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'.

Every genocide in history has been notable for the minority of brave individuals and groups who put their own lives at risk to rescue its would be victims. Based on three case studies - the genocides of the Armenians, the Jews and the Rwandese Tutsi - this book is the first international comparative and multidisciplinary attempt to make rescue an object of research, while breaking free of the notion of 'The Righteous Among the Nations'. The result is an exceptionally rich and disturbing volume. While it is impossible to distill or describe what makes an individual into a rescuer, acts of rescue reveal a historical fact: the existence of an informal, underground network of rescuers - however fragile - as soon as genocides get underway, and in every geographical and social context.