http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf0489n3tj No online items Register to the Nathaniel Weyl papers Processed by Dale Reed Hoover Institution Archives Stanford University Stanford, California 94305-6010 Phone: (650) 723-3563 Fax: (650) 725-3445 © 1998, 2010 Hoover Institution Archives. All rights reserved. Register to the Nathaniel Weyl 86003 1 papers Descriptive Summary Title: Nathaniel Weyl Papers Date (inclusive): 1920-2004 Collection number: 86003 Creator: Weyl, Nathaniel, 1910-2005 Extent: 50 manuscript boxes (20.8 linear feet) Repository: Hoover Institution Archives Stanford, California 94305-6010 Abstract: Correspondence, writings, memoranda, notes, and printed matter, relating to communism, especially in Latin America; espionage and internal security in the United States; and racial, ethnic and class analyses of political and intellectual elites. Physical location: Hoover Institution Archives Language of Material: English Access The collection is open for research; materials must be requested at least two business days in advance of intended use. Publication Rights For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Nathaniel Weyl papers , [Box number], Hoover Institution Archives. Acquisition Information Acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 1986. Accruals Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find the collection in Stanford University's online catalog at http://searchworks.stanford.edu/ . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in the online catalog is larger than the number of boxes listed in this finding aid. 1910 Born, New York City 1931 B.S., Columbia University 1931-1933 Postgraduate student, London School of Economics 1933-1934 Economist, U.S. Agricultural Adjustment Administration 1939 Co-author, The Reconquest of Mexico: The Years of Lázaro Cárdenas 1941-1942 Economist, U.S. Federal Reserve Board 1942-1943 Economist, U.S. Board of Economic Warfare 1943-1945 U.S. Army service 1945-1947 Economist, U.S. Department of Commerce 1950 Author, Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and Betrayal in American History 1951 Author, The Battle against Disloyalty 1960 Author, The Negro in American Civilization 1961 Author, Red Star over Cuba: The Russian Assault on the Western Hemisphere 1963 Co-author, The Geography of Intellect 1966 Author, The Creative Elite in America 1968 Author, The Jew in American Politics 1970 Author, Traitors' End: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Movement in Southern Africa 1971 Co-author, American Statesmen on Slavery and the Negro 1979 Author, Karl Marx, Racist 1989 Author, The Geography of American Achievement 2003 Author, Encounters with Communism 2005 Died, Ojai, California Scope and Content of Collection Despite copious writings, autobiographical and otherwise, Nathaniel Weyl remains an enigmatic figure. As the only child of Walter Weyl, co-founder of the New Republic and influential molder of liberal opinion, he enjoyed a privileged upbringing. Nathaniel Weyl was educated at a private preparatory school, Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Beginning in 1933 he worked episodically as an economist for a succession of United States government agencies. After Register to the Nathaniel Weyl 86003 2 papers military service during World War II he returned briefly to civilian government service but resigned in 1947 and thereafter made a living as a free-lance journalist and author. Weyl created a minor sensation in 1952 when he testified to a Congressional committee that he had been a secret member of the Communist Party during the 1930s, that he had belonged to a group of New Deal functionaries who were also clandestine party members and whose leader was Harold Ware, and that Alger Hiss had also been a member of the group. Although Hiss had already been convicted of perjury, and although Weyl disclaimed any knowledge of espionage, the testimony was nonetheless significant. Weyl was the only person ever to offer eyewitness corroboration of Whittaker Chambers' identification of Hiss as a Communist. Following his break with the Communist Party at the time of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939, Weyl underwent a fundamental political reorientation from left to right, and became a regular contributor to journals of conservative opinion. His books Treason (1950) and The Battle against Disloyalty (1951) sounded anti-communist and anti-subversion themes which he maintained thereafter. He also wrote frequently regarding Latin American affairs. His book Red Star over Cuba (1961) maintained that Fidel Castro had been a Communist agent from the outset. In some of his writings he collaborated with his wife Sylvia, also an ex-Communist. Weyl developed a major preoccupation with issues of race and intelligence. This followed from a series of interlocking premises, all problematic, to which he subscribed: that social well-being depends on the leadership of elites of superior intelligence; that intelligence is a single measurable entity and is transmitted genetically; that distinct human races are meaningful biological categories; and that intelligence is distributed differentially among races. In particular he believed that African and American blacks occupied a low position on a racial intelligence spectrum and that Jews occupied a high position. (Weyl was himself Jewish on his father's side). In consequence of these convictions, he became active within Mensa, an organization requiring high intelligence quotient scores for membership, and founded an international charity to help subsidize schooling for gifted children. He wrote on race and intelligence themes in numerous journal articles, especially for the eugenicist Mankind Quarterly, to which he was a regular contributor, and in several books, notably The Geography of Intellect (co-authored with Stefan T. Possony of the Hoover Institution in 1963) and The Creative Elite in America (1966). His book Traitors' End (1970) defended the record of the apartheid governments of Rhodesia and South Africa. Weyl developed a further concern for what he termed "aristocide"--the threatened extinction of natural (genetically superior) elites, whether through the violence of envious inferiors or through their own failure to reproduce. (Ironically Nathaniel and Sylvia Weyl had no children of their own. They adopted two.) The collection is arranged into six series, the first two of which are small. School Papers covers Weyl's childhood and college years. The Government Service File consists of official documents from his employment as a United States government economist. Of special interest in this file is the record of the security investigation of Weyl carried out by the Civil Service Commission and House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1942-1943. The Correspondence and Speeches and Writings series are by far the largest in the collection and probably of greatest interest. Speeches and Writings comprehensively covers Weyl's literary output over his entire adult life, including numerous projects left unfinished or only planned. Correspondence, however, dates primarily from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s. The series includes a lesser amount of correspondence from the 1950s, but only two letters dating from before 1950 and none at all after 1984. A Subject File consists mainly of material collected by Weyl rather than generated by him, but also includes his memoranda and notes not intended for publication. Finally, there is a small Audiovisual File. Three broad areas are likely to be of greatest interest to researchers. The first of these is Communist Party activity within the United States government, together with related espionage and subversion issues. Although his early writings indicate leftist sympathies, there is unfortunately no correspondence or other contemporary documentation from the 1930s of Weyl's Communist Party membership. He told of this in his 1952 Congressional testimony and in various subsequent published accounts, ending with Encounters with Communism, privately printed in 2003. The collection includes substantial unpublished writings by Weyl on this subject. Notable among these are the book-length "The Espionage Case of Alger Hiss," completed in 1981, and the voluminous "Memoirs of the Communist Labyrinth" upon which he worked throughout much of the 1980s. Some correspondence, such as that with Hede Massing and with Robert Gorham and Hope Davis, is relevant. Memoranda from the 1950s, apparently intended for the use of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will be found in the Subject File. A second area of interest is Latin America. Correspondence with Cuban exiles, including General Fulgencio Batista, will be found in the Correspondence series. "The Young Fidel Castro" is a substantial unpublished writing, dating from around 1962. The source of this item, edited by Weyl, is not clear. Weyl undertook a history of the Mexican Communist Party, to be entitled "Aztec Serpent, Russian Bear." Although he never completed it, he did write a substantial amount before Register to the Nathaniel Weyl 86003 3 papers abandoning the project in 1971. One curious case requires explanation. Nathaniel and Sylvia Weyl contracted to collaborate with Isaac Don Levine on a book about Ramon Mercader, who assassinated Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Interpretive differences between the putative co-authors resulted in the eventual publication of The Mind of an Assassin