France Under Fire: German Invasion, Civilian Flight and Family Survival During World War II

'We request an immediate favour of you, to build a shelter for us women and small children, because we have absolutely no place to take refuge and we are terrified ' This French mother's petition sent to her mayor on the eve of Germany's 1940 invasion of France reveals civilians' security concerns unleashed by Second World War Blitzkrieg fighting tactics. Unprepared for air warfare's assault on civilian psyches, French planners were among the first in history to respond to civilian security challenges posed by aerial bombardment. France Under Fire offers a social, political and military examination of the origins of the French refugee crisis of 1940, a mass displacement of eight million civilians fleeing German combatants. Scattered throughout a divided France, refugees turned to German Occupation officials and Vichy administrators for relief and repatriation. Their solutions raised questions about occupying powers' obligations to civilians and elicited new definitions of refugees' rights.

Author: Nicole Dombrowski Risser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 05/14/2015
Pages: 330
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9781107521254

About the Author
Dombrowski Risser, Nicole: - Nicole Dombrowski Risser is Associate Professor of History at Towson University in Maryland. She is editor of Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted With or Without Consent (1998).

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