30
PARTISAN REVIEW
deal.
He had arrived at a moment of special richness in the history of to–
talitarianism. Theodore Maly was by then well established in England.
Maly had come to England well after Ludwik had placed his recruit in the
upper track of British intelligence, back in 1927 . Maly and Ludwik
worked together, from London to Amsterdam. Maly remained in England
through most of the thirties, operating now and then from an office next
door to the one used by Gibarti's propagandists in London, an outfit
known as the Anti-War International, which was in fact the British office
of Amsterdam-Pleyel. The front man for the Anti-War International was
a Miinzenberg-man recruited from the Bloomsbury elect, Lytton's cousin
once removed, John Strachey. As usual, propaganda and espionage were
functioning hand in hand.
As
his train pulled into London, Otto had many friends already wait–
ing for him. Friends
and
the British secret service, for Otto was under the
surveillance of SIS "watchers," probably from the moment of his arrival.
In later years Otto made it plain that he was fully aware of this surveil–
lance from the moment it began. One wonders exactly who or what
made him aware of it.
Katz's immediate task was to stage the show of the Reichstag Fire
Counter-Trial, assisted by an unstoppable ball of English political fire,
none other than Red Ellen Wilkinson. Ellen Wilkinson was a driving
force in Labor's left wing; she had also been a hard-left collaborator with
Willi and Louis in many a radical effort gone by. To some not quite dis–
cernible degree, this founding personality in the British Labor party must
have been conscious of Otto's true role. Only a fool in her position
would have failed to guess that Otto was a Soviet agent, and Ellen
Wilkinson was nobody's fool. Or rather she was
almost
nobody's fool. She
had been, for a while, Stalin's fool, though she later became a staunch
anti-Stalinist, and Otto fooled her sufficiently to use her anti-fascism as
cover for the arrangement with Hitler. But then with that, he fooled the
world. Ellen remained under Katz's spell through Munich. It has been
suspected that he had an affair with her. Certainly they were close. He
guided her through Spain. Even the summer of the pact, Ellen quite
contentedly paid a visit to Otto on the Riviera.
Another contact waiting for Otto in England was the lifelong Stalinist
and propagandist, Claud Cockburn. Cockburn had first encountered Otto
at least the year before at Amsterdam-Pleyel. In years to come, Cockburn
and Otto would work together in many an adventure - in London, in
Spain, and doubtless in America as well. Their link would peak in surreal–
ity during 1952, when Otto stood wavering in the dock in Prague,
mouthing his "confession" and covering for some important secret service
