Doug
Rees writes from Iowa with a question about FDR’s adviser Hopkins:

Was
Harry Hopkins really Moscow’s agent?

AS someone with a lifelong obsession with history, I have read quite a bit about the Soviet rule in Eastern Europe and the various satellite leaders. So I am somewhat familiar with
Matthias (Matyas) Rakosi. You write that Rakosi’s birth name was “Matthias Roth”. In all my other sources, it is given as “Matthias Rosenberg”. Which is correct?

I have found other references to Rakosi being given the unflattering nickname by his countrymen of “Roth Mano” (the red dwarf), so maybe this is the source of the confusion.

SINCE I apparently have your ear, I will take advantage of your vast knowledge of WWII to enquire about an unrelated matter. As you undoubtedly know, Brian Crozier has recently made a fairly strong case (in The Venona
Files) that FDR’s closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, was a Soviet agent. This is interesting for two reasons:

First, Hopkins was born in Iowa. As a native Iowan, I have always thought that we Hawkeyes are congenitally incapable of communism. They give us all a little pill at birth which immunises us to Marxist-Leninist infection.

Another (and perhaps somewhat weightier) reason is this:
In February 1941 Hopkins was in London negotiating with
Churchill for Lend Lease assistance to Britain, at a time when Hitler and Stalin were de facto allies. So why was Hopkins labouring so mightily (and successfully) to help England when Stalin was Hitler’s ally and therefore England’s enemy? Three possibilities come to mind:

  1. Crozier is simply wrong about Hopkins;
  2. Hopkins wasn’t a Soviet agent in 1941, but became one
    later in the war; and
  3. Stalin was hedging his bets six months before the
    German invasion.

I have brought this matter up with numerous friends, but none of them has heard of Crozier and few have more than a dim knowledge of Hopkins. So I thought I would try it on a real expert.

I hope that this isn’t too much of an imposition, but being a history nut doesn’t necessarily make me a nice person.

Doug
Rees

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