Les prisonniers de guerre allemands

Fabien Théofilakis’ book on German prisoners of war in France between 1944 and 1949 begins with the short story of an Alsatian shopkeeper, who had taken on a German prisoner of war in 1946 to help with his daily work. Everything had gone well and the German prisoner even ate at the family table, until a man from the French interior grassed on him. In order to appease public opinion, he had henceforward to have his breakfast in a public location. After his return to Germany, contact was maintained, but the former prisoner of war never accepted invitations to family functions in France. This story, as well as the fact that the author collected interviews with a great number of former German prisoners of war in France during the early 2000s, raises high expectations—not least because the topic of German prisoners of war in France at the end of the Second World War has for a long time been an under-researched field. Théofilakis, currently active at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, sets out to fill this gap in historiography with his book of more than 700 pages. It is divided into three parts, which deal with German prisoners of war in France, with prisoners of war in diplomatic relations and with the relationship between the issue of prisoners of war and French occupation policy in Germany

Archaeology · Economic history · German · Historiography · Political science · Prisoners of war · Spanish Civil War · World War II · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law