Ludwig Lore

Ludwig Lore (June 26, 1875 – July 8, 1942) was an American socialist magazine editor, newspaper writer, lecturer, and politician, best remembered for his tenure as editor of the socialist New Yorker Volkszeitung and role as a factional leader in the early American communist movement. During the middle 1930s, he wrote the daily foreign affairs column "Behind the Cables" for the New York Post. Later still, he was charged with having secretly worked recruiting potential agents and gathering information on behalf of the Soviet foreign intelligence network.

Background

Ludwig Lore was born to working class parents of ethnic Jewish extraction in Friedeberg am Queis in Lower Silesia (now Mirsk, Poland) on June 26, 1875. Lore attended gymnasium in "Hirschberg, (now Jelenia Góra), also in Lower Silesia) and later graduated from Berlin University, where he studied under political economist Werner Sombart. Upon completion of his education in 1892, Lore went to work in the textile industry. He remained in that industry until emigrating to the United States in 1903. While in Germany, Lore joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of that country, holding office in the party and standing as an SPD candidate for political office. and editor-in-chief during World War I.

Lore did periodically participate in various electoral campaigns of the Socialist Party of America, such as traveling to Altoona, Pennsylvania to address a German-language street meeting in support of the November 1908 Presidential effort of Eugene V. Debs. He appeared in elections in 1914 for the Socialist Party as "Delegate-at-Large to Constitutional Convention." He was also involved in the cooperative movement as a director of the American Wholesale Cooperative Company, formed in Brooklyn in 1910 upon a capital investment of $20,000.

Lore was an early and active opponent of World War I, speaking at an anti-war meeting in New York City in August 1914 that was attended by 4,000 people. Lore shared the platform a host of other prominent socialist leaders, who condemned the war in English, Russian, French, German, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Latvian for their international immigrant audience.

Following American entry into the war, Lore remained steadfast in his opposition. On May 30 and 31, 1917, the Socialist Party organized an event in New York City touted as the First American Conference for Peace and Democracy, aimed at joining various anti-war groups into a common effort to bring a speedy end to the European conflagration. As an anti-war emigrant from the German empire, Ludwig Lore played a prominent role at this gathering, delivering a speech to the gathering at the first day's session in which he expounded upon the peace efforts being made in Germany by the Social Democratic Party to bring about immediate peace. )

Communist period

In 1917, Lore founded the bi-monthly Marxist theoretical magazine, The Class Struggle, which he edited in conjunction with Louis C. Fraina and Louis Boudin.

One historian notes: For the [New Yorker Volkszeitung] veteran, the struggle for political, electoral socialism in the United States had taken decades of self-sacrifice and many reversals. Readers of the paper had never been happy with the 'underground' mentality of the early Communist movement, because they viewed hyperrevolutionary rhetoric as the worst possible response to repression. The formation of a legal Workers Party in 1922, and the beginnings of a political campaign structure (minimal though it was), encouraged them greatly. ). James P. Cannon led the charges against Lore, which he summarized as (1) misconception of the strategy and tactics of the Communist International and (2) wrong analysis of the economic and political forces operating within the framework of present-day America. He went on to denounce him for "Loreism." (or "incurable Loreism" as Chambers put it (Cannon would continue to castigate Lore into the 1930s. ) In August 1925, the party expelled Lore.

Post-Communist period

Lore was an independent thinker who was reluctant to take political orders, a personal characteristic which made him unsuited for the increasingly centralized Communist movement of the late 1920s. In addition, his well-known personal fondness for Leon Trotsky, established during Trotsky's time living in New York, during which he wrote for The Class Struggle, made Lore an easy target for factional opponents.

In 1925, fearing proto-Trotskyist indiscipline, Lore was brought up on charges before the executive of the Workers (Communist) Party's German Language Federation. When the executive refused to expel Lore, changes were made in the composition of the body to make Lore's expulsion inevitable. Lore was expelled from the organization later that same year.

As editor of the Volkszeitung, Lore attempted what has described as a "balancing a feeling for a theoretical Marxist line with a more sensitive reading of American political culture," in which he "tried, and ultimately failed, to develop a communism that would meet the demands of the aging generation of radical German-Americans in the 1920s and 1930s."

By the end of the 1920s, the Volkszeitung had lost some of its radical edge, taking the form of a more vaguely "socialistic" labor and cultural publication, complete with wire service photos and non-political fare such as radio listings and classic literature.

In 1931, Lore gave up the editorship of the ailing Volkszeitung to become a freelance journalist.

In 1934, Lore joined the editorial staff of the New York Post (then the New York Evening Post, a newspaper whose contributors have included Walt Whitman). His last appearance was on June 3, 1942, on a Round Table program titled "Battle Front and Home Front" with Christopher T. Emmet Jr.

He left the Post in January 1942, when he "took over a special government assignment," according to the New York Times.

