Faith, Treachery, and Redemption

In the early 20^th Century, Communism was a force for chance that was spreading across the international scene like wildfire. The unprecedented destruction of World War One fueled this fire, igniting revolution in Russia and capturing a large swath of the intellectual elite in Europe and also in the United States, where labor strife was beginning to draw the middle and working classes into a Communist Party that had been previously marginalized and ignored. By the 1930’s, Communism seemed to be unstoppable; offering the only solution to a world wracked by the Great Depression that it was desperately trying to break. In the midst of this worldwide depression, the Soviet Union was undergoing a vast transformation into an industrial powerhouse under Josef Stalin and was showing the only signs of economic growth in a period in which the great economies of the world were devolving into oblivion. This growth was fed in part through espionage. Agents of the Soviet Union in the United States had successfully infiltrated the ranks of the Departments of State, Treasury, and Agriculture and were using the intelligence that was gathered to further the growth of the Soviet economy. Whittaker Chambers, who would later rise to prominence in the conservative New Right movement in the 1950’s was, in the 1930’s, a member of the American Communist Underground who controlled a cell of espionage agents in Washington D.C., most notably among which was Alger Hiss. Hiss, who went on to rise in the ranks of the State Department after Chambers’ break with the Communist Underground in 1938, was instrumental in the landmark events of the 1940’s including the Bretton Woods Conference, the Yalta Conference, and the advent of the United Nations. With the outing of Alger Hiss by Whittaker Chambers in 1948, the House Un-American Activities Committee finally had its first viable witness that was willing to testify to the dangers that Communism posed to the United States, which allowed it to further expand its search for Communists, leading eventually to the Red Scare of the 1950’s.

Whittaker Chambers was a complex and fascinating figure. As an archetypal example of the extremist personality type, he spent significant periods in his life at either end of the political spectrum: first as a Communist, and then as a Conservative of the New Right, where he helped to light the torches of the Red Scare and later served as a charter editor of The National Review. After the close of the Hiss Trials in 1949, Chambers set out to write his autobiography which would tell his side of the story, and more importantly, his reasoning for both adopting and abandoning Communism. The resulting book, titled Witness, was a tour de force account of political ideology, religious redemption, and treachery. Witness is, without a doubt, one of the most striking apologias’s ever written, providing a glimpse into the mind of a man that could never resort to half-measures or submit to compromising whatever beliefs that he harbored in his heart, regardless of the consequences.

Background

The Dies Committee was founded by Representative Martin Dies during the 1938 to root out such “un-American” activities and conspiracies such as the Ku Klux Klan and Fascist plots to overthrow the United States government. When none of these avenues of investigation bore fruit, the committee, by then known as the House Un-American Activities Committee (H.U.A.C.), started investigating reports of a growing Communist conspiracy and turned its sights on New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration and the National Recovery Administration. H.U.A.C was lambasted by its critics who had quickly labeled it as a Which Hunt. H.U.A.C. was sidelined during WWII due to the fact that the United States was now allied with the Soviet Union, and it would have been unseemly to have been perceived as persecuting Communists by our new and important ally, Josef Stalin. However, H.U.A.C. ramped up its activities after WWII once it became apparent that Stalin and the Soviet Union was to morph into our newest adversary in the Cold War, and the growing fear of a Communist threat through government and media infiltration by Communist Party members gave H.U.A.C. a new lease on life. Among its members in its post-WWII incarnation was a freshman Congressman from California by the name of Richard Nixon.[1]

With the advent of the Soviet Union and its international branch COMINTERN in the 1920’s, the American Communist Party shifted from a collection of East Coast intellectuals to a full blown revolutionary party with a national scope. The rank and file of the Party consisted mainly of poor European ex-patriots and immigrants, former Wobblies (members of the Industrial Workers of the World), trade and labor union members and organizers who had radicalized in the labor strikes of the early 20^th Century. The Party leadership consisted of upper-class elite intellectuals, many of which had Ivy League educations and connections and were members for idealistic and moralistic reasons. Party news and propaganda was distributed through such Party apparatuses as The Daily Worker, the official Party newspaper, and the literary magazine The New Masses, which published longer intellectual essays, short stories, and poetry. Both of these publications were run by the American Communist Party, which in turn was nominally controlled by COMINTERN.

In the 1950’s, ex-Communists would prove to be valuable allies to the New Right. Yet the conversion of these once radical revolutionaries to intellectual bulwarks of the Conservative movement was by no means a simple or quick one. A multitude of factors played into their conversion from Communism, including but not limited to ideological differences, physical distance from the communist homeland, and actual events and atrocities associated with the Soviet Union after Stalin took power. Perhaps the least arcane of the previously mentioned factors that pushed these ex-Communists out of the Party were the most obvious ones revolving around actual events. The first of these was Stalin’s Purges, in which Stalin consolidated his power by expelling and/or exiling his political and intellectual adversaries within the Communist Party, most notably Leon Trotsky. The Second event that pushed many away from the Party was COMINTERN’s bungling of the Spanish Civil War, the handling of which disgusted many Communists and fellow travelers. The final straw for most however, was Stalin’s signing of the Non-Aggression Pact, which allied the Soviet Union with Communism’s most bitter enemy; Nazi Germany. This final act so disgusted those that broke with the Party because they saw it as the final betrayal of their Communist ideals by the intellectually deficient bureaucrat Stalin.[2]

While most of those that broke with the Communist Party in the 1930’s and 1940’s were radical Communist intellectuals, they were not involved with the actual dirty work of what was, in all reality, a revolutionary Party dedicated to the overthrow of the United States government. Of all of the ex-Communist intellectuals that broke with the Party, only one was actively involved with the G.P.U.’s espionage apparatus that was operating in the United States. This man was Whittaker Chambers. Chambers’ story is a study in contradiction, betrayal, and redemption. A hero of the New Right, Chambers was the first ex-Communist to name names to HUAC, and by doing so, kicked off the first sensational scandal in what would become known as the Red Scare. It is an interesting dichotomy that Chambers would be venerated by the Right. After all, the Right in America stands for “all-American” moral values which it holds as its core principals and which inform all of its political and intellectual activity. Chambers, however, represents none of these values. Primarily, he was a traitor to his country, actively engaged in espionage against the United States government for an enemy that was determined to see its downfall. Secondly, he was a betrayer, having through his testimony and later writings exposed and informed upon those that had trusted him. So how does this traitor and villain make his way into the pantheon of New Right intellectuals? Through reflection and religious redemption, the only sure fire way to gain forgiveness from a movement that is largely composed of deeply religious individuals.

Chambers was born in Philadelphia in 1901 but soon moved to Long Island with his eclectic parents. His father was an artist that produced illustrations for magazines and his mother was trained as an actress. This family settled in a quiet Long Island town that had little understanding for its new neighbors. Chambers had a difficult and troubled childhood; he was a shy, introverted boy that had little regard for social niceties or proper hygiene. His brother was the exact opposite; well liked, athletic, and outgoing. When the boys were still quite young, their father, by all reports a cold and distant man, moved out of the house to pursue his own life without his family.[3]

After his parents reunited after a long period of estrangement, Chambers, then in his late teens, decided to run away and see life for himself. He ran away to Washington D.C. shortly after graduating from High School in 1919, where he spent some months working as a laborer on the cities streetcar system. After a period in D.C., Chambers took the money that he had saved and went to New Orleans, where he lived in a boarding house with a prostitute and her pimp. In his travels he discovered the poverty stricken underclass, who went about their lives with a dignity of purposed that touched the young man deeply. Once his money ran out and unable to find work, Chambers wired his parents for money and made his way home.[4]

Upon his return to New York, Chambers enrolled in Columbia University, where he started to shed his introverted shell. He studied under Mark Van Dorn and wrote bombastic and offensive pieces for The Morningside, Columbia’s student journal. During a summer trip to Europe, Chambers saw the blasted wasteland that of post-WWI France and Belgium, along with the miserable conditions in Weimar Germany. It is this experience that Chambers credits his conversion to Communism, and upon his return to the United States, he sought out the Communist Party with the intention to become a member.[5]

