Under a Darkening Sky: The American Experience in Nazi Europe: 1939–1941

Historian Lyman (Among the Headhunters: An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival in the Burmese Jungle) uses the firsthand accounts of students, housewives, academics, journalists, businesspeople, and others to provide a clear and unsettling account of the North Americans who warned of Nazi Germany before Hitler declared war on the U.S. Appeasement by the leadership of Western Europe and U.S. isolationism predominated in the 1930s, but information about Nazi violence and expansionist ambitions was conveyed by people such as New York Herald Tribune reporter Leland Snowe, who published a prescient, widely ignored 1933 book entitled Nazi Germany Means War. Other Americans who saw the Nazi threat early on included singer Josephine Baker, who aided the French Secret Service, as well as many now-obscure figures, such as Arthur Donahue, who, as a member of the RAF, became “the first American to engage enemy aircraft during the Second World War.” The compilation validates Lyman’s contention that the experiences of individuals “looking at history as it is made... offer in their accumulation an interpretation of events as valuable as... specialist historical accounts” and effectively rebuts those who still assert that no one could have foreseen WWII. This is a well-constructed, valuable alternative to military-focused histories of the time. Agent: Charlie Viney, Viney Shaw Agency. (Nov.)