According to historians Haynes and Klehr, the exact date of Lore's termination by Soviet intelligence is not known and no record of him is said to be found in secret police archives after April 1937. Citing Soviet archival evidence, the historians charge that from 1934 until early 1937 Lore paid Salmon, chief of the U.S. Department of State's communication and archives division, a stipend of $500 per month in exchange for classified diplomatic communications — information then passed along to the Soviets. While it is not clear whether Salmon was aware he was providing information to a foreign government or merely leaking information for a fee to a prominent New York Post journalist, or even whether Salmon was "Willi" at all, the fact remains that for several years Soviet intelligence had unparalleled access to the secret communications of prominent diplomatic and military decision-makers through Lore's connection.

According to Haynes and Klehr, Lore's contact with Soviet intelligence seems to have been ended in 1937 owing to a belief in Moscow that Lore retained ties to the Trotskyist movement. In the superheated atmosphere of the Great Purge the Trotskyists were believed by Soviet authorities to be engaged in an international terrorist conspiracy aimed at the overthrow of the Stalin regime and Lore's purported connection cast doubt upon his loyalty and reliability. In addition, Lore was believed by his Soviet handlers to have been guilty of financial improprieties, taking the form of double-dipping for multiple monthly expense stipends. In fact, the real reason for the Soviet's termination of relationship was their discovery that Lore had cheated them about the identity of his sources at the Department of State.

"Liberal" accounts Julius Kobyakov, a Russian major general in the SVR and previously a "deputy director of the KGB's American Division in the late 1980s", adds some detail to Chambers' account, in that "Leo" began his work for Soviet intelligence in 1933, recruited by Soviet intelligence rezident Valentin Markin. In 2004, he wrote: I can refer to the case of LEO and his sub-sources: WILLIE, DANIEL and others (HW p. 34-35). The authors dutifully copied and translated odd reports from the case-file but when it came to analysis and conclusions they were not up to the task. They claim that even after it became clear that LEO was a con-man (he created fictitious sources and fabricated their reports) the KGB continued to use him for several years. In fact, after LEO's perfidy was confirmed, the Center for some time toyed with the idea of kidnapping him, either in Great Britain or in Spain, and shipping him off to Russia for interrogation, but that idea was abandoned and LEO terminated. And the authors obviously failed to recognize colorful and resourceful LEO as Ludwig Lore, former editor of the Volkszeitung and a columnist for the New York Evening Post. His path curiously crossed with that of Chambers, who mentioned him several dozen times|"Witness" pp. 201, 217, 352, 387-392, 412-413, 492. (Note: The "authors" refer to Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev.) Svetlana Chervonnaya, another Russian historian, asserts that Lore falsely claimed the high ranking functionary Salmon as his source so as to throw his Soviet handlers off the trail to the fact that he was himself rewriting information obtained from "lower level clerks at the Communications and Records Division." After enhancing the mundane information which he received with his own interpretive content, Lore then pocketed the handsome monthly stipend which was purportedly destined for the top-ranking official Salmon, Chervonnaya charges. Chervonnaya cites the published work of Julius Kobyakov as the basis for her challenge: Throughout the whole period of surveillance, he left his home only once, for four hours. For three nights running, [Lore's] study was bustling with work, with the participation of all the family members; in particular, [Lore's] wife and son were taking turns at the typewriter typing something. When providing us with the materials, [Lore] repeated his usual lies about a trip to Washington and meetings with sources ... With the results of physical surveillance, the Centre arrived at a preliminary conclusion, that [Lore] was an exceptionally talented compiler. The use of information from open sources, fishing in them for any new data, as well as their analysis and evaluation, often produce outstanding results; many intelligence services do not neglect this method of information-gathering. But such work is considered auxiliary to the main task — obtaining information from agent sources ... The situation was aggravated in late spring 1937, when the Soviet 'illegals' managed to ascertain that the "Willie" and "Daniel" whom Lore had presented to his Soviet handlers, were "dummies." "Preface" to Mein Kampf: ""The translation in this volume, the unexpurgated version in English, has been made from the two-volume first edition of Mein Kampf, the first volume of which was published in 1925, the second in 1927."

Magazines and articles therein: The Class Struggle (archives 1917–1919, volumes I–III) Trotsky, Lenine, Kautsky on the Russian Revolution! (November–December 1917) "Our National Executive Committee" (January–February 1918) "Leon Trotsky" (November 7, 1918) "Left Or Right?" (August 1919) "The National Convention" (November 1919) "The Communist Labor Party" (November 1919)

Articles: Daily Worker: "My Position Toward the Farmer-Labor Movement" (December 29, 1924) The Nation: "The Book of Adolf Hitler: A Diluted Version" (November 1, 1933) The Nation: "Nazi Politics in America: Are Nazi Agents Spreading Propaganda Here? If So, Who and Where are They?" (November 29, 1933) Harper's: "How Germany Arms" (April 1934) The New International: "A Nazi Confesses" (January 1935) Foreign Affairs: "Two Internationals Find a Common Foe" (January 1936) The Nation: "Will Europe Go to War?" (July 24 and 31, 1937)

Letters: To Eugene V. Debs (March 9, 1917) To Eugene V. Debs (March 5, 1919)