ABBREVIATIONS: The Soviet and Russian security organs have been reorganized and renamed several times since 1918, originally named the OGPU, then the NKVD, then the KGB, and today the FSB. For the sake of simplicity I use KGB as my shorthand reference, since the purpose and the techniques of all these security apparatuses remain the same.
For the description of Noel Field’s days in Prague prior to his abduction, I relied on Field’s letters to his wife, Herta, as well as Czech and Hungarian secret police records (as below). Also, Flora Lewis’s Red Pawn: The Story of Noel Field (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), Tony Sharp’s Stalin’s American Spy: Noel Field, Allen Dulles and the East European Show Trials (London: Hurst & Company, 2014), and Jiri Pelikan’s Czechoslovak Political Trials, 1950–1954 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971).
Interviews with Alan Field, Hugh Field, and Alison Field, as well as their father, Hermann Field’s, unpublished collection of letters to his family, entitled Letters from Krakow (Field family private papers).
See also Lewis, Red Pawn, 1–50.
Noel’s self-description is in the Field Files, Hungarian Institute of Political History Archives (HIA), Budapest.
August 4, 1954, letter to his interrogating officer, Major Arpad Kretschmer, op. cit.
“ ‘A Call to the Young . . . ’ ” Field Papers, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
“Dr. Field, who straddled . . .” Leonard Mosley, Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network (New York: Dial Press, 1978), 47–49.
“In early 1918, Allen Dulles joined . . .” Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 32.
“On the morning of . . .” Noel Field to Hermann Field, December 29, 1963, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
Robin Carlaw of Harvard University Archives, Pusey Library, provided background information for this chapter.
Noel’s letters are in the Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
Noel’s term papers, op. cit.
For Sacco and Vanzetti: Upton Sinclair, Boston: A Novel (Cambridge, MA: Linnaean Press, 1978).
Stephen Koch, Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West (New York: Enigma, 2004), 16–17, 39–48, 53, 373–74.
Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (New York: Modern Library, 1997), 67.
On Münzenberg: Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 64.
Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (New York: Random House, 2009), 80, 93, 104–5.
“Graduating from Harvard . . .” Lewis, Red Pawn, 33–50.
“Lacking in social experience . . .” Lewis, Red Pawn.
“I have been a pacifist . . .” Field’s letter to his mother is found in Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
Noel at the State Department:
Bernd-Rainer Barth, Werner Schweitzer, and Thomas Grimm, Der Fall Noel Field (Berlin: Basis Druck, 2005), 162, 285–86.
For George Kennan’s experience as a Foreign Service entrant during the same period, useful description can be found in John Gaddis’s George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin, 2011).
For background:
Edmund Wilson, The Thirties (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980).
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America (New York: Bantam, 1975), 3–57 for vivid portraits of the Depression, the Bonus Army, and the presidency of Herbert Hoover.
Mosley, Dulles, 73.
Ben Gerig interview, Flora Lewis Papers, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
“The race problem . . .” Field letter, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Allen Dulles . . .” Mosley, Dulles, 73.
“I was different . . .” Letter to Nina Field, January 8, 1927, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Lucky Lindy . . .” Noel to Nina Field, June 23, 1927, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“My real life . . .” Noel to Hermann, October 23, 1928, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“I have lying before me . . .” Op. cit.
“They were called Hoovervilles . . .” Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, 3–20.
“The whole scene was . . .” Op. cit., 16.
Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties (New York: New York Review of Books, 2012).
“Moneymaking . . .” Edmund Wilson, “An Appeal to Progressives,” New Republic, January 14, 1931.
J. B. Matthews testimony is from the HUAC Files, Investigating Section Series 4, Box 107 Field Files, National Archives.
“The nation . . .” Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006) and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vols. 1 and 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002, 2003).
“When I came to the State Department . . .” Alger Hiss to Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
For background: Crossman, The God That Failed.
Nathaniel Weyl, Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and Betrayal in American History (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1950).
