Doctors at War

"'Doctors at War: Their Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France,' tells the stories of a handful of French physicians who did all they could to impede the German war effort. Determined to defeat the Nazi program, one group of Paris doctors founded a medical Resistance network to help treat injured guerrillas and keep young men from being sent to forced labor in Germany. Another group of doctors organized an intelligence and sabotage network that grew to become one of the largest in the Resistance-even after the Gestapo arrested and imprisoned its leaders. Once in the camps, the doctors continued to work against the Nazis by helping keep their fellow prisoners alive. Other doctors joined the rural guerrilla camps to treat the young men fighting to prevent German reinforcements from reaching Normandy after the D-Day landing. Their stories, told by Ellen Hampton for the first time, add an important dimension to the history of occupied France. Throughout the story, there are American threads, from airmen who parachuted in and needed medical treatment and a guide to escape to American doctors working in Paris or internment camps to the US Army-led liberation of France. Memoirs and archival documents provide the backbone of 'Doctors at War,' while contemporary accounts and records of those working with the Nazis and the Vichy government describe the opposition they faced. Well-connected pediatrician Robert Debrâe, for example, could not practice medicine because of his Jewish heritage. Rather than leave the country, as many did, he pulled strings to get an exemption to continue working. Debrâe refused to wear the yellow star of racial identification, but the authorities decided to let it go because of his stature. His rebellion worked until the Gestapo came looking for him, and he had to flee. However, after a year in hiding, he returned to run the medical services during the chaotic liberation of Paris. Written for both historians and general readers of World War II history, 'Doctors at War' is a dramatic, character-driven account of the physicians' courage and resilience in the face of evil. It is a window into life under a fascist regime and the story of how doctors negotiated the terrifying moral labyrinth that was the Nazi Occupation of France"