by Arthur Koestler
A review by Ethan A. Bayer
Koestler reveals the confusion and sometimes self-imposed ignorance of the masses that compelled them to remain in France instead of escaping before war struck. They fooled themselves into believing there would be no war, and their illusions were propagated by the educated. For example, the famous writer M. Giraudoux told the people to "trust their leaders" and "not to ask silly questions" (p. 31). They devoured the newspapers, which swayed between extremes-one day a flashy article claiming that the war was off, the next a retraction and apology. The faint glimmer of hope this provided kept them lingering there, and Koestler himself admits to being swayed by the media. Once the war starts, however, the illusions are shattered, the wool is torn away, and the people find themselves in the middle of a nightmare.
Another contributor to the confusion is the lack of knowledge about what is happening politically. France's leaders claim valiant reasons for fighting the war-for the preservation of democracy and truth-when the true purpose is indefinable. In reality, France is simply clinging to the status quo, fending off the industrialization in favor of the agricultural lifestyle that currently pervades the countryside. The government cannot put this goal into suitable words, so they fashion a mask of bravery and valiance for noble causes. The result is that the working class cannot comprehend what they are fighting for-they just know who they are fighting against. The soldiers, too, have little insider knowledge about the war, and so become apathetic and homesick. They are unfit and despise what they do. The war is only a form of employment. This is France's downfall.
In the midst of the internal instability, France sets up camps. Any person who poses the slightest threat to France, whether directly or indirectly by angering France's belligerent enemies, is detained. In the rush to lock up these thousands, the government utilizes random buildings as prisons. Even a sports arena, the Roland Garros Stadium, is converted into a temporary camp, which is where Koestler is brought. Ninety percent of those imprisoned in the stadium are there for political reasons, sometimes petty, and the majority are foreigners. The bleachers serve as a roof, and when it rains the water drizzles through the cracks to soak those beneath. It smells of filth and excrement, and only slits of light can find their way inside.
Instead of shamefully concealing the shady incarceration of this group, the French government loudly publicizes it. The Ministry of Information falsifies stories about the prisoners' behavior to cast foreigners in a violent light. They discover that by portraying foreigners as inherently troublesome, they can funnel the population's general discontent into a helpless scapegoat. Koestler says that, to the French people, this scapegoat is not feeble, but resembles a dragon: one can beat a dragon again and again and it never dies, so the only answer is to beat it more.
Roland Garros is Koestler's first experience in a French camp. He watches his strong-willed comrades buckle under the persecution, so that even when they are freed they ask much less from life. The scale of suffering has been distorted and shifted up a notch.
No matter how awful the stadium seems, nothing could have prepared Koestler for his next stop. He is transported to Le Vernet, the worst camp in France, below even Nazi standards. What looks like an explosion of barbed wire and mud, the camp has three hutments, each thirty yards long and five wide, with two levels of wooden planks for sleeping. Each man has twenty-one inches to spread out, which means that all must sleep on their sides; if one man turns over, all turn over.
Again, the prisoners have been detained on irrational grounds. The ridiculousness is manifested in Gouget, a man taken into custody for eating pigeons. This practice was banned not on moral grounds, but simply because the army can use pigeons as messengers. Because of such frivolity, much of Koestler's anger originates in his confusion as to the exact reasons for his captivity. He sees through the shallow rationalism force-fed by the government and knows that is "an outlet for their traditional xenophobia" (p. 142).
The camp, therefore, is filled with nearly innocent men who are subject to unthinkable conditions. The lieutenants in charge have vengeful mindsets and treat the prisoners hellishly. To obtain information, rubber tubes are inserted in the nose and water is poured through them. One detainee was carrying a pot of boiling water as part of his duties when he passed Lieutenant Cosne. His hands were full, so he was not able to salute; instead of showing sympathy or just basic logic for the situation, Cosne became irate and poured the hot water all over the prisoner. Another man who fell from the upper sleeping platform and suffered a broken arm was escorted to the hospital in handcuffs. At night, the gendarmes drink excessively and beat up the prisoners. Through all the horror, the soldiers excuse their actions with the warning that the Gestapo would torture them more.
Outside of the torture, the prisoners deal with their new reality through whatever outlets they can find. Camaraderie develops and serves to construct faint glimmers of hope in the darkest minds. When everyone wears rags and crumbling shoes, one's past holds no importance-the concept of status disappears. A few months into Koestler's stay, the establishment of a canteen rips apart this tight mesh. Prisoners are now allowed to use money they receive in packages to buy commodities from the post. A class system emerges and makes glaringly obvious the differences among the men. The rifts begin appear in the group of barrack leaders, who attempt to oust each other by fabricating claims against their opponents and install bribery as a methodized practice. A glance inside the hutments displays the blatancy of the situation. On one end the wooden planks have been transformed into private compartments, sometimes with tables and the soft glow of candles. Mr. Goodman, a particularly affluent gentleman, has drenched his compartment with decoration and dines on canned foods and brandy-he even has a personal valet. Koestler and few others are lucky enough to share compartments with members of the upper class, whereas just ten or twenty feet down the dank aisle men huddle together in the sub-zero temperatures with no blankets.
