Shot from the Sky: American Po - Hardcover

Prince, C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1557504334 ISBN 13: 9781557504333

Publisher: Naval Institute Press, 2003

Synopsis

This book is about one of the great, dark secrets of World War II: neutral Switzerland shot down U.S. aircraft entering Swiss airspace and imprisoned the survivors in internment camps, detaining more than one thousand American flyers between 1943 and the war’s end. While conditions at the camps were adequate and humane for internees who obeyed their captors’ orders, the experience was very different for those who attempted to escape. They were held in special penitentiary camps in conditions as bad as those in some prisoner-of-war camps in Nazi Germany. Ironically, the Geneva Accords at the time did not apply to prisoners held in neutral countries, so better treatment could not be demanded. When the war ended in Europe, sixty-one Americans lay buried in a small village cemetery near Bern.

Details of this little-known episode are brought to light for the first time by Cathryn Prince, who tells what happened and examines the argument that the Swiss used to justify their policy. She shows that while the Swiss claimed it satisfied international law, they applied the law in a grossly unfair manner. No German airmen were interned, and Nazi aircraft were allowed to land unharmed at Swiss airfields to refuel. The author draws on first-person accounts and unpublished sources, including interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving American prisoners, and documents held by the Swiss government and the U.S. Air Force. Although these events have been briefly alluded to in other books, this work is the first to present the story in full. 272 pages. 23 photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Hardcover. 6 X 9 inches.

About this title

Review

This book eloquently addresses a little known aspect of WW II. Choice"

"This book eloquently addresses a little known aspect of WW II."--Choice

-Ms. Prince's study ... is proof that atrocities will happen whenever one individual is given unchecked power over another.- --Wall Street Journal

-This book eloquently addresses a little known aspect of WW II.---Choice

This book eloquently addresses a little known aspect of WW II.Choice

"Ms. Prince's study ... is proof that atrocities will happen whenever one individual is given unchecked power over another." --Wall Street Journal

About the Author

Cathryn J. Prince is the author of several non-fiction books including Death in the Baltic: The WWII Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, for which she won the 2013 Military Writers Society of America’s Founders Award and A Professor, A President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science for which she won the Connecticut Press Club’s 2011 Book Award for non-fiction. She has a B.A. from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, an M.S. from The Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, and an M.A., American Studies from Fairfield University. She works as a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, Times of Israel and several Connecticut magazines.

Edition details

• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1557504334
• ISBN 13: 9781557504333
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248