John Peet (1915-1988)

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John Peet (1915-1988) was a British journalist most famous for defecting to East Germany in 1950.

Peet fought in the Spanish Civil War with the International Brigade, worked for Reuters in Palestine and covered the Nuremberg trials after World War II. After three years as a reporter in Berlin, Peet surfaced in East Germany in 1950, saying he had left the West because of West German rearmament.

From 1952 to 1975, Peet produced the Democratic German Report, a newsletter targeting the left-of-centre public opinion in the UK. His positive portrayal of the GDR was among the GDR's most believable and powerful propaganda in Britain. He spent the last ten years of his life translating Marx and Engels into English. Many East Germans saw Peet as the archetypical Englishman, and he played this character in several East German films. In his posthumously published memoirs, Peet writes about his defection (at the time, he stated he "could no longer serve the Anglo-American warmongers ...") as well as his links to Soviet intelligence.

Peet was married three times and had two children.

[edit] Memoirs

• The long engagement. Memoirs of a Cold War Legend, with introduction by Len Deighton. Fourth Estate, London 1989. ISBN 0947795642

[edit] Literature

• Stefan Berger, Norman Laporte (2004): John Peet (1915–1988): An Englishman in the GDR, History 89 (293), 49–69