Johannes Steel (born Herbert Stahl, 1908–1988) is best known for his 1934 book The Second World War.
He continued to work as a journalist, writing for The Nation and the New York Post, for which he was foreign news editor.
A deciphered Venona cable of Soviet intelligence traffic from July 1944, reveals Steel telling Vladimir Pravdin of the New York KGB that Roman Moszulski, the director of the Polish Telegraphic Agency, was secretly pro-Communist and told Moszulski that he should remain in place with the Polish Telegraphic Agency, which was aligned with the London-based Polish government-in-exile, and set up a meeting with the KGB.
At the meeting Moszulski told Pravdin he believed Poland should have good relations with the Soviet Union and, "having thought over the full seriousness and the possible consequences of his step, he was putting himself at our disposal and was ready to give the Communists all the information he had and to questions concerning his activities."
To prove his bona fides to Soviet intelligence, Moszulski conveyed a list of Polish exiles and Polish-Americans, including an evaluation of how they stood on Polish-Soviet relations.