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50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A hero for any age, April 26, 2005
Nearly unknown today, this extraordinary book deserves to be a classic. A gifted writer, Chambers soars whether discussing the world crisis that led him to Communism, his life underground, the trials of the establishment turning against him, and the religious faith that saw him through. Chambers emerges as a profoundly conscience-driven man, one whose human feelings kept him ever so slightly out of step with Communism as a party member, and which caused him repeatedly to consider the humanity of former comrades he ended up having to attack in trying to save his nation.
Whittaker Chambers joined the American Communist Party in the 1920s. He was then recruited into the separate Soviet-run Communist underground. He helped form a secret ring of Communists among New Deal officials who then spied on their own country, passing documents to the Soviets. Chambers led the ring for about three years before his growing disillusion with Communism led him to risk his life by breaking with the party in 1937, at the height of Stalin's purges.
He grew personally close to Alger Hiss, a New Deal lawyer with sterling credentials - including Harvard Law and working as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Hiss served in the Agriculture, State and Justice departments and later became president of the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace. He helped create the United Nations and advised Roosevelt at Yalta, where the ailing president ceded Eastern Europe to the Soviets, condemning it to half a century of Communist domination. Chambers' break with the party, and his later focus on Hiss in his accusations, is made poignant by the intensity of his friendship with Hiss.
Hiss's supporters defended him for decades. Conservatives, meanwhile, raised troubling questions about not only the UN and Yalta but about the nation's China policy leading up to the Communist takeover in 1949. They were labelled paranoid as a result. But decrypts of Soviet wartime cables called the Venona Files, kept secret until the 1990s, strongly suggested the guilt of Hiss and other officials suspected during the McCarthy era.
Chambers in 1939 told a high-ranking State Department official what he knew, but nothing was done. He went to work for Time magazine, becoming a star editor. In 1948, the House Un-American Activities Committee, spurred on by a young Richard Nixon, began hearings with Chambers as the main witness that Hiss had secretly been a Communist. The affair went on for nearly two years, including two trials of Hiss for perjury, ending in Hiss's conviction and three years in prison. Hiss also sued Chambers for slander, and a grand jury investigated Chambers' espionage charges. Another highly placed spy was Harry Dexter White, an assistant to FDR's treasury secretary. Long under suspicion, White died before being prosecuted. The affair saw dramatic twists and turns including Chambers' sensational production of long-hidden documents in Hiss's handwriting or typed on his typewriter - that Chambers stashed for safekeeping and briefly hid in a pumpkin before producing them as evidence.
The Hiss affair exposed a seamy underside to upbeat New Deal liberalism, suggesting its ranks were riddled with Communists loyal to a foreign government. Chambers saw the Russians succeed not only in spying but in shaping U.S. policy through their agents, furthering their efforts at world revolution and weakening this country.
In denial, the liberal establishment responded with the worst sort of personal attacks on Chambers, rather than support any honest efforts to get at the truth. The Republican HUAC worked at cross purposes with the Democratic Justice Department, one attempting to make Chambers' case and the other to discredit him. Reporters overwhelmingly sympathized with Hiss, an early instance of liberal press bias.
I was struck by parallels between Chambers' time and our own. Colleges then as now far more sympathetic to the left than society as a whole. A loose morality that was doctrinaire among Communists - marriage and childbirth both discouraged in favor of "party marriages" (shacking up) and abortion - and which later became de rigeur among Baby Boomers. (Were these promoted to strengthen this society, or weaken it?) An unwillingness on the left to consider the dubious provenance of many cherished ideals, or to consider whether and how much American activists were encouraged, guided, financed or directed from abroad - and to whose ultimate advantage.
The facts of his life are fascinating. His own insights make this book invaluable and his writing ensures it never drags. It is a testament to the application of religious ideals to public responsibilities. While believing the free world would lose its war with Communism, he stood up at great personal risk and with little or no support to warn the world of what it was refusing to face - one in which socialism led not to justice but to tyranny. Chambers was a hero for any age.
