Ludwig Lore (1875 – 1942) was an American socialist newspaper editor and politician, best remembered for his tenure as editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung and role as a factional leader in the early American communist movement. During the middle 1930s, Lore wrote a daily foreign affairs column for the New York Post and secretly worked recruiting potential agents and gathering information on behalf of the Soviet foreign intelligence network.
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Ludwig Lore was born to working class parents of ethnic Jewish extraction in Friedberg, Germany on June 26, 1875.[1][2]
Lore attended gymnasium in Hirschberg, Germany,[3] and later graduated Berlin University where he studied under political economist Werner Sombart.[4]
Upon completion of his education in 1892, Lore went to work in the textile industry.[2] He remained in that industry until emigrating to the United States in 1903.[2]
While in Germany, Lore joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of that country, holding office in the party and standing as an SPD candidate for political office.[2]
Lore emigrated to America in 1903 and first settled in the state of Colorado where he worked at various jobs.[2] While in Colorado, Lore joined the fledgling Industrial Workers of the World.[2]
Lore later moved to New York City where he joined the staff of the German-language socialist daily, the New Yorker Volkszeitung.
Lore was editor of the German-language socialist daily published in New York City, the New Yorker Volkszeitung.[5] Under Lore the paper had more the feel of a tabloid magazine than a typical straight newspaper, an orientation which is said by one historian to have "suited his personality and approach."[6]
The historian Paul Buhle has written of Lore:
"He was a jolly man whose political and aesthetic inclinations fit no prescribed categories. If he enjoyed a particular writer, in any of the many languages he could understand, he ordered translations made, or did them hmself. He printed classics galore, but he also went out of his way to encourage young artists. He did not, personally, have any great immediate hopes for the dramatic transformation of the United States. Rather, the [New Yorker Volkszeitung] set itself to create an enjoyable publication for the aging reader, whose main political activities centered around fraternal, support, and leisure activities. Unlike the other immigrant papers whose editors had to battle for left positions (likewise readership) against social democratic or conservative elements in their own communities, the [New Yorker Volkszeitung] already had all the readers it would ever require. Lore needed to hold onto them, through chains of loyalty and the charms of literary excellence."[7]
Lore was married to a woman named Lilly and together with her had three boys.
In 1917, Lore founded the bi-monthly Marxist theoretical magazine, The Class Struggle, which he edited in conjunction with Louis C. Fraina and Louis Boudin.[1]
Lore was a founding member of the Communist Labor Party of America, an organization which, following a decade of splits and mergers, ultimately evolved into the Communist Party USA.[4]
During this interval, Lore's New Yorker Volkszeitung was brought into the communist orbit, albeit neither fully nor wholeheartedly. The paper professed what was essentially a Communist interpretation of international events and advocated a general Communist policy at home, yet was only partially and unwillingly dragged into the mire of the bitter factional Communist Party politics of the 1920s.[8]
One historian notes:
"For the [New Yorker Volkszeitung] veteran, the struggle for political, electoral socialism in the United States had taken decades of self-sacrifice and many reversals. Readers of the paper had never been happy with the 'underground' mentality of the early Communist movement, because they viewed hyperrevolutionary rhetoric as the worst possible response to repression. The formation of a legal Workers Party in 1922, and the beginnings of a political campaign structure (minimal though it was), encouraged them greatly."[8]
Lore was two times a candidate of the Workers Party of America, running for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1922 and for U.S. Congress in the New York 14th District in 1924.
Lore was an independent thinker who was reluctant to take political orders,[9] a personal characteristic which made him unsuited for the increasingly centralized Communist movement of the late 1920s. In addition, his well-known personal fondness for Leon Trotsky,[10] established during Trotsky's time living in New York, during which he wrote for The Class Struggle, made Lore an easy target for factional opponents.
In 1925, fearing proto-Trotskyist indiscipline, Lore was brought up on charges before the executive of the Workers (Communist) Party's German Language Federation. When the executive refused to expel Lore, changes were made in the composition of the body to make Lore's expulsion inevitable.[11] Lore was expelled from the organization later that same year.
