the sort of vast array of modern expressionism witchcraft and is one of the fastest-growing religions in the world and so on and so forth. >> welcome to the national museum virtually. i'm here physically. my name is jeremy collins. in the tractor conferences and symposia. today we are bringing this program to you with hurricane said a couple of hours away from hitting so i wanted to let all of our audience members know that we are going to bring this program to come heck or high water. if we do have any interruptions

i wanted to apologize beforehand for the technical difficulties from the storm but now it's my pleasure to get this program started high passing it on to the museum samuel jones senior historian and dr. robert citina who'll be leading today's conversation. senate thanks jeremy and welcomes everyone from beautiful new orleans louisiana. quite literally in the path of the storm quite literally a few hours from now and eye of the hurricane so we hope everything goes smoothly and i like would jeremy said heck or high water. we hope we don't get any today. having said that i'm really excited about today's program. every now and then in my line of work you get to interview an author that you feel like you've. every word they have published

in this particular author's case that might be difficult but some six as a writer at large for the times and the best-selling up of numerous books this the spy and the traitor and operation mincemeat -- doublecrossed operation mincemeat a book that many of our audience have already. is written and presented these documentaries of his work. he's a star in the field. i guess i would say espionage history and ben macintyre welcomto the national wolf or two ecm. >> thank you for iiting me. i wish i could be there in person at what am i favorite cities. thank you for having me. >> you are a master of this topic and in "operation sonya" i will tell our audience you really dish it up in style. let me begin by asking you the standard question when i get it good author and my screen and i

never like let them go without asking them. why this book? why this topic and why now? is there something about the moment we are in the suggested this amazing woman. she she is better known in her professional life as agent sonya. why this book? >> yes so often with these stories it was really accidental. i was researching a completely different story which always intrigued me which is the story of a poet in the cia at the tail end of the war when he began to parachute into the collapsing reich for sabotage operations and just as the enemy was falling apart. and the scavenger recruit by the germans but the back of the

story was a woman. she wasn't identified any of the papers but the names and addresses. what the americans and they didn't know all of these people were die-hard communists and they were being recruited by agent sonya ursula kachinsky and that was my starting point but it began wondering and then again -- began to scroll back in time and found this remarkable character who goes back even earlier and why now? because for me it was something of a challenge. i have never written about somebody who was a committed communist. most of my stories come from the other end of the pedestal and i thought it was time really and her story is quite extraordinary because as many people know this is a very male-dominated world the world of espionage.

their women spies but a woman intelligence officer who was trained to the pitch that she was trained to the point where she was a colonel in the red army i didn't no, couldn't find a single other woman who had risen so far in so high within any service let alone that system so i was trying to tell that story and in the way her story has been hidden for far too long he could she was a one. it was her most profound disguise and it's how she ruthlessly -- ruthlessly used her gender to hide what she was really up to but also she tended to shy away from women subjects. i wouldn't have been able to tell the story haven't not had the incredible fortune of being able to interview her surviving children and two of her sons who very generously opened the family archives and allowed me access to all of her papers all of her diaries and letters and

said even though barry m. and i've live the kind of life and wanted to live i felt she was with me in some way kind of guiding me through the story and instead of trying to didn't relook wise for her in some way i had her voice with me and that was a great comfort in a way. >> tell us more about ursula. she was a good communist she claims and 17 she was in a left-wing rally in berlin. how had she gotten to this point? tell us about her family life a german intellectual and a cultural circle around her are who's who of leftism in the early 20th century. tell us about ursula the young woman. >> it's a always important understand the person at ursula became among the greater the

chaos and germany between the wars and extraordinary period when economic disaster was looming and fascism was on the rise on the right and extreme leftism in the form of the german communist party was extremely powerful in germany. there were many people and in a way germans were the background. she came from an intellectual academic family and they were very well-off but they left in the life of her linen they knew everybody from einstein and everybody who was anybody on the left there and as a result of her experience as a teenager she had seen the appalling poverty and the appalling degradation and the contrast and her family's leftist meaning. she joined the communist party at the age of 17 out of conviction despite her parents objection and she never really wavered. when she did waiver there were