Hope Hale Davis, Great Day Coming: A Memoir of the 1930s (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 1994).
Thomas Sakmyster, Red Conspirator: J. Peters and the American Communist Underground (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011).
“Hal Ware . . .” Davis, Great Day Coming, 101.
Weyl, Treason, 417–23, 426, 429–30; see also:
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 81, 87, 96–97.
“Membership in the underground . . .” Davis, Great Day Coming, 98–105, 256, 330–31, 336.
“Ware provided . . .” Sakmyster, Red Conspirator, chapters 5 and 6.
“Even in Germany . . .” Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Washington, DC: Gateway Editions, 2002), 338.
“Recently declassified . . .” Op. cit.
“The secret apparatus . . .” Op. cit., 77.
“a test and a binder . . .” Op. cit.
“Hiss paid more . . .” Chambers, Witness, 572.
“Actual truth . . .” Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 26, 31.
“Similar Communist cells . . .” Op. cit., 26.
For a description of spy craft as taught to Hede Massing by Ignaz Reiss, see Hede Massing, This Deception (New York: Ivy/Ballantine, 1987), 67–70.
“Much of the still . . .” Chambers, Witness, 281.
“Hiss began an intensive campaign . . .” Noel Field interrogation record, Field Files, HIA, September 23, 1954; Chambers, Witness, 381.
Recruiting Duggan: Massing, This Deception, 176–79.
Massing’s and Bazarov’s cables to Moscow Center, and Moscow’s replies, throughout the book are from the Vassilev Notebooks: Translations from the KGB files by Alexander Vassiliev (the KGB files were opened in the early 1990s and then closed again in 1996, by which time Vassiliev had done his important work accessing and then translating the files relevant for this period). They are filed in the Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project digital archive: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/86/vassiliev-notebooks.
Also: Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (New York: Modern Library, 2000) and from “In Re Alger Hiss: A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB,” Journal of Cold War Studies 11, no. 3 (Summer 2009).
See also: John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999) and Klehr et al., The Secret World of American Communism.
Roger Baldwin’s interview is filed in the Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
Alger Hiss interview: op. cit.
“In 1935 . . .” Davis, Great Day Coming, 108.
“Noel was a worrier . . .” Interview with Flora Lewis in the Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“In 1934 . . .” Massing, This Deception, 140–52.
“Hede was beguiled . . .” Op. cit., p. 142.
“The three unlikely . . .” Op. cit., and see also Chambers, Witness, 381–82. See also Noel Field interrogation record of September 23, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
This section on the Massings is based on their interviews with Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“The mentality of the State . . .” Field’s lengthy autobiographical narrative is in the Field Files, HIA, Budapest (which contains the secret police files), and is dated June 23, 1954.
Field’s spying at the Naval Conference is described in his handwritten German-language statement to the Hungarian secret police, June 23, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Our friend [Field] . . .” From the KGB Files as transcribed by Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #2, April 26, 1936, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/86/vassiliev-notebooks.
“Moscow was not pleased . . .” Op. cit. and March 5, 1936.
“Actual damage . . .” Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 314.
“In Geneva . . .” Massing interview with Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Reiss was the real thing . . .” See Massing, This Deception, and Walter G. Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service: Memoirs of the First Soviet Master Spy to Defect (New York: Enigma, 2000), 218–23, 225–29, 233, 250, 252, 298.
“Personal affections . . .” Noel Field, “Hitching Our Wagon to a Star,” Mainstream, January 1961.
“The more irrational . . .” Paul Massing interview, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Ruddy faced . . .” Wallace Carroll interview, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Paul Massing . . .” Interview with Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“In late 1936 . . .” Noel Field testimony, September 23, 24, and 29, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“The man whom . . .” Op. cit., and see also Massing, This Deception, 188–90, 198–201.
