Witness: Cold War Classics

“On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time—Communism and Freedom—came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men. Indeed, it would have been hard, in a world still only dimly aware of what the conflict is about, to find two other men who knew so clearly […] with dark certitude, both knew, almost from the beginning, that the Great Case could end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending figures, just as the history of our times (both men had been taught) can only end in the destruction of one or both of the contending forces.”

Whittaker Chambers was best known for his confrontation with Alger Hiss, but he always insisted that their conflict was not personal. In the opening pages of Witness, Chambers clarifies his position: While the political drama in which they were involved centered around Chambers as the accuser and Hiss the accused, Chambers’s narrative positions them mainly as representatives of the broader ideological clash between the capitalist West and the Communist East. These geographic regions, of course, had recently found them themselves plunged into a Cold War that would last decades. Chambers believed that the outcome of the Cold War would decide the fate of the entire world.

“A child of Reason and the 20th century, she knew that there is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a logic that may be more compelling than the mind’s. She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night he heard screams.”

Chambers understood Communism as the pure expression of human reason. By extension, he was convinced that appeals to logic would fail to dissuade its adherents to abandon Communism. The only force capable of overcoming Communism, he decided, was conscience, a sense of morality that did not depend upon reason or calculation. According to Hiss, Communism worked hard to suppress Party members’ sense of conscience because it knew this would undermine its totalitarian drive towards full political domination.