moments in her life when the whole communist party is becoming a part of her hand. and the way her equivocations are part of the story but because she was very young when the bolsheviks revolution took place in very old when the berlin wall came down her life in some ways spans the whole of communism. it was away it seemed seemed to me the exploring that extraordinary events and movement in world history in the 20th century for good and for evil. she ended up working for brutal ruthless stalinist regime and the extent to which he knew about that we can certainly discuss but i caught her wavering from times to times. she said she had doubts and as a way to explore that story. all starts in germany in the 1920s when his first she was concerned it was a perfectly

respectable intellectual position at that point. as far she was concerned the only people standing up for the fascists were the communists so for her in a way it was a migration to the left. >> i'm fasnated by one of her phrases would be writing the book and of course a difficult thing to say at the time. the soviet union is the future. course today when they -- we live in an era where the soviet union is -- and of course she had never been to the soviet unit that point. she had not seen what the soviet unit was or could even imagine what the soviet union evolved into but for many idealistic young people in the world and not disturb me don't forget that germany was considered to be the crucible of "the next revolution." many people in germany and outside believed "the next revolution" was going to take place in germany. that was quite a widespread

belief. and yes she saw all the ideology that went with the. >> she sob that is the future and cheap comes to that there most of her life. >> i'm trying to think of the word, she's a bookish character. her world is the publishing may you reach you or did book stores and more than one occasion so seems to me you started with an idea and it will be earning for something. how did she get into the action and? all of a sudden she had been shot high and i don't want to give away the beautiful deep to let this book to the raiders but how did she make that transition. many idealistic young people have done it in the freezer uses cocoa we outgrow that but not her. she grew into it as an action oriented figure. >> she's a contrast. she is as you say a very gentle

bookish, she wrote very early on she wrote poems and short stories. she lives in a house in berlin that contains the largest private library in germany. you couldn't get mh more bookish than that. at the age of i think 14 sitting in a tree basalt the book. that's the way she was by that that -- yet as you said she ended up in the revoluti. she got it done. she was ready at a very young age to go to war on behf of that was because she was single at the brownshirts were doing in the rise of the essay ithe brutality that she was sitting onhe far right. the one thi that makes it interesting for the first half of h life she isattling fascism possibly uerside.

during the war with the soviet union of written and an american ally tri to beat this defeat nazism and then of crse history pivots around her in some ways. and in the cold war she's fing against the west. she has no change in the trajectory of her belief but from our perspective she suddenly on the other side of the fence. to me that's fascinating. again as in so much of life it's accidental. she went to shanghailthough she did spend a brief period in america in new rk. she word in the bookshop in upper manhattano she had the experience of americans srted a love-hate relationship with the state. there were evidence of americans she deeplydmired and others that she defied.

she was a very talented young chitect and she was offered a job in shanghai for the british council. she was only 24 by the time she got to shanghai and it's an intoxicating place. it was a huge melting pot of different races verrich on one hand and a mercantile cter in massive chinese population on the other side. she witnessed it first-hand was shot via. it was a meeting wita long forgotten history of the fastening man called agnes smedley. most of the people the story ve the most extraordinary names. >> that's what led you to this topic. >> she was at that point a successful left-wing novelist. she wrote a highly successful

novel and by the time she met agnes in shanghai she was already communist spy. she had already been recruited to the soviet military intelligence and she recruited ursula. she was a communist and she longed to do something. in the context of the times shanghaied was the birthplace of the chinese communist party but the chinese communist party was undergoing a brutal repression at the hands of the chiang kai-shek known as the white care. it was a brutal repression something like 300,000 people were killed in the course of that attempt to extricate the communist party and ursula was recruited first of all by smedley who was described no less as being the most formidable spy in history.

