Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg (1889-1940) was a German Communist. He was one of the most influential propagandists of the Twentieth Century, and was notable for his front organizations and other tactics which would go on to be developed by both East and West in the Cultural Cold War.[1]
As a young Communist, Münzenberg was recruited by Leon Trotsky into the circle of intellectuals around the exiled Vladimir Lenin in Geneva. With Lenin's return to Russia in 1917, Münzenberg moved to Berlin as the highest ranking Communist outside the Soviet Union.[2]
After the Reichstag Fire in January 1933, Münzenberg upstaged Hitler's show trial of Communist Marinus van der Lubbe by staging a mock counter-trial in London and publishing The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag.[3]
Notes
- ↑ Michael Scammell, The Mystery of Willi Münzenberg, 27 April 2010.
- ↑ Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wulitzer: How the CIA played America, Harvard, 2008, p.12.
- ↑ Michael Scammell, The Mystery of Willi Münzenberg, 27 April 2010.
