Aliens
eBook - ePub

Aliens

The Chequered History of Britain's Wartime Refugees

  1. 352 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Aliens

The Chequered History of Britain's Wartime Refugees

About this book

The welcome given to refugees from fascist Europe is part of our fond nostalgia for Britain's role in the Second World War, nestling in our imagination next to images of evacuees clutching teddy bears, and milkmen picking their way through bomb rubble during the Blitz. But there is a darker side to this story. Then, as now, there was great suspicion, resentment and fear towards new arrivals, much of it kindled by the tabloid press. Then, as now, politicians dealt with a reluctance to accommodate refugees by hiding behind bureaucratic hurdles and obfuscation.

Many of the 10,000 Kindertransport children who arrived here in the late 1930s have warm memories of the kindness they were shown, but half a million refugees were refused entry and most of them died as a result. And those who were accepted found their troubles far from over. While Britain fearfully awaited invasion in 1940, 30,000 Jews were interned as 'enemy aliens' and some were sent off to the colonies on dangerous and sometimes fatal voyages. Nor were Jews the only refugees clamouring for the thin gruel of public sympathy. Those fleeing fascism and civil war elsewhere in Europe found that whether they were met with kindness or hostility depended on the locals' political affiliations and newspapers of choice.

Interweaving personal testimonies with historical sources, Paul Dowswell casts a fresh eye on the wartime era, painting a vivid picture of what life was really like for Britain's refugees.

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Yes, you can access Aliens by Paul Dowswell in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Jewish History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Contents
  4. Introduction: A Proud Tradition?
  5. Chapter 1: A Catalogue of Calamities: Britain in the 1930s
  6. Chapter 2: ‘Scurrying’ from Germany: The First Arrivals
  7. Chapter 3: Feeding Red Children: The Spanish Civil War
  8. Chapter 4: A Lost Opportunity: The Évian Conference
  9. Chapter 5: Escape: The Lucky 80,000
  10. Chapter 6: The Enemy Within: The War Begins
  11. Chapter 7: Satellites of the Monster: Internment
  12. Chapter 8: Punches, Kicks and Painful Prods: Internment Overseas
  13. Chapter 9: Valuable Work: Refugees and the War Effort
  14. Chapter 10: Other Newcomers to These Shores: GIs and POWs
  15. Chapter 11: ‘It Only Makes Me Hate Them More’: Antisemitism and the Camps
  16. Chapter 12: The Ants’ Nest: After the War
  17. Chapter 13: From Soldiers to Refugees: Poland after the War
  18. Chapter 14: Echoes of King Canute: Israel
  19. Conclusion: An ‘Ecosystem of Hostility’: The Twenty-First Century
  20. Bibliography
  21. Acknowledgements
  22. Index
  23. Plates
  24. Copyright