“Now, finally . . .” Yellow Notebook #2, cables from agent “Jung” to Moscow, August 15, 1937; September 11, 1937; Massing, This Deception, 189–201; Noel Field testimony of September 23, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“[Reiss] is liquidated . . .” Yellow Notebook #2, September 11, 1954.
“For the time being . . .” Op. cit.
“He was a traitor . . .” Noel Field to Paul Massing, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“In Washington . . .” Yellow Notebook #2, Jung’s cables to Moscow, September 28, 1937; January 1, 1938; February 2 and 8, 1938; March 1, 1938; June 28, 1938; July 1, 1938; August 4, 1938; February 10, 1939; March 6, 1939; May 10, 1939; April 11, 1940; February 25, 1942, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/86/vassiliev-notebooks.
“Noel’s new contact . . .” Noel Field testimony of September 23 and 29, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Krivitsky’s defection . . .” Noel Field statement, September 29, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“In a book-crammed . . .” Chambers, Witness, 459–63; Krivitsky, In Stalin’s Secret Service, 218–22.
Flora Lewis, “Who Killed Krivitsky?” Washington Post, February 13, 1966.
FBI Memorandum to Director J. Edgar Hoover from Agent A. Rosen, February 11, 1941, FBI Krivitsky File via FOIA.
“Once in Moscow . . .” Massing, This Deception, 203–35.
“Bazarov shot . . .” Moscow to agent “Mer” Vassilev, Yellow Notebook #2, February 25, 1939, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/86/vassiliev-notebooks.
“My trip to Moscow . . .” Noel Field statement, September 29, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
For background: Stephen Spender, World Within World (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951).
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (London: Penguin, 2013).
Arthur Koestler’s memoirs: Scum of the Earth (London: Eland, 2006); Arrival and Departure (New York: Random House, 2011); The Invisible Writing; Dialogue with Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
“Spain was to be . . .” Kempton, Part of Our Time.
“Steadfast . . .” Noel Field, “Hitching Our Wagon to a Star.”
“I think the happiest . . .” Paul Massing interview, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“This charge . . .” Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, 241.
“I know you will forgive . . .” Noel Field letter to family, January 29, 1939, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“The Glaser family . . .” Erica Wallach, Light at Midnight (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967).
“Everything changed . . .” Op. cit., 144–47.
“My long blond . . .” Op. cit., 272.
“For the young girl . . .” Op. cit., 28–31.
“I repeat in writing . . .” Noel Field letter of February 18, 1942, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“For many Europeans . . .” Koestler, Scum of the Earth, 244.
“What went through Noel Field’s . . .” Flora Lewis interview with Dr. Zina Minor, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Arriving at Kraków . . .” Hermann Field, Letters from Krakow, Field family private papers.
“On May 13 . . .” Op. cit.
“On September 2, 1939 . . .” Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, 204, and also Chambers, Witness, 470.
“The Fields’ earnest manner . . .” Susan Elisabeth Subak, Rescue and Flight: American Relief Workers Who Defied the Nazis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 84, 88, 109–110, 121–22, 146, 148–49, 179–82, 202, 204, 219, 223.
“Among those in flight . . .” Koch, Double Lives, 332–34.
“Until the Fields’ . . .” Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1995).
Howard Lee Brooks, Prisoners of Hope: Report on a Mission (New York: Fischer, 1942).
“This government . . .” Subak, Rescue and Flight; and also Long to Berle, June 26, Breckinridge Long Papers, US Library of Congress.
“Fry fired back . . .” Varian Fry, “Our Consuls at Work,” The Nation, May 2, 1942, 507–9.
“Within a year . . .” Fry, Surrender on Demand, 236–37.
“Through Fry . . .” Michel Gordey to Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Anyone who . . .” Noel Field Report, USC Records, March 6, 1942.
“At Rivesaltes . . .” USC Records, March 6, 1942; also Noel Field Report in Subak, Rescue and Flight, 88.
“I lived and worked . . .” Noel Field statement, June 23, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest; and Noel Field, “Hitching Our Wagon to a Star,” 6–7.
