Cathryn J. Prince, "Shot from the Sky: American POWs in Switzerland"
English | ISBN: 1612518338 | 2016 | 288 pages | EPUB | 6 MB
English | ISBN: 1612518338 | 2016 | 288 pages | EPUB | 6 MB
Now available in paperback, Shot from the Sky uncovers one of the great, dark secrets of World War II: neutral Switzerland shot and forced down U.S. aircraft entering Swiss airspace and imprisoned the survivors in internment camps, detaining more than a 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 far 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.
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