"Drawing extensively on recently opened Moscow archives, McMeekin chronicles Munzenberg's political career throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He describes how Munzenberg parlayed his friendship with Lenin into a media empire, leveraging his corporate ventures against the currency of his reputation in the Kremlin. He explains how Munzenberg's mysterious financial manipulations outraged Social Democrats and lent rhetorical ammunition to the Nazis and how, by the last years of the Weimar Republic, Munzenberg and his Nazi counterpart Joseph Goebbels were firing off reckless propaganda salvos, feeding a destructive spiral of lies that poisoned the political atmosphere irrevocably.".
Willi Münzenberg was a towering figure in the anti-fascist movement during the first half of the twentieth century. He was acquainted with many of the leading left wing activists and thinkers of his day including Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Karl Radek. He also played a foundational role in several important transnational organisations such as the Socialist Youth International, the largest anti-war movement in opposition to the First World War, the International Workers’ Relief organisation, and the League against Colonialism and for National Independence. As a film distributor and promoter, he brought modern Soviet films to western Europe. As a publicist and manager, he built up the most influential left-wing media empire in the Weimar Republic and initiated the pioneering use of photography and photo montage. He was also a long-time member of the Reichstag. He was a pioneer in the use of a variety of media and the way he gained the support and collaboration of progressive politicians, artists and intellectuals ensured that he would become the leading, and most effective, opponent of Hitler’s and Goebbels’ propaganda machine, as he exposed the venality and brutality of the Nazis. Late in life, his turn against Stalinism almost certainly led to his mysterious death. This is the first detailed biography in English to give coverage to the full range of Münzenberg's activism. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from the book about the best ways to counter fascism which are powerfully relevant to our contemporary political situation. It should be of great interest to activists, scholars and those studying the history of the radical left.
The first major study on the making of new cultures, movements and public celebrations of transnational solidarity in Weimar Germany. The book shows how solidarity was used to empower the oppressed in their liberation and resistance movements and how solidarity networks transferred visions and ideas of an alternative global community.
The story of how Lenin and Stalin's propaganda agent, Willi Munzenberg, manipulated the Western intellectuals and politicians into effectively collaborating with the Soviet Union.
Examines the emergence of anti-imperialist internationalism during the interwar years from the perspective of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
The League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives explores the dramatic and engaging story of a global institution that brought together activists across geographical and political borders for the goal of eradicating colonial rule worldwide. The League against Imperialism (LAI) attracted anticolonial activists like India's Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno, and Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, as well as prominent figures such as Albert Einstein, Ernst Toller, Romain Rolland, Upton Sinclair, Mohandas Gandhi, and Madame Sun Yat-Sen. This volume is the first to capture the global history of the LAI by bringing together contributions by scholars researching the movement from various regions, languages, and archives. Told primarily from the perspectives of those on the peripheries of empires, the volume argues that interwar anti-imperialism was central to the story of transnational activism during the interwar years and remained an inspiration for many who took on leadership roles during decolonization across the global south.