Upon joining the Communist Party in 1925, Chambers soon found himself working for its newspaper The Daily Worker. Here Chambers set for himself a precedent that would repeat itself throughout his professional career by excelling at a job that no one else wanted. At The Daily Worker, Chambers complied and published letters from workers in their own section of the paper, which quickly grew in popularity and notoriety to the point where Chambers was commended by the COMINTERN for his labors. After going to work for The New Masses, Chambers’ notoriety within the Party had grown, and people had begun to take notice. His intellectual capacity and gift for languages, combined with a reputation for being apolitical, made him a perfect candidate for recruitment into the Communist Underground, which he joined in 1932.[6]

Shortly after joining the Underground and receiving his education in spy-craft from his handler, Chambers was ordered to relocate to Washington D.C. and participate in Underground operations there. In pursuit of this mission, he attended meetings of the Ware Group, a semi-clandestine group of Communists and Fellow Travelers that met nominally as a discussion group, but was in actuality a holding ground for future espionage assets. It is at this point that Chambers met Alger Hiss, who was then a lawyer for the Nye Committee, a Congressional committee that was investigating United States arms manufactures on claims of instigating United States involvement in WWI and then charging exorbitant prices for arms and supplies. At this point, there was no active espionage involved in their relationship, and the two quickly become friends. After Hiss received a position at the State Department and gained access to sensitive material, he and Chambers started their formal relationship as spy and asset. Hiss would spirit documents out of his office and give them to Chambers who would then photograph them and return them to him in the same night.[7]

After seven years of operating in the Underground, the reality of the situation in which he then found himself hit him. By this time, Stalin’s Purges were in their most brutal phase, reaching out as far as the United States. Some agents who had either fled the Underground or were suspected to be thinking about breaking with the Party were either assassinated or worse; ordered to return to Russia where they then disappeared. Stalin’s excesses, combined with a crisis of faith that Chambers was then experiencing, led him to decide to break with the Underground. Before he could do so, Chambers knew that he needed an insurance policy. It is toward this end that he put together what he called his “life preserver”; a collection of sensitive papers and rolls of microfilm from his various assets that he gathered and gave to his Brother-In-Law for safe keeping. There they would remain for the next decade.[8]

After a year in hiding from the Underground, Chambers emerged in 1939 and landed a position at Time Magazine. He started as a reviewer in the Books Section, and gradually worked his way up to editor of the section. In the middle of WWII, Chambers took over the editorial duties of the Foreign News section. It was during his period at Time that his anti-Communist views began to take shape and informed both his writing and his editorial perspective, much to the chagrin of many of his coworkers, many of whom were Liberals with a smattering of Communist sympathizers among their ranks. After recovering from a debilitating illness brought about by his hectic schedule at Time, Chambers returned as a writer for the Special Section, writing cover stories on such luminaries as Reinhold Niebuhr. It is at this point that Chambers is able to let his new found Christian beliefs shine through and inform his anti-Communist beliefs. It is also at this point that Chambers is first subpoenaed to appear before H.U.A.C.[9]

Chambers was called before H.U.A.C. on August 3, 1948 to corroborate the testimony of Elizabeth Bently, another ex-Communist Underground operative that had abandoned the Party. Chambers had a better list of names for the committee, which he presented to great effect. After outing Alger Hiss and a number of other government officials as Communists (but not as spies; he withheld that particular bit of information), H.U.A.C. responded by calling Hiss to appear before the committee. Hiss denied being a Communist, and disavowed Chambers, claiming at first that he did not know him, and then “recalling” him to be a deadbeat journalist named Carl. Hiss challenged Chambers to repeat his charge in a public forum where he would not be protected from libel, which Chambers did on Meet the Press. Hiss then sued Chambers for libel shortly thereafter.[10]

After being called before a New York Grand Jury later that year to testify on behalf of the Federal government, which was planning to bring perjury charges against Hiss, Chambers was backed into a corner and forced to admit to espionage. At this point, he retrieved his “life preserver” from his brother-in-law. Chambers then turned over all of the written material, saving the microfilm for future use. Once Nixon realized that he had held back some of the material from H.U.A.C., he issued a subpoena for all remaining articles relating to espionage. Chambers then produced the microfilm, which he had hidden in a pumpkin on his farm. Once developed, the resulting evidence, known as the “Pumpkin Papers,” proved to be quite damning, and the grand jury indicted Hiss for perjury as he had denied both knowing Chambers and being a Communist in its proceedings. Chambers served as a Federal witness in the ensuing trials yet was forced to resign his position at Time in 1948 due to public pressure, as public opinion was heavily slanted toward Hiss and the magazine was suffering.[11]

Chambers was eviscerated by the press during his ordeal with H.U.A.C. and the Hiss Trials. In order to answer his detractors and get his own story out, Chambers set out to write his autobiography. The resulting work, titled Witness, was a massive 800 page tome. Part autobiography, part political treatise, and part religious tale; Witness stands out as one of the most compelling books to come out of the period. In it, Chambers detailed not only his life, but the inner-workings of his ideological development into and out of Communism, along with his religious conversion to Quakerism. It is these sections of the book dealing with his understanding of Communism and Christianity that are the most illuminating, providing valuable insight into the mind of a man that by all human standards is a complete scoundrel. In fact, Eric Sundquist, in his article titled “Witness Recalled” claimed that Witness “remains one of the most important works of political literature to be written in America.”[12] Although Witness (and much of Chambers’ other writings) have fallen into obscurity, Sundquist maintained that it remained relevant due to the fact that “Chambers’ testimony and his ideologically charged autobiography helped pave the way for the often irresponsible tactics of anti-Communist investigation associated with Senator McCarthy.”[13] Due to this association with McCarthy and the anti-Communist zeal of the 1950’s, Chambers and his later work were, according to Sundquist, always burdened with the taint of these events which “impeded a reconsideration of Witness as a political and, especially, a literary work… [requiring] that we not shy away from Chambers’ demanding conjunction of political freedom and belief in God.”[14] Sundquist continued in his article to provide an array of examples of the masterful use of metaphor and allegory used by Chambers, and took great delight in his homage’s to the works of such luminaries as Dante and Shakespeare.

Aside from providing a biographical account of his life, Chambers used Witness as a vehicle for espousing his ideological reasoning for first adopting and then abandoning Communism. In Witness, Chambers’ opinions on Communism and its evils and allures can be broken down into four major categories: the seductive appeal of Communism, the fact that abandoning Communism amounts to a conversion akin to a religious awakening, the evil nature that is inherent in Communist thought and doctrine from the viewpoint of the religious, and lastly, an account of what he saw as the coming battle between East and West, which he portrays as an epic battle between good and evil. By providing valuable insight directly into the mind and opinions of an ex-Communist, Witness stands as one mans valuable testament of one of the most significant political exoduses of the Twentieth Century.

