Charles Glass - Americans in Paris - Life and Death under Nazi Occupation 1940–44

LIFE AND DEATH UNDER NAZI OCCUPATION 1940–1944

CHARLES GLASS

Harper Press An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF, UK www.harpercollins.co.uk

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First published in Great Britain by Harper Press in 2009

1

Copyright © Charles Glass 2009

Maps and Endpapers © www.joygosney.co.uk

Charles Glass asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

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Ebook Edition © MARCH 2009 ISBN: 9780007321032

Version: 2016-03-14

To the memory and glorious spirit of Charles Glass, Jr.,

my father and unwavering partisan,

born 11 October, 1920, died 2 February, 2008.

COVER

TITLE PAGE Americans in Paris LIFE AND DEATH UNDER NAZI OCCUPATION 1940–1944 CHARLES GLASS

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: 14 June 1940

1 The American Mayor of Paris

2 The Bookseller

3 The Countess from Ohio

4 All Blood Runs Red

5 Le Millionnaire américain

6 The Yankee Doctor

PART TWO: 1940

7 Bookshop Row

8 Americans at Vichy

9 Back to Paris

10 In Love with Love

11 A French Prisoner with the Americans

12 American Grandees

13 Polly’s Paris

14 Rugged Individualists

15 Germany’s Confidential American Agent

PART THREE: 1941

16 The Coldest Winter

17 Time to Go?

18 New Perils in Paris

19 Utopia in Les Landes

20 To Resist, to Collaborate or to Endure

21 Enemy Aliens

PART FOUR: 1942

22 First Round-up

23 The Vichy Web

24 The Second Round-up

25 ‘Inturned’

26 Uniting Africa

27 Americans Go to War

28 Murphy Forgets a Friend

29 Alone at Vittel

30 The Bedaux Dossier

PART FIVE: 1943

31 Murphy versus Bedaux

32 Sylvia’s War

33 German Agents?

34 A Hospital at War

35 The Adolescent Spy

36 Clara under Suspicion

37 Calumnies

PART SIX: 1944

38 The Trial of Citizen Bedaux

39 The Underground Railway

40 Conspiracies

41 Springtime in Paris

42 The Maquis to Arms!

43 Résistants Unmasked

44 Via Dolorosa

45 Schwarze Kappelle

46 Slaves of the Reich

47 One Family Now

48 The Paris Front

49 Tout Mourir

PART SEVEN: 24–26 August 1944

50 Liberating the Rooftops

51 Libération, not Liberation

EPILOGUE

ENDNOTES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

IN THE PLAZA WHERE THE Boulevard Saint-Michel approaches the River Seine, water cascades down stone blocks of a vast monumental tribute to those who endured the four-year German occupation of Paris. The Archangel Michael stands guard above an old memorial that was rededicated after the Second World War, above all, to the civilians killed nearby when the people of Paris finally rose against their oppressors in the summer of 1944. Reading the inscriptions and looking at the stone lions beside the shallow pool, I used to imagine life during the fifty months from 14 June 1940, when the Germans marched proudly into Paris, and 25 August 1944, when they retreated in shame. I wondered how I would have behaved while the Wehrmacht ruled the cultural capital of Europe. Many books and films on the period depicted French behaviour that varied from self-sacrifice and heroism to treason and complicity in genocide. But what would I, as an American, have done? Was it possible to survive until liberation day, 26 August 1944, without compromising or collaborating? Would I have risked my life, or the lives of my family, by fighting for the Resistance? Or would I have waited patiently with the majority of Parisians for the German retreat?

Nearly 30,000 Americans lived in or near Paris before the Second World War. Those who refused to leave were, paraphrasing Dickens, the best and the worst of America. Like the French, some collaborated, others resisted. The Germans forced some into slave labour. At least one was taken back to the United States to face a trial for treason. Americans in Paris under the occupation were among the most eccentric, original and disparate collection of their countrymen anywhere – tested as few others have been before or since. This is their story.

When Britain and France declared war on Germany for invading Poland in September 1939, American Ambassador William Bullitt advised United States citizens without vital business to leave France immediately. At least 5,000 ignored him and stayed. While many had professional and family ties to Paris, the majority had a peculiarly American love for the city that had its origins in the debt the young United States owed to the Frenchmen who volunteered with the Marquis de Lafayette to fight for American independence after 1776. The American love affair with Paris, where the United States opened its first diplomatic mission, was shared by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (whose wife, Abigail, famously said, ‘No one leaves Paris without a feeling of tristesse ’), Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Monroe and generations of writers, artists, musicians, diplomats, journalists, socialites and financiers. It was with a certain pride that Walt Whitman wrote, ‘I am a real Parisian.’ A year or two in Paris was a vital component in the education of any socially acceptable young American.