Richard Julius Hermann Krebs (December 17, 1905 - January 1, 1951), better known by his alias Jan Valtin, was a German writer during the interwar period. He settled in the United States in 1938, and in 1940 (as Valtin) wrote his bestselling book ''Out of the Night''.

Background

Krebs became active in the Communist movement as a boy, when his father was involved in the naval mutiny that heralded the German Revolution of 1918–19.

Career

In 1923, he saw action in the failed Communist insurgency in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

. Sometime after this he joined the

German Communist Party The German Communist Party (german: Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, ) is a communist party in Germany. The DKP supports left positions and was an observer member of the European Left. At the end of February 2016 it left the European party. His ...

, but was later expelled.

Arrest

In 1926, Krebs entered the United States illegally and moved to

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. He spent 38 months in San Quentin State Prison for attempting to murder a merchant navy seaman during a brawl, then was deported to Germany in 1929. He worked as a seaman until 1934, when he was arrested and tortured, and acted as a witness for prosecution in a trial that brought to the conviction of a fellow German seaman accused of treason.

Out of the Night

In 1938, he returned to the United States to settle, this time under his most famous alias, Jan Valtin - where he published the highly publicized autobiography ''Out of the Night''. In the book he described in detail the actions he supposedly had carried on as a secret agent of the Soviet GPU. The 1926 attempted murder was described by Krebs/Valtin as a GPU operation. The book received great critical acclaim. A 1940 review for the ''Saturday Review of Literature'' reads: "No other books more clearly reveals the aid which Stalin gave to Hitler before he won power".

Congressional testimony

Valtin/Krebs was invited to testify before the

Dies Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...

as regards Soviet secret activities in Europe. On May 26, 1941, Richard Julius Krebs testified before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (the "Dies Committee") that he had worked for the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

for the Comintern. Research director J.B. Matthews had Sender Garlin had reviewed ''Out of the Night'' unfavorably in the ''

Daily Worker The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were ...

'' newspaper of January 21, 1941. Garlin claimed no "Jan Valtin" existed and that the book's authors were

Isaac Don Levine Isaac Don Levine (January 19, 1892 – February 15, 1981) was a 20th-century Russian-born American journalist and anticommunist writer, who is known as a specialist on the Soviet Union. He worked with Soviet ex-spy Walter Krivitsky in a 1939 exp ...

Walter Krivitsky Walter Germanovich Krivitsky (Ва́льтер Ге́рманович Криви́цкий; June 28, 1899 – February 10, 1941) was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact after he defected to ...

, and

Freda Utley Winifred Utley (23 January 1898 – 21 January 1978), commonly known as Freda Utley, was an English scholar, political activist and best-selling author. After visiting the Soviet Union in 1927 as a trade union activist, she joined the Communist P ...

(known ex- or anti-communists). Krebs said he had defected in December 1937 - January 1938.

Arrest

In November 1942, Krebs was also indicted as a

agent. He was arrested in December 1942 and found innocent in May 1943. The Los Angeles court record revealed that the 1926 crime had no political purpose. This event marked the end of Krebs/Valtin's career as a "Soviet expert". The ''New York Mirror'' said about his book ''Out of the Night'': "In effect, the decision means he perpetrated a huge literary hoax."

US war service

In August 1943, Krebs was drafted as an infantryman and deployed in February 1944 to the Philippines in fighting the Japanese in the Pacific War. In 1946, his book ''Children of Yesterday'', an anecdotal history of the 24th Infantry Division was published, describing in graphic detail the horrors of the fighting and everyday life of the division’s troops. He was granted citizenship in 1947.

Personal life and death

Valtin/Krebs married again, before 1941, to Abigail Harris, an American. Richard Krebs died in 1951. The

Board of Immigration Appeals The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) is an administrative appellate body within the Executive Office for Immigration Review of the United States Department of Justice responsible for reviewing decisions of the U.S. immigration courts and cert ...

declared:

His life has been so marked with violence, intrigue and treachery that it would be difficult, if not wholly unwarranted, to conclude that his present reliability and good character have been established. ..Within the past five years the subject has been considered an agent of Nazi Germany. On the record before us it appears he has been completely untrustworthy and amoral."

Works

* ''Out of the Night'' (1940) * ''Bend in the River'' (1942) * ''Children of Yesterday'' (1946) * ''Castle in the Sand'' (1947) * ''Wintertime'' (1950)

References

External links

John G. Wright ''Jan Valtin: Out of the Fight''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Valtin, Jan 1905 births 1951 deaths German autobiographers German defectors German emigrants to the United States German male non-fiction writers