The Seductive Appeal of Communism

Communism served as a new faith to those that had seen an apparent lack of compassion for the plight of the downtrodden that had been suffering for years under the yoke of a capitalist class that had long used the language of Christianity to further their avarice. This mindset affected a slice of the upper class that had long felt something lacking in a system which was nominally backed by the Church, yet was lacking in moral direction. Indeed, “in the West, all intellectuals become Communists because they are seeking the answer to one of two problems: the problem of war or the problem of economic crises.”[15] These answers were not being provided by Churches that were unable to actively speak out against the ruling classes that profited from unbridled capitalism and the wars that it brought since they were beholden to those powers through their benefaction. Personal factors did play a role because neither the problem of war nor the problems precipitated by economic crises were being addressed in any significant way by the prevailing engines of societal reform. Therefore, domestic interpretations of Communist doctrine held that both crises are aspects of the greater crisis of history. This crisis of history fed conversion to Communist doctrine because it offered the best solution due to the fact that “when an intellectual joins the Communist Party, he does so primarily because he sees no other way of ending the crisis of history.”[16] Thus, the conversion to Communism was an act of despair brought about by the fact that no other path seemed to provide solutions to the worlds ills. However, “few communists have ever been made simply by reading the works of Marx or Lenin. The crisis of history makes Communists; Marx and Lenin merely offer them an explanation of the crisis and what to do about it.”[17] This fact led, according to Chambers, even more people into the ranks of Communism because it provided a solution to the crisis of history that no other system seemed to provide to a world that was devolving into chaos. This presented a massive problem to those who would abandon Communism, for to do so meant to abandon a faith that was strong and provided hope, since in the first place

it is the crisis that makes men Communists and it is the crisis that keeps men Communists. For the Communists who breaks with Communism must break not only with the power of its vision and its faith. He must break in the full knowledge that he will find himself facing the crisis of history, but this time without even that solution which Communism presents, and crushed by the knowledge that the solution which he sought through Communism is evil against God and man.[18]

This fact spoke to the notion that kept those from leaving Communism. For if Communism is as powerful as a religious faith, then it is indeed hard to break from due to the power that deeply held religious beliefs hold on the human psyche. It is nearly impossible for a normal, contented believer to enter into a crisis of faith that necessitates the abandonment of any deeply held doctrine, as it first requires one to admit that they were wrong in adopting the beliefs in the first place, which is ridiculously hard for many to do.

In order to pinpoint the success of the Washington D.C. underground espionage ring that Chambers led in the 1930’s, one must consider the mindset of those that provided sensitive material to agents of the Soviet Union. When he was first introduced to members of the Ware Group, it was assumed that Chambers was a European; and therefore most likely either a German or a Russian, which played into Chambers mystique. To illustrate the effectiveness of this subterfuge, Chambers related that

no sooner had I reached Washington that I found myself wrapped in the aura of a man who had worked with ‘them’—the Russians. So great is the revolutionary spell of that word ‘Russian’ that American Communists, who might do certain things for another American Communist, will all but beg to do the same things for a Russian or anyone directly connected with the Russians.[19]

Chambers credited this veneration of Russians by American Communists as the “tribute that hope paid to success,”[20] yet it went much deeper than that. In fact, Chambers acknowledged that “the heart of every revolution is a struggle for power and there was little that the bright young men of Washington worshiped more fervently than power.”[21] Since it was assumed that Chambers was in fact a Russian, he had an invisible power over those that were under him which allowed him to exploit the situation and easily gain the confidence of others without really trying. Indeed, since Hiss assumed that Chambers was a Russian, “he felt more confidence in dealing with a Russian than he would have in dealing with the most respected American Communist.”[22] Exploiting this situation was an easy choice for Chambers, so he continued to play up the charade and, due to that his “stature shot up almost overnight… there was nothing that the underground Communists in Washington would not gladly do for me as a Russian.”[23] This veneration for Russians amounts to a hero worship normally reserved for celebrities. However, since it has already been established that Communism is akin to a religion, perhaps a comparison to the veneration of saints would be more apt.

Finally, one has to take into account why Communism is such a deeply held belief and how far into the reaches of polite society it made inroads; for to deny the messianic power of Communism as religious faith is bound to leave someone terribly confused. That is because they are making false assumptions akin to those asked by the Chairman of H.U.A.C., who asked Chambers at the August 25, 1948 hearing “will you explain to us how a person who has made a real living in this country, a person with a large income, some of the witnesses we have had before this committee, over a period of time, what, in your mind, would influence them to join the party here in our country?”[24] This question assumed that all Americans pursue the American Dream of wealth and upward mobility, a doctrinaire belief in its own right, which cannot fathom why anyone would oppose it or work against it. Having been there himself, Chambers replies that

the making of a good living does not necessarily blind a man to the critical period which he is passing through. Such people, in fact, may feel a special insecurity and anxiety. They seek a moral solution in a world of moral confusion. Marxism, Leninism offers an oversimplified explanation of the causes and a program for action. The very vigor of the project particularly appeals to the more or less sheltered middle-class intellectuals, who feel that there the whole context of their lives has kept them away from the world of reality. I do not know whether I make this very clear, but I am trying to get at it. They feel a very natural concern; one might say an almost Christian concern, for under privileged people. They feel a great intellectual concern at least, for recurring economic crises, the problem of war, which in our time has assumed an atrocious proportion, and which always weighs on them. What shall I do? At the crossroads the evil thing, Communism, lies in wait for them with a simple answer.[25]

Chambers’ answer completely summed up the allure of Communism to those that “have it all” and feel guilty about it. This guilt is persistent in a society that is predominantly Christian, as guilt is a significant component of its religious dogma. While those that turn to Communism may not be religious in a Christian sense, the tenets of Christianity are nevertheless ingrained into society and therefore exert considerable influence. While those searching for answers or a better way to solve societies ills might be turned off by the dogmas of Christianity, they are therefore susceptible to the allure of Communism and take to heart the tenets of political philosophy much in the same way a newly converted Christian does; receiving instruction by those that had already found what they themselves had been searching for.

Religious and Political Conversion

There is a conundrum inherent in Communism and its perceived anti-religious doctrines. That is that Communism denies the human tendency toward religious belief, countering Marx on the fundamental argument that religion is the opiate of the masses. Communists have interpreted this comment to mean that religion should be abolished, thereby perverting Marx’s position that religion should be co-opted and made to serve the Party and provide an outlet for the people to explore their spiritual lives. Its firm denial of the importance of religion in the lives of most people left a large gap in Communist dogma, the gap that religion has always filled. Religion seeks to explain the unknown and wondrous, labeling everything unknown or not understood as God, thus serving as a balm to quiet the souls of those that have no means to seek that which they do not understand, or in the case of evolution, those things that they refuse to accept because it would somehow diminish the superiority of mankind and its place at the pinnacle of the natural order. Therefore, those Communists that had religious epiphanies were in effect forced to abandon its political principals also. Chambers related that his break with Communism followed this path, writing that

I date my break from a very casual happening… my daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life… My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear—those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: ‘No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design’. The thought was involuntary and unwanted.[26]

This revelation was the first in what would become a crisis of faith for Chambers, and precipitated his further break from Communism which disavowed religious ideas such as his.

At the core, many ex-Communists broke from the Party because they wanted to be free to explore with of the wonderment that religious faith imparts to their adherents. The lack freedom to pursue ideas that conflict with Party doctrine are, to Chambers, completely reprehensive and led him to the conclusion that “freedom is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is a striving toward God that the soul strives continually after freedom. God alone is the inciter and guarantor of freedom.”[27] Chambers further expounded on this theme with rhetoric claiming that freedom is a gift from God, concluding that “every sincere break with Communism is a religious experience, though the Communist fail to identify its true nature, though he fails to go to the end of the experience.”[28] That Chambers equated religious conversion to political conversion is telling, as it provides valuable insight into his nature and character. For Chambers had the nature of a zealot; he threw himself into whatever caught his soul and pursued it with a Herculean tenacity. Like Saull, who hunted Christians with bloodthirsty savagery born from his orthodox beliefs and applied that same single-minded adherence to orthodoxy after his conversion on the road to Damascus, Chambers became a vehement anti-Communist once he underwent his religious awakening.

Perhaps the most reasoned and well thought out contemporary critique of Witness was penned by Hannah Arendt in her essay titled “The Ex-Communist” which appeared in The Commonweal in late 1952. The first thing that Arendt did was differentiate between former and ex-Communists. As an example of a former-Communist, she provided Pablo Picasso, who she claimed was more aligned with Communism in a sentimental fashion and was therefore not interesting as a component in her analysis of ex-Communists because “decisive is that their Communist past remained an important biographical fact, but did not become the nucleus of their new opinions [or] viewpoints.”[29] Chambers, Arendt argued, represented the ex-Communists, who were vastly different from the former-Communists due to the fact that “the ex-Communists, though of course much smaller in number than former-Communists, have become prominent on the strength of their past alone. Communism has remained the chief issue of their lives.”[30] This distinction is important because ex-Communists were helping fight totalitarianism based on the fact that they knew it intimately and therefore were better armed to meet it head on and fight it on its own terms. Yet Arendt did take issue with the fact that ex-Communists used language of faith rather than ideology, and spoke in absolutes since “the ex-Communists are not former-Communists, they are Communists ‘turned upside down’; without their former Communism, they insist, nobody can understand what they are doing now. What they are doing concerns the central crisis of our times; this is really known by two groups: the Communists and the ex-Communists themselves,”[31] and in the coming fight they saw everyone else as mere bystanders.

