Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice, a martin Foundation of Elkhart celebrating the Spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Ursula's story reflects the great battles of World War Two, Communism, fascism and the Western democracies.

Ursula or Sonya influenced the course of the Cold War.

We'll get to that.

Let's welcome my guest, Doug Farmwald, who knows how to get things done, too.

Welcome.

Thank you, Gail.

Pleasure to be here.

You're a very busy person.

You know, maybe any of us that are coming and going, people wonder what are they really doing?

You know, just so busy.

And--an-- and so what did you think of the book?

I mean, just a broad--.

It was really a surprising book.

And Sonya or Ursula Kaczynski, Agent Sonya, is really an interesting character.

And what I guess surprising, if anything, was how much of what we think of now as spy novels as fiction took place for real in the book.

Yes, exactly.

These are all real characters in this book.

And there's many details, but they're pleasant to read because they're eye opening.

And then you go, 'Oh, now I know why we're having problems in, you know, Russia and Ukraine today'.

Right.

None of these problems ar-- they have deep roots.

They have very deep roots.

I just find it fascinating and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book.

So let's talk about what you've decided to prepare for the Spy Woman.

Well, I thought appropriately to make an authentic Russian stroganoff.

We've all had sort of the high school cafeteria version, you know, hamburger and cream of mushroom soup.

It's actually a much, much better dish.

Very simple to prepare, but very, very satisfying.

So we're going to do a more traditional beef stroganoff.

Good.

And you're going to serve that on potatoes.

And potatoes, which is traditional in Russia.

All right.

And then we're going to also do some sipping, aren't we?.

I brought some ingredients.

We'll make a cocktail called the spy catcher.

Oh, the spy catcher.

Oh, good.

Can't wait.

So to add to that, I am going to do a cabbage salad.

It is ubiquitous in--in the Central European and the Asian countries.

And so I'm going to make it with chopped cabbage, carrots and little cucumbers and toss it with some mayonnaise.

Very simple.

Lots of salt and pepper, though.

And it's a satisfying, satisfying salad to serve with the stroganoff.

And also, I'm going to make some ham and cheese sandwiches because that would have been very typical.

I wanted to find some black bread or dark brown bread, but alas, I couldn't find any of that.

So you're going to get started on yours and I'm going to get started on my salad here.

And you know what, Doug?

Instead of chopping a cabbage, head of cabbage here, I did buy packaged cabbage.

And that's very nice.

Well, and I did the same thing.

The potatoes I bought pre shredded so that we don't have to shred them here on--in the studio.

But they work just as well as if you shred them at home.

If you have a food processor, you can run it through the food processor and do them really quickly at home as well.

But for this I brought--.

Well and then you have to soak them in water and then carry the water here.

I mean, so we try to make it easy and accessible.

So what would you--what do you think about the young people getting attracted, becoming attracted to communism in the thirties?

I mean, how did that start?

Well, it even started up before the thirties, Herschel talks about it in the twenties.

I'm going to go ahead and grab my steak and start slicing that.

Okay.

But even in the twenties, Ursula was attracted by communism and I think much of that is due to what happened immediately preceding that in the First World War, which was sort of her childhood.

So and she--it was tough going.

Now she is German, but she spies for the Soviets.

Right.

Because after World War One, Germany kind of split.

You had a far right and a far left and--.

Very few in between.

And very little in between.

A lot of that was due to the economics of the Weimar Republic and the reparations that Germany had to pay for the war.

But if you were a Jewish family, there was very little to attract you to the far right.

Oh, yes, exactly.

And that left the you know, the far left.

And so while it may be hard for us with a post-Cold War lens to sort of understand what would have motivated her at the time, if you can look at it a little bit more through her eyes, it makes a lot more sense.

Good point.

And when she was sixteen, she was marching in an anti-government parade.

She got smacked by a German carrying a--what, a big--what do you call that, like a cudgel?

A truncheon, yes.

Light nightstick.

And that just sort of set her on this.

Why am I defending my country?

Right.

When they sicced the cops on me.

Yes.

And that, from her point of view, makes perfect sense.

So many young people were affected by this.

And she had friends that did join the Communist Party.

In her early life, Ursula is--she comes from a well known family.

They had the largest library of anybody in Germany, and they were intellectuals.

But they all were--now, we say, left leaning and everybody goes, 'Oh', you know.

But sh-- her family was all concerned about the freedom of the individual, the freedom of the individual, but the individual being helped as well.

Right.

And so there was a focus on equality, one, on making sure that--that everyone had at least the bare necessities.

And so she--she does marry a young man named Rudi.

Rudolph Hamburger.

And that is a sort of an interesting name.

But anyway, they--.

He's an architect.

He's an architect.

And they moved to Shanghai and he's going to be building some things there.

