Suchergebnisse

The Second World War between the Axis and Allied powers saw over 20 million soldiers taken as prisoners of war. Prisoners of War uses a series of case studies to illuminate the personal and collective histories of those who experienced captivity in Eastern and Western Europe during the war and their repatriation and reintegration afterwards.

Abstract
Arnold Douwes led a rescue network in the village of Nieuwlande, in the Dutch province of Drenthe. For fifteen months he bore sole responsibility for Jews and others in hiding, whose numbers grew thanks to the rescuers' philosophy of never refusing genuine fugitives. What makes Douwes unique is that he recorded extensive coded notes about his day-to-day thoughts and activities, burying these in jam-jars in various safe places. Crucially for our understanding of rescue, his chronicle provides in-depth insight into not only the group's heroic activities, but also the mundane work required to maintain those in hiding.

Piet de Rooy, A Tiny Spot on the Earth: The Political Culture of the Netherlands in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015, 405 pp., ISBN 978 90 8964 704 7).

During the Second World War over 1 million Italian servicemen were taken prisoner by the major belligerent powers, and their captivity was ultimately spread over four continents. This study analyses the processes and decisions that led to this diaspora, highlighting the economic imperatives that governed captor policies and which often overrode political, diplomatic, and security concerns.