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77 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Important Piece Of American History, May 21, 2004
It is sad but true that a large portion of young Americans--even many with college degrees--probably have no idea who Whitaker Chambers was. Indeed, numerous conservatives likely know the name only as belonging to someone who was anti-communist but would be unable to provide more than vague generalities on his life and accomplishments. Ann Coulter helped rectify this unfortunate development last year with the publication of her mega-bestseller "Slander". Her trenchant exploration of twentieth century communism and the unbridled invective hurled against those who dared to oppose the murderous ideology introduced Chambers to a whole new generation. In interviews she has often stated that his autobiography Witness is one of the absolute-must reads for conservatives and an important title for all students of American history. As someone whose knowledge of Alger Hiss' nemesis was lacking, I decide to follow the sapient blonde's advice and picked up a copy of the 800-page memoir. I now second Miss Coulter's call; Witness is a moving and educational read. The extent to which communists infiltrated the United States Government in pre-World War days is frightening both in its scope and in the fact that today few Americans appreciate just how serious actual security breaches were. Chambers was well-qualified to address the magnitude of the red threat because for more than a decade he was a part of the menace. As a committed fellow traveler, he hobnobbed in all the right (left?) circles. So powerful was the communist structure within our nation that when he eventually grew disillusioned and abandoned the atheistic dead end, he firmly believed that he was "leaving the wining world for the losing world." Among the most striking features of the communist organization he exposed was its massive bureaucratic nature. Within the clandestine cabal there was an "underground" so completely sequestered from the regular communists that few committed adherents knew who was who in the parallel penumbras. Additionally, the labyrinthine steps taken to maintain secrecy are almost laughable. Chambers' talks about never learning addresses to places he regularly visited for years; rather he knew to get there by landmarks and neighborhoods. This was a precaution in case of capture--unknown information could not be provided to the authorities. Furthermore, Chambers relates cumbersome machinations for all his assignments; yet his endeavors to deliver "plans" or meet ever-changing, ephemeral "contacts" seem like little more than wheel-spinning busy work. It is no wonder that conspiracy theories abound among modern day leftists--the direct descendants of the very group that perfected the art. Many of Chambers' observations are as suitable to the early 21st century as they were in the 1940s. A cavalier attitude toward abortion permeated communists. As soon as his first child was conceived Chambers and his wife readily conceded that abortion was their only option, but when faced with the reality of their circumstance, the innate bond of parenthood trumped the dictates of good communists. Mrs. Chambers informed her husband, "we couldn't do that awful thing to a little baby," a demand that he whole-heartedly accepted. Considering that Chambers' communist days predated the formation of Israel, his asides on that issue truly show how much things have remained the same. He writes "Arab outrages were occurring in Palestine; the Communist International chose that moment to call for the formation of a "Soviet Arabism" to attack the Zionists." He also talks about how pure communism demanded its followers' ideologies remain and in an earlier incarnation of Hillary's Clinton's dreaded "right wing conspiracy," he sites numerous expulsions due to "rightwing deviationism." Even the problem of illegal immigration is shown to not be an entirely new phenomenon. At least one German communist contact is described as "probably in the United States illegally." One situation that has changed radically concerns Chambers successful post-Communist career at Time. It is not newsmagazine today. Beyond the important political tale Chambers tells, his personal story proves inspirational too. Born into a badly dysfunctional home (his only brother committed suicide, his parents lived in the same house without communicating for years), the lost soul was easy prey to the false promises of communist utopia. Marrying a left-leaner and starting a family as an avowed red forced him to confront reality, and his transformation to conservative Christian was painful and controversial but ultimately redemptive. His celebrated accusations against Alger Hiss stripped away his family's privacy and provoked piles of scorn upon his name (think Linda Tripp, Ken Starr, Miquel Estrada, Clarence Thomas, etc.) With the release of KGB files a few years ago Alger Hiss' guilt was proven anew, yet some influential voices still argue the traitor's innocence. As quoted in Robert Novak's newly added introduction, upon Hiss' 1996 death liberals from President Clinton's National Security Adviser Anthony Lake to Peter Jennings spoke of the charges against Hiss as either false or unsubstantiated. The incontrovertible record tells a different story, and Witness lays out the facts in perhaps a more engrossing and chilling way than any other source. Ann Coulter's Slander makes for an engaging and stimulating read, but Whittaker Chambers eloquently gives the full story in his own words.
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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
one more piece to the political puzzle , August 1, 2005
I taught high-school history for a few years before switching to math then switching to a new career. I remember teaching about the Hiss-Chambers case, but could never remember who was who and like a sensationalist journalist, mostly just concentrated on the story of the microfilm Chambers had hidden in his pumpkin.
I'm glad I finally got around to reading the story, and will briefly share my impression here.
Firstly, Chambers was an excellent writer. The book flows well, is hard to put down, and Chambers led a fairly interesting life. Probably the least interesting was his time as a spy, and the second least interesting was the case itself.
The second thing I found impressive, and indeed the pivot on which the book turned, was the account of his metamorphisis from ardent communist true-believer to ardent anti-communist. From godless to God-filled is how one might sum it up, but the changes were subtle, and often described in a kind of echo. "I heard someone screaming in the night"- sums it up figuratively if not literally for him, knowing that the screams were due to the grinding of a soul under the gears of the communist-soviet machinery.
Thirdly the book has a quiet humor mixed in with the tragic melancholy of Chamber's ironic life. It's not laugh-out-loud funny by any stretch, no one has any hilarious Stalin anecdotes or anything, but the humor is there, and it provides an undercurrent to carry the reader through the drier places until the end.
Finally I was amazed at the similarity with the left-right struggle of today. I know every generation thinks their's is the most or best or worst- fill in the blank, but I really did think that the secular,liberal, pseudo-intellectual left and the conservative, religious, family-oriented right were relatively new camps, at least in the sharp focus they are in today. I knew that the "silent majority" had been around for a while, and that many of the fellow-travelers would by definition have strong leftist notions, but I'd forgotten just how powerful a sentiment that was in the depression/war era, and just how similar the struggle is to today. The Chambers/Hiss case was and is a metaphor for that struggle, and the story of one man and his stand to be a witness for Christ and good and to expose evil is a must read for today.
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