Sharp, Tony Stalin's American Spy: Noel Field, Allen Dulles and the East European Show Trials (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 387 hands. If that’s true — and also if it is not true — there is an interesting story to be told, but in order for that to happen a difficult history needs to be excavated. University of Chicago Michael Geyer Sharp, Tony. Stalin’s American Spy: Noel Field, Allen Dulles and the East European Show Trials. Hurst & Company, London, 2014. xiii + 410 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £25.00. Noel Field was an unlikely player in a real-life spy drama. As a half-American Quaker and a self-proclaimed ‘pacifist idealist’ (p. 29), he was regarded as an outsider in the State Department, and yet he quickly developed into a ‘perfect bureaucrat’ in the eyes of his colleagues (p. 26). The ambitious, workaholic Harvard graduate became an acknowledged expert on disarmament and the League of Nations. Although his Communist sympathies excited suspicion, Noel’s profile and personality scarcely fitted the image of a Soviet agent, much less the reverse role of an ‘American master-spy’ in which he was cast by Stalin (p. 147). As the German Communist Paul Merker observed about the youthful Noel, ‘He was the sort of uncomplicated, middle-class American, who from a religiously motivated outlook and morality […] took the side of the weak and needy in society’ (p. 100). By 1949, however, Noel held the dubious distinction of being investigated as a traitor and a spy by both the Americans and the Soviets at one and the same time. Arguably, it was only a quirk of fate that he was kidnapped and arrested by the Czechoslovak and Hungarian secret services, and that he did not stand trial in the United States. Whilst the disappearance of Robert Vogeler, another American accused of espionage, prompted a torrent of protest from the United States Legation in Budapest, the vanishing of a former State Department employee — and subsequently of his wife, brother and foster daughter — barely caused a stir. After all, Noel had already been named by defectors as a covert Communist Party member who previously worked as a Soviet agent. Ironically, the Fields had travelled to Eastern Europe as a precaution, hoping to evade the Western intelligence services. When Noel went missing in Prague in May 1949, his wife assumed he had been seized by the Americans. She had no notion that her husband was languishing in Hungarian custody. Despite his pre-war record in Soviet foreign intelligence, and his wartime assistance of Communist refugees in Switzerland, Noel’s status changed overnight from Stalin’s spy to Stalin’s victim. This dramatic reversal is covered in minute detail by Tony Sharp, who documents how the capture of Noel was followed by that of his wife, Herta, his brother, Hermann and his foster daughter, Erica, all of SEER, 95, 2, APRIL 2017 388 whom ended up in Communist captivity. In addition, most of those who were helped by the Field brothers during the war came to rue the connection, faring badly at the hands of the East German, Polish, Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Soviet secret services. Whether or not the Fields’ associates received what they deserved,theyareportrayedinthisbookwithadegree ofcompassion,ashapless creatures caught in a spider’s web. Sharp relates many tales of human suffering and betrayal, without passing judgement on the individuals concerned. By contrast, in a recent Hungarian study on the trial of László Rajk and his fellow accused (‘A nagy politikai affér’ a Rajk-Brankov-ügy, 2 vols, Budapest, 2013–14), Tibor Zinner harps on the culpability of the Communist victims. Sharp’s more balancedapproachisto humanizethepersecuted,to‘treatthem withsympathy’, whilst suspending ‘empathy with their motives’ (p. 6). His canvas is at once broad and narrow: he effectively links the whole chain of East European show trials to the ordeal of one unfortunate American family. One might argue that Sharp devotes too much attention to some of the East European investigations and purges that had no bearing on the plight of the Fields. He also leaves unanswered some important questions about the anti-American purposes of the Rajk case. Why was Noel picked as the first American victim of Stalinist ‘justice’ in Budapest, and why was he not eventually tried in a Hungarian court, as Vogeler was...