@DecaturNature Wow...I could have sworn that was "Letters To A Nazi"...but it's been a few years and we've had a few cocktails by the fire tonight. And he certainly knew about French imperialism...he was Algerian, and indeed I believe RRD has an essay about how his experiences of being Algerian which really shaped my thinking about the generations that inherit a colonial project and what they owe the colonized.
But yeah, your point is valid, and IIRC the book picks up hard after that.