American Communists and ex-Communists shared, according to Arendt, a common disdain for Liberalism. This was due to the fact that American Communists denounced Liberalism as half-measures, and ex-Communists denounced Liberals as Fellow Travelers, leaving them with no allies in the Left wing of American politics thus forcing them into the arms of the Right. This also led ex-Communists to more readily adopt the language and tactics of totalitarianism in order to fight totalitarianism, which to Arendt was a recipe for disaster since justifying these tactics as merely a means to an end was akin to traveling down the road to perdition. Indeed “if we insist on applying the category of means and end to action and human relationships, we shall see that everything comes to stand on its head.”[32] Therefore, this alluded to the proposition that ex-Communists cannot do good deeds because that would make for a more liberal society and would therefore have been detrimental to their cause.

Arendt also took serious issue with the notion that the world was experiencing a crisis of history that only Communism could offer a solution to. Arendt insisted that no one can actually make history; only politics. And yet both Communists and ex-Communists styled themselves as makers of history. Arendt traced this tendency to identify as a maker of history to Marx’s misinterpretation of Hegel. She then related that Chambers was not interested in politics and chastises him for the fact that by informing to Berle in 1939 conveniently linked to the Non-Aggression Pact, even though he broke from the Party a long time before. This led her to the conclusion that “it is against these makers of history that a free society has to defend himself, regardless of the vision that they harbor.”[33] She then continued this line of thought by lamenting that proverbs and imagery are generally on the side of the history makers, which to Arendt was a very unfortunate fact. She then concluded with the opinion that true statesmen transcend this fact and used Dreyfus Affair as an example. In the wake of Dreyfus’ acquittal, Arendt offered that Clemenceau knew that “the law is impartial toward both good and bad, and that the breech of the law (or, for that matter, the risking of civil liberties in order to trap a bad man) is necessarily to end of civil liberties for all.”[34] Therefore, there could be no final battle between free society and totalitarianism, because said battle would be inconclusive. However, Arendt insisted that “it belongs to totalitarian thinking to conceive a final conflict at all. There is no finality in history—the story told by it is a story with many beginnings but no end.”[35]

Finally, Arendt concluded that there was room in the American polity for all who truly want to participate, and was more than willing to accept those that repent their Communist beliefs, as long as they were not a “murderer or a professional spy.”[36] She qualified this sentiment with the observation that America as a democratic entity is uncategorizable will never be “perfect.” To Arendt, ex-Communists were no better than police thugs that need to be kept on a short leash. After all, living in freedom is risky, and that is why we need police. Yet

much as we desire friendship with you, much as we are in sympathy with your experiences and frequently with your personalities, as long as you insist on your role as ex-Communists, we must warn against you. In this role, you can only strengthen those dangerous elements which are present is all free societies today and which we do not want to crystallize into a totalitarian movement or a totalitarian form of domination, no matter what its cause and ideological content.[37]

In the end, Arendt provided a well-reasoned critique of Chambers’ work. She delved into the root of ex-Communists as zealots that merely switched sides without loosing the zealous nature of a true believer which is really what makes them dangerous to society as a whole.

Chambers brought to anti-Communism the same diehard zealotry that he brought to Communism. His religious conversion armed him with a determination that was forged in the fires of his crisis of faith. This crisis of faith was a pivotal component in his political conversion because “no man lightly reverses the faith of an adult lifetime, held implacably to the point of criminality. He reverses it only with a violence greater than the force of the faith he is repudiating.”[38] This theme of violence is a corollary of his painful convulsions he went through in his conversion. The primary thought that sustained him was that he must be willing to fight and die for belief, a sentiment that explains his readiness to sacrifice everything and testify before the world about the dangers of Communism. The steel in his spine served Chambers well when he decided to break, and he related this experience when he recalled the night in 1937 in which he decided to break with Communism. Facing oblivion, he can “remember that night well. It was the night when I faced the fact that, if Communism were evil; I could no longer serve it, and that was true regardless of the fact that there might be nothing else to serve, that the alternative was a void.”[39] Yet he knew that as far as his life and sanity were concerned, he had to face the oblivion and find something new to work toward. The courage that was born from his conviction was great, after all when he made his break with Communism he was 37 years old had a wife and two children to care for. Yet two things made that possible, his wife and “a faith that, if I turned away from evil and sought good, I would not fail; but whether or not I failed, that was what I was meant to do, at all costs, without measuring the consequences.”[40] This faith sustained him through the dark days and nights of his first year in hiding, and later in his long involvement as a government informer.

Yet Chambers was no fool. He was well aware of the ambiguity inherent in any conflict between good and evil and readily acknowledged grey areas devoid of any absolutes. Yet the very ambiguity of that sentiment exposes itself since “in that transition [from evil to good] we drag ourselves like cripples. We are cripples. In any such change as I was making, the soul itself is in flux. How hideous our transformations then are, wavering monstrously in their incompleteness as is a distorting mirror, until the commotion settles and the soul’s new proportions are defined.”[41] If this is true, then the only thing left to do is pray when faced with a crisis of conscience. At this point the only option that was open for him was to re-align his political thinking to a state more in tune with his newfound religiosity. This took much more time, for recompiling a political philosophy is a different animal than adopting a religious one. Chambers had found his faith in God; now he had to reformulate his faith in man.

Chambers was able to reorganize his political outlook while writing for Time Magazine. It is while at Time that Chambers has his serious religious awakening, and while editing the Foreign News section, truly began to see Communism as an evil ideology that must be fought against at all costs. It was therefore one of the most formative periods of his life. He soon became convinced that “men may seek God alone. They must worship him in common.”[42] This need for community had always motivated Chambers, who “had not changed from secular to religious faith in order to tolerate a formless good will vaguely tinctured with a rationalized theology and social uplift. I was not seeking ethics; I was seeking God. My need was to be a practicing Christian in the same sense that I had been a practicing Communist.”[43] This need for belonging and community was strong in a man who had been ostracized in his youth. His first forays into religious life were through a colleague at Time, Samuel Gardner Wells, who was an Episcopalian from a prominent family within the Church. However, soon after being baptized he felt that Episcopalianism was seriously lacking in some aspects. In his future searching, Chambers found a Quaker meeting. He had always been drawn to the Quakers, and after attending a meeting he read George Fox’s 17^th Century writings on the nature of Quakerism. Upon reading them, Chambers claimed that “it summoned me to a direct daily experience of God and told me that His revelation is continuous to those who seek to hear His voice in the silence and distractions of this world.”[44] Chambers interpreted Fox’s writings as a more militant brand of Quakerism than was being practiced during his day. It is also through these daily meditations that Chambers found peace and was better able to reconcile his thoughts on Communism and its evil nature. One thing that had turned Chambers off from Quakerism was also resolved by his reading of Fox, who as Chambers saw it as a militant pacifist due to the hard nature of his life and circumstances, pointing to the fact that he had to struggle daily to survive and thus knew what it was to wage war. By remaining devout in the face of extreme adversity, Fox provided the best example for Chambers to follow in his coming fight.

