I highly recommend Jan Valtin's book, recently on HN: https://thebaffler.com/latest/unflinching-prisoners-of-a-grandiose-make-believe-asher https://thebaffler.c

I highly recommend Jan Valtin's book, recently on HN: https://thebaffler.com/latest/unflinching-prisoners-of-a-grandiose-make-believe-asher https://thebaffler.com/latest/unflinching-prisoners-of-a-gra... It is the biography of German Communist in WWII. To quote from the review "few books have ever done a finer or more honest job of describing the appeal and disappointments of ideology. "