he was the key soviet agent in shanghai and the soviets were bankrolling the communist underground and ursula lasorda brought into it. >>i'm trying to think of a way you put it when you said heard domesticity was one of her greatest assets. all spies have to leave a doub-life. she has a husband and a child by him. some point she's told by the party to leave him so she can put 10 to b the wife of another man and they pretend to be a family. i think of lenin who once said, is have no priva life. you do whatever the party tells you to. is that about right? >> not quite because one of the things that i find so fascinating about ursula is between what she saw as her

ideological duty and her responsibility as a wife a mother a homemaker. throughout her le these two sides of her life were in constant tension and even in old age she began to wonder whether she had been good spy and a bad mother. the reality was the cause required her to put her family second and she struggled wit that greatly. she always put them second and she put them in mortal jeopardy. there's no doubt that we will get into the story lat but when she was operating in europe not only would she have bn murdered by the gestapo but her family would have been wed out as well. she was putting everybody at risk. she was writing about this whe she said, she said i never givep my family again and i've never take this risk unless the

revolution requires it of me. so she would have done it. we find that in the 21st century that whole notion that anyby would put her cause before her family is just terrifying against humanity but bear in mind it's possible understa here because not a question that we wouldsk of male spies. cynically would never asked that question come you're right. >> we would never say he's a great fher. that's not a distinction we would ke a she did. time and again she -- herself on the subject it was a bad mother, and did i do enoughnd of course it leaves legacy. when her family had children and nds out what she had done and they didn't find out there in mind until they were themsels

of middle-age. they had no idea that their mother had been a spy. the dcovery that should lead this double-life and she had been some completely different from the woman that brought them up that had long-term effect on the children. >> you met the children as you begin your discussion and they were of extreme help to you in writing this book and he said he probably couldn't have done it without them. did you talk to them on this very sensitive point? >> she had three children b three different men at three different times of her life in all three of the fathers of her children were hurt so agents. they were brutal communist spies themselves one of whom was --. >> she did say at one point to be fair to ursula. >> her first great love again

there's a bit of an old standard here. we love our spies and the mail spies that live the lives of james bond but she was a woman way ahead of her time but i d interview the two surviving children. one of them is still alive in the old one michael died in his 90s and remember vividly a conversation i had with the most charming and lovely man and waed to discover that her moth had all the secrets and he said it was a rlly moving moment said look i been married and dirced three times. he said perhaps the problem is it's because of where i came from. i ner knew how to trust anybody. i found that really very poignant from an old man nearing the end of his life.

another thing he said which again i was very tohed by he said look readi the book he said i now feel i know my mother a little better. secrets are addictive. in the secret world of difficult to give it up but secrets are very bad for you. secrets do things and i've written 12 books aut spies and i'm fascinated by that world. these stories don't have a simple black-andhite moral conclusion. ople are damaged by these kinds of stories and by what happens to them and the children of ursula arno exception. >> having. a number of your works spies -- the story rarely comes to a happy ending in the sense that you are a hero in your ride up into the sunset and that's

precisely what doesn't happen. you tell lies your whole life and i wonder if it's difficult to remember which lie you were living at the current time. >> it's a even seto tell o lie but it's very difficult to tell compact lies and remember thlie he told afford it has a denaturing effect. spying is such a strange professional really because given how much i've written about ituite often doesn't make that much difference. quite often one side knows what the otheride is doing it all balances out but very occasionally in history and many of your friends wil notice "operation mincemeat" is a good example. the deceptions that cover the enormous thes another one in ursula is one of the very one that did affect the course of

history and we will come to that in the moments but her intelligence on the blding of the atomic bomb materially affected world htory and that makes her again quite exceptional. >> give a ment in this book were ursula kachinsky code-named "operaon sonya" comes from a very gentile boor upper middle class background cultured and educated and she's actually helping a communist and manchuriaelping them build toms for aess sabotage against the japanese. yohave a great story in their about a ammonium nitrate explosive. >> one of the many things that ursula trained and when she went to a special sky -- spy school she was trained in a radio technician work and how to build

