[9] In his will, Watson left £950,000 to the Liberal Democrats[10] and the painting Rocky Landscape with Saint John the Baptist by Joos de Momper to the National Gallery, London.
[11] Watson contributed to Encounter, a Cold-War intellectual journal, and published material arguing that Adolf Hitler was a Marxist and that socialism promoted genocide.
[13] For this, he was criticised by Latvian political scientist and cultural commentator Ivars Ijabs[14] and Robert Grant,[15] who argue that Watson's views are based on mistranslation and distortion reflecting his ideological bias.
[13] In the Lost Literature of Socialism (1998), Watson cited an 1849 article written by Engels called "The Hungarian Struggle" and published in Marx's journal Neue Rheinische Zeitung,[16][nb 1] stating that the writings of Engels and others show that "the Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism, which in advanced nations was already giving place to capitalism, must in its turn be superseded by socialism.
"[18] Talking about Engels' 1849 article and citing Watson's book, historian Andrzej Walicki wrote: "It is difficult to deny that this was an outright call for genocide.