After his return to Time in 1946 after a long period of illness that was brought about from exhaustion, Chambers was assigned to Special projects where he was able to write on a multitude of subjects that were printed in the magazine as cover stories. Chambers was not inclined to take the assignment, as he had wanted to return to edit the Foreign News section. In fact, he recalled that “at first, I regarded Special Projects with a deep distaste. Then I realized that what I had taken for a final defeat was, in fact, my greatest opportunity. It gave me, on a scale impossible in Books, an opportunity to justify the ways of God to man that I had taken as my writing purpose.”[45] Chambers took the opportunity to publicly formulate his views on Communism and religion; culminating his tenure at Special Projects with a piece on the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr titled “Faith for a Lenten Age” which was printed in the March 8^th issue of Time in 1948. In this piece it is possible to see the fundamental tenets of Chambers conception of Christianity, for it is a critical review of Niebuhr’s life’s work that had been distilled into a massive two volume tome titled Nature and Destiny of Man. About this massive work and the essay that he penned lauding it Chambers wrote that “if anyone seeks to know the mind, the mood and character of Whittaker Chambers was like on the fore-eve of the Hiss case, let him read the essay on Reinhold Niebuhr.”[46] And the above is true, for a close reading of this essay and the material that he cited provides a glimpse into the mind of one who has claimed the moral high ground and provides insight into his motivations for turning informant against his former Communist comrades.

Chambers opened the essay with a young child who was asking her mother about the ash mark that Catholics receive on their foreheads as part of the Ash Wednesday services celebrating the beginning of Lent. Since the mother was unable to answer the child’s questions about the mark, Chambers lamented that

with prayer, with humility of spirit tempering his temerity of mind, man has always sought to define the nature of the most important fact in his experience: God. To this unending effort to know God, man is driven by the noblest of his intuitions—the sense of his mortal incompleteness—and by hard experience. For man's occasional lapses from God-seeking inevitably result in intolerable shallowness of thought combined with incalculable mischief in action.[47]

Man has science, yet science fails to explain God, and people have come to see religion as a mere habit; attending church irregularly and paying lip-service to the doctrines of faith while continuing on with their lives for the other six days of the week. According to Chambers, this gives rise to an apathetic and empty existence, for “to the mass of untheological Christians, God has become, at best, a rather unfairly furtive presence, a lurking luminosity, a cozy thought. At worst, He is conversationally embarrassing.”[48] It is this embarrassment that Chambers laid at the feet of Liberalism, arguing further that the Liberal doctrine of the perfectibility of man through progress is a sham.

Progress was, according to Chambers, a driving force for the declining religiosity among the people of his age, which fueled a departure from religion with the continued advances in science and medicine that pointed to the eventual perfection of the human condition. Indeed, Chambers argued that

this perfectibility is being achieved through technology, science, politics, social reform, education. Man is essentially good, says 20th Century liberalism, because he is rational, and his rationality is (if the speaker happens to be a liberal Protestant) divine, or (if he happens to be religiously unattached) at least benign.[49]

Yet, a very significant question remained to be asked; if science and progress were so good, why all of the destruction in the 20^th Century? The answer was quite simple to Chambers, who pointed out that “as 20th Century civilization reaches a climax, its own paradoxes grow catastrophic. The incomparable technological achievement is more & more dedicated to the task of destruction.”[50] Further and multiplying factors led to further strife and destruction, for “the faster science gains on disease (which, ultimately, seems always to elude it), the more the human race dies at the hands of living men. Men have never been so educated, but wisdom, even as an idea, has conspicuously vanished from the world.”[51] It was the resolution of these factors with the belief in God that Chambers felt was integral to the continued survival and moral well-being, yet the reality was that those that spoke of the perfectibility of man failed to see the paradoxes inherent in their doctrines and idealism.

To Chambers, Niebuhr represented an attempt within the ranks of Christian theologians to identify and address the paradoxes within Christian dogma, which can only be addressed by looking at Christianity and identifying its multiple inherent paradoxes. Indeed, the

Christian faith is a paradox which is the sum of paradoxes. Its passion mounts, like a surge of music, insubstantial and sustaining, between two great cries of the spirit—the paradoxic sadness of "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief," and the paradoxic triumph of Tertullian's ‘Credo quia impossibile’ (I believe because it is impossible).[52]

Chambers continued by examining the paradoxical relationship between good and evil, and the roots of each in the works of Man. For Man is only as good or as evil as his intentions, even though “if, in a chastened mood, man says, ‘I am essentially evil,’ he is baffled by another question, ‘Then how can I be good enough to know that I am bad?’”[53] The answer to this conundrum is that “man is, in fact, the creature who continually transcends nature and reason—and in this transcendence lies man's presentiment of God.”[54] Therefore, God has long been man’s way of answering unanswerable questions and solving the paradoxes inherent in the world by allowing someone to explain away the unexplainable by merely stating that what is, is; a sentiment summed up in the statement “man's world is not evil, for God, who is good, created the world. Man is not evil, because God created man.”[55] This very tidy summation of the paradoxical relationship that exists in the world of religious philosophy is rectified by the belief in that sin, not nature, is the root of evil in the world.

Chambers quoted Niebuhr as claiming that “anxiety is the precondition of sin,”[56] and that this anxiety is mans inherent spiritual condition. However,

anxiety is not sin because there is always the ideal possibility that faith might purge anxiety of the tendency toward sin. The ideal possibility is that faith in God's love would overcome all immediate insecurities of nature and history. Hence Christian orthodoxy has consistently defined unbelief as the root of sin.[57]

Man is therefore pushed into seeking transcendence of sin by performing cultural and intellectual achievements, yet in doing so often falls into the trap sprung by the sin of pride in his accomplishments. This slippery slope is not the only one that man finds himself traveling down because, unfortunately, “man does not always sin by denying his finiteness. Sometimes, instead, he denies his freedom. He seeks to lose himself ‘in some aspect of the world's vitalities.’ This is sensual sin.”[58] Having identified yet another conundrum in the complexities of faith, Chambers concluded that “the paradox of man's freedom and finiteness is common to all great religions. But the Christian approach to the problem is unique, for it asserts that the crux of the problem is not man's finiteness—the qualities that make him one with the brute creation—but man's sin.”[59] One must dissolve the perspective of paradox in order to transcend sin, for that is the only way available for him to overcome the finiteness of his situation and rectify the fact that he is unable or unwilling to understand the true nature of sin, no matter how much knowledge he has accumulated over his relatively short lifetime.

Finally, Chambers delved into Niebuhr’s reflections on the state of Original Sin, which he identifies as having roots in an unfathomable pre-history that predates both the Fall of Adam and the Fall of Lucifer, a paradoxical train of thought that leaves the mind reeling, almost like the analogy of the Chicken and the Egg. However, an examination of this conundrum reveals that

this original sin, infecting the paradox in which man asserts his freedom against his finiteness, and complicating with a fatality of evil a destiny which man senses to be divine, is the tissue of history. It explains why man's history, even at its highest moments, is not a success story. It yawns, like a bottomless crater, across the broad and easy avenue of optimism. It would be intolerable without faith, without hope, without love.[60]

This final statement summed up the mindset of a man that was struggling to come to terms with his past; a man that was desperately seeking redemption for the sins that he committed willingly and for which he had long felt remorse for. It also explains why he set out to find religion in the first place, as the existential examination of not only his own personal faith but the examination of the intricate threads of paradox inherent in any philosophy that attempts to explain the human condition shows a man that is out to not only justify his past actions, but absolve himself of the guilt that those actions have left him with. For Chambers had the personality of a true believer crossed with an intellectual capacity that was quite formidable, a combination that left him with the insatiable desire to not only find solace in his personal faith, but to achieve transcendent understanding of that faith as well.

Communism: a Doctrine of Evil

Having developed his new Christian based moral outlook on the world, Chambers turned to the task of defining Communism as the primary force for evil in his age. In order to examine this new philosophy one must first acknowledge that central to his argument is the claim that Communism is evil. Then an examination of his motivation for deciding to inform to H.U.A.C. becomes plainly apparent. It is also necessary to reintroduce the concept explained as the crisis of history and the solutions that Communism seemed to provide for it. When Chambers broke with Communism, he did so believing that he was abandoning the winning side in the historical struggle, yet his convictions necessitated the abandonment of Communism, for he is convinced as early as “1938, [when] with the clearest understanding of the consequences, we freely made the choice which history is slowly bringing all men to see as the only possible choice—the decision to die, if necessary, rather than to live under Communism.”[61] Again, the militant nature of Chambers’ psyche shines through with this bold statement. In his eyes, it is much nobler to die a martyr than to continue to ignore something that he once believed in but now saw as evil.

