Whittaker Chambers

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Whittaker Chambers

Jay Vivian "Whittaker" Chambers (born April 1, 1901 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † July 9, 1961 in Westminster , Maryland ) was an American writer and editor and Communist agent and informant. He was a representative of American McCarthyism in the early 1950s and became known for his testimony against Alger Hiss .

Chambers remains a contradicting historical figure. Most historians view him ambiguously: depending on the political orientation of the observer, he was either a "hero" or a "liar".

Youth and education

Chambers was in Philadelphia ( Pennsylvania born). Shortly thereafter, the family moved to New York . He grew up mainly on Long Island and Brooklyn . In his autobiography Witness , he described his parents as stuffy. Chambers described himself as a loner; his childhood was mostly unhappy. After graduating from high school in 1919, he worked in a bank for two years. In 1921 he enrolled at Columbia University . Lecturers later recalled that he was a talented but sloppy, undisciplined student and rarely attended lectures. According to Chambers' claims in Witness , he was more interested in the downfall of the West; other matters seemed insignificant to him. Certainly this topic was widely discussed right after the First World War. Like Oswald Spengler , Chambers believed that the “civilization of the West” was over. In 1922 he was expelled from the university. Some sources suggest that he wrote a blasphemous play; others say the reason was a lack of attendance at lectures. At Columbia University, Chambers discovered the works of Karl Marx and Lenin . The Russian Revolution was very topical back then, in 1921. Chambers soon decided that communism was the only right way to go.

The American Communist Party

Chambers worked in a mine for two years. In 1925 he became a member of the Communist Party of America . He has written articles and edited communist magazines such as the Daily Worker and The New Masses . To supplement his uncertain and irregular salary, translated Chambers who spoke German, in 1927 the children's book Bambi by Felix Salten into English. Chambers was employed by Clifton Fadiman at Simon & Schuster and got regular work as a translator.

In 1932 Chambers began working in the communist underground. The following year he was sent to Moscow for intelligence training . Back in America, he went to Washington, DC, where Josef Peters (later known as " J. Peters ") became his contact person. Chambers met Harold Ware through Peters ; Ware headed the "Ware Group", which supposedly functioned as a "Marxist discussion group" of intellectuals, but was in fact a communist spy cell. At that time Alger Hiss was working for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration , which supported the US farmers. Chambers organized communists in Washington and acted as a courier of stolen documents between New York City and Washington. He did so until 1938 when he left the party. He later claimed that Stalinism , the show trials , mass murder and the prison camps (the gulag ) had disaffected him. He also claimed that he was afraid of the party and the Soviets. Because of this, he kept a collection of documents that later became famous as the "Pumpkin Papers".

His life after the party

From 1938 onwards, Chambers turned politically to the right. He got a job with TIME magazine; rose there up to editor-in-chief. His salary was $ 30,000 (which is roughly $ 400,000 today). At TIME, Chambers was a staunch opponent of communism. Against the wishes of his editors, he sometimes tightened their articles if, in his opinion, they were too "soft" against communism. After the signing of the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union , Chambers had a conversation with Adolf Berle , the American vice foreign minister. In three hours he told him everything he knew about communist activities in America. The minutes of the conversation disappeared in the archive and were forgotten.

The process

After World War II, a new and ambitious MP in the United States House of Representatives , Richard Nixon , became aware of Chambers. On August 3, 1948, Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (Committee for Investigating Un-American (Treasonful) Activities, or HUAC). He produced a list of names. These people, Chambers said, were members of an underground communist network that operated within the US government during the 1930s and 1940s. One of the names was Alger Hiss. In 1948, Hiss was a respected man. He was the head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace); barely three years earlier he had played an important part in creating the United Nations .

Many in Congress and the press were skeptical. Hiss was an elegant, charming, well-educated man, a classic example of the "establishment". He had studied law at Harvard University and worked with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. , the famous high court judge. He had an impressive career. Chambers appeared semi-silky by comparison. He had already admitted that he had been a communist himself for several years. Chambers was fat, and his story seemed implausible and vague to most. Hiss tried to take advantage of this situation. He slandered Chambers in the press and launched a rumor that Chambers was homosexual.

At first, Hiss denied ever knowing Chambers. He later stated that he now recognized Chambers as a man he previously known as "George Crosley". Shortly afterwards, Chambers accused Hiss on a radio show of being a communist. Hiss then sued Chambers for $ 75,000. In November 1948, Chambers showed HUAC committee investigators a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm with three rolls of microfilm in it. Their contents were known as the "Pumpkin Papers" (pumpkin papers). Nixon posed with a magnifying glass and the negatives, and the photos were posted everywhere. (In the 1970s, it emerged that one reel was empty and the others contained publicly available information about fire extinguishers and lifeboats.) Hiss lost his civil suit, which also became his undoing. He swore under oath that he was never a communist.

The trial of Alger Hiss began on May 31, 1949. Any allegations of espionage would have been statute-barred, so the US Attorney's Office could only charge him with perjury. The jury could not make a unanimous decision. So there was a second trial in which the jury found Hiss guilty on January 21, 1950. Chambers had to appear and testify fourteen times. This forced him to quit his job at TIME. He became depressed and made an unsuccessful suicide attempt.

After the trial

Richard Nixon made a career through the Hiss trial. At the age of 40, he became Vice President of the United States , losing the 1960 presidential election , but winning in 1968 . Chambers did not benefit from this, and his position at TIME was never returned. He lived on his farm and wrote his autobiography Witness , published in 1952 . Its critics consider the information contained therein to be unreliable and partial to this day.

In the 1950s, he briefly served as editor-in-chief of National Review , a conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, Jr. In 1961 he died of a heart attack. His last book, Cold Friday (German: Kalter Freitag) was published posthumously in 1964 . In this book, Chambers correctly predicted the collapse of communism in the Eastern Bloc countries. In 1984 Ronald Reagan Chambers, who for the Conservatives remains a hero of the American Conservative Movement, awarded the Order of Freedom.

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personal data
SURNAME Chambers, Whittaker
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chambers, Jay Vivian (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and editor
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1961
Place of death Westminster , Maryland