When Men Fell from the Sky
Civilians and Downed Airmen in Second World War Europe

A fascinating comparative history of the treatment of fallen airmen in Second World War Europe.

Claire Andrieu (Author)

9781009266680, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 April 2023

348 pages, 17 b/w illus. 7 maps
23.8 x 16.1 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

'Claire Andrieu reverses the normal scenario of bombing wars and focusses on those moments after airmen crashed to earth and found themselves isolated and facing angry civilians. In this powerful, probing and engaged analysis, she shows how fundamental the contrasting ideologies of wartime France, Britain and Germany were to what happened next. Vivid and compelling, this is history-writing that puts the politics back into the face-to-face encounters between civilians and airmen, making us ask again who were victims and who were perpetrators.' Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939–45

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'.

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.

Subject Areas: Air forces & warfare [JWG], Second World War [HBWQ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1], European history [HBJD]