“Dr. Joseph Weil . . .” Joseph Weil, Le Combat d’un Juste (Saumur, France: Éditions Cheminements, 2002), 242.
“When I tried to timidly insert . . .” Op. cit.
“In March 1945 . . .” Subak, Rescue and Flight, 209; Fry Papers, March 26, 1945.
“Bénédite already had . . .” Lewis, Red Pawn, 152.
“You are too noisy . . .” Op. cit.
“Noel loved . . .” Zina Minor interview, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Noel soon hired . . .” Paul Massing interview, op. cit.
“Minutes ahead . . .” Andy Pollak, “The Unitarian Who Shook Europe,” Oscailit: Cork & Dublin Unitarian Magazine, December 2009; also Field Project, USC records, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard University.
“It’s not quite the thing . . .” Subak, Rescue and Flight, 153.
“I think of the past . . .” Noel Field to mother, op. cit., 179.
“To Dr. Joseph Weil . . .” Op. cit., 204.
“Surrounded by Axis troops . . .” Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2005), 187–94; and Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (New York: Times Books, 2013), 66–70.
“I’d put Stalin . . .” Op. cit., 9.
“The first chance . . .” Op. cit., 24.
“Dulles soon settled . . .” Grose, Gentleman Spy; and Mosely, Dulles, 44–49, 73, 129–32, 147–48, 172, 275–77, 505.
“In 1941 . . .” Elizabeth Dexter interview with Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“In a secret internal . . .” Allen Dulles telegram 1687 to Paris, November 30, 1944, as cited in Neal H. Petersen, From Hitler’s Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 403–4, 431, 628.
“Soft spoken . . .” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. to the author; and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 334.
“After years of silence . . .” Noel Field statement, September 23, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
All quotes in this chapter are from Erica Wallach’s memoir Light at Midnight, as well as “The Erica Wallach Story: Report by HUAC,” March 21, 1958, from the long interview Erica gave Flora Lewis, among the Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center, and from the German documentary film Noel Field: The Fictitious Spy by Werner Schweizer (Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion, 1997), and, where indicated, from Erica’s private correspondence, for which the author thanks Robert Wallach Jr.
“I was perfectly willing . . .” To Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center; also HUAC Investigative Section series 4, Box 107, National Archives.
“He arrived at everything . . .” Flora Lewis interview, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“All these things . . .” Op. cit.
For background: Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005); Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2012); Krisztáin Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
“We must be firm . . .” Schlesinger, A Life in the Twentieth Century, 477.
“I saw Noel in 1945 . . .” Weill, Le Combat d’un Juste, 243.
“Later in 1945 . . .” Subak, Rescue and Flight, 202; see also USC Field Files Box 2, 1945–1947, Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard University.
“He was the hero . . .” Rev. Ray Bragg interview with Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“It is so utterly . . .” Noel Field to Erica Wallach, December 6, 1945, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“We have met . . .” Op. cit.
“We really . . .” Op. cit.
“By 1946 . . .” “Confidential Memo to the USC,” August 6, 1946, USC Files, Andover-Harvard Theological Library; “Harvard Divinity School Transcript of the Meeting with Mr. Henson,” September 10, 1946, USC Files; Noel Field correspondence with Dr. William Emerson and Francis Henson, USC Files; and also Rev. Bragg interview with Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Noel’s blazing . . .” Elizabeth Dexter to Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“She perceives . . .” Charles Joy, “She Has Known Terror,” Christian Register, April 1946; and also Subak, Rescue and Flight, 202.
“The disaster . . .” Judt, Postwar, 19.
“I told Noel . . .” Bragg to Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“I should have . . .” USC Files, April 1957, Frank GZ Glick Memorandum for Files, Box 3.
“Dear Kid . . .” Noel Field to Erica Wallach, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“For a decade . . .” Sakmyster, Red Conspirator, chapter 9 and epilogue.
“We slept . . .” Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life (New York: Grove, 2013), 258.