Chambers saw in Communism’s rejection of religion a pragmatic exploitation of a trend in society toward agnosticism and atheism. Indeed, Chambers admitted that in his early years he “committed the characteristic crimes of the century, which is unique in the history of men for two reasons. It is the first century since life began when a decisive part of the most articulate section of mankind has not merely ceased to believe in God, but has deliberately rejected God.”[62] Chambers insisted that this phenomenon of rejection was exploited by those who politicized it, stating that “the most conspicuously menacing form of that rejection is Communism.”[63] The crime of rejection had in fact worked to the great favor of the Communist Party, drawing in those who had seen organized religion as the great villain of history.

By treating Communism as an evil force, Chambers made the next jump by criminalizing it. Chambers provided an excellent metaphor describing the forces of good as having established police apparatuses in order to protect the world from those that would seek to exploit it, and ex-Communists were to serve as informants to this police force. He acknowledged that informants sit at the lowest rank in the social hierarchy, yet demands that “every ex-Communist look unblinkingly at that image. It is himself. By the logic of his position in the struggles of this age, every ex-Communist is an informer from the moment he breaks with Communism, regardless of how long it takes him to reach the police station.”[64] This is a key factor in any attempt to rationalize the mind frame of a man who would betray those that trusted their lives to his discretion. Yet Chambers continued to seek redemption for his past sins, regardless of the consequences.

It is a brave act to turn against an organization that destroys its traitors and detractors. Indeed, “Communism fixes the consequences of its evil not only on those who serve it, but also on those, who, once having served it, seek to serve against it.”[65] This is due to the fact that Communism is fighting on its own terms, for the simple truth is that Communism existed to wage war, and in doing so took no prisoners and offered no mercy to its enemies. Therefore, Chambers insisted that “no man simply deserts from the Communist Party. He deserts against it. He deserts to struggle against Communism as an evil. There would otherwise be no reason for his desertion, however long it may take him to grasp that fact,”[66] even though this demanded that one treated those that were once friends as enemies. This must happen because in order to defeat an enemy one must resort to the tactics and strategy used by said enemy and use these tricks against them.

But how does one reconcile himself to being a betrayer? For Chambers, the answer is simple and absolute: if the ex-Communist believes that Communism is evil, he must turn informer. In order to find redemption and offer service to his new allies in the struggle against evil, Chambers claimed that

in that war which Communism insists on waging, and which therefore he cannot evade, he has on specific contribution to make—his special knowledge of the enemy. That is what all have to offer first of all. Because Communism is a conspiracy, that knowledge is indispensable for the active phase of the struggle against it.[67]

Therefore, it is imperative that ex-Communists inform, thereby earning redemption for their past transgressions. For Chambers, this decision is an easy one “for, in the end, the choice for the ex-Communist is between shielding a small number of people who still actively further what he now sees to be evil, or of helping to shield millions from that evil which threatens even their souls.”[68] That being said, Chambers showed his true colors as a pragmatist, pointing out that “sometimes, by informing, the ex-Communist can claim immunity of one kind or another for acts committed before his change of heart or sides. He is right to claim it, for if he is to be effective, his first task is to preserve himself.”[69] This statement, more than any other, provides insight into the reasoning for informing to H.U.A.C. This resolve, combined with the damning nature of the evidence that he was able to produce is very powerful indeed.

Sociologist Murray Hausknecht examined what he saw as a new literature form that was emerging around those ex-Communists that were publishing their memoirs in the 1950’s. In his article titled “Confession and Return”, Hausknecht posited that of all the titles being published at the time, Witness was the best example of literature of political conversion. Hausknecht opened his article with an examination of the phenomenon of confession and the importance that it had on the likes of Whittaker Chambers, who with the writing of Witness was attempting to reintegrate himself into society after the Hiss Trails. This was integral because “Chambers was at one time a deviant or nonconforming person who now seeks to return to a more approved position in the society. This suggests that confession may be a means for reintegrating the once deviant person with the rest of society.”[70] This need to re-enter society necessitated a complete and comprehensive listing of the crimes and misdeeds that Chambers had perpetrated during his years as a Communist, lending weight to Hausknecht’s claim that true confessions are never coerced; that they are indeed voluntary as “one of the values of a confession lies in the fact that it is a dramatic symbol of the forces of one set of beliefs over another. For in confessing to crimes or sins the wrong- doer testifies to the force and validity of the moral code which condemns his behavior.”[71] Confessions, especially public ones, hold immense symbolic power over the opinions of those that read them. As an example, Chambers, “the returning ex-Communist, the person presumably well acquainted with two competing ideologies, is a living symbol of this power. But he has this symbolic value only when he confesses, for only then does his defection become a positive aid in re-enforcing the traditional beliefs of the majority.”[72]

Confessions approve one set of beliefs; they play to an audience and serve to reinforce their deeply held convictions and worldview. In order to exploit this, those that confess have to speak to the greatest common denominator of the group that he is trying to either placate or join. This is due to the fact that “the returning nonconformist will always leave at least part of the group cold. Anyone labeled a ‘renegade’ is morally leprous; the ex-Communist has compounded this sin not only by becoming a Communist in the first place, but by now deserting the Communists.”[73] This speaks to the fact that confessions are not just politically motivated; they are actually exploited by those maintaining the status quo. Therefore, “any deviant individual, whether he is an ordinary thief or a political nonconformist, severely damages the fabric of the social order. Those charged with maintaining order must not only prevent further damage but must also repair the damage already done.”[74] Hausknecht concluded by claiming Witness was very credible to the public as it reinforced the beliefs that they held, even though there was a swath of the population that refused to trust a man that would betray both his country and the trust of those that he was associated with, even though they were his accomplices in treasonous acts.

The Imminent War

Finally, the fourth aspect of Chambers’ thinking is to be examined, and that his growing fear of the imminence of WWIII as an epic battle that was to be waged between the forces of good and evil. Chambers was particularly worried that his contemporaries were not particularity concerned about this coming struggle, and he himself was not firmly convinced until he had a conversation he had in 1939 with Walter Krivitsky, a former G.R.U. agent and veteran of the Soviet Revolution, who having broke with the Communist Party was living in exile in New York. When discussing the nature of the Soviet Union as a fascist state, Krivitsky used the Non-Aggression Pact as an example of Stalin’s ruthlessness by explaining to Chambers that

the alliance was, in fact, a political inevitability… for by means of the Pact, Communism could pit one sector of the west against the other, and use both to destroy what was left of the non-Communist world. As Communists strategy, the Pact was thoroughly justified, and the Communist Party was right in denouncing all those who opposed it as Communism’s enemies. From any human point of view, the Pact was evil.[75]

The pragmatic nature of this realization was seen by Chambers as evidence of Stalin’s plan for the post-WWII world. Krivitsky also pinpointed the unprepared nature of the West by stating that when “looked at concretely, there are no ex-Communists. There are only revolutionists and counter-revolutionists… in the 20^th century, all politics, national and international is the politics of revolution.”[76] Being Revolutionists themselves, they were aware that only ex-Communists could truly grasp the nature of the coming conflict. This bespoke of a danger of unprecedented scope for the West, for “in the struggle against Communism, the conservative is all but helpless. For that struggle cannot be fought, much less won, or even understood, except in terms of total sacrifice. And the conservative is suspicious of sacrifice; he wishes first to conserve, above all what he is and what he has. You cannot fight against revolutions so.”[77] Herein laid the crux of Chambers’ worldview; he felt that Communism was the stronger force due to its ability to destroy and build a new world on the ashes of the old without regard for the lives of either its adherents or its enemies. The West was doomed in this coming battle because it was forced to defend too many fronts and was unwilling to give ground and would therefore be bowled over by a force with nothing to loose and everything to gain.

