Ebook: Darkness Over Europe: First-Person Accounts of Life in Europe During the War Years 1939-1945

This collection of World War II firsthand accounts, edited by Tony March for the Army Times, probes behind the front lines to capture the life and times of the average man existing under the conditions of occupied Europe. Some of the stories bear witness to the large-scale events already engraved in history--the Parisian prefect of police describing the arrival of German troops in the French capital, a Swiss resident of Dresden recounting the Allied firebombing, a woman of Lidice reliving the night of horror. Other narratives tell of lesser known personal ordeals, moving individual variations on the same themes of privation, abuse, and tragedy--a Danish foreign service officer spiriting Jews out of the country, a Belgian aeronautical engineer forced to ""volunteer"" for work at a German aircraft plant by confiscation of his family's ration cards, a chief forester in eastern Germany hiding in underground ""fox-holes"" to evade the reconquering Russians. Editor March limits himself to a few short paragraphs of preface about the persistence of Evil, very brief introductions and postscripts to the twenty-two accounts, and a hasty epilogue, but the stories speak well enough for themselves. (Kirkus Review)