The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willy M�nzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West, 1917-1940

by Sean Mcmeekin

Release Date: 01 January, 2004

Edition: Hardcover

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Worthwhile reading, although annoying at times.

This book is a biography of Willy Minzenberg, who was a famous German propagandist for the communist cause in the years between the two great wars of the previous century. Although the man shilled for a cause which led to the deaths of millions of people, in reality he was not as successful as he or Moscow had hoped. In fact, Munzenberg and his projects were essentially a "money pit" for the Bolsheviks. Had there been a more effective means for them to espouse their collectivist cause, the Bolsheviks may have been more successful in Germany and the rest of Europe, perhaps even successfully establishing a Soviet German state before Hitler was given power in 1933, as they wanted. This is the most important point you should get from the Soviet-Munzenberg relationship, and McMeekin illustrates this point well.

On the other hand, McMeekin writes from a somewhat American elitist, naive point of view. You know the type, every other word out of said naive American elitist's mouth is "democracy" or "justice" when they have no idea that their own nation is not even a democracy, but rather a republic (democracy means "mob rule") and neither would they know what justice was, even if it bit them on the leg. A leftist might read this book thinking that McMeekin is an arrogant capitalist since throughout the book, McMeekin denounces communist principles and practices. On the other hand, he quite often, especially with regard to American communists and sympathizers, apologizes for leftists by calling their efforts to support Munzenberg and other Bolsheviks as "naive." At one point, he even calls oil baron Armand Hammer "naive" for his collaboration with communists. This, in spite of the fact that Hammer was the son of a communist, and most likely was educated by his father in sympathy to collectivism. Throughout the book, McMeekin documents one Eupoean capitalist after another funding communist causes, however in these cases he does not call them naive. Of course they are not naive, and neither are the American capitalists when they support collectivism. Collectivism is a great benefit to the capitalist, especially when it helps him establish a monopoly; eliminating his competitors. And what is any bigger monopolization of wealth and power than communism, moreover a global soviet state?

Another thing in this book which got on my nerves was in chapter 15, where McMeekin makes the claim: "The production crisis [during the depression] was exacerbated further by the doctrinal commitment of Western Governments to the gold standard which left central bank officials with little room to maneuver and keep credit tight." What McMeekin is saying here, whether he is aware of it or not, is that the central planners should have been given more freedom to undermine the worth of their respective nations' currency for the purpose of funding large government projects to bail their respective governments out of situations that they themselves created in the first place. When a government or bank "goes off a standard" (e.g. gold or silver) it is given the ability to print as much money as it likes. The worth of that nation's currency declines as an immediate result. So when a dollar in your bank account becomes worth only $0.97 in one year, keep in mind that it's worth is not just disappearing in to thin air, it is being transferred into the coffers of your government and the private banking monopoly known as the "Federal Reserve." Yes, in a manner of speaking, inflation is the effect of a hidden form of taxation.

Another aspect of the author's writing which makes me label it naive is his branding of the communists "leftists" and the nazis "rightists." McMeekin is by no means the only author "guilty" of this habit, nevertheless it is naive to call the nazis "right wing" when in fact the full name of the Nazi party is NSDAP, meaning "National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeits-Partei" or in English, "National Socialist German Worker's Party." I don't know about you, but this name does not sound terribly "right wing" to me. Considering how the communists and nazis were competing against one another over the same rabble before 1933, and how even some nazis like Gregor Strasser were communistic in idealogy, the distinctions "left" and "right" become even more meaningless in this scenario. Don't forget also the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact between Hitler and Stalin and their cooperation in dividing up Poland. These bedfellows were not so strange.

It was the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact which finally caused the usually cowardly (shrewd, if you prefer) Munzenberg to publicly sever his diminishing relationship with the Soviets in 1938. Shortly after the Nazis invaded France, where Munzenberg was exiled, he was found dead in a forest in Vichy France and authorities dubiously labeled it as "suicide." McMeekin correctly points out that it probably was neither suicide, nor the nazis who killed Munzenberg since they would want him alive, to furnish them with information about the German commmunist underground. On the other hand, McMeekin again points out, if Stalin could have Trotsky killed in Mexico, then there is no reason to suspect he could not cause Munzenberg to suffer a similar fate in France, which seems to have been a territory not unfamiliar to the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB). Unfortunately the chapters documenting the end of Munzenberg's life are short; however I don't blame the author considering the likely shortage of information available.

If you can stand the annoying things in this book, including the out of-place verbs such as "punt" where McMeekin uses American football analogies to describe activites of European communists, you will find much interesting information in this book. And for his contribution to knowledge, McMeekin certainly deserves much credit.