Summary

Sartre had little work to do at his meteorological posting during the war, and spent long hours working on his own projects. However, soon enough Germany attacked France. The French decided to surrender early in order to decrease the unnecessary violence and casualties. Merleau-Ponty was an infantry officer on the front line, and was later captured. Sartre was captured as well, but as a prisoner of war he was still able to read Heidegger and begin drafting his influential work Being and Nothingness.

Not knowing where Sartre was, Beauvoir joined a group of refugee civilians and fled to the southwest. She later returned to Paris, but found it once again to be eerily normal. Beauvoir also began to spend a lot of time at the library of the Sorbonne reading Hegel and Kierkegaard.

Sartre was later able to escape with the excuse of needing...