Word: malraux
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Fighting for France. When the Nazi armies marched into France, Malraux volunteered as a private in the tank corps. For the first time, at the age of 38, he was fighting for his own bourgeois country. His war record was as dashing as a hero would wish. He was captured, escaped to unoccupied France dressed in an artisan's clothes, carrying planks on his shoulder. Soon he was working with the Resistance. As a start, he dynamited locomotives, intermittently returning to writing. By 1944 he had become "Colonel Berger," in command of 1.500 men in the southwest of France...
...disillusionment was at hand. His friend Gide came back from Russia declaring: "Russia is not what we thought." After the Soviet-Nazi pact, Malraux announced bitterly: "What I wanted to defend for 20 years could not be defended by Communism...
Interrogated by a "priest" while lying bleeding on the floor of a hotel, Malraux still had the strength to engage him in a theological argument over St. Augustine; the man's ignorance of philosophy convinced Malraux that he was no priest but an S.S. officer seeking information. The Germans also tried standing him up against a wall and telling him he was to be executed. Malraux wheeled around to face death. The Germans did not fire...
...French regular army commander if there was anything his guerrillas could do in an impending attack on Dannemarie, the colonel said yes, could he find some young fellow to blow up the locomotive of a Nazi armored train stationed there. "I'll do it if you like," said Malraux...
...Malraux became Minister of Information in the brief Provisional government of General Charles de Gaulle. When De Gaulle retired in disgust, Malraux retired with him, disillusioned with the inefficiency of France's bureaucracy. "To know how foul it really is," said Malraux, "one must be in it, one must be married to it, and be frustrated by it as a man is by a wife with whom he is hopelessly coupled...