After the H.U.A.C. hearings, Chambers found a deeper calling to testify to the truth about the coming apocalyptic battle between good and evil that he was sure was coming. For Chambers, the act of testifying in the Hiss Trials was the action of a man engaged in the first skirmishes of the impending conflict. To punctuate this point, Chambers wrote that “I was not merely a man testifying against something, I was a witness for something… a struggle between the force of two irreconcilable faiths—communism and Christianity.”[78] By choosing the side of Christianity, Chambers was declaring his allegiance in a 20^th Century crusade against the Godless heathens of the East, a zealot with an eye for martyrdom who “had begun to understand that to be a witness, in the sense in which I am using the term, means, ultimately, just one thing. It means that a man is prepared to destroy himself, if necessary, to make his witness.”[79] It is by acting as a witness that Chambers was most valuable to his cause, serving himself up on the altar of an ally that did not see the impending apocalyptic battle.

Liberalism was the prime domestic enemy in this coming fight, and Chambers was quick to identify the complicity of Liberals in the face of an enemy that they were largely sympathetic of. To Chambers, Liberals were cowards that would capitulate to the extreme forces of Communism as opposed to the doctrines of he Right because they were more ideologically compatible with their own beliefs. Therefore, Liberals were the enemies in Chambers world, which was apparent since

the fact is that when I took up my little sling and aimed it at Communism, I also hit something else. What I hit was the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, but always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades.[80]

In couching his language in this way, Chambers identified the enemy to his cause, and with the conviction of a man that had walked through the fires of political and religious conversion laid down the gauntlet against those that would stand in the way of what he felt was the historical force for good.

The critical response to Witness and Chambers’ warnings of an impending battle with the evil forces of Communism was defiantly mixed. Conservative critics lauded the book, while Liberals tended to slam it. Much of the Liberal responses that denigrated Witness were more concerned with proving the innocence of Hiss than they were with actually engaging the text. However, Irving Howe’s article for The Nation titled “God, Man, and Stalin” which was published in the May 24^th edition of the magazine in 1952 actually engaged Chambers and his visions of impending doom. One of the first things that strikes the reader in an article from a Liberal of the period is the fact that he does not think that Hiss was innocent and that in fact, Chambers was telling the truth in the H.U.A.C. hearings and the following perjury trials. To further explore this position, Irving asks “what did it matter when at stake was the commitment of those Popular-Front liberals who had persisted in treating Stalinism as an accepted part of ‘the Left’? And why should serious people have puzzled for long over the private motives of Chambers or Hiss when Stalinism itself remained to be studied and analyzed?”[81] These questions are indeed more pertinent than those that were often addressed concerning Chambers character or his motivations for outing Hiss as a Communist spy.

Yet Howe was by no means easy on Chambers or his book. He goes on in the article to claim that Witness certainly left something to be desired as a scholarly work, stating that “as a work of ideas it should be so ragged and patchy… everything breaks down into sermon, reminiscence, self-mortification, and self-justification.”[82] He further criticizes Chambers as a self-appointed seeker of truth and takes him to task for his claim that God is an agent of change, wryly suggesting that “from Witness, an unsympathetic reader might, in fact, conclude that God spent the past several years as a special aid to the H.U.A.C.”[83] Howe lays further doubts about Chambers veracity as a historian, and lists many factual errors in which Chambers had substituted Communist legend and hearsay for valid, verifiable facts positing that “Chambers’ extreme political turn has dizzied his historical sense”[84] in his use of Communist legend as fact and by twisting the activities of H.U.A.C. to being the get of one or two of its many operators. Howe also had much criticism for Chambers’ attempts to play the victim to attacks from the Left, and in doing so, criticized Chambers’ complaints of Liberal smear tactics, yet rightly pointed out that he used them himself on many occasions. Howe also took issue with the fact that Chambers failed to examine in detail Stalinist ideology, pointing out that “nowhere in his 800 pages does he attempt sustained definition or description, nowhere does he bound the shape of evil.”[85] Howe thought that Chambers left out this fact because it would have weakened his overall argument that Communism was a force for evil in the world, stating that “if you believe that the two great camps of the world prepare for battle under the banners, Faith in Man and Faith in God, what is the point of close study and fine distinctions? You need only sound the trumpets.”[86] While this may sound trite, it does raise a valid point, for if one feels it absolutely necessary to take up arms against a rival power, it is much more effective and ethical to give valid reasons and not descend into religious hyperbole.

Howe is at times hyper-critical in his analysis, and one point particularly shines through. Howe splits hairs over Chambers’ claim that Communism is fascist in nature, writing that “Stalinism and Fascism, while symmetrical in their political devices, have different historical origins, class structures, political ideologies, and social rationales.”[87] While this may be technically correct, Howe misses the greater point that Chambers was making entirely when he related his conversation with Krivitsky that was discussed earlier. However, Howe did give Chambers credit for identifying major problem of Stalinism, stating that “his insistence that in an era of permanent crisis it provides a faith, a challenge, even an ideal. Feeding on crisis, Stalinism offers a vision.”[88] In the larger scheme, Howe correctly pointed out that “this is an important observation and a necessary corrective to vulgar theories which make of Stalinism mainly an atavistic drive for power.”[89] Yet Howe claimed that Chambers treated Stalinism as a legitimate form of Marxism. This is indeed true, and as he stated time and time again in Witness, it was the main reason that Chambers broke with the Party. Finally, Howe took issue with Chambers for taking a moralistic view of upcoming WWIII (that Chambers thought was coming in the near future) and pointed out that religion has nothing to do with the fact that dictators an despots still gain power, often through religious rhetoric, and that “the priests in Russia pray for Stalin as in Germany they preyed for Hitler.”[90] Howe further claimed that pointing out above fact to Chambers was a lost cause because

those who abandon a father below are all too ready for a father above. But this shift in faith does not remove the gnawing problems which, if left unsolved, will drive still more people to Stalinism; it gives the opponents of the totalitarian state no strategy; no program with which to remake the world; it makes our situation more desperate than it already is. For if Chambers is right in believing the major bulwark against Stalin to be faith in God, then it is time for men of conviction and courage to take to the hills.[91]

While Howe did give grudging credit to Chambers on some points, he stole his credibility by taking many of his more whimsical passages in the book and treating them as facts to be verified, and when these facts failed a test, Howe discredited the entire sentiment. It is important to note that Chambers was not a political animal, and since Howe failed to either realize or acknowledge this fact, his critique of Witness reads as shrill and reactionary, leaving the reader wondering about any underlying agenda he had while writing this critique.

Conservative Canonization

Chambers served as an editor for The National Review in its formative years, acting as a friend and mentor to its young provocateur William F. Buckley. In the years leading up to his death in 1961, Chambers provided many an article to The National Review, thereby establishing himself at the forefront of the New Right movement. By the 1970’s, Witness had achieved canonical status among American Conservatives as Chambers was among the first editors of The National Review, and provided articles for the magazine until his death in 1961. On the 25^th anniversary of its release, Gerhart Niemeyr wrote a glowing review of Witness for a new generation of Conservatives. From the start, Niemeyr attacked the Liberal tendency to still defend the innocence of Hiss by comparing the Hiss trials to the Sacco and Vanzetti trial and Dreyfus Affair. In a definite case of sour grapes, Niemeyr claims that while the Dreyfus Affair left the French Right Wing disgraced, Sacco and Vanzetti and Hiss Trials found the Left as strong as ever, lamenting that “we find that legal decisions do not move political mountains, at least not against the Left; one may leave the picking of fine legal points to the historians.”[92] This is obviously a tender point for Niemeyr, who went on to quote Chambers when he wrote that the West has “lost the power to distinguish between reality and unreality, because ultimately it had lost the power to distinguish between good and evil”. This failure on the part of the Left was a major bone of contention among Conservatives, who largely felt that the “failure accounts for the widespread inability in the West to realize the forces of demonic faith that draws the totalitarian movements, as well as the hellish agony of those who try to make their souls escape from its claws.”[93] Niemeyr concludes his rather short review of Witness sentimentally, writing that “while we look in sorrow on the long list of our losses of nerve and failures of wisdom in high places, we also have Whittaker Chambers, who bore his countries honor.”[94] Frankly, Niemeyr’s article is slightly hypocritical in that he slams prior Leftist “victories” yet refuses to come to terms with the fact that Chambers was a traitor in the 1930’s, an omission that effectively negates his argument that the Liberals get all the breaks.

