczynski grew up with her parents and siblings in a villa on Schlachtensee in Berlin. The family of Jewish origin sympathized with the anti-fascism of communist ideology from the start. As a teenager, Ursula joined the “Communist Youth Association of Germany,” where she met her first husband, a German architect. Shortly afterwards she follows her husband to Shanghai, which is currently experiencing a construction boom. However, life as a wife and new mother is not fulfilling for her. When she met the spy Richard Sorge in Shanghai, the course was set for her future: Sorge became her teacher and the young Ursula Kuczynski went to Moscow, where she was trained as a radio operator. Life in Germany is also becoming increasingly difficult for her as a Jew.
Ursula now operates all over the world under the code name “Sonja”. It delivers information to Moscow from Asia and Europe. When the Japanese invaded China, she radioed from Manchuria; During the occupation of Danzig, she set up local resistance groups. And when the German Wehrmacht invades Poland, Ursula hides her radio transmitter in Switzerland. There she also gets in touch with the legendary “Red Chapel”, the network of agents that regularly supplies the Red Army with information about the Wehrmacht.
In 1940, the Red Army sent “Sonja” with her now second husband Leon Beurton – the English communist and agent for the Soviet intelligence service GRU – to London. Stalin demands military information from the Empire – and gets it. However, the dictator ignores Ursula’s news of the Wehrmacht’s impending attack on the Soviet Union. Ursula is one of the few to survive Stalin’s violent purges.
After the war, Ursula flees to East Berlin. Although she ends her collaboration with the Red Army’s secret service, she does not give up her belief in human socialism for the rest of her life. From now on she writes children’s books as Ruth Werner. It was only at her funeral that her rank was revealed: colonel in the Red Army.
“Universum History” tells the story of the Soviet spy Ursula Kuczynski alias “Sonja” in an extremely exciting documentary. How she passes on the British’s nuclear secrets to the Russians, operates under the noses of the British secret service MI5, evades capture and even manages to escape Stalin’s great purge. A look behind the “secret fronts” of the great powers of the 20th century and into the shadowy world of espionage.
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