a radio but also sabotaging bomb-making bridget was an expert bombmaker and one of the things she had to do in japanese occupied manchuria a situation where the japanese move into manchuria and the communist underground was causing warfare against them in ursula was there main agent sending money back and forth. there's this moment in she's always buying material for the bombs would you couldn't go to one shop and buy a raking in needed because the japanese secret intelligence service would have picked you out in the second. she had to go shopping and she tells the story about how she is at another hot hardware store to buy ammonium nitrate for building bombs. her chinese was so bad just for 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate

the shop owner gave her an enormous one hundredweight sack of ammonium nitrate. she put the baby on top and will back up again and realized she wouldn't have to go shopping for a while so it kept the bomb makers saying who knows what this bomb was used for? the chinese party underground did enormous damage to the networks of the japanese. maybe she had quite an impact on history. >> you are looking at the author's ability to write a good tease and the baby on top of the stack of ammonium nitrate going back to sabotage the mill and building a bomb. it's an astonishing story and ving into rosa wasaring for your child and buying explosives at the same time. >> is imposble to estimate the degree of peril she was mpeg japanese secret police were brutal and highly efficient and they wer all over this.

they wer seeking out communist unrground but there are extraordinary photographs in ursula's collectio in a house that she lived in. toook at it carefully conceived it to of them climb ov the roof and direcd her own aerial use a radio transmitter within you can see the poll that she latched at the end of this little house. how she got away with it that and how the japanesfailed to spot it is extraordinary. she was incredibly lucky. >> we are the national world war ii museum and fst sonya's wartime spying which ones do you think were most significant quakes you have already referred to him but i wonder if he can talk us throh this a bit. it is for the audience the mt of the book and to me some the most interesting portrayals of the entire book.

>> she is redloyed to switzerland. she i sent to switzerland just before the war breaks out in their running agents into the reich. she had to recruit people and sends them and to extract as much infortion as they can and she ended up she goes for radio transmitter and sets herself up with this digital chalet in the swiss mountains in a beautiful place. she has her twohildren with another child by another man and she began runni really the most important communication network with moscow. therwere lots of spy operating uses and she recruited her n. theyere producing information from inside of moscow. it was of huge importance. she was one othe lynch pins of

it and the story that astonish me that i had never come across before and i don't know if anyone had was her plot to assassinate hitler. she came very close to assassinating hitler preacher critic to british communist before the hispanic civil war. her family had moved to london to escape the persecution. she sent them into the reich before the outbreak of the war and one of them had discovered the restaurant he was going to us hitler's favorite restaurant. he would die in there everyime he was i munich and he mentioned this to ursula who immediately said well that'an opportunity. she reported back to moscow the plan was she would build a bomb and put in a briefcase and put it in a flimsy partition that divided hitler's semiprivate dining room and they were going to to smithereens.

this plot was weeks away from being put into action. it had a good chance of working. i readbout it and i was shocke because of the improvements molotov at the moment when germany and communist soviet union struck an alliance aonaggression pact not to attack each her. at that moment the dayfter that was agreed ursula seizes all oensive operations against germany so she had to stoper assassination plot. who knowwhat it had been the future the world if she were able to cay it through. >> in munich at h favorite restaurant he'd go and have a bite of ravioli and a vegetable on the side. i have been reading my whole life about it and this is one i'd miss. it seemed to be the closest and one i had never heard about before. >> i had not eitr and it can't

be exaggerated. he came very close in moscow is extremely enthusitic about it. they were very keen to kill hitler at that point. as a secondary pnt the molotov ribbentrop act dangles an alliance between the soviets and the with a hammer blow. it was one othe first moments when she began to realize actuly the cause that she was followin the moscow le was like battling fascism and suddenly her cause w an alliance with fascism. it was at terrible crisis of conscience for her. >> there's a moment in orwell's 1984 in which the alliance has suddenly shifted and oceana goes from being an ally to an enemy and the exact opposite and everyone has to get on board and innocent orwell nails that moment.

