When the Nazis Ruled Paris
David Drake, Paris At War: 1939 – 1944
Harvard University Press, 592pp, £25.00, ISBN 9780674504813
reviewed by Ian Birchall
That Paris under German occupation was a brutal and frightening place (and far, far worse if you were a Jew) will come as no surprise. But even to those who think they know something of the period David Drake’s fascinating book will provide a mass of new and illuminating information. Based on ten years’ research and a range of sources including the memories of survivors and police archives, this is a detailed and vivid narrative of 50 horrific months.
Drake carefully intertwines an account of the political events with an account of what occupation meant for the everyday lives of Parisian inhabitants. With increasing pressure on France to subsidise the German war effort, there was an endless sequence of shortages – food, power, heating, petrol, cigarettes. Transport was inadequate so many resorted to bicycles – if they could get hold of one. Class division persisted: while the majority queued for food, the rich continued to hold lavish parties and drink champagne. Then there was the bombing by Britain and the USA, aimed at factories producing goods for the German war effort, but in fact often falling on the homes of those who worked there.
The German administration which governed Paris was certainly totalitarian, but it was far from monolithic. As Drake shows with some remarkable detail, the Germans were corrupt and deeply divided, with factions and individuals jostling for power. There was open hostility between the army and the secret police; in 1941 Otto von Stülpnagel, head of the German armed forces in France, was outraged to discover that the secret police had been involved in the bombing of Paris synagogues without any consultation with himself. But those involved were close to Himmler and his protests were in vain. Though some of the Germans, notably the ambassador, Otto Abetz, professed respect for French culture, often their motivation was quite simply the looting of French property, and especially the property of deported Jews. Sometimes there was a clash between ideology and naked interest; what should be done with valuable works of modern art, which Nazi doctrine defined as ‘degenerate’? Should they be destroyed or appropriated? Even anti-Semitism, which was at the very heart of Nazi policy, was not universally applied; the Germans were quite happy to do deals with some rich Jewish black marketeers.
The situation was further complicated by tensions between the French government and the German occupiers. Pétain, the head of state of the Vichy regime, was increasingly senile and the head of government, Laval, was a total opportunist who hoped to do a deal with the Allies when he realised Germany was losing the war. At least on small points, the French sometimes refused to do as the Germans wished. At the same time Drake shows the full responsibility of the French for the crimes of the occupation; Vichy’s first anti-Semitic laws, which stripped some Jews of French citizenship and barred them from various professions, were introduced without any pressure from the Germans. It was the French police who rounded up Jews and who staffed the camps they were detained in. The police also had a keen sense of self-preservation. As it became clear that Germany was losing the war, resistance groups began to grow up inside the police, and after the Normandy landings in the summer of 1944 the Paris police actually went on strike.
Anti-Semitism was deeply ingrained in sections of the French population, so that Nazi policies enjoyed a certain popularity. Drake quotes from a number of letters sent by Parisians to the authorities, denouncing their neighbours as Jews. Such letters show the depths to which apparently ordinary ‘respectable’ people could sink.
But Drake also shows the other side of the coin. Many Parisians showed enormous courage in defying government policies. All Jews were required to wear yellow stars when they went out in public, so some non-Jews decided to wear stars too in solidarity (often with facetious labels like ‘Auvergnat’); some were arrested and sent to camps where Jews were held. There were a number of illegal demonstrations by students and others, some of which led to the execution of those involved. And even if its tactics are open to criticism, the Communist Party mobilised its members for direct action against the occupying forces. Initially this involved mainly its youth organisation, who had received no serious training, and some very young men were executed for their role in launching attacks on German soldiers. The German response was to execute numbers of those already imprisoned, treating them as hostages.
When Paris was finally liberated in August 1944, it is not surprising that there was a huge amount of bitterness at the sufferings of the previous four years. Many Parisians felt that the official legal processes would be too slow-moving, and wanted to see immediate revenge. A number of collaborators were executed by unofficial squads, women alleged to have consorted with Germans had their heads shaved. After what had gone before such a desire for revenge was wholly understandable, and the violence of the liberators was only a tiny fraction of that of the occupiers. Nonetheless, it was generally the comparatively humble who suffered the consequences, while the more exalted collaborators had to wait longer for their well-deserved punishment. Some got it; others didn’t – some leading Nazis ended up working for the CIA.
In many ways the world of occupied Paris seems extremely remote from our own experience. Yet it is less than a lifetime away – there must still be thousands of Parisians who remember those years. And to a British reader the book poses the question: what should we have done, if Hitler’s plan to invade Britain had succeeded?