“In the long run . . .” Noel Field to Erica Wallach, February 29, 1948, Wallach family private papers.
“Going West to East . . .” Robert Gellately, Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (New York: Knopf, 2013), 300.
“This would make you . . .” Craig Thompson, “What Has Stalin Done with Noel Field?” Saturday Evening Post, December 15, 1951.
“The national mood . . .” Some of the best studies of the Chambers case that provided background for this chapter are: Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers; Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (Stanford, CA: Hoover Press, 2013); Chambers, Witness; Susan Jacoby, Alger Hiss and the Battle for History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); G. Edward White, Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
“ ‘Hiss,’ his former control . . .” “Interview with J. Peters by Allen Weinstein,” Allen Weinstein Papers, Hoover Institution; “Letter to Comrade Berman,” Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“On October 15 . . .” “Ex State Department Aide Called Red by Chambers—Noel Field Named in House Inquiry,” New York Herald Tribune, October 15, 1948.
“Herta asked . . .” Testimony of Herta Field, undated, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“His colleagues . . .” Paul Massing to Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“I was afraid . . .” Noel Field testimony of March 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest. The Alger Hiss letter of October 19, 1948, is in the Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“On Capitol Hill . . .” Laurence Duggan, 1905–1948: In Memoriam (Stamford, CT: Overbrook Press, 1949).
“Shaushkin . . .” Alexander Vassilev, Yellow Notebook #2, March 1938–December 1948, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/86/vassiliev-notebooks.
Also, Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, part 1, “Communist Romantics, the Reluctant Laurence Duggan”; “Investigations: The Man in the Window” (obituary of Laurence Duggan), Time, January 3, 1949; Nathaniel Weyl, “I was in a Communist Unit with Hiss,” U.S. News & World Report, January 9, 1953; Massing, This Deception, 176–77; Venona File 36857, 19s.
“Increasingly, the Fields . . .” Michel Gordey to Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“One of my greatest . . .” Noel Field testimony of March 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“As to ourselves . . .” Noel Field to Erica Wallach, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“An epic . . .” Adam B. Ulam, Titoism and the Cominform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952).
“On the ottoman . . .” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle, trans. Harry T. Willets (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 96–98.
“Stalin chose Budapest . . .” Béla Szász, Volunteers for the Gallows: Anatomy of a Show-Trial (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971); George H. Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1987); and George Paloczi-Horvath, The Undefeated (London: Eland, 1959).
“Happily for Stalin . . .” This section was tremendously enhanced by the author’s many hours of conversation with Endre and Ilona Marton and László Rajk Jr.
“I need hardly tell you . . .” Noel Field letter to Oskar Kosta, undated, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“I went to Moscow . . .” Gellately, Stalin’s Curse, 311.
“Today I’m sticking close . . .” Noel Field to Herta Field, May 9, 1949, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
For a description of Noel Field’s interrogation at the Villa, the author relied on the first-person experiences related by her parents, Endre and Ilona Marton, as well as the vivid published accounts of Field’s “coconspirators,” Béla Szász, George Hodos, and George Paloczi-Horvath.
“The sessions always . . .” The testimony of secret police (AVO/AVH) officer Gyula Décsi, one of Field’s interrogators, is in the HIA Field “Rehabilitation” File of May 16, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“I stood for nine days . . .” Szász, Volunteers for the Gallows, 52.
“When did you . . .” Op. cit., 45–49
“On July 7, 1949 . . .” Noel Field letter to the American embassy, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Rákosi travelled . . .” Gábor Péter testimony, October 18–23, 1956, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“On September 16 . . .” This section is based on the author’s parents’ accounts. As correspondents for the Associated Press and United Press, they were in the courtroom covering the Rajk trial. This account is rounded out by László Rajk Jr.’s personal account, as well as the published Hungarian transcript of the proceedings, “László Rajk and His Accomplices before the People’s Court of Budapest.”
