Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Introduction

  PART ONE - 14 June 1940

  ONE - The American Mayor of Paris

  TWO - The Bookseller

  THREE - The Countess from Ohio

  FOUR - All Blood Runs Red

  FIVE - Le Millionnaire américain

  SIX - The Yankee Doctor

  PART TWO - 1940

  SEVEN - Bookshop Row

  EIGHT - Americans at Vichy

  NINE - Back to Paris

  TEN - In Love with Love

  ELEVEN - A French Prisoner with the Americans

  TWELVE - American Grandees

  THIRTEEN - Polly’s Paris

  FOURTEEN - Rugged Individualists

  FIFTEEN - Germany’s Confidential American Agent

  PART THREE - 1941

  SIXTEEN - The Coldest Winter

  SEVENTEEN - Time to Go?

  EIGHTEEN - New Perils in Paris

  NINETEEN - Utopia in Les Landes

  TWENTY - To Resist, to Collaborate or to Endure

  TWENTY-ONE - Enemy Aliens

  PART FOUR - 1942

  TWENTY-TWO - First Round-up

  TWENTY-THREE - The Vichy Web

  TWENTY-FOUR - The Second Round-up

  TWENTY-FIVE - ‘Inturned’

  TWENTY-SIX - Uniting Africa

  TWENTY-SEVEN - Americans Go to War

  TWENTY-EIGHT - Murphy Forgets a Friend

  TWENTY-NINE - Alone at Vittel

  THIRTY - The Bedaux Dossier

  PART FIVE - 1943

  THIRTY-ONE - Murphy versus Bedaux

  THIRTY-TWO - Sylvia’s War

  THIRTY-THREE - German Agents?

  THIRTY-FOUR - A Hospital at War

  THIRTY-FIVE - The Adolescent Spy

  THIRTY-SIX - Clara under Suspicion

  THIRTY-SEVEN - Calumnies

  PART SIX - 1944

  THIRTY-EIGHT - The Trial of Citizen Bedaux

  THIRTY-NINE - The Underground Railway

  FORTY - Conspiracies

  FORTY-ONE - Springtime in Paris

  FORTY-TWO - The Maquis to Arms!

  FORTY-THREE - Résistants Unmasked

  FORTY-FOUR - Via Dolorosa

  FORTY-FIVE - Schwarze Kapelle

  FORTY-SIX - Slaves of the Reich

  FORTY-SEVEN - One Family Now

  FORTY-EIGHT - The Paris Front

  FORTY-NINE - Tout Mourir

  PART SEVEN - 24–26 August 1944

  FIFTY - Liberating the Rooftops

  FIFTY-ONE - Libération, not Liberation

  EPILOGUE

  ENDNOTES

  Acknowledgements

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  By the same author

  Tribes with Flags

  Money for Old Rope

  The Northern Front

  The Tribes Triumphant

  THE PENGUIN PRESS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © Charles Glass, 2009

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Glass, Charles, 1951-

  Americans in Paris : life and death under Nazi occupation / Charles Glass.

  p. cm.

  Originally published: London : Harper, 2009.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19556-7

  1. Americans—France—Paris—History—20th century. 2. France—History—German

  occupation, 1940–1945. 3. Paris (France)—History—1940–1944. 4. Paris (France)—

  Intellectual life—20th century. 5. World War, 1939–1945—France—Paris. I. Title.

  DC718.A44G53 2010

  944’.3610816092313—dc22 2009039650

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To the memory and glorious spirit of Charles Glass, Jr., my father and unwavering partisan, born 11 October, 1920, died 2 February, 2008.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  The author and publisher are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce their copyright material. While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future editions.

