Diamond, Hanna 1962- (Hanna Elizabeth Diamond)

PERSONAL:

Born April 14, 1962.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Bath, England. Office—Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, England. E-mail—H.E.Diamond@bath.ac.uk.

CAREER:

Has taught in Paris, France; University of Bath, Bath, England, currently senior lecturer in French history.

WRITINGS:

Women's Experiences during and after World War Two in the Toulouse Area, 1939-1948: Choices and Constraints (dissertation), University of Sussex (Sussex, England), 1992, revised and published as Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948: Choices and Constraints, Longman (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with Anna Bull and Rosalind Marsh) Feminisms and Women's Movements in Contemporary Europe, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Simon Kitson) Vichy, Resistance, Liberation: New Perspectives on Wartime France, Berg (New York, NY), 2005.

Fleeing Hitler: France 1940, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hanna Diamond is a historian and professor. Her primary focus is on the lives of the French during the twentieth century, oral histories, the roles of women in European politics—particularly in France and French history—and the role of France in World War II. Diamond has written and edited a number of books addressing feminism in Europe and the reactions of the French to the German invasion, as well as looking at the lives of French women during World War II's aftermath. Her works include Women's Experiences during and after World War Two in the Toulouse Area, 1939-1948: Choices and Constraints, and Vichy, Resistance, Liberation: New Perspectives on Wartime France, which she edited with Simon Kitson.

In Fleeing Hitler: France 1940, Diamond looks at the suffering of the French people following the German occupation of World War II. While the French have a mixed reputation due to their actions during the war, having both collaborated with the Nazis through the Vichy government and fought them through the French Resistance, little has been written about the actual conditions in France under occupation and the numbers of French citizens who fled Paris in 1940 in the wake of the Germans' arrival. Approximately four million people left Paris and the surrounding areas, aware that with their own government's panicked departure they had very little standing between themselves and the Germans. A large portion of the refugees were women and children; they fled south, along with refugees from Belgium and Luxembourg. Belongings and vehicles were abandoned along the side of the roads as the refugees attempted to move more quickly and find shelter in the event of a sudden German bombing.

Max Hastings, reviewing Fleeing Hitler for the Times, felt that "the author has failed to make up her mind whether she is telling stories of the 1940 fugitives, or writing a history of France's wartime political and military experience." He concluded: "It contains many fragments of interesting information, but it is crippled by lack of purpose and rigour." Financial Times critic Carmen Callil, however, praised the book, writing that, "based on original research and interviews, with exhaustive attention to sources, Diamond has an excellent eye for the striking detail." Library Journal contributor Marie Marmo Mullaney dubbed Diamond's effort an "excellent work of social history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Contemporary European History, November, 2000, "Vichy Specificities: Repositioning the French Past," p. 475.

European History Quarterly, October, 2000, Sharif Gemie, review of Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948: Choices and Constraints, p. 602.

French Studies, January, 2001, Jackie Clarke, review of Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948, p. 121.

Journal of Contemporary History, October, 2002, "Recent Work on France and the Second World War," p. 637.

Journal of Modern History, June, 2005, Karen Offen, review of Women and the Second World War in France, 1939-1948, p. 445.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2007, review of Fleeing Hitler: France 1940.

Library Journal, May 15, 2007, Marie Marmo Mullaney, review of Fleeing Hitler, p. 100.

Publishers Weekly, April 9, 2007, review of Fleeing Hitler, p. 43.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2005, review of Vichy, Resistance, Liberation: New Perspectives on Wartime France.

Signs, summer, 2004, "When the War Was Over: Women, War and Peace in Europe, 1940-1956."

Times Higher Education Supplement, March 31, 2006, Richard Parish, "A La Recherche Des Memoires Perdues," p. 26; August 3, 2007, "The Long March to the Country and Back," p. 24.

Women's Studies, October, 2001, Kathryn S. Reuter, review of Feminisms and Women's Movements in Contemporary Europe, p. 714.

ONLINE

Financial Times Online,http://www.ft.com/ (May 16, 2007), Carmen Callil, "Nonfiction: Forgotten Exodus."

Times Online,http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ (June 17, 2007), Max Hastings, review of Fleeing Hitler.

University of Bath Web site,http://people.bath.ac.uk/ (January 8, 2008), faculty profile of Hanna Diamond, and "Book Criticises French Government during Nazi Invasion."