"Parisians retain a magical belief that the City of Light is impervious to destruction." And fortunately, not a shell fell on it before the Germans arrived in 1940. The wounds Paris would suffer would be subtle, but traumatic. Before Paris was occupied, the city was shocked by the defeat of the Army, the civilian exodus from north to south and the end of the Third Republic. The city was declared 'Open' on June 12 and the Germans marched in two days later. The early occupation had a light touch, as there was no destruction, shortages or panic. The Germans came fully prepared and ready to occupy the city. "They know where everything is" was a common refrain among the locals. Behind the occupation was a respect for a great city and a desire to show the world that they could be benign victors. This correlated well with the French embarrassment about their own collapse. The Fuhrer made a brief stop in the city, a place he long studied and admired for its beauty and architecture, and simultaneously despised for harboring communists, Jews, homosexuals and mixed-race degenerates. The city became a tourist destination for the soldiers of the Reich. As time went on though, German visitors and the 20,000 occupiers soon described a 'Stadt ohne blick' ( the city without a glance) to describe the Parisians' ability to stare right through them.
France has been unable after 75 years to sort out the true role of the Resistance during the war. The myth of its effectiveness helped absorb the pain of defeat and arguably provided France with a seat at the victors' table. The existence of the myth deferred for generations the acknowledgement of France's complicity in the Holocaust. Does the Resistance require actively resisting or merely maintaining a state of non-acceptance? Over the four years, throughout France, approximately 100,000 died fighting the Germans, although that did not have a material effect on the occupation. Yet, Ike acknowledged that in the weeks before and after Overlord, the Resistance was very helpful and hastened the success of the invaders. In Paris, resistance initially took the form of underground publications and occasional acts of violence against German officers. It was followed by a youth-driven, four-year graffiti campaign featuring V for victory with de Gaulle's Cross of Lorraine in it. After Barbarossa, French communists took to aggressive resistance and throughout the era, women and Jews were proportionately over represented as active resisters.
The Jews of Paris knew they were headed for trouble when the Germans arrived. Within weeks, the government voided all naturalizations since 1927, thus depriving thousands of their citizenship. Austrian and German Jews were immediately arrested. Individuals and businesses were required to register, and the laws prohibiting Jews from most of civil society soon followed. Galleries, luxury apartments and houses soon were confiscated. Beginning in May, 1942, yellow stars were required. The great shame of the war came on July 16,1942 when Paris' police led the roundup of 13,000 Jews, taking them to the infamous Velodrome, where they waited in deplorable conditions until deported to Drancy and then on to Auschwitz and other camps. Approximately 4500 French policemen participated in the aktion. There were 150,000 Jews in Paris, half of them were French, and the rest were refugees from around Europe. Forty thousand survived. It would be fifty years before president Jacques Chirac acknowledged the state's and society's complicity.
In 1942, Germany demanded workers for the war effort and in the next two years, 600,000 men and women went east to work. The following year saw the Resistance come under a united de Gaulle command and a serious increase in activity took place. It became apparent the Germans were losing, and the French were receiving less and less food.
Once the Allies landed in Normandy, Paris became a military conundrum for both sides. The Allies did not think it was worth taking and the Germans were reluctant to commit the manpower to hold it and the resources to feed it. De Gaulle wanted it freed by French soldiers and FDR and Churchill wanted it occupied by the Allies with de Gaulle nowhere in sight. The Germans left August 25th and the CO never really considered reducing the city to rubble, as Hitler had ordered. A French division had spun off from the main Allied advance and arrived in Paris at midnight on the 24th to the peals of the bells of Notre Dame. The next two weeks saw a convulsion of violence and retribution against Germans, collaborators and scapegoats. Summary executions became commonplace. "The events that immediately followed the departure of the Germans would mark the city and its residents indelibly as had the black years of the occupation itself." France suffered through the destruction of a significant portion of the country and a massive demographic loss in WWI. In 1940, the armies were routed and the most famous city in the world was occupied. The thirty years that framed these debacles have been almost impossible for the nation to digest or interpret. Needless to say, these years and the Occupation itself are still matters of considerable thought and anguish for a proud nation, and likely one they will struggle with for a long time.
I've enjoyed this excellent, well-written book. I prefer narratives that set out facts and seldom stray from that discourse. This is more of a free-wheeling conversation about freedom, the impact of occupation on both sides, the psychology of the the four years of occupation. My recently acquired familiarity with the city has significantly enhanced the fun of reading this book.
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