  SECTION I

  Josephine Baker. (©Roger-Viollet/TopFoto)

  William C. Bullitt. (©Roger-Viollet/TopFoto)

  Roosevelt, Marguerite LeHand and William C. Bullitt. (Image credited to World Wide Photos in For the President: Personal & Secret by Orville H. Bullitt (ed), Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1972)

  Myrsine and Helene Moschos and Sylvia Beach next to Ernest Hemingway, outside Shakespeare and Co. (Image credited to Princeton University Library in Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch, W. W. Norton, New York, 1983)

  James Joyce, Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier in Shakespeare and Co. (Gisele Freund/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

  Sylvia Beach in Shakespeare and Co. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

  Sylvia Beach decorates the bookshop’s window. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

  Adrienne Monnier in La Maison des Amis des Livres. (©Roger-Viollet/TopFoto)

  Clara Longworth de Chambrun. (Photograph by Rogi-Andre in Shadows Lengthen by Clara Longworth de Chambrum, Scribner, New York, 1949)

  Clara fought to keep the library open throughout the occupation. (Courtesy of The American Library in Paris)

  An information card for the American Library. (Courtesy of The American Library in Paris)

  Josée Laval and René Chambrun. (© Topfoto)

  Clara’s house. (In Shadows Lengthen by Clara Longworth de Chambrum, Scribner, New York, 1949)

  Pierre Laval leaving the Château de Châteldon. (©Roger-Viollet/TopFoto)
/>   Charles Bedaux and his wife, Fern, in South Africa. (In The Price of Power by Jim Christy, Doubleday and Company Inc., New York, 1984)

  Charles and Fern Bedaux. (©Bettman/CORBIS)

  J. Edgar Hoover. (MPI/Getty Images)

  Charles Bedaux’s country residence, the Château de Candé. (© Condé Nast Archive/CORBIS)

  Dr Sumner Jackson with his son, Phillip. (Courtesy of Phillip Jackson)

  SD Major-General Karl Oberg. (© Rue des Archives/Tal)

  Dr Edmund Gros. (Courtesy of The American Hospital of Paris)

  SECTION II

  Dr Sumner Jackson, Dr Thierry Martel, Dr Edmund Gros and Toquette. (Courtesy of The American Hospital of Paris)

  The entrance to the American Hospital in Neuilly. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

  Drue Leyton. (Otto Dyar/General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

  Florence Jay Gould. (© Fonds Foundation Florence Gould in Florence Gould by Gilles Cornut-Gentille and Phillipe Michel-Thiriet, Mercure de France, Paris, 1989)

  Polly Peabody. (In Occupied Territory by Polly Peabody, The Cresst Press, London, 1941)

  General Otto von Stülpnagel. (©Roger-Viollet/TopFoto)

  Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel. (akg-images/ullstein bild)

  A German military parade passes the Hôtel de Crillon. (RDA/Tallandier/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

  Paris under occupation outside the Hôtel Meurice. (©Roger-Viollet /TopFoto)

  Marshal Pétain, pictured with his cabinet. (akg-images)

  Marshal Pétain with American Ambassador to Vichy, Admiral William D. Leahy. (akg-images)

  Shakespeare’s King John. (In Shadows Lengthen by Clara Longworth de Chambrum, Scribner, New York, 1949)

  Parisians welcome an Allied tank. (RDA/Getty Images)

  American flags on the Champs-Elysées. (Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

  Ernest Hemingway in Sylvia Beach’s flat. (Princeton University Library)

  Phillip “Pete” Jackson. (Courtesy of Phillip Jackson)

  Charlotte “Toquette” Jackson. (Courtesy of Phillip Jackson)

  INTRODUCTION

  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.

  Where the rich led, poorer painters, writers, singers and vagabonds followed. An African-American soldier expressed this love better than most, as his troopship from France cruised into New York harbour after the First World War. An officer asked him why he was saluting the Statue of Liberty, and he answered, ‘Because France gave her to us.’ The thousands of Americans who stood with the French during the humiliation of German rule from 1940 to 1944 found their relationships to Paris and America expressed in the famed lyrics of Josephine Baker, the quintessential American Parisian, ‘J’ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris.’(‘I have two loves, my country and Paris.’)

  Among the few thousand Americans who remained in Paris throughout the war, four had pronounced reactions to the occupation that represented in relief the experiences of the rest of their countrymen. The French-born, naturalized American millionaire Charles Bedaux did business as he had before the war. If he compromised with the occupier, his rationale was that European industry had to be preserved