Matti Friedman, "Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe" (Spiegel & Grau, 2026)

About this episode

Matti Friedman discusses the paradoxical mission of parachutists during World War II who aimed to return to Nazi-occupied Europe.

Was it one of the war’s most memorable feats of valor or an act of desperation, even madness? In Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe (Spiegel & Grau, 2026), Matti Friedman unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: In 1944, a team of young women and men who had escaped the Holocaust made the inconceivable choice to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe under the cover of a British military operation. Yet by the end of the mission, not a single Nazi was harmed and not a single Jew was saved, and many of the parachutists died in the process. Even so, some of their names would become legendary, especially that of twenty-three-year-old Hannah Senesh, the author of the beloved Hebrew song “Eli, Eli.” Their story would become one of the young state of Israel’s founding myths—but what exactly was the mission, and what had the parachutists actually accomplished? What made them heroes? Using thousands of original documents from once-secret files, manuscripts, memoirs, and unpublished letters, Matti Friedman follows four of the parachutists from the spring of 1944 to the operation’s dramatic end that winter. In Out of the Sky, he tells the gripping and…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Matti Friedman

Topics covered

• World War II
• Holocaust
• heroism
• parachutists
• Israel
• storytelling

Keywords

• Matti Friedman
• Hannah Senesh
• Nazi Europe
• parachute mission
• Holocaust
• valor
• Israel

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Spiegel & Grau

Books & works: Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe

More episodes of New Books in Military History

• Richard Bennet and Alexander Noyes, "War at Arm's Length: How America Can Build Effective Partners Through Military Assistance" (Yale UP, 2026) · June 12, 2026 · 40 min
• Justin F Jackson, "The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines" (UNC Press, 2025) · June 10, 2026 · 1h 17m
• Understanding Themistocles: A Discussion with Author Michael Scott · June 9, 2026 · 36 min
• Anand Gopal, "Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution" (Viking, 2026) · June 4, 2026 · 43 min
• Homa Katouzian, "Iran and the Revolution: A History" (Yale UP, 2026) · June 4, 2026 · 1h 0m
• Lauren Duval, "The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025) · June 3, 2026 · 59 min