And then she sees all the--the restrictions on people, particularly the Chinese.

There's the French section, there's the English, the American, maybe the German section.

And everybody is against the Chinese and they treat them like they are just--.

Like--like any other colonial.

Yes.

Right.

It wasn't really any different than any of the colonies in Africa or--.

Right.

Or elsewhere in the Far East, like French Indo-China, there was very much the Europeans got to run things as they wish.

As they wish.

And this, they've been fighting this and and overcoming the results of this kind of activity for a long time.

So she and her family, she actually convinces her brothers and her father to sort of join the Communist Party with--with her.

And they're going to receive, you know, full acceptance by everybody.

But it's not that easy.

She goes to China with Rudi and she meets an American woman who had just published a novel.

It slips my mind, the name of it, but she was Agnes Smedley.

And she became probably one of the most, oh, one of the most notorious spies in the world.

And she kind of--.

Right.

She was more propagandist.

Yes.

Than anything else.

But she was the one who introduced Ursula to Spycraft.

Yes.

And--and Ursula was really pulled in because this Agnes wrote a book and she was connected.

She was intelligent.

So the two coming together, Agnes was a little older.

And here we go.

Sonya or Ursula is pulled into the movement, in the spy kingdom by Agnes.

By Agnes'.

Smedley.

Well, and more specifically by Agnes' at that time lover, Richard Sorge.

Richard Sorge.

I never heard of him.

And now I know he's the model for for James Bond.

James Bond.

Even Ian Fleming said that this is the most formidable spy in history was Richard Sorge.

And after Agnes introduced Richard to Ursula, they became lovers, which create a certain tension between Agnes and .rsula?

Yes, indeed, indeed.

But, you know, he had a way with women.

He he loved his motorcycle.

He would take them my motorcycle rides.

And, you know.

He was noted for boozing it up in Shanghai.

He was noted for boozing it up in Shanghai, which at that time was noted for boozing it up.

Okay.

Okay.

Not now, though, unless it's all in in the dark now.

So anyway, this is the beginning of our spy's life, Sonya.

Slowly she gets pulled in, and before you know it, she is a spy.

Right.

Because at first she was just sort of storing papers or things and taking notes and, you know, just serving as a lookout and not really doing too much of anything.

But yeah, very gradually got pulled a little deeper and deeper into actual spy craft.

And her family never knows this.

I don't know if they did.

She in this book, it's never revealed.

But they are in sympathy with her life and her goals and her thoughts and her-her brother--her sisters.

They--They don't get involved.

Her brother, her older brother, Juergen, he, I think was involved.

When he was very much an academic leftist.

He was.

Yes.

And like their father.

So anyway, we have all this going on and we have Sonya became--becomes the head of the operation in China.

And that is an amazing leap, isn't it?

Yes.

And--And kind of unexpected.

She didn't set out on this as a career path or anything.

No, she wasn't sure what she was going to be.

And she had a son named Michael.

Well, she had three kids.

She had three by three different men.

They were all having to do with where she was spying.

And who her partner was at the time.

At the time.

But her sons later on in their nineties, they talk about--they never complain about their mother, whom they didn't see very much, as you can well imagine.

And at one point, she went to Russia to study spycraft for six months and left the kids at home.

Well, with her, his parents, they were in a chateau in Czechoslovakia.

Right.

So it wasn't they were they were not on the street.

They were in pretty good place and had a nanny.

These children never knew who--what their mother was, where she was or what was happening.

But the nanny knew all along.

Olga Muth.

Olga Muth.

She--she competed with the mother for the children's, you know,w bringing up.

Yeah, she wrote.

And she more or less raised Ursula.

Yes, she did.

And then raised Ursula's children.

Yes.

For, well, at least the first two.

And we have to take a moment here to move to the next segment.

But you know what?

I just want to make sure everybody gets to see some pictures of Agnes and Richard and Rudy and Ursula before she takes on spying as a full time career.

And we'll be back.

Doug and I are talking about Ben McIntyre's agent, Sonya, and she's our heroine.

And tell us what you've been doing.

Well, I sauteed some mushrooms and this is not canned mushrooms.

You want to use fresh, sauteed them and some butter and a little white wine, put them off the heat so we don't cook them down all the way.

We don't want them limp.

Right, right.

We sauteed some onions and again, we're not going to caramelize them.

We just want to get them.

So the sugars start to convert a little bit and then we're going to put in the beef.

I tossed--I sliced that very thinly and you want to slice it across the grain.

That makes it more tender.

I want to put that in there after tossing it with some flour.

Yeah.

And we're going to brown that.

Yes.

For a few minutes and then we're going to make the sauce.

And you have a nice pot of potatoes here.

Just some shoestring potatoes.

And they're kind of ready.

We're just going to keep them warm.

I have finished my salad that we'll serve.

