Scum of the Earth

At the lowest point of Arthur Koestler's account of his confinement in France at the outset of World War II -- he is imprisoned by the French as an alien and then, after his release, goes on the run from the Nazi advance -- he wonders, "Will we ever be on the winning side?" He is speaking of himself and his allies on the Left, hounded from place to place throughout Europe. The Soviet Union was not yet any help, having signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis and calling the war against Germany a fight for "imperialism." It was a bitter irony that those who were the most anti-Nazi in France in September 1939 were those most likely to be punished by France. Scum of the Earth is an indictment of the old men like Petain but also the whole bureaucracy down to the lowliest clerk. Koestler details his days at the infamous Vernet camp, where he and his comrades slept on straw in barracks with no heat. Throughout his entire ordeal, enountering hundreds of Frenchmen, he finds maybe one or two who could be called, at a stretch, admirable.