Volume 54, Number 18 · November 22, 2007
Inside the Panic
By Robert O. Paxton
Fleeing Hitler: France 1940
by Hanna Diamond
Oxford University Press, 255 pp., $29.95
Strange exodus, with no Promised Land and no Moses. But in May 1940 in France, Belgium, and Holland, the word 'exodus' came into use at once. It must have seemed appropriate to the biblical proportions of this human tide, which Hanna Diamond calls the largest population movement in history up to that point. On May 10, the very day Hitler launched his attack on France and the Low Countries, people began leaving their homes in potential combat zones. At its peak, between late May and mid-June 1940, some eight million French, Dutch, Belgian, and other refugees—no firm count could ever be made—were on the road. Counting witnesses, helpers, and relatives, a majority of the French population was affected by the exodus.
Review, 2369 words
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