MANES SPERBER
67
one member more or less. I or somebody else - it hardly mattered .
But insofar as my own past was concerned, I now saw it as an un–
conscious complicity in a horrible, truth-destroying drive by a tiny
power group which had reduced an entire movement to a despicable ,
cowardly hostage to its own purposes .
When a person becomes his own enemy, he runs the risk of los–
ing all prospects of a future . There now began the most difficult,
most threatening phase of my life. I still had many friends, and
for the past year I had had Jenka. But there was no one to whom I
wanted to confide my trouble . ...
It was the summer of 1939 , not too hot , not too rainy . All of
France seemed to have conspired to take its vacation at the same
time . Never had such crowds been seen at the seashore , on the river
banks , in the mountains, in the valleys, in the sleepy villages. Wars
did not break out before autumn, so one had no need to think of any
immediate danger. Besides, there was the Soviet Union with its
mighty army; all the newspapers and weekly magazines carried re–
ports, complete with pictures . One could admire the parachute regi–
ments , the tanks, and the wonderfully strong, reliable young men as
they marched, peace-loving and sure of victory, through Red Square.
And even more interesting was the theft of a Watteau painting from
the Louvre. The search for the master thief, who had carried off such
a coup, kept the vacationers on tenterhooks . There was something
uncanny here, because just before the First World War a master–
work had also disappeared from the Louvre, the mysteriously smil–
ing Mona Lisa . Yes , here was something everyone could talk about.
It took one's mind off Adolf and his little mustache . ...
Stalin's betrayal of antifascism released me and many others
once and for all from our last investment in communism. Thanks to
that betrayal, from August 24,1939 on we were so free of it that we
could regard it with the objectivity of a microbe hunter.
At Miinzenberg's request I drew up a program for a new so–
cialist movement and considered the conditions under which it could
be established in Germany once Hitler was defeated. None of us
doubted the outcome of the war - even with the help Hitler had re–
ceived from his Russian crony . It was clear on the other hand that
France and England would fight seriously only in the West. When
Russia launched its raid into Finland , the Allies gesticulated wildly ,
and threatened to send an expeditionary force to help the little coun–
try. But it was empty chatter , contemptible and laughable .