>> i'm quite sure orwell was thinking specifically of them molotov ribbentrop act. of course it was short-lived because the invasion of the soviet union by hitler's troops and operation -- and suddenly turned around again and she found herself on the right side of history again but for long period between the molotov von ribbentrop she was basically put out to dry. she was sent to pasture and it really was a terrible moment because it was suddenly advance really. ..

ben:every single one of these agents is a communist there from her several ariend is a fellow e like-minded individuals. so do the americans, this my question to .o they have any idea that there with the communist . they suspected. ben: they never had done contact, they had a middleman to use to distance herself from this. and they believe they were sitting on spies. is an amang story really. rob: they were incredibly brave. they believe they were sitting in their own spies. what they didn't realize that erything a one was in fact working for moscow . nevermind this point, the moscow and there still in alliance with america.

you can say they're cause really. just forwarding the genal allied cause. there were one or two voices on the american side. it and on the cia side under ronald reagan. have really investigated the background ofhese peoe. it how do we know. and most of them are trade unions had been perfect, by the nasi regime and had gone into exile. and ty were kind o left-wing party didhey knew they were unionized. but what they didn't know is they were all guiding world communist in order to have each one of those extraordinary monts read and provide the cil union withut a key piece of technology. the americans had developed f become a walkie-talkie to them as known as a different system.

named doctor airlfriend of two americans who inventedt. this was a way that spies on the ound could communicate in real time with airplanes fing overhead. it is a revolutnary piece of chnology. in these size, they cried into bein. and until you had, this incredible piece of sort of spying technology. in that respect, as they were later do with the atomic weapons, enormous jump on the technology thanks to ursula our unit. rob: bolts are subject, the famous nuclear spy. can you tell us about their collaboration in traps, how important was ursula to the soviet development of the rapid

soviet delopment. ben: let m paint you a little picture of where we are. in switzerland, to britain . essentially she will joiner family and in reality become the single most important soviet intelligence agencies in the country. she's not col. theed army but she's also is an lives in a tiny rural haml. it's very beautiful vy quiet . she makes cakes a now has three children by her husband. anwould've met o ordinar women along countryside. in fact, in the back garden, in e privy, the outside toilet, she builds a very powerful radio transmitter when she was sitng secrets to soviet moscow. prince was most important but e was running a home network. the british atomic weapons

program party to so once sheas finally out of the countryside she was often goingo meet people. the germanhysicist. who also secret communist who believed that he'd been done fair, the britain and america were developg sonic weapons. but not sharing it. if it is a very sime, very naïve philosophy if you like. when he was handing over really the crown jewels of the atomic are . comes up with like 570 pages of documents relating to really how to build an atomic weapon. their cplicated. so she would take them actually put them in a drop site party which believe it or not,as a llow trade, three trees beyond the crossroads. outse of the village and there they wou be pked up b her's soviet handyman.

and in from london. d when the soviets, they moved from britain to the mhattan project in america. when h did so, they handed him over to another controller to new york. and when the soviets in 1949, to the astonishment of the west, the consolation of washingto down to missus burton, onef the most extraordinary aspects of that story. rob: so eventually that is how the americans played into this. and it is crucial part. ben: absolutely buried in ratifications in theontinue still. the rning of the active spying.

for the west it was just laughter but it was a triumph for soviet espionage. was eraordinarily of way to penetrate and both sidesf the atlantic part in right to the heart oft. wouldn't sayhey develop their own atomic weon. my suspicion is that would've done it. they hav scientists on their side and they wer quite advanced. what are they done soar. i'm absolutely convinced . and we can debate forev what the long-term implications of that work. ursula herself argued that. but in a way b stealing the atomic secrets from one se to the other, they had created this balance of power eas and west so neither side would use tha atomic weapon. there were voices within the american administration. they were argui that with the

american weapons was developed in on what they could been use in japan and also the soviet union. should be a one-sided war. well, imagine for the world would've bee like if that had happened. america first, with an as t only atomic power the world. m not sur how comfortable the world that would be to live in. i'm not supporting for communism but i'm saying the effects of this of this distracon, maybe that kt the world safer. rob: i think the last point, lucas, she kinds of this adulteries avenger rooting for her when she spying on the japanese or the gmans. in this sometimes you find yourself turned around. she spying on the british. and then americans.

