Caught in the Turmoil of History

Branko Vukelic may not be well known outside his home country, but he certainly should be.

That's because Branko was a spy, part of the famous Soviet secret espionage group based in Tokyo and led by Richard Sorge. They were spying on Japan and Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s. After discovering evidence of Hitler's plans to launch an attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, and that the Japanese authorities had decided to direct their attention away from the Soviet borders toward Indochina and the Pacific, Sorge's group sent word back to Moscow. This news arrived just in time for Stalin to deploy fresh troops from the country's far eastern border and halt Germany's rapid advance toward Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

Not only did this shatter Hitler's belief in his army's invincibility, it also changed the course of World War II.

While Branko and his espionage work are central to this narrative, this book also focuses on his entire Jewish-Croatian family whose several members committed heroic deeds and often risked everything-including their lives-in their quest to create a better world. Key players include Branko's mother, Vilma, a women's rights advocate and a highly regarded chronicler of late nineteenth century life in southeastern Europe; his younger brother, Slavko, who also served as a Soviet spy, and who fell victim of the Soviet Great Terror in the 1930s; Branko's second wife, Yoshiko, who defied her repressive Japanese culture to support her husband; and Ive, his anti-fascist brother-in-law, imprisoned by both fascist and communist security services at the end of WWII in Yugoslavia. They were all caught up in some of the most tumultuous events of modern history.