JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Leon Dennen was a dedicated man with a broad experience in the affairs of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and a capacity to see into the future. And what this widely published man saw was this--that the countries in Eastern Europe that were presently (in 1945) under control of the Soviet Union were going to stay there1. He did see this correctly and at a time when seeing things like that correctly was pretty tough.
Earlier in his career he did see Fascists under American beds and published his view in this publication (above), published by The Friends of teh Soviet Union Society in New York City in 1935. On the other hand he couldn't see the Great Purge and the millions of Russians being eaten alive by the monstrous Joseph Stalin. But his vision was pretty good for seeing the Soviet plans in Europe at the end of World War II--there weren't that many people who save that, and those same people really didn't see the Great Purge either.
Notes:
1. Some biographical information from Commentary, January 1946:
"Leon Dennen spent nine months in 1944 in the Near East as a representative of an American relief agency. Upon his return he announced that Soviet Russia was building a zone of influence in the Balkans that was “being nailed down with bayonets and terror by regimes deriving their authority not from the local nationalities but from the Soviet liberators.”
"Mr. Dennen cites chapter and verse to support his contention. He shows that the peoples of the Balkans and the Near East, unable to order their own destinies, have become mere pawns in a gigantic battle for power between Britain and Russia—with Russia, propelled by the dynamism and ruthlessness of the newcomer and in a better geographical position, distinctly having the upper hand."
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