Top

Published in:

2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Maslow’s Death

Author : Mario Kessler

Published in: A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

On November 21, 1941 Fischer succeeded in getting Maslow an entrance permit to the United States. But on the same day he was found dead in Havana. According to an official investigation, Maslow had suffered a heart attack. However, Ruth Fischer was and remained of the opinion that Stalin’s secret police agents had murdered him. The chapter demonstrates that her assumption was correct and gives details of how Maslow was run over by a truck.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

previous chapter Flight and Exile: Paris-Marseille-Lisbon-Havana

next chapter Avenging Maslow? Ruth Fischer’s Crusade and Final Change of Mind

See Guenther Reinhardt, Crime Without Punishment: The Secret Soviet Terror Against America (New York: Hermitage House, 1952), p. 41.

See Peter Brock and Nigel Young, Pacifism in the Twentieth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 249, referring to a debate between Norman Mailer and Dwight Macdonald in 1952.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 567: Letter of June 23, 1941, in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 98.

German espionage activity in Cuba was minor despite the country’s importance to the Allied war-effort and was soon eliminated by Allied counter-intelligence. At the time of Maslow’s arrival in Havana, a Gestapo agent named Heinz Luening lived there, posing as a Jewish refugee. See Max Paul Friedman, Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against the Germans of Latin America in WWII (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 216.

Ruth Fischer: Letter of October 16, 1941, in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 130.

Fritz Heine knew Fischer and Maslow from Marseille. See Stefan Appelius (ed.), Der Teufel hole Hitler: Briefe aus der sozialdemokratischen Emigration (Essen: Klartext, 2003), p. 38.

On this whole affair, see Ruth Fischer Papers, Files 567 (Maslow’s letters to Fischer), 1662 (documents on Maslow’s visa application), 2296 (Maslow to Benny Cohn) and 2332 (Danish General Consulate, New York, letters to Benny Cohn).

See Ruth Fischer Papers, File 2778: A. Maslow, Das Überraschungsmoment oder die Elimination abstrakter Hypothesen [June 23, 1941], also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 384–389. See also File 2746: Die Perspektiven Russlands in diesem Krieg und die Auswirkungen des deutsch-russischen Krieges [July 2, 1941], in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 389–408.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 567: Maslow to Fischer, letter of June 23, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 98–99.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 567: Letter of June 25, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 101.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 2779: Europe analyzed daily, August 1, 1941.

See ibid., August 27, 1941.

Ibid., File 567: Letter of October 11, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 125.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 1662: Letter of October 3, 1941, p. 5. Issichka was a nickname for Isaak, Maslow’s original first name.

Ibid., Letter of November 19, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 140.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 2306: Maslow to Lore, letter of November 1941 [exact date unclear], also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 139–140. See many references to Lore in the Fischer–Maslow correspondence, as in: Ibid., pp. 96, 100, 102, 104, 113, 139–142 (correspondence between September 13 and November 19, 1941).

For the contact between Lore and Chambers see Sam Tenenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (New York: Modern Library, 1997), p. 140. For Lore’s work for the Soviet secret service see John Earl Haynes et al., Spies: The Rise an Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 109; Yu N. Kobyakov, “Bumazhnaia fabrika [Paper Mill],” Ocherki istorii rossiiskoi vneshnei razvedki [Outlines of the History of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service], Vol. 3: 1933–1941гг (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnoe Otnozhenie, 2003), pp. 191–199. However, Kobyakov’s article does not contain any footnotes so that the information about Lore cannot be verified.

Hede Massing was smart enough to do so only in 1947, almost ten years after her departure from the Soviet secret service. By that time her intelligence knowledge was out of date and she may therefore have escaped a possible retaliatory attack on her life, as such an attack would no longer have been considered worthwhile.

Subsequent research (as mentioned above) on the topic points to Whittaker Chambers as Lore’s first contact person, however.

Hede Massing, This Deception (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1951), p. 222.

See Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America: The Stalin Era (New York: Modern Library, 1999), pp. 10–11 and 88–89 (and the literature mentioned there). See also Robert J. Lamphere (in collaboration with Thomas Shachtman), The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent’s Story, 2nd ed. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995, esp. pp. 55–56. See also Maslow’s commentary “Zu Stalins gegenwärtiger Politik: ‘Jahrelanger Schmutz’, fortgesetzte Morde” [February 1941] Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 370–374.

In their own letters as well as in correspondence with Lore there is not even the slightest hint that Ruth Fischer or Arkadij Maslow knew anything.

Reinhardt, Crime Without Punishment, p. 21.

See http://documentstalk.com/wp/ludwig-lore-a-background-file/, with an entry on Lore that is based on his FBI file to which I had no access. It obviously gives indications of his work for the OCI. The Office of the Coordinator of Information (OCI), formed in July 1941 was split into the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Office for Strategic Services (OSS) in early 1942, part of which became the CIA.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 1662, p. 6: Fischer to Maslow, letter of October 3, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 140–142.

See Ohio State University, University Libraries, Columbus, OH: Alexander Stephan Collection of FBI Files on German Intellectuals in US Exile, File Ruth Fischer, Internal Security Memorandum, September 16, 1949.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 568, p. 204: Maslow to Fischer, letter of November 10, 1941.

Ibid., Maslow to Fischer, letter of November 19, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 137–138.

See ibid., File 1074: Ruth Fischer to Etienne Balázs, letter, September 13, 1945, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 172.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 776: Roberto Santiesteban Pérez to Fischer, letter, November 25, 1941. Santiesteban’s letter, written in English, refers to the medical statement written by doctors Carlos Roco Casuso and Roberto Martinez Prieto. See ibid., File 1662, German excerpt in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 22.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 1137: Fischer to Brandler, letter, November 25, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 143–144.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 101: Brandler to Fischer, letter, November 30, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 144–145.

Ibid., p. 146.

See Ruth Fischer papers, File 1662 (for the Danish original and Spanish translation of the document).

Ibid., File 826: Max Shachtman to Fischer, letter, December 3, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 149. Original emphasis.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 101: Brandler to Fischer, letter, December 6, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 150.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 101: Brandler to Fischer, letter, December 28, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, p. 152.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 1662: Ruth Fischer [Confidential], also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 423–424.

Ruth Fischer Papers, File 1137: Fischer to Brandler, letter, December 16, 1941, also in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 150–151.

Reinhardt, Crime Without Punishment, p. 42.

Ibid., p. 43.

Ibid., p. 44.

See ibid. Reinhardt was wrong on one point: He wrote that Maslow’s corpse was cremated. Jews do not cremate their dead.

Maslow and Fischer wrote to each other in German, as was the case in their correspondence with Lore.

Two decades later, working for the Cuban United Nations mission under Fidel Castro, he was (rightly or wrongly) accused of preparing terrorist attacks against ex-Cubans living in New York. This at least can be found on several web pages operated by Cuban exiles. See, e.g., Castro’s Cuba: Asymmetric Threat to the United States? https://www.newswithviews.com/news_worthy/news_worthy18.htm.

Reinhardt, Crime Without Punishment, pp. 46–47.

Complete copies of the very extensive material collected about Gerhart Eisler by the FBI are now deposed in the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment Library, New York, Collection FBI, Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts Releases, Series/Contents: TAM 219, Gerhart Eisler. Cited hereafter as: Gerhart Eisler FBI File, here Box No. 1, Folder 1: Memorandum, Re: Gerhart Eisler alias Hans Berger, May 29, 1944.

See Peter Lübbe in his introduction to: Abtrünnig wider Willen, pp. 22–25, although he also considered the likelihood of a murder.

Title: Maslow’s Death
Author: Mario Kessler
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43256-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-43257-7

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43257-7_14