at one point, she seriously considers murdering her lifelong nanny, the woman who served her family loyally for decades because she had a little bit too much about ursula's activity. my queion is to use this creditid she change in the course of h life. or did she say the same while the circumstances the world around her changed. ben: she remains committed and that she had serious doubts about it later. and yet she herself changed. we are consistent in our behaviors but the moment you allude to really is the moment when the commissions between her private and emotional and personal life and her political and secret life collide head-on

because as you say, the nanny had brought up her own children. it should come across ursula when she was wondering what ursula was up to and feeling that she was about to be commanded by her she tries to deep infantry drinker. she was on person in ursula's life in this antagonizing moment where she and her husband - the thought in the spanish-american war. they discuss whether they had to liquidate the nanny. and thank god they can't do it. and in the end it was humanely, she had a gun to anybody is it. she would've been at the forefront of it. but she was not a prude. but that an expected to produce moral thing. that somehow kind of black and white moral fable their goodies and baddies. in goodies when in the baddies loose. in the somehow, if they can give

us a lesson in civics. and actually history is not like that. espionage is not like that. this made up of fascinating chains. the sort of those people, she's not one done conventional plastic person buried should not a female james bond person. she's complicated, sort of well she is a product of history. in defending her. or more of what i like to condemn her. but a book that would somehow explains her tries to explain communism was like to experience the life of a single woman. right to his camps again. rob: and again the book's "agent sonya" and i recomnd it to ever person out there. it's a wonderful book targeted let's go to the q&a from our listeners today but no mind. and i m take the opportunity

just a couple more questions myself. thanks souch. so richard ramsey, he would like to know i think it's a good question. so has russia acknowledged agent sonja, and they done anything to deny her activities. can you tell u something about that prey to. be the ultimate the second question only culturally. east germany, the reinvented herself as someone else. and she d write a memoir. her ownemoir whi wor presented to the sort o east geany: s. and it said thatou can't possibly publish this. far too muchut your love life and far t muc about persona things. they took out all of the most interesting stuff. d he was allowed to publi

what remained. what remained was rlly kind of a propaganda thing. ke being the star in the tremendous affected the orinal manuscript. and i had access to those archives. one of the pages was being able to write about what they didn't want you to know about. so she was not only in her lifetime, and o course they said at the beginning, a huge shock to her family. they had aolutely no idea. it was published later. it was known in these communist circle, put upon her death, emerged to say this woman was a heroine in the siet union. so they have begun to acknowledge her. they have begin to celebrate her. the book is going to become a published in russian which is a huge surprise me.

you can probably speculate but this one will come out and brush in our unit it is a complicated history. it's not a simple o simple hero. she's much more complicated departed theyave acknowledged her. butot enough i'm sorry to say to allow me free access to her archives in mcow. which may come eventually. but not very soon i don't think. rob: richard ramsey has a really good questn. what was ursula's life like after the war argued i fnd this portions of the book to be fascinating. how did this by retire . ben: the astonishing thing is that what is, i will give it awayo the listeners but there's a moment of escape. she does get out.

she risin germany. soviet spying is something tough to get into but even harder to get out of. you don't just walk away from it t she did . she just washed her hands of it. she said i don't want anything more to do with this. she did come under suspicion targeted she was suspected at one point. but she survived all of that. and she completely reinvented herselfs someone aspirin she began louisiana. she adopted aet name and she began to wte novels for children. children's fiction. and sheighly successful. she sold hundreds of thoands of copies name and describe was as the east german, and sol so any copies. andhe was more famoushan the children nellis then she er

