Originally published as a Penguin Special in November 1940, this book was the first to focus public attention on what was happening to thousands of individual German, Austrian, Czech and Italian anti-nazi refugees and émigrés when, in the invasion scare of spring 1940, they faced internment, deportation and, inadvertently, death. It was also the first to investigate what was going on in the minds of those responsible for resorting to and implementing such a policy.

Combining reportage, interview and committed research, the author throws an extraordinarily vivid light on important aspects of home policy during one of the darkest periods of the war, amplified by the freshly told experiences of the refugees themselves. The book covers the months of the internments on the Isler of Man and in other camps, and the deportation to Canada and Australia, including the sinking of the Arandora Star, with the loss of some five hundred lives, of which the author was one of the first to obtain and use first-hand reports.

For this new edition the author has added an index, and an introduction which tells how the book came to be commissioned and written so quickly in the unusual circumstances of blackout and air-raid. He also reveals some of the important sources among the refugees themselves who could not be identified at the time.

Published by Libris in 1988