The physical sufferings brought on by the conditions are obviously excruciating, but the emotional injuries prove to be grave as well. When Koestler first arrives at Le Vernet, he protests the treatment and attempts to send a petition to the administration. After a few months, his initiative and confidence have been whittled down to a weak image of what they used to be. Entrepreneurs and highly influential figures, if they ever escaped, carried the weight of those months or years on their backs, settling for the least life could offer them. Day after day of being handled worse than animals and receiving no regard as to their health or mental state, the men are not only externally viewed as the "scum of the earth," but they have become it (p. 67). In his writing, Koestler addresses his peers with this title, which reveals that even the prisoners embody each other in this image.
Inhabiting the lowest position in life, one would most likely lie down to wallow in his pitiful state. However, Koestler notes that even though these men are at the bottom, they set their sights and disposition higher than what is expected of them. Mario, a comrade of Koestler, has spent over a decade in detainment camps. He has done strenuous labor everyday for years, and yet he shows a compassion that is rare even in the outside world. When Koestler announces to his friends that he has gotten leave of work due to heart problems, Mario rejoices as if the news were for himself.
The men also stand strongly for their beliefs under the weight of the staunch conditions. They demonstrate their integrity when the Italian consul, the first outsider, is allowed entrance. He offers the men protection under the Fascist government and the precious jewel of rescue, and surprisingly only fifteen of the three hundred Italians accept his offer. The rest weigh their convictions more heavily than their lives.
Koestler escapes from Le Vernet on an administrative organizational fluke. His release feels eerie; the boundary between the filth in the camp and the civilization of the outside world has always been a chasm too great to fathom, but as he walks out he realizes "how simple" it is for the lieutenant to unlock the gate and escort him to the waiting taxi (p. 149). Koestler emphasizes that his escape is the product of incredible fortune-he is the exception and not the rule. Of the two thousand locked up in Le Vernet, only fifty ever breathe outside air again.
While Koestler gains freedom from a prison guarded by soldiers and barbed wire, his release sends him into a much more vast and dangerous prison-that of France itself. He joins the Foreign Legion, and in exchange for five years of service gets a new identity. Quickly he learns that troops in the Legion are apathetic as well; they have no loyalties to France, but only wear their uniforms to disappear from the political eye. Day by day they grow wearier because the promise of demobilization is not being fulfilled. Nightly roll call ceases because the number of men who do not return after the day is depressing. Among those who do continue to trudge along, laziness abounds: some are too sluggish to climb the ladder down from the upper quarters, so they urinate in the sleeping loft. The Legion is ineffective even as a decent body of humans working together, much less as a military defense for France.
Inevitably, the Legion staggers along aimlessly, and Koestler loses his battalion. With a hodgepodge group of other lost military men, he travels the countryside, near his unit but always missing them by a hair. He feels as if while running after the Legion he is simultaneously running from the Germans; every town they come to is "about to be" occupied, so rest is never for more than a few hours (p. 216). The omnipresent fear that towers over every head in France is that of falling into the Gestapo's hands. At last, exhausted, Koestler watches the tanks roll into town under the blazing sun. They have been chasing him for months-for years-and they have finally caught up to him.
Instead of acquiring emotional baggage from the war, Koestler departs the stage with less than he came with. Losing his name means losing himself. The irony is that he tries so hard to be someone else in order to preserve who he really is; he is willing to relinquish his identity and social persona, but not his convictions. Physically, he loses much as well. Every time he is arrested, the police ransack the rooms of his abode, ripping through treasured memorabilia. Every hastened move of residence requires manuscripts and books to be left behind. His war diary is written on the only suitable thing he has-a pocket calendar. The soldiers transporting his luggage to Castelnau defecate into his only knapsack, which must be burned. This, concludes Koestler, is the finale of the "complete annihilation of a man's past" (p. 229).
Koestler writes this autobiographical picture at a time when the war is still in full force. His animosity and passion is evident, but there is also a sense of emotional hollowness. Putting the time frame into a broad perspective, Koestler's imprisonment is fairly short-lived in comparison with many victims of World War II. That he is emotionally damaged to such an extent is a testament to the excruciating state he lived in during his incarceration. Koestler's story is one of senseless persecution and anger at the ignorance of the impending doom wrought by the political situation in Europe.