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Drawing on family papers, wide-ranging interviews, FBI files, American and German newspapers, a wide array of published sources, and her own memories, the author traces Harry Marks’s German American heritage, his education both formal and informal, his marriage to a fellow Communist from a poor Russian family, his rocky start as an academic, his anguish when con-fronted by his Communist past, and his ultimate creation of a satisfying career.

“Rude Awakenings is a must read for students of 20th-century political and intellectual history. It tells the story of Harry J. Marks, who, after witnessing the tragic rise of Nazism in Hitler's Germany, embraced Communism because he saw the USSR as the leading anti-fascist force in the world. Equally gripping is the story of Marks’s disillusionment with Communism and his decision to “name names” when, as a history professor in the McCarthy era, he was summoned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify about his radical past.”–Robert Cohen, Professor of History and Social Studies Education,New York University.

“Based on a unique treasure trove of family letters and diaries, this biography interweaves the intellectual trajectory of a well-connected American academic with his observations and ideological responses to a most dramatic period of German history and European-American relations from the early 1930s to the 1960s. This book will be read and pondered with much profit not only by scholars and college students, but also by those who continue to find the insights to be gained in retrospect from the tragedies of the 20th century indispensable for an understanding of our contemporary predicament.”–Volker R. Berghahn, Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University.

“Of particular interest is Carol Sicherman’s carefully researched description of the anti-Semitic atmosphere that Jewish students encountered at Harvard in the twenties and thirties, as well as the experience of a young American thrown into the turmoil accompanying the collapse of Germany’s democracy and the appeal of Communism as an alternative to Nazism.”–Curt F. Beck, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Connecticut.

Carol Sicherman taught in the English Departments of Cornell University and Lehman College of the City University of New York. Her publications include: Thomas Traherne’s Christian Ethicks, ed.; Becoming an African University: Makerere 1922-2000. The reference works Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: The Making of a Rebel and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources won the Conover-Porter Award of the African Studies Association in 1992. She has published many articles on Renaissance and African literatures and on higher education in East Africa. She lives in Oakland, California.

Rude Awakenings

An American Historian’s Encounters with Nazism, Communism, and McCarthyism

Carol Sicherman

Washington, DC

Copyright © 2011 by Carol Sicherman

New Academia Publishing, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

Published in eBook format by New Academia Publishing

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ISBN-13: 978-0-9855-6988-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011939247

ISBN 978-0-9836899-8-0 paperback (alk. paper)

New Academia Publishing

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For Harry’s further descendants

Miriam Sicherman

Noemi Sicherman

Una Yoorim Sicherman Rose