Hitler’s Refugees and the French Response, 1933–1938

Abstract

Scholarly interest in issues related to European migration and how European states deal with or enact policies related to migrants has been on the rise in the past decade. Building upon the work of Carole Fink, Vicki Carron and Greg Burgess, among others, Julius Fein’s Hitler’s Refugees and the French Response, 1933–1938 seeks to determine how, exactly, France’s status of a ‘land of asylum’ played out in terms of foreign policy. What happens when that national ideal is confronted by the realities of international diplomacy, the rise of fascism (in Fein’s case Nazi Germany), and a subsequent refugee crisis? This is the historical, political, and human rights question Fein tries to answer. Over eleven chapters, not including the introduction and conclusion, Fein highlights the complex relationship that the French state, and here Fein is specifically analysing the Quai d’Orsay (the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs known simply as the Quai),...