Jan Valtin

Jan Valtin was the alias of Richard Julius Hermann Krebs (December 17, 1905 - January 1, 1951), a German communist and Soviet agent during the interwar period. He defected to the United States in 1938, and in 1940 (as Valtin) wrote his bestselling autobiography "Out of the Night". He also wrote several novels.

Valtin became active in the communist movement at the age of 14, when his father was involved in the naval mutiny that heralded the 1918 revolution. And in 1923 he was to see action in the failed communist uprising in Hamburg. Sometime after this he was recruited to the GPU, the foreign intelligence service of the USSR, and forerunner to the KGB.

After joining the GPU he helped run various smuggling enterprises, and helped organise communist cells onboard merchant ships. As a sailor he visited many countries and could speak a number of languages including fluent English. He spent three years in the San Quentin Prison in California for an assault carried out under GPU orders.

After the Nazis came to power in Germany he fled to Denmark, where the GPU headquarters had relocated. At this time he was a seasoned GPU operative but fell out of favor with the leadership and was sent back - according to Valtin by Ernst Wollweber - to Germany to do underground work.

He was subsequently arrested by the Nazis and brutally tortured. But the GPU made contact with him inside jail and instructed him to defect to the Nazis and act as a double agent for them. This plan was successful, and the Nazis then sent him to Denmark to make contact with the GPU again. However they kept his wife and son hostage in Germany.

But once again he fell out with the GPU leadership, who kidnapped him ready for transportation to the USSR. But he escaped, and fled to the United States. The GPU - Valtin accuses again Ernst Wollweber - took their revenge by publishing an article about him by the American communist newspaper the Daily Worker. This let the Nazis know that he had tricked them, and the Gestapo had Valtin's wife killed.

Valtin was penniless and destitute when he arrived in the United States and worked at a number of menial jobs before joining the US army during the second world war. After the war he was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities but cleared. He was granted US citizenship in 1947.

References

* Valtin, Jan; Alliance (1941). Out of the Night.
* Ernst von Waldenfels: "Der Spion, der aus Deutschland kam. Das geheime Leben des Seemanns Richard Krebs." Berlin 2002 ISBN 3-351-02538-6
* Postscript to the 1988 edition of Out of the Night published by Fortress Books (publishing arm of the British Militant Tendency) by Lynn Walsh.