'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.'

The result of research work conducted at the Centre for History at Sciences Po, this work by Claire Andrieu was presented in Columbia on March 27 and in Princeton on March 28 during a Book Talk .

Claire Andrieu's book When Men Fell From The Sky is the translated version of her work published in french Tombés du ciel, published in 2021 (Editions Tallandier | Ministère des armées).

Claire Andrieu, When Men Fell from the Sky. Civilians and Downed Airmen in Second World War Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2023