The God that Failed

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This article is about the 1949 book. For the song by the thrash metal group Metallica, see The God That Failed (song); The title was also used for the 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed.

The God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communists, who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays is the authors' disillusionment with and abandonment of Communism. The promotional byline to the book is "Six famous men tell how they changed their minds about Communism."

Contributors:

• Louis Fischer
• André Gide
• Arthur Koestler
• Ignazio Silone
• Stephen Spender
• Richard Wright

Richard Crossman, the British MP who conceived and edited the volume, at one point approached the famous American ex-communist Whittaker Chambers about contributing an essay to the book. At the time Chambers was still employed by Time magazine, having not yet gone public with his charges against Alger Hiss, and so declined to participate.