When Men Fell from the Sky

Civilians and Downed Airmen in Second World War Europe
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-009-26668-0
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 348 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 232 mm, Gewicht: 672 g

Reihe: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare

Between 1940 and 1945, more than 100,000 airmen were shot down over Europe, a few thousand of whom survived and avoided being arrested. When Men Fell from the Sky is a comparative history of the treatment of these airmen by civilians in France, Germany and Britain. By studying the situation on the ground, Claire Andrieu shows how these encounters reshaped societies at a local level. She reveals how the fall of France in 1940 may have concealed an insurrection nipped in the bud, that the 'People's War' in Britain was not merely a myth, and that in Germany, the 'racial community of the people' had in fact become a social reality with Allied airmen increasingly subjected to lynching from 1943 onwards. By considering why the treatment of these airmen contrasted so strongly in these countries, Andrieu sheds new light on how civilians reacted when confronted with the war 'at home'.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Andrieu, Claire

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Militärwesen Verwaltung, Streitkräfte (Militärwesen)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: the international in the village; Part I. Blitz-Invasion in France, or Resistance Crushed: 1. Finding the volunteers of the Year 40; 2. The repression of the Republic's 'francs-tireurs'; Part II. 'Imminent invasion!': a very civil war in the United Kingdom: 3. Britain into battle: a people at war; 4. 'British humor' as an agent of civility; Part III. The Origins of the Resistance: Hiding Allies in France: 5. The resistance as mass local dynamic; 6. The Sequences of aid: between family and repression; 7. A civil society against two states; Part IV. Lynching in Germany, 1943–1945: defending the Nazi state: 8. The lynching of Allied airmen, an ordinary practice; 9. A revolutionary dynamic; 10. Lynch mobs: pre-constructed anger and Nazism in action; 11. Race at heart; Conclusion: an archeology of the moment.

Über Autor(innen)

Andrieu, Claire
Claire Andrieu is Professor emerita in contemporary history at Sciences Po Paris. Her previous publications include Resisting Genocide. The Multiple Forms of Rescue (co-ed.) (2011), and Spoliation et restitution des biens juifs en Europe (co-ed.) (2007). From 2011 to 2018, she was editor-in-chief of Violence de masse et Résistance / Massviolence & Resistance.