became as a spy. she reinvented herself. itut had to be done ideological of the skills begin to fall from price. there are several ents that took place during her retirement from espionage. the invasio of hungary, and in 1968 these moments in soviet union was even moreepressive . for her it was a terrible thing. the discovery, whenhe fou out the sheer scale of the carnage and all of the people that she knew. any people she knew and loved most interesting world. they were liquidated. it was terrible momentor her. but she, basicallyecided i didn't d this for him. it did it for an idea, and even

in the '90s she was saying that i feel the nee and that cause. like any oldommunists, she looks back and she says, it is not counism, it is the people who wereeing brought about in the wro way. it is the people of the idea. those often, this defense that the communists have come up th. rob: often said the 20s and 30s, audiology really committed communists would say ings like you cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs talking with the lives of two or $3m victims. so sonja at least was able to somehow come to a realization later in lif ben: i think she was. i think sheelt deeply troubled what she was in buried of a troubled by fact that she survived. i think she had a certain survivor's guilt. but she often asked herself.

about how and why she had bn spared with so any others attitude. ben. most of her colleues didn't rvive. as a jew and as a spy, she was a triple suspect. those were t absolute targets. the speculating that only did sh never denounce anyone else, she was ner asked herself. that's interesting. because that was a currey if you like, of survival. he survived in russia by saying that i'm is sent. but that personal my neighbors or my brother-in-law or even like my family. you survived by selling someone's out . she never denoce anyone or herself. she was able t inspire quite extraordinary loyalty among her friends and family. rob: we have a question from basil . a good question for you

then. of all the spies that you read about which you think was the most clever. which was your favorite. and she wants to know that she ves writing . ben: thank you. okay which was my favorite. it still, annie chapman. and it was zigzag. proper corrupt. it he was an absolute professional condominium tracker. and he was by the germans, and he was highly trained by them. as a gman spy. an immediate entrant to immediately swap signs winr to the british and saidill i will fight against the germans. it is a tremendously bad person and all sorts o ways. but is a wonderful proper crook if you will. as the germans won the war, he kind of set me off in a way in

the story. he was the most clever, well king sylvie was . good at this. we were talking earlier about infinity to remember compounds d remember these places. nobody did it better than him. he was really good at it. to coin the phrase. you probably have to ask ursula . to control life and your family a risk like that. the taste of rare or wrong type of courage . with looking for this, the one that i wrote before also spi for a dozen years deep inside the casey gb. it then takes bravery. inside of the city knowing that any moment one tap on the shoulder coming to be arrested and tortured and kled. for sheer steel bravery.

rob: we have a question from richard go bus print how much intelligence provided contribute to the victory at the battle. if you wish to broaden that. you said that ursula intel was really valued. didn't often get down to the level of the operation and field. did ursula really spies talk about materially impact. ben: that's a really good question. one that is still a debated to the extent to which the soviets espionage system inside of germany, the purity also to the soviet strategy in the backfield. endlessly debated it. i'm not really an expert on that. ursula was gathering information. she was not actually gathering herself. she was nothing and line.

so in these twists in the career of she was the radio operator of that time. she knew the value of which she was sending. i actually saw that at that point as being a role i would argue that there wasn't a material impact. and they were also able to get to build off of and inside this disposition, that was incredibly useful for stalin, the fascinating thing about stalin was that he didn't really have spies. he tended to disbelieve because he was paranoid and extraordinary person, he tended to disbelieve the intentions that he was receiving. and also richard sergey ended up in japan give the operations

which was really ignored by stalin. because he just didn't trust the spies. i always thought it was a great example of that and extraordinary amount of material was being sent from the british spies in britain before during and after the war, but such good quality that stalin and his analyst believed the untruth. it's one of the great sort of spy stories in history ended up in stalin's wastepaper basket because he didn't really tst the spies. to see go back into the balance the. rob: quick question. how did you come up with their children how would you describe them. ben: is fascinating really. to the three children are still alive. two sons, one in his 80s, and one in early 90s. and i found the telephone book.

