Melvin J. Lasky
Born in 1920 in the Bronx, Melvin Jonah Lasky. One of the 'best and brightest' graduates from New York City College from which he emerged as a staunch anti-Stalinist. he joined the Civil Service and worked as a tour guide at the Statue of Liberty, before joining the staff of Sol Levitas's anti-Stalinist magazine the New Leader. Drafted into the services, he became a combat historian with US 7th Army in France and was demobbed in Berlin, where he became German correspondent of the New Leader and Partisan Review.
Disrupted the East Berlin Writers Congress in October 1947. Submitted 'the Melvin Lasky proposal' to General Lucius Clay on 7 December 1947, a personal blueprint for the cultural cold war. Two days later he submitted a proposal for the American Review, which was subsequently realised as the pro-American magazine Der Monat.
