A social, military and political history of the French refugee crisis tracing the impact of government responses upon civilian lives.

Introduction: no more 'behind the lines'; Part I. Civilians in the Line of Fire: 1. Securing the homeland; 2. Mothers move against military and bureaucratic entrenchment; 3. Pulling the plug on the city of lights; 4. Civilian survival on the open road; Part II. Refugees, Rights, and Return in a Divided Land: 5. Provincial towns feed and shelter refugees; 6. Paving the road for refugees' return; 7. German exclusions inaugurate a policy of ethnic cleansing; 8. Disappointment and despair in the occupied zone; Conclusion.

Nicole Dombrowski Risser is Associate Professor of History at Towson University in Maryland. She is editor of Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted With or Without Consent (1998).