As editor of the Volkszeitung, Lore attempted what has described as a "balancing a feeling for a theoretical Marxist line with a more sensitive reading of American political culture," in which he "tried, and ultimately fialed, to develop a communism that would meet the demands of the aging generation of radical German-Americans in the 1920s and 1930s."[12]
By the end of the 1920s, the Volkszeitung had lost some of its radical edge, taking the form of a more vaguely "socialistic" labor and cultural publication, complete with wire service photos and non-political fare such as radio listings and classic literature.[11] Lore sought to occupy political space in between social democracy and communism, a position roughly akin to that of the Independent Labour Party in Great Britain.[11]
As the 1920s came to a close and the Communist Party moved into an ultra-sectarian phase known as the "Third Period," Lore found himself disaffected from his old party comrades. His Volkszeitung continued to defend the policies of the Soviet Union, however, and sought to support CP-sponsored initiatives in which radicals of various stripes could work together for common objectives, such as the International Workers Order and the International Labor Defense.[13]
In 1931, Lore gave up the editorship of the ailing Volkszeitung to become a freelance journalist.[14] Three years later, Lore joined the editorial staff of the New York Post, for which he wrote a daily foreign affairs column called "Behind the Cables."[14] In his column, Lore frequently emphasized the threat to world peace implicit in the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany.[14]
During this interval, Lore was recruited to work for the foreign intelligence network of the Soviet Union, working under the code-names "Leo" and "10."[15] According to Russian historian Julius Kobyakov, who had access to his official files, "Leo" began his work for Soviet intelligence in 1933, recruited by Soviet intelligence rezident Valentin Markin.[16] Whittaker Chambers knew Lore because they both reported to Markin.[17] By the middle of 1934, Lore had begun to supply information gathered from sources which he had recruited, code-named "Willi" and "Daniel."[16] A January 1935 report described Lore as a recruiter and handler of agents for Soviet intelligence who was responsible for gathering information from four sources.[15] Lore received $350 per month for his services.[18]
Espionage historians John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev credit Lore with the recruitment and handling of David A. Salmon (code-named "Willi"), one of Soviet intelligence's most important information assets in the US government.[19] Citing Soviet archival evidence, the historians charge that from 1934 until early 1937 Lore paid Salmon, chief of the U.S. Department of State's communication and archives division, a stipend of $500 per month in exchange for classified diplomatic communications — information then passed along to the Soviets.[20] While it is not clear whether Salmon was aware he was providing information to a foreign government or merely leaking information for a fee to a prominent New York Post journalist,[21] or even whether Salmon was "Willi" at all,[22] the fact remains that for several years Soviet intelligence had unparalleled access to the secret communications of prominent diplomatic and military decision-makers through Lore's connection.
According to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Lore's contact with Soviet intelligence seems to have been ended in 1937 owing to a belief in Moscow that Lore retained ties to the Trotskyist movement.[23] In the superheated atmosphere of the Great Purge the Trotskyists were believed by Soviet authorities to be engaged in an international terrorist conspiracy aimed at the overthrow of the Stalin regime and Lore's purported connection cast doubt upon his loyalty and reliability. In addition, Lore was believed by his Soviet handlers to have been guilty of financial improprieties, taking the form of double-dipping for multiple monthly expense stipends. In fact, the real reason for the Soviet's termination of relationship was their discovery that Lore had cheated them about the identity of his sources at the Department of State.
Russian historian Svetlana Chervonnaya asserts that Lore falsely claimed the high ranking functionary Salmon as his source so as to throw his Soviet handlers off the trail to the fact that he was himself rewriting information obtained from "lower level clerks at the Communications and Records Division."[24] After enhancing the mundane information which he received with his own interpretive content, Lore then pocketed the handsome monthly stipend which was purportedly destined for the top-ranking official Salmon, Chervonnaya charges.[24]
Chervonnaya indicates that in February 1937 Lore's deception was discovered by Soviet intelligence when they rented an apartment across the street from Lore and began round-the-clock surveillance.[25]
Chervonnaya cites the published work of Julius Kobyakov as the basis for her challenge:
"Throughout the whole period of surveillance, he left his home only once, for four hours. For three nights running, [Lore's] study was bustling with work, with the participation of all the family members; in particular, [Lore's] wife and son were taking turns at the typewriter typing something. When providing us with the materials, [Lore] repeated his usual lies about a trip to Washington and meetings with sources. * * *
"With the results of physical surveillance, the Centre arrived at a preliminary conclusion, that [Lore] was an exceptionally talented compiler. The use of information from open sources, fishing in them for any new data, as well as their analysis and evaluation, often produce outstanding results; many intelligence services do not neglect this method of information-gathering. But such work is considered auxiliary to the main task — obtaining information from agent sources... * * *
"The situation was aggravated in late spring 1937, when the Soviet 'illegals' managed to ascertain that the 'Willie' and 'Daniel' whom Lore had presented to his Soviet handlers, were 'dummies.'"[25]
According to historians Haynes and Klehr, the exact date of Lore's termination by Soviet intelligence is not known and no record of him is said to be found in secret police archives after April 1937.[23] In fact, according to Lore's case file, on July 2, 1937, Moscow Centre instructed its New York “illegals” to break off the relationship with Lore and “to take measures to avoid any hostile actions” on his part.[25]
Ludwig Lore died in 1942.