Firebrand: Journalist Ludwig Lore's Lifelong Struggle Against Capitalism, Stalinism and the Rise of Nazism

by David Lore

FIREBRAND tracks the life of radical Ludwig Lore, a pacifist and socialist who emigrated to America at a young age to escape the straitjacket of German politics during the first years of the 20th century and began a new life as a newspaper editor and political commentator. A close associate of Leon Trotsky, Lore was instrumental in the formation of the American Communist Party until 1925, when his stubborn opposition to Stalin’s dictates led to his banishment from the party leadership. During the 1930s, he mentored other breakaway communists – including Whittaker Chambers – while building a reputation as a fierce critic of Hitler.

300 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Shaun Richman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is essentially a glorified piece of family genealogical history that the author, a retired investigative reporter, wisely realized might be of interests to scholars of early American Communist and anti-fascist history. It most certainly is. Ludwig Lore was, as his grandson writes, a "second tier" name in the founding ranks of the Workers (Communist) Party, but reading this book you realize that his name pops up in the margins of a lot of other histories you've read (if this is your sort of thing).

Lore was possibly Leon Trotsky's best friend during the brief period that the Russian revolutionary assumed he would live out the rest of his days in the Bronx, a few months before the February Revolution. Lore's closeness with Trotsky meant that he would inevitably be expelled from the U.S. Communist party and charged with Trotskyism. He wasn't a Trotskyite, but was doomed by this rough treatment over - as one Russian agent called it - "stupid stuff" to be a gadfly, a dissident and ultimately an informant.

I wish his footnotes made it easier to find Ludwig's FBI file. I wish that David Lore had put in the extra work, or found a co-author, to turn this into a book of historical scholarship for the wider world of labor and socialist nerds.

There's a haunting note in the introduction wherein David Lore bemoans the fact that Ludwig never completed his memoirs and says that he himself feels the pressure of his age to get this book over and done with. The author died a few months after this book was self-published.