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Whittaker Chambers

Witness (Cold War Classics) Paperback – December 8, 2014

by Whittaker Chambers (Author)

421 ratings

Part of: Cold War Classics (3 books)

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#1 New York Times bestseller for 13 consecutive weeks!

"As long as humanity speaks of virtue and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire." - PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN

"One of the dozen or so indispensable books of the century..." - GEORGE F. WILL

"Witness changed my worldview, my philosophical perceptions, and, without exaggeration, my life." - ROBERT D. NOVAK, from his Foreward

"Chambers has written one of the really significant American autobiographies. When some future Plutarch writes his American Live, he will find in Chambers penetrating and terrible insights into America in the early twentieth century." - ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR.

"Chambers had a gift for language....to call Chambers an activist or Witness a political event is to say Dostoevsky was a criminologist or Crime and Punishment a morality tract." - WASHINGTON POST

"Chambers was not just the witness against Alger Hiss, but was also one of th articulators of the modern conservative philosophy, a philosophy that has something to do with restoring the spiritual values of politics." - SAM TANENHAUS, author of Whittaker Chambers

"One of the few indispensable autobiographies ever written by an American - and one of the best written, too." - HILTON KRAMER, The New Criterion

First published in 1952, Witness is the true story of Soviet spies in America and the trial that captivated a nation. Part literary effort, part philosophical treatise, this intriguing autobiography recounts the famous Alger Hiss case and reveals much more. Chambers' worldview and his belief that "man without mysticism is a monster" went on to help make political conservatism a national force.

Regnery History's Cold War Classics edition is the most comprehensive version of Witness ever published, featuring forewords collected from all previous editions, including discussions from luminaries William F. Buckley Jr., Robert D. Novak, Milton Hindus, and Alfred S. Regnery.

Print length

718 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Regnery History
Publication date

December 8, 2014
Dimensions

6 x 1.7 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

162157296X
ISBN-13

978-1621572961
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jay Vivian Chambers (1901 –1961), known as Whittaker Chambers, was an American editor who denounced his Communist spying and became respected by the American Conservative movement during the 1950s.

After early years as a Communist Party member and Soviet spy, he defected from communism (underground and open party) and worked at Time magazine. Under subpoena in 1948, he testified in what became Alger Hiss's espionage trials and he became an outspoken anti-communist (all described in Witness). Afterwards, he worked briefly as a senior editor at National Review . President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom posthumously in 198

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Regnery History; Reprint edition (December 8, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 718 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 162157296X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1621572961
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.59 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.7 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #51,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #51 in Espionage True Accounts
- #120 in Political Intelligence
- #213 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism

Customer Reviews:
421 ratings

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Giannuzzo

This is one of the great American Autobiographies

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2017

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This is one of the great American Autobiographies. I originally was seeking information about the Hiss trial for professional curiosity. What I got was the story of a courageous, tormented man. His disillusion with the Communist party and his religious conversion.
Many of the Communist intellectuals of the 30's shared Chambers disenchantment with the Party. The Italian novelist Ignazio Silone and the great Arthur Koestler edited a very informative work on the subject "The God that Failed". But no other work matched the personal description of Chambers. The book deals not so much with the two trials of Alger Hiss on a perjury indictment and concentrates more on Chambers's life, up to 1950, and his testimony and Hiss's statements before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and the Manhattan Grand Jury which indicted Hiss.
Of course some readers will have a negative view of the work of the Committee, and one of the heroes of the book Richard Nixon(!!), but I urge them to put that aside and read this book. There really was serious Communist infiltration of the American Government and Hiss really was guilty. B I've always been a staunch anti Communist and Chambers's testimony was the beginning of the end for the Soviet "apparatus" in the US. Nevertheless, his description of the party faithful of his era actually led me to develop a grudging respect for the dedication and personal sacrifices which they made in furtherance of their misguided beliefs. The reader must remember that the World looked very different in the 1930s. Chambers came to this realization in 1938. This led him to realize that he had a moral obligation to denounce those of his former comrades who were still working against his Country. Finally, much of what Chambers wrote of is still relevant today. My highest recommendation.

67 people found this helpful

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W. Wilmeth

Despair, and its Fellow Travelers

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2015

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The years prior to, during and following World War II were a time of heavy communist infiltration into all aspects of the federal government. The most famous and notable, perhaps, was Alger Hiss who was a key man at Yalta, and in writing the UN Charter. I was raised by the popular media to believe that any discussion of communist penetration of the federal government was merely "McCarthyism," and 'red baiting.' As WITNESS makes clear, there was a considerable communist presence (Harry Dexter White, Harry Hopkins, Hiss. among others) in the executive branch, and WITNESS also makes clear that there was an above ground, and below ground, apparatus that was populated by dedicated communists.