The canonization of Witness continued with the 30^th anniversary release, for which Terry Teachout wrote a glowing review for, once again in the National Review. Signaling a shift to a literary analytical approach, Teachout claimed that “Witness is not an apologia, an attempt at self-vindication; nor is it primarily the autobiography of an historical figure. It is, rather, a work of literary art which deals with a profoundly moral theme.”[95] Teachout carries this theme when he relates a point in Witness in which Chambers is talking to a young woman who had lived in Moscow during Stalin’s Purge and told him that she could hear screams in the night, which prompted her flight from the Soviet Union. Teachout brought that sentiment in the modern context, writing that

at a time when the ears of the West are so closely attuned to the screams coming out of Gdansk and Warsaw and Silesia, it is appropriate to pause for a moment and recall the 30 year old witness of Whittaker Chambers. One night he heard screams, and followed the dictates of his conscience; and the free world has been—however grudgingly—in his debt ever since.[96]

In the end, Teachout provided what is really a shallow literary criticism that spent more time lambasting Liberal critiques (however warranted they may be) then going beyond the obvious allusions that Chambers made to good and evil.

In the final analysis, Chambers was always an extremist that was in no way comfortable in the middle ground. At every point in his life, Chambers always took the most extreme path; joining the Communist Party, engaging in espionage, converting to Quakerism, and finally informing on a man that he acknowledged that he had a strong friendship with. The arguments, opinions, and ideological analysis that Chambers espoused in Witness are without a doubt extraordinarily well-reasoned. However, one must temper that fact with an examination of the source and look to the root of his character as an all-or-nothing personality, and remember that the most effective and long lasting political advancements have come through the art of compromise, an act with which a man like Chambers was completely incapable of.

Chambers is far and away an extraordinarily difficult subject to analyze. He is a traitor and a villain by any standard that can be applied, yet the Right (arguably the most unforgiving of sects in American politics), venerates him and treats him as a hero. Even Ronald Reagan, the most ardent of the Communist fighters, elevated Chambers to the status of hero, bestowing upon him in 1984 the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded by the United States government. It can and has been argued that without Chambers, the McCarthy era of Red-Baiting and Blacklisting would not have been so prevalent in the culture of the 1950’s, yet it would be just as easy to take that claim even further and say that there would have been no basis for this historical episode in the first place had people like Chambers had not stepped forward and named names.

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[1] I wrote this using notes from the various 20^th Century History classes that I have taken and general readings form the era.

[2] The above paragraph would not have been possible to write without a reading of Diggins, John P. Up From Communism. Harper and Row, New York. 1975. In this book, Diggins outlines the major intellectual development of four prominent ex-Communist intellectuals; Max Eastman, John Dos Passos, Will Herberg, and James Burnham

[3] Tanenhaus, Sam. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Random House, New York, 1997. Pgs. 4-8.

[4] Tanenhaus, S. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Pgs. 15-18.

[5]Ibid. Pgs. 30-45.

[6] Tanenhaus, S. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Pgs. 57-76.

[7] Ibid. Pgs. 91-119.

[8] Tanenhaus, S. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Pgs. 123-128.

[9] Tanenhaus, S. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Pgs. 153-199.

[10] Ibid. Pgs. 212-276.

[11] Tanenhaus, S. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Pgs. 340-406.

[12] Sundquist, Eric J. “Witness Recalled”. Appears in Commentary, December, 1988. New York. Pg. 57.

[13] Sundquist, E. “Witness Recalled”. Pg. 58.

[14] Sundquist, E. “Witness Recalled”. Pg. 58.

[15] Chambers, Whittaker. Witness. Random House, New York. 1952. Pg. 191.

[16] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 191.

[17] Ibid. Pg. 192.

[18] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 193.

[19] Ibid. Pg. 348.

[20] Ibid. Pg. 348.

[21] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 348.

[22] Ibid. Pg. 351.

[23] Ibid. Pg. 352.

[24] Ibid. Pg. 693.

[25] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 693.

[26] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 16.

[27] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 16.

[28] Ibid. Pg. 16.

[29] Arendt, Hannah. “The Ex-Communists”. Appears in Essays in Understanding, Kohn, J. Ed. Harcourt Brace and Company, New York. 1994. Pg. 392.

[30] Arendt, H. “The Ex-Communists”. Pg. 392.

[31] Ibid. Pg. 394.

[32] Arendt, H. “The Ex-Communists”. Pg. 396.

[33] Ibid. Pg. 397.

[34] Arendt, H. “The Ex-Communists”. Pg. 398-9.

[35] Ibid. Pg. 399.

[36] Ibid. Pg. 400.

[37] Ibid. Pg. 400.

[38] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 444.

[39] Ibid. Pg. 444.

[40] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 446.

[41] Ibid. Pg. 446.

[42] Ibid. Pg. 482.

[43] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 482.

[44] Ibid. Pg. 483.

[45] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 505.

[46] Ibid. Pg. 507.

[47] Chambers, Whittaker. “Faith for a Lenten Age”. Time Magazine, March 8, 1948. New York. URL: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,853293-1,00.html retrieved 4/15/2009. Pg. 1.

[48] Chambers, W. “Faith for a Lenten Age”. Pg. 1.

[49] Ibid. Pg. 1.

[50] Chambers, W. “Faith for a Lenten Age”. Pg. 2.

[51] Ibid. Pg. 2.

[52] Ibid. Pg 4.

[53] Ibid. Pg 5.

[54] Chambers, W. “Faith for a Lenten Age”. Pg 5.

[55] Ibid. Pg 5.

[56] Ibid. Pg 5.

[57] Ibid. Pg 5.

[58] Ibid. Pg 5.

[59] Chambers, W. “Faith for a Lenten Age”. Pg 6.

[60] Ibid. Pg 7.

[61] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 25.

[62] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 449.

[63] Ibid. Pg. 449.

[64] Ibid. Pg. 454.

[65] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 454.

[66] Ibid. Pg. 455.

[67] Ibid. Pg. 455.

[68] Ibid. Pg. 455.

[69] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 456.

[70] Hausknecht, Murray. “Confession and Return”. The Antioch Review, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1954). Pg 77.

[71] Hausknecht, M. “Confession and Return”. Pg 77.

[72] Ibid. Pg 77.

[73] Ibid. Pg 78.

[74] Ibid. Pg 79.

[75] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 461.

[76] Ibid. Pg. 462.

[77] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 462.

[78] Ibid. Pg. 699.

[79] Chambers, W. Witness. Pg. 700.

[80] Ibid. Pg. 741.

[81] Howe, Irving. “God, Man, and Stalin”. Appears in The Nation, 5/24/1952. New York. Pg. 502.

[82] Howe, I. “God, Man, and Stalin”. Pg. 502.

[83] Ibid. Pg. 502.

[84] Ibid. Pg. 502.

[85] Howe, I. “God, Man, and Stalin”. Pg. 503.

[86] Ibid. Pg. 503.

[87] Ibid. Pg. 503.

[88] Howe, I. “God, Man, and Stalin”. Pg. 504.

[89] Ibid. Pg. 504.

[90] Ibid. Pg. 504.

[91] Ibid. Pg. 504.

[92] Niemeyr, Gerhart. “Witness” (Book Review). Appears in The National Review, 8/4/1978. New York. Pg. 964.

[93] Niemeyr, G. “Witness” (Book Review). Pg. 965.

[94] Ibid. Pg. 967.

[95] Teachout, Terry. “The Man Who Heard Screams”. Appears in The National Review, 2/5/1982. New York. Pg. 122.

[96] Teachout, T. “The Man Who Heard Screams”. Pg. 122.