I'm going to make some sandwiches and I'm making them for Ursula because often she was on her bicycle going out into the country to retrieve messages left in trees or meet another agent.

And she had to keep herself going.

And her children, she probably made sandwiches for them before she left.

They would go for a family picnics and they like to walk.

They called their residents in Switzerland the molehill, and they like to go out and walk the hills.

Yes, and she brings us these children, like you said, she's compartmentalized.

She's compartmentalized all her life.

She's a mother.

When she's a mother, full time mother.

When she's a spy, she's full time.

The kids said sometimes they couldn't imagine why she'd be napping when they got home from school.

She'd spent all night sending messages on the wireless.

So she--she just, sort of, is amazing.

It was hard on the kids because even afterwards, they all had long lives and very successful lives.

So I suppose one could argue that, well, it must not have been all that bad, but in the interview and the kids helped the author with this book, so they were part of it.

Michael, the oldest child, said, 'You know, if she had ever gotten to the point where she had to choose between her spy work and her kids, I don't know what she would have chosen'.

She was devoted to her spy work, and that's why she was such a good spy.

And we wanted to talk, too, about the third man that she meets.

And.

Oh, yes, he he's the Czech and they--they they're spying together in Czechoslovakia.

And they might even go to--.

Poland.

They went to Poland after--after Shanghai.

Right, before the war started.

They weresSpying on--on the Germans and on--on the Poles for the Russians.

Yes.

So see, she had so many signals to watch and catch.

In the meantime, the nanny thinks she'd be a better mother and then she doesn't, like, what, that Sonia is gone all the time.

So she wants to reveal to the authorities what her boss is doing.

At one point, actually does.

Yes.

And she babbles so they can't understand her.

This is in Switzerland and they dismiss her.

They get rid of her, thankfully so.

And again, this is where sometimes, you know, you look at this and think, well, this is just a sort of James Bond stuff.

But it is.

Well, sometimes it's also kind of Inspector Clouseau stuff.

Because Olga Muth walks into the British embassy and denounces Ursula as a Soviet spy.

And the official at the British embassy says 'Who's this crazy foreign lady?

I don't know what she's saying.

Get her out of here'.

Yes.

So then Sonya's saved.

And she's saved.

So there's so much going on in this book.

And we do want to talk about her encounter.

Well, then she goes off to England and she marries another man.

He's a bit younger.

And is another dashing young man, in his right.

A veteran of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

So someone also long term dedicated to the leftist cause.

And they have a child.

And he is interviewed at the end when the author writes this book and he seems to be well adjusted.

They all lived to ripe old ages and--.

He was more just in it for adventure.

He wasn't necessarily ideologically motivated the way Ursula was.

She was so motivated.

He just thought about it as, Well, this is--this is good fun'.

Well, and then she goes off to England and I'm leaving off some steps here in Switzerland.

But they love being in Switzerland with the children.

And then she--she is with Len Burton and they are in England and she tries to get, you know, protection in England, takes a while because they aren't sure about her, they know about her but they aren't sure.

They know that officially and Len and Ursula even agree that the marriage is a sham.

It's just so she can get British identity papers.

And she does get them.

And she does, although they do eventually fall in love.

So it started out as a sham, but didn't end up that way.

And all her family, most all of them get into Britain as well.

And so there we are.

And oh, there's just so much more to say.

We talked about the fact that she was so put out with the Russians after she realizes that, well, Stalin doesn't care about the people.

He doesn't care.

I think there's another one in power just like that.

He doesn't care about his people.

If it takes a million to kill, we'll kill them.

Regardless of the labels.

It's about personal power.

Personal power.

Here, now that we've got the beef brown, we're going to deglaze the pan with some white wine.

Yes.

Oh, lovely deglazing.

And I get all that--.

You want to have this--.

Brown stuff off the bottom.

You want to have the meat sort of like cooked quickly?

You want to cook it quickly, which is why you want to cut it soon.

So we're going to deglaze it with some white wine.

We're going to add a cup of beef broth.

And a teaspoon of onion powder.

And a couple tablespoons of tomato paste.

And there's really not much to this recipe.

It's very simple and very simple.

I'm sorry.

I didn't hear this.

Mustard powder.

Mustard powder.

And I love this.

I do like tomato sauce in it, too, because it's such a waste buying these tiny little cans because that dries up if you don't use it right away.

But, you know, I also was very interested in her meeting Klaus in England before they move on.

This Klaus guy.

You said he was a scientist.

A physicist, noted physicist.

And he left Germany.

He's and he gets involved with the British building a bomb.

A big bomb.

Mm hmm.

And when does Ursula hear about that?

Well, at one point, Klaus Fuchs simply walks into the Russian embassy and says, more or less, 'You guys ought to know about us.