The best feature of the book, however, is Mr. Chambers discussion of how and why he turned to communism as the only possible solution to the woes of the world. He was an exceptionally intelligent man, and in his view, there was no other possible choice. In a word, despair led him to believe that communism was the best vehicle to solve the problems of mankind. In fairly short order (10 years), he realized that once communists were in power, they tended to lean heavily on the 'ends justify the means' approach as millions starved or were executed (or worked to death). He later turned to Biblical Christianity as the best hope for mankind, fully aware that there are no easy solutions to the dilemma of existence.

This book did have an influence on my understanding of history and on how decisions are made. It a very real sense, it impacted my life.

85 people found this helpful

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T. Graczewski

Roots of the Red Scare

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2020

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“Witness,” Whittaker Chambers’s classic autobiography, was first published in 1952 in the midst of the Red Scare known as McCarthyism. It dropped like a fifty-gallon drum of gasoline onto a bonfire.

Chambers was a former Communist operative turned state’s witness. He was raised in a fractured family living in near poverty on Long Island. After a short stint in manual labor in Washington DC and New Orleans he matriculated at Columbia University where he studied literature and his phenomenal prose talent was first discovered. It was also where he discovered the writings of Marx and Lenin, which had a profound effect on a young man in post First World War America who was convinced that Western Civilization was in existential crisis. Chambers joined the Communist Party in 1925, first serving openly in editorial positions at the “Daily Worker” and “New Masses,” and then, at the orders of the Party, in the underground, first in New York and then in Washington DC. It was in Washington that he managed the State Department’s Alger Hiss and Treasury’s Harry Dexter White as members of an undercover Communist “apparatus” that reported to Soviet Military Intelligence. Chambers describes in exquisite detail the clandestine workings of the underground and the close relationship he developed with Hiss in the mid-1930s.

Chambers would break with the Communist Party in 1938, largely over news of the purges then occurring in Russia, along with more philosophical doubts at to its moral probity. He would re-establish himself as a devout Quaker and then, somewhat miraculously, as a highly compensated senior editor at Time Magazine. In 1939, just days after the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact and the onset of the Second World War, he alerted the government of the Communist conspiracy of which he was a leader. His testimony would rather inexplicitly remain dormant for a full decade until it came to the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).

When Chambers pointed his finger at Alger Hiss, it was a political bombshell. The urbane Hiss possessed a glittering resume and top shelf social connections. Educated at Johns Hopkins and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a Supreme Court Justice and was a key participant in a wide array of monumental events of the late Second World War, including the Dumbarton Oak meeting on international peace and security, the San Francisco conference on the establishment of the United Nations, and, most ominously of all for conservatives, the Yalta Conference. By 1948 he held the prestigious post of president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Two sitting Supreme Court justices would serve as character witnesses on his behalf. Indeed, at Chambers writes, “In the persons of Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, the Soviet Military Intelligence sat close to the heart of the United States Government.”

Chambers’s testimony during the Hiss Case was electric; his detailed later revelations in “Witness” captivated a nation and, it may be argued, set the McCarthy era in motion. Chambers’s claims were alarmist, to say the least. “It is certain that, between the years 1930 and 1948,” he writes, “a group of almost unknown men and women, Communists or close fellow travelers, or their dupes, working in the United States Government, or in some singular unofficial relationship to it, or working in the press, affected the future of every American now alive, and indirectly the fate of every man now going into uniform [in support of the Korean War].” He goes on to say, “The danger to the nation from Communism had now grown acute, both within its own house and abroad. Its existence was threatened. And the nation did not know it.” Just two weeks after Hiss’s conviction, McCarthy would deliver his famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia claiming he had the names of hundreds of Communists then working in the State Department. Under the present circumstances, it seemed readily believable.

“Witness” makes the Red Scare of the early 1950s much more palpable and understandable for twenty-first century American readers. The conspiracy that Chambers details in “Witness” is stunning in its scope and audacious in its aims. Today, McCarthyism and HUAC are largely seen as stains in American history, embarrassing hysteria that recklessly and needlessly ruined hundreds of innocent lives. That may be true, but reading “Witness” will present that episode of American history from a fundamentally different perspective and under a far different light. Chambers credits HUAC with administering a fair and able investigation. Congressman Richard Nixon is singled out as a particularly shrewd and observant participant. Indeed, Chambers confesses, “I liked and trusted Nixon.”

If Chambers’s testimony is to be believed – and there are no reasons not to, as far as the historical record shows – there really was a vast Communist conspiracy afoot to manipulate American foreign and domestic policy, a conspiracy that reached to the highest levels of multiple government agencies. Again, the charges Chambers makes and the evidence he advances to support it is jaw-dropping.

