Merleau-Ponty responded to invasion fears with ironic lightness.

Evidence

Merleau-Ponty likewise feared the worst for France should there be war, yet he too did not want to run away from Communists. Sartre noted that he now seemed exceptionally light-hearted — ‘with that boyish air which I always knew him to assume when matters threatened to turn serious’. If the invasion came, joked Merleau-Ponty, he would go and become an elevator boy in New York. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 800