“Everybody performed . . .” Endre Marton, The Forbidden Sky (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 5, 86–87.
“Let us remember . . .” Lewis, Red Pawn, 20.
“In the Prague trials . . .” Hodos, Show Trials, 84; and see also Pelikan, Czechoslovak Political Trials.
“My arrest . . .” Noel Field testimony, March 18, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“My accusers . . .” Field, “Hitching Our Wagon to a Star.”
“She was very secretive . . .” Hélèné Matthey to Flora Lewis, Flora Lewis Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“It’s a long time . . .” Herta Field’s letter of May 22, 1949, Herta Field Files, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Herta asked Hermann . . .” Hermann Field’s account of his arrest and imprisonment is contained in his gripping joint biography with his wife, Kate, Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).
The author gratefully acknowledges the support Hermann and Kate’s three children, Allison, Hugh, and Alan, provided in capturing the human drama of their father’s disappearance and its impact on their childhood.
“The same day . . .” See Igor Lukes, “The Rudolf Slansky Affair: New Evidence,” Slavic Review 58, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 160–87; as well as Pelikan, Czechoslovak Political Trials.
“I heard my husband . . .” Field testimony conducted by AVO Major Gyorgy Szendy, undated but likely from 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Around Christmastime in 1953 . . .” Herta Field’s “rehabilitation” testimony, undated but from 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Arthur M. Schlesinger . . .” Schlesinger, A Life in the Twentieth Century, 499–500.
“The moment . . .” Hermann and Kate Field, Trapped in the Cold War, 39–40.
This chapter is based on interviews with Erica Wallach’s children, Madeleine Wallach de Heller and Robert Wallach Jr., and their cousins Feroline Higginson and Hope Porter.
Welcome Home is Erica Wallach’s unpublished fourteen-page description of her ordeal and final homecoming; Wallach family private papers. All quotes from Erica are from the following sources:
Erica Wallach interview in Schweizer, Noel Field.
Descriptions of Erica’s prison ordeal are from her memoir, Light at Midnight.
“The Erica Wallach Story: Report by HUAC,” HUAC Investigative Section series 4, Box 107, Field Files, March 21, 1958, National Archives.
All correspondence between Robert and Erica and her mother, Marie Therese Glaser, is from the Wallach family private papers.
“After long personal . . .” June 20, 1954, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“He had also begun a hunger strike . . .” Noel Field sixty-five-page letter, March 18–22, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Field’s reprieve . . .” “Polish Defector Bares Data on the Missing Field Family,” New York Times, September 29, 1954.
“Josef Swiatlo’s own . . .” News from Behind the Iron Curtain [Munich] 4, no. 3 (1955).
“Even as Swiatlo . . .” “US Notes to Poland and Hungary.”
“Swiatlo’s announcement . . .” Henry Jordan, “Where Is Noel Field?” Argosy, November 1958.
The October 2, 1954 transcript (in Hungarian) of Swiatlo’s Radio Free Europe broadcast is in the Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Not a word . . .” Erica Wallach interview, Schweizer, Noel Field.
“They must guarantee . . .” February 10, 1955, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Hermann, also suddenly . . .” “Warsaw Releases Hermann Field,” New York Times, October 25, 1954.
“I first got . . .” Hermann and Kate Field, Trapped in the Cold War, 401–3; and “Hermann Field Arrives in Zurich in Reunion with Wife and Sister,” New York Times, November 20, 1954.
The Fields’ voluminous surveillance records are catalogued in the Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“A top secret . . .” Op. cit., November 1, 1954.
“Only one American . . .” This information is from Ambassador Ravndal’s close friends, the author’s parents, Endre and Ilona Marton.