Drake notes that in the post-war years there was a myth that everyone had supported the Resistance; this was followed by a time when, under the influence of films such as Marcel Ophuls’ Le Chagrin et la Pitié, it was implied that most people had collaborated. Both, Drake argues convincingly, were false. There was a small minority of heroic resisters, and an equally small minority of active collaborators. The majority of the population just aimed to ‘survive increasing hardship and deprivation while making as few compromises as they could.’ If it had happened here in Britain, the same would undoubtedly have been true.
Drake carefully intertwines an account of the political events with an account of what occupation meant for the everyday lives of Parisian inhabitants. With increasing pressure on France to subsidise the German war effort, there was an endless sequence of shortages – food, power, heating, petrol, cigarettes. Transport was inadequate so many resorted to bicycles – if they could get hold of one. Class division persisted: while the majority queued for food, the rich continued to hold lavish parties and drink champagne. Then there was the bombing by Britain and the USA, aimed at factories producing goods for the German war effort, but in fact often falling on the homes of those who worked there.
The German administration which governed Paris was certainly totalitarian, but it was far from monolithic. As Drake shows with some remarkable detail, the Germans were corrupt and deeply divided, with factions and individuals jostling for power. There was open hostility between the army and the secret police; in 1941 Otto von Stülpnagel, head of the German armed forces in France, was outraged to discover that the secret police had been involved in the bombing of Paris synagogues without any consultation with himself. But those involved were close to Himmler and his protests were in vain. Though some of the Germans, notably the ambassador, Otto Abetz, professed respect for French culture, often their motivation was quite simply the looting of French property, and especially the property of deported Jews. Sometimes there was a clash between ideology and naked interest; what should be done with valuable works of modern art, which Nazi doctrine defined as ‘degenerate’? Should they be destroyed or appropriated? Even anti-Semitism, which was at the very heart of Nazi policy, was not universally applied; the Germans were quite happy to do deals with some rich Jewish black marketeers.
The situation was further complicated by tensions between the French government and the German occupiers. Pétain, the head of state of the Vichy regime, was increasingly senile and the head of government, Laval, was a total opportunist who hoped to do a deal with the Allies when he realised Germany was losing the war. At least on small points, the French sometimes refused to do as the Germans wished. At the same time Drake shows the full responsibility of the French for the crimes of the occupation; Vichy’s first anti-Semitic laws, which stripped some Jews of French citizenship and barred them from various professions, were introduced without any pressure from the Germans. It was the French police who rounded up Jews and who staffed the camps they were detained in. The police also had a keen sense of self-preservation. As it became clear that Germany was losing the war, resistance groups began to grow up inside the police, and after the Normandy landings in the summer of 1944 the Paris police actually went on strike.
Anti-Semitism was deeply ingrained in sections of the French population, so that Nazi policies enjoyed a certain popularity. Drake quotes from a number of letters sent by Parisians to the authorities, denouncing their neighbours as Jews. Such letters show the depths to which apparently ordinary ‘respectable’ people could sink.
But Drake also shows the other side of the coin. Many Parisians showed enormous courage in defying government policies. All Jews were required to wear yellow stars when they went out in public, so some non-Jews decided to wear stars too in solidarity (often with facetious labels like ‘Auvergnat’); some were arrested and sent to camps where Jews were held. There were a number of illegal demonstrations by students and others, some of which led to the execution of those involved. And even if its tactics are open to criticism, the Communist Party mobilised its members for direct action against the occupying forces. Initially this involved mainly its youth organisation, who had received no serious training, and some very young men were executed for their role in launching attacks on German soldiers. The German response was to execute numbers of those already imprisoned, treating them as hostages.
When Paris was finally liberated in August 1944, it is not surprising that there was a huge amount of bitterness at the sufferings of the previous four years. Many Parisians felt that the official legal processes would be too slow-moving, and wanted to see immediate revenge. A number of collaborators were executed by unofficial squads, women alleged to have consorted with Germans had their heads shaved. After what had gone before such a desire for revenge was wholly understandable, and the violence of the liberators was only a tiny fraction of that of the occupiers. Nonetheless, it was generally the comparatively humble who suffered the consequences, while the more exalted collaborators had to wait longer for their well-deserved punishment. Some got it; others didn’t – some leading Nazis ended up working for the CIA.
In many ways the world of occupied Paris seems extremely remote from our own experience. Yet it is less than a lifetime away – there must still be thousands of Parisians who remember those years. And to a British reader the book poses the question: what should we have done, if Hitler’s plan to invade Britain had succeeded?
Drake notes that in the post-war years there was a myth that everyone had supported the Resistance; this was followed by a time when, under the influence of films such as Marcel Ophuls’ Le Chagrin et la Pitié, it was implied that most people had collaborated. Both, Drake argues convincingly, were false. There was a small minority of heroic resisters, and an equally small minority of active collaborators. The majority of the population just aimed to ‘survive increasing hardship and deprivation while making as few compromises as they could.’ If it had happened here in Britain, the same would undoubtedly have been true.