Despite being decorated with a German Service Cross, Willi Wegler is inwardly sickened by both Hitler's genocidal war and the complicity of his fellow citizens in Third Reich brutalities. Wracked by guilt, he suddenly betrays his country in a profound gesture of protest and self-sacrifice: during the course of an air raid, he fashions an enormous arrow out of hay in an open field, then ignites it as a flaming signal to direct British bombers to the site of the factory where he works – an act that cannot fail to precipitate a series of dramatic events.
The Cross and the Arrow – first published in 1944, during the latter stages of the war it describes – portrays a man's struggle to retain his dignity in defiance of state-sponsored cruelty and explores the role and responsibility of the individual in the face of tragic global events. In its examination of an enemy's complex heroism, it provides a life-affirming message of humanity's ultimate capacity for good.