Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, or Beverly Hills—these are the evocative names of the Californian haven where they found refuge: filmmakers and actors, writers and intellectuals who had to flee Nazi Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. It was a community of the exiled:  Bertolt Brecht, Helene Weigel, Hanns Eisler, Billy Wilder and Vicki Baum, Fritz Lang and William Wyler, Thomas and Heinrich Mann. But soon the refugees found themselves under suspicion. One moment celebrated as nobly minded opponents of the Nazis, and the next moment their trash was getting searched by the FBI – the “red scare” and McCarthyism reduced freethinkers and left-leaning liberals to enemies of the State and communists.

This captivating and atmospheric account drawing on hitherto unpublished documents from archives in Los Angeles, reconstructs how the artists in exile fought back against authoritarian America using their wit, boldness; and creating many film classics. Yet it also traces their disillusion and despair in the face of a dark American period.

Jan Jekal, born in 1993 in Kiel, is a freelance journalist and book author writing for ZEIT, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and other magazines. He also hosts the pop culture podcast Rolling Stone Weekly.