that's also kind of how these things happen. he tour around enough, you find them and approach them with some trepidation. both of the sons came to me talking with her mother. the older son was at the university at that point. in his early 20s. and then later, under the german regime sprayed they were both dyslexic right in the joy that lofgren and they were very proud of their mother. adam wondered how well they would be to a british writer to say right, i'm going to write about your mother. although geographies as you know, will they were understandably very suspicious. that didn't quite know what was going on. they got both of them and after a while, got to meet both of them. i went to see them several times.

they became really very generous in the end. because it turned out to be wonderful sources that you would always want in a story like this. we would love to see what you write help yourself. and we think you've made a factual mistake we will let you know. otherwise, it for over this time, it's up to you. most people descendents of somebody, want to control have their own family myths about what happened. we'll do this life. we can look back in our lives we frame them in a certain way. ursula had told him stories eventually, she didn't do it very willingly. but she began to about her espionage career. in this mythology area. it's i think over time, somebody could say to her, actually and at one point, the way it happened. integrate credit instead of saying, well it's our family,

our mother . will play with trade this. that isn't the way it happened. and they will tell me and it was actuly extraordinary and there were incredibly generous. rob: i will be quoting that for th rest of my life. my thank you for that one. we have william craig, a good estion i think. a little far, where they all based on political ideals and she could pay paid for her spying. ben: very interesting. it is actually very good question. because it is the truth that's very seldom acknowledged. most is bas on money. i've never come across a spy who didn't say, i'm doing this for a higher calling. or because've never come across despite is much more next that. they do spy for most reasons but most spypies for material

gain. they don't want to admit it but that is the rlity. and of course they didn't really do that, they didn't pay off very well. at that point the same would be true, ofhe opposite class. th didn't do it for money. they did it out of belief. but nonetheless, money ishat oils the wheels of ts operation. in ursula, would hundred was paid enough to allow her and her mother to keep going in wartime pris. she about why they spped paying her. the great and mighty intelligence, havg in fact god the wrong drop site. the money the wrong tree. then she was paid or had she never profited it. there's no question that she did not do it from until your again.

di she use the money neede undoubtedly. it didn't make rich, certainly not credit. rob: one last question presented question . talked about her son's. but what happened to other members of the extendedamily during the war . did ty survive. i think for example,er brother was scholar and a prolific writer. turned up thousands of particles in the course of his life would happen to him. ben: the entire family but her immediate family had gotten out of nothing germany just in time. they were absolutely targets for the gestapo. it they were had their house ransacked and their fathers came to britain and the mother took the children and the girls, five women and get them out. and they had already moved to britain. and they became british. it most of the family most of the daughters and family married englishmen.

their families are still in london. where am talking to you from. in fact, if we went back to east germany, he had also was a paid agent. he has espied story as well. he was providing the intelligence to the soviet union right from the beginning. including some very important american information. he was right in the heart of it as well. and he did that until the end of his life. in his two eldest ended up back in east germany. and they became this great, he was mad and difficult and the rest remains in britain . so you have this british part of the story. in the very german part of the story as well. in a very tragic part story because there were extended family and almost all the rest of the extended family were

rounded off into the holocaust. so ursula was determination to battle the fascism came from t heart. it came fm what she had seen ppen to her family. rob: we have come to the end of ouhour together. and unfortunately, i know that integrates. i know that readers are going to love this is located ... ... much for spending time tooth today. book t in prime time starts now. first chef alice waters and food labor research director offered their thoughts on the

food system in the united states. in former appellateudge douglas ginsburg looks of the constitution to the eyes of judges, leg scholars and historians. also ts evening former president barack obama reflects on his life and political caree career. open markets institute director sally hubbard looks at the history of monopolies in american industry and economics professors david rose argues more belie and culture are essential to a thriving society. find more schedule information about tv.org o consult your program guide. here's a discussion on america's food system. ♪ ♪ welcome everyone to berkeley unbound. the bay area book a civil date log many festive big ideas. the graphic epic time of crisis impossibility. how communities will reshape them