Out of the NightPickle Partners Publishing, 2020 M01 30 - 724 pages A bestseller in 1941, selected by the Book of the Month Club for a special edition and described by Book of the Month Club News as: “...full of sensational revelations and interspersed with episodes of daring, of desperate conflict, of torture, and of ruthless conspiracy...It is, first of all, an autobiography the like of which has seldom been.” The son of a seafaring father, Richard Julius Herman Krebs, a.k.a. Jan Valtin, came of age as a bicycle messenger during a maritime rebellion. His life as an intimate insider account of the dramatic events of 1920’s and 1930s, where he rose both within the ranks of the Communist Party and on the Gestapo hit list. Known for his honesty and incredible memory, Krebs dedicated his life to the Communist Party, rising to a position as head of maritime, organizing worldwide for the Comintern, only to flee the Party and Europe to evade his own comrade’s attempts to kill him. As a professional revolutionary, agitator, spy and would-be assassin, Krebs traveled the globe from Germany to China, India to Sierra Leon, Moscow to the United States where a botched assassination attempt landed him a stint in San Quentin. From his spellbinding account of artful deception to gain release from a Nazi prison and his work as a double-agent within the Gestapo, to his vivid depiction of a Communist Party fraught with intrigue and subterfuge, Krebs gives an unflinching portrayal of the internal machinations of both parties. |
From inside the book
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... aboard a steamer, bound down the Rhine to Rotterdam. My father had spent most of his life at sea. But despite his roamings, he had the devotion of a wanderer for the land of his birth, a devotion which I did not learn to share. During ...
... aboard a steamer, bound down the Rhine to Rotterdam. My father had spent most of his life at sea. But despite his roamings, he had the devotion of a wanderer for the land of his birth, a devotion which I did not learn to share. During ...
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... aboard a Heligoland patrol boat; now his post was in the forward torpedo room of the battleship Thüringen, stationed at Wilhelmshaven and for periods at the Kiel naval base. My mother fought incredibly hard to keep her brood alive on ...
... aboard a Heligoland patrol boat; now his post was in the forward torpedo room of the battleship Thüringen, stationed at Wilhelmshaven and for periods at the Kiel naval base. My mother fought incredibly hard to keep her brood alive on ...
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... Aboard the Thüringen the mutineers had seized the ship. They had dropped the anchors, smashed the lights and disarmed the officers. A shout went up: “Down with the Kaiser! Down with the war! We want peace!” Passing men shook their heads ...
... Aboard the Thüringen the mutineers had seized the ship. They had dropped the anchors, smashed the lights and disarmed the officers. A shout went up: “Down with the Kaiser! Down with the war! We want peace!” Passing men shook their heads ...
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... aboard the Lucy Woerman. Scores of the nearly four hundred who were signed had been among the mutineers of the Imperial navy; scores of others had never been aboard a ship before; once at sea none manifested the slightest intention of ...
... aboard the Lucy Woerman. Scores of the nearly four hundred who were signed had been among the mutineers of the Imperial navy; scores of others had never been aboard a ship before; once at sea none manifested the slightest intention of ...
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... aboard a slow coastwise steamer, and after a few aimless days in Valparaiso, I decided to visit the nearby capital, Santiago de Chile. Here I found work in a candle factory under a domineering British foreman. It was inside work which I ...
... aboard a slow coastwise steamer, and after a few aimless days in Valparaiso, I decided to visit the nearby capital, Santiago de Chile. Here I found work in a candle factory under a domineering British foreman. It was inside work which I ...
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Out of the Night: The Memoir of Richard Julius Herman Krebs Alias Jan Valtin Jan Valtin Limited preview - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
aboard agents Albert Walter Antwerp Apparat arms arrested arrived ashore asked Bandura Berlin British Brownshirts Captain cell chief Cilly Comintern Communist Party Comrade Copenhagen courier crew death Dimitrov door Elite Guards Ernst Wollweber eyes face Firelei front Fuhlsbüttel gave Gestapo girl guns Hall Halvorsen Hamburg hands harbor head headquarters Heinz Neumann Heitman Hertha Jens Hitler Hugo Marx hundred Inspector Kraus International Club Jensen John Scheer Karl Liebknecht knew later leaders Leningrad looked marine mass Michel Avatin morning Moscow murder Murmansk mutineers Narvik Nazi never night organization passport Pioner police policemen political ports prison Profintern propaganda Radam Reichswehr Rotterdam Russian sailors Samsing seamen secret sent shouted smuggled socialist Soviet Union station steamer stood storm troopers street strike told took towline train voice waiting walls wanted waterfront Western Secretariat window woman workers yard young