Partsch noted that both books are very much concerned with Sorge's womanizing (which neither author exaggerated), but presented this aspect of his personality in different ways. Kirst portrayed Sorge's womanizing as part of the same self-destructive urges that led him to spy for the Soviet Union, while Meissner depicted Sorge's womanizing as part of his callous narcissism, and as his principal weakness, as his Desire for Kiyomi finally destroys him. In turn, this led to different depictions of the male body. Meissner portrayed the male body as the seductive instrument that entices female Desire, and led women into ill-advised relationships with Sorge, whose body is perfectly fit and attractive to women. Kirst by contrast, correctly notes that Sorge walked with a pronounced limp due to a war wound, which he has Sorge sarcastically say was due to his "gallantry", and in his book, Sorge's wounded body served as a metaphor for his wounded soul. Partsch further commented that Meissner's book is a depoliticized and personalized account of the Sorge spy ring as he omitted any mention of Hotsumi Ozaki (an idealistic man who sincerely believed his country was on the wrong course), and he portrayed Sorge as a "Faustian man" motivated only by his Vanity to exercise "a god-like power over the world", giving Sorge "an overblown, pop-Nietzschen sense of destiny". The ultimate "message" of Meissner's book was that Sorge was an amoral, egoistical individual whose actions had nothing to do with ideology, and that the only reason why Germany was defeated by the Soviet Union was due to Sorge's spying, thereby suggests Germany lost the war only because of "fate". Meissner followed the "great man" interpretation of history with few "great men" deciding the events of the world with everyone else reduced to passive bystanders. By contrast, Kirst pictured Sorge as a victim, as a mere pawn in a "murderous chess game", and emphasized Sorge's opposition to the Nazi regime as motivation for his actions. Kirst further noted that Sorge was betrayed by his own masters as after his arrest, the Soviet regime denounced him as a "Trotskyite", and made no effort to save him. Partsch concluded that the two rival interpretations of Sorge put forward in the novels by Meissner and Kirst in 1955 have shaped Sorge's image in the West, especially Germany, from the time of their publication to the present.