“Now, Ambassador . . .” January 29 internal memorandum (unsigned), Hungarian Ministry of the Interior, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“I am authorized . . .” Ravndal’s note is in the Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“To my utter amazement . . .” Noel Field letter to Monica Felton, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Herta and I love . . .” Noel Field to Hermann and Kate Field, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“1. His statement . . .” Szalma Jozsef memorandum, January 7, 1955, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Field, wrote . . .” Mrs. Ferenc Kuhari, January 30, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“If you had simply . . .” Hermann Field letter to his brother, May 4, 1955, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“I just can’t bring myself . . .” Elsie Field letter, April 24, 1955, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“The Case of Noel H. Field . . .” January 5, 1955, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“A certain wariness . . .” Author’s interview with Noel Field’s colleague Ferenc Aczél at Corvina Publishing and the New Hungarian Quarterly.
“On January 13 . . .” Field letter to the Communist Party, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“On February 25 . . .” Applebaum, Iron Curtain.
“Let me tell you this . . .” Author’s interview with László Rajk Jr.
Letters between Erica and Robert Wallach and Noel, Hermann, and Elsie Field are also among the Wallach family private papers, as is the letter to Erica from Curt Pohl, Erica’s former fellow inmate. All Erica’s correspondence to her attorneys and other officials is similarly from the family papers.
United Nations Special Committee on Hungary Report, June 1957.
“On Radio Budapest . . .” New York Times, June 27, 1957.
“It makes me so . . .” Elsie Field to Hermann Field, Field Papers, Gottlieb Center.
“[Your radio report] . . .” Op. cit.
“Feeling utterly torn . . .” Op. cit.
“It’s damnable . . .” Op. cit.
“He used to say . . .” Author’s interview with Miklos Vajda.
“Soviet troops . . .” Noel Field, “Hitching Our Wagon to a Star.”
“I’m really sore . . .” Hermann Field to Elsie Field, December 21, 1960, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“As you know . . .” Noel Field to Hermann Field, December 26, 1960, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“Comrade Field . . .” Author’s interview with Miklos Vajda.
“Hermann’s story . . .” Harvard Class of 1932 Class Report, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1982.
“Very few people . . .” Author’s interview with Ferenc Aczél.
“Even if Hiss . . .” Weinstein, Perjury, 540.
“What I said . . .” Op. cit., 596.
“That year . . .” Mária Schmidt, Battle of Wits: Beliefs, Ideologies and Secret Agents in the 20th Century (Budapest: Század Int., 2007).
“Moreover, in 1996 . . .” Haynes and Klehr, Venona.
“One startling coda . . .” Edward Stettinius Jr., The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 1943–1946 (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), 416.
“Once . . .” Author’s interview with Ferenc Aczél.
“Our days with you . . .” Hermann Field’s letter to Noel Field, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
“Dear Kid . . .” May 1964, Field Files, HIA, Budapest.
For an excellent visual representation of the Prague Spring, see Josef Koudelka, Invasion 68: Prague (Paris: Tana Editions, 2008).
“I have a hard time . . .” Noel Field letter, March 24, 1968, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“This time . . .” Author’s interview with Rudi Fischer.
“The gentle . . .” Author’s interviews with Robert Wallach Jr., Madeleine Wallach de Heller, Feroline Higginson, and Hope Porter.
All correspondence—including with Noel Field—in this chapter is from the Wallach family private papers.
The description of Erica as teacher is from the author’s interview with Stevenson McIlvaine.
Erica’s run-in with Allen Dulles is told in her unpublished memoir, Welcome Home, Wallach family private papers.
The text of Erica Wallach’s final speech is also in the family papers.
“Like all the other Quaker . . .” Sakmyster, Red Conspirator, 174.
“The famed . . .” David Caute, Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 50, 288–89.
“Mr. Field is one of . . .” HUAC, Investigative section series, Box 107, Field Files, February 28, 1958, National Archives.
“That last day . . .” Herta Field to Hermann Field, September 1970, Field Papers, Gotlieb Center.
“I made a big . . .” Erica Wallach interview, Schweizer, Noel Field.
“He died with only . . .” New York Times, September 14, 1970.
“In death . . .” Author’s interview with Rudi Fischer.