The God That Failed

A collection of six essays from ex-communists. Dreamed up by Arthur Koestler, this was edited by UK Labour Party MP and head of the Political Warfare Executive, Richard Crossman. He asked the advice of C.D. Jackson who recommended Louis Fischer. Melvin Lasky translated the essays and also published them in Der Monat. The American edition was published by Cass Canfield, who'd worked at the Office of War Information. Three of the contributors had formerly worked for Willi Munzenberg, including Koestler. "journalist Louis Fischer was a man whose career had also been closely shaped by his experience as a Communist working for Munzenberg. Ignazio Silone had joined the Italian Communist Party in 1921... The final break came in 1931, when the Communist Party asked him to make a public statement condemning Trotsky. He refused, and the Party expelled him... 'The God That Failed gang' was now a nomenclature adopted by the CIA, denoting what one officer called 'that community of intellectuals who were disillusioned, who could be disillusioned, or who hadn’t taken a position yet, and who could to some degree be influenced by their peers as to what choice to make.' The God That Failed was distributed by U.S. government agencies all over Europe. In Germany, in particular, it was rigorously promoted. The Information Research Department also pushed the book."

Contributors:
 * Arthur Koestler
 * Ignazio Silone
 * André Gide
 * Richard Wright
 * Louis Fischer
 * Stephen Spender