It helps that Chambers is a writer of genius. “Witness” has been called one of the best-written and most important autobiographies of the twentieth century – and I can see why. At nearly 700 pages in length, it is neither a short nor breezy read, but the prose is elegant and the story is utterly captivating, a monumental piece of twentieth century non-fiction.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Legal Vampire

Informative, Parts are Interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2021

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Hard to know how to rate this book by an American former Communist who in the 1940s, despite fear of reprisals against himself and his family, revealed the extent of penetration of the US government by Communist agents reporting to the Soviet Union, which he had once assisted. He provides an insight into the strange world of pro-Soviet American Communism in its heyday of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, roughly the same period as the monstrous tyranny of Joseph Stalin in the USSR, which they supported.

Parts of this book are very interesting, but others too long and at times boring. In the end I read the majority but skipped some parts.

The author Whittaker Chambers was a brave and ultimately honest and principled man, who eventually replaced his former faith in Communism with Christianity.

He worked for a time on the American Communist Party's newspaper, into whose often turgid pages of Marxist jargon he tried to inject some human interest.

He observed how the power and ideological struggles and purges going on thousands of miles away within the Soviet Party caused ripples in the US Party. The then leader of the American Communist Party thought that Bukharin was going to win the contest with Stalin for power in the Soviet Union, aligned himself accordingly, and had to be removed when Stalin proved the victor. They mostly accepted the denunciations as traitors and execution or assassinations of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin although such men had once to them not just been heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution but 'they were the Revolution'. Chambers found his friends and colleagues on the paper in unison turned against any of their number who fell under ideological suspicion.

He was convinced that at least one member of the American Party who supposedly died in a car accident had actually been murdered to prevent her revealing Party secrets.

Chambers met Russian intelligence officers secretly in the USA and conveyed messages and documents from agents in US government departments to contacts who he knew were passing them on to Soviet Intelligence.

He spoke to one Party member who had spent time in the Soviet Union and returned shocked by 'those murderers'. The same contact told Chambers that there were American Communists living miserably in Moscow who had served the cause and had to take refuge there, but whom the Soviets no longer considered useful.

When Chambers went public with his accusations against those in the US State Department and elsewhere who were secretly working as Communist agents, Chambers suffered slander, defamation actions and career consequences. However, he received important support from the Republican politician and future President Richard Nixon, who has not always had a good press but for whom Chambers is full of praise.

This book is too long and I lost interest in parts of it, but I respect the author and there is also a good deal here of historical interest and importance.

If you are interested in the subject of American Communist sympathising traitors and useful idiots in the Twentieth Century there is a good deal of information in 'The Mitrokhin Archive' by Andrew and Mitrokhin. However, that is another book that despite containing some interesting and historically important information I did not enjoy reading as much as I had hoped.

While some may object to the authoress due to her politics and reputation, if you want an explosively brilliant, thought-provoking and fascinating book on this and related subjects then the book you really need to read is 'Treason' by my heroine, the wonderful if slightly crazy Ann Coulter.

Maria-Isabella Green

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2018

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Great!

JimmyT

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2017

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Excellent and enthralling piece of American Modern History

Nick

Surprising societal resistance/indifference/deception also revealed.

Reviewed in Canada on August 11, 2021

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Well beyond a little interesting -- the theme, the reality, the relevance of "public viewpoints" vs known reality -- I can see it as a classic. I am at the climax -- when he reports what happened as he, Whitaker Chambers, the author, and former (American) Communist, was 'called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where he gave the names of individuals he said were part of an underground communist group in 1948.. Since he became an editor for Time magazine, I can see why his writing skill were stong. Some refreshing candor too..

WeMustResist

Beware! All is not well!

Reviewed in Australia on June 25, 2015

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Terrific book! Well-composed, grand themes, full of characters, suspense, twists and drama. A lovely biography and an insight into the psychology of modern man. Very relevant today, because the secret Communists ally with the outrageous, bloodthirsty followers of you-know-who. The author would recognize today's types easily. He describes them so well. He shows that Marxists have 3 traits: (1) They are fixated on the evils of this world. Unlike a rational or balanced person, they spend no time thinking about the good things, or the costs and benefits of change. (2) They are stuck in a top-down view. They believe in strict discipline and hierarchy. They look from the top of the pyramid downwards. They do not see that civilization can be built from the bottom. (3) They think you can make a better world by evil acts. They scorn the idea that we make things better when we become better people. By the way they think God does not matter because He is either weak or not interested or does not exist. Muhammed shares the same traits as Marxists but he thought Allah believes in hate, lies and endless war. So the followers of Marx and Muhammed share some psychological traits and differ about the deity. Chamber's pessimism could be realism unless we learn to practice many more virtues than we do today. The challenge is ahead of us if we want civilization to survive. Read "Witness" to learn about the Leftist enemies of civilization. The book shows they can be lovable, and it shows they are sinister and powerful. When they quietly ally with other totalitarians then our freedoms and our lives are in danger.