Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler

Scum of the Earth

I read this of the back of references to it in one of the collection of George Orwell Essays I have also been reading, and it gives a griping account of Koestler's experince in the opening years of the Second World War in France - with all the tension and drama of the best thriller writing - and while you clearly known he must escape to tell his tale for much of the time you live in the moment where its impossibility is the reality.

Koestler had travelled across Europe ahead of the tide of the Nazi advance and made a home in France, only to be betrayed by the French along with countless other 'enemies' of the Nazis.  The reasons behind his arrest and imprisomeant go to the core to the France collapse and murky years of collaboration with the Nazis.   And this is a lesson writ large in the truth of the saying of Burke ""All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." In the French Concentration Camp Koestler receives numerous acts of kindness from the guards which sound them to be fundamentally 'good' which only adds to the tragedy of their failure to see the evil of which they had become a part.

Koestler's escape was a stroke of luck, many other remained imprisoned and found themselves handed over to the Gestapo and in most cases death. One of the most interesting perspectives we gain from this account is the complete sense of hopelessness of 1940 as France fell, and Britain gave no real sign at that stage of having either the will of the capacity to fight on let alone to ultimately triumph.