We're allies.'

and hands them a big file on what he's doing with the British on what they called their Tube Alloys project, which was the origins of the atomic bomb before it moved to America and became the Manhattan Project.

And even Klaus comes to America and he's working there.

And continues feeding information back, although not through Ursula back then.

Yes.

And so when she hears about this, she thinks, 'Well, this is only right.

We can't have one group having the bomb without the other'.

That's how Russia got the bomb.

And she she kind of maybe didn't pass the messages on, but she certainly made sure that Klaus was where he was supposed to be.

She was a spymaster.

She--she told these spies what to do.

She had evolved, right.

She had evolved from being back in Shanghai just the look out to, in Banbury, and later, a great wall right in England was the leader of the network.

And, you know, the thing that Doug and I were talking about, none of her--what her agents or her bosses ever revealed her, turned on her.

She kept their respect and their loyalty.

Even during the Stalinist purges.

None of her compatriots in the GRU turned her in or--.

And many of them were killed by Stalin.

And he certainly either thought, was she just a quiet little housewife?

I'm not going to worry about her, but that's how she got through this.

And it's like we say, this is a true story.

And is that gorgeous, Doug?

So.

Right.

So we've got one who browned the beef.

We add some beef broth and white wine, and we're going to cook that down a little bit.

And you just cook it until you get the beef just tender as you like it.

So it usually takes five minutes or so.

Yeah.

And you need to taste it while you're going.

This is great.

I just love what you're preparing and it smells so good.

Oh, that's.

Nice and rich and hearty.

And the only real seasoning on it, and this is a point we put it in, is some salt and pepper.

Right.

And the salt just brings out the richness of the beef and the broth.

Yes.

They didn't add all these fancy herbs.

And, you know, I do like adding herbs.

I'm very much in favor of it.

But this is a simple food that is good and good quality and good food.

And gosh, that sounds like a motto.

And so beautiful.

You're going to take a taste.

That's coming up pretty good.

Good, good, good.

Stick around.

We're going to be doing some more here.

You know, after the war is over, what happens to Ursula?

Germany is divided, isn't it?

East Germany is--.

And her brother Juergen goes back to East Germany to try to build his worker's paradise that he's fantasized about for decades.

So the Russians control East Germany.

Some of you know this, some of you don't.

And who is one of the controllers in East Germany who has his own troupe, his own spies?

Yes.

Well, at one end, eventually, her first husband, Rudy, comes back into it because she got him involved.

Now, he didn't have quite as good luck.

He ended up in the gulag, you know.

But then after the war, he comes back.

But the one who is doing the orchestrating in East Germany is named Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin was a KGB colonel.

Yes.

So you see how he has all this background and we don't have this background and he wants to make up for any punishment that came to Russia.

Oh, my goodness.

We have some more things here to do.

We're going to finish our food.

We're going to invite you to our dinner.

We're feeding good spies, aren't we?

I'm just taking a little bit of the pan juice.

We're going to put that in the sour cream to warm it before we put it in.

That will help it be a little extra creamy..

I forgot about that sour cream.

That is what the whole stroganoff is.

It's developed by a Russian.

A Russian count.

Well, at one point it was the Stroganoffs were the richest family purportedly in Czarist Russia.

So that's what we're eating today, isn't it?

We have white Russians, red Russians.

We have communists.

We have we have a fascist, we have the eastern western democracies.

And this still lives today in Europe.

And I always say history wasn't really that long ago.

It wasn't that long ago.

We're going to finish our preparations.

We're going to invite you to our clandestine secret dinner and we're going to celebrate some of these people.

Stay with us.

And let's take a look at the menu here.

So, Doug, what are we going to sip?

Well, actually, we're going to shoot.

This is a spy catcher.

Oh, which is two parts Canadian whiskey and one part Sambuca.

All right.

To your health.

Yes.

I can't do it as well as you do.

Well, I've had more practice.

But, you know, spy catcher.

It might catch your spy.

You know, we have too many of them.

Or enough.

So anyway, we have this delicious meal.

Tell us about your dish.

It's a traditional, traditional Russian beef stroganoff using good beef, fresh mushrooms served over potatoes.

The noodles that we're used to is an American variation of it.

All right.

So this is the real stroganoff.

You can go to our website to get the recipe.

Right?

And we have some slaw here.

I call it sort of like spice slaw.

And we have some sandwiches if you're a spy and you need to take them along on where you're going to meet somebody.

There you go.

And we have these wonderful drinks.

Doug, thank you so much.

It's been fun.

Adding so much to the program, as you always do.

And I've always liked it because I always end up reading books that I would not have chosen otherwise, and I've always enjoyed them.

Good.

I'm glad to hear that.

And remember, good food, good food, good food and good books, good books and good friends make for a very, very good life and good sambuca.

Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and the Alice, a martin Foundation of Elkhart celebrating the Spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.