There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
“I had hope, however; I had been wounded seven times during the war, and once before in this same lung; and I did not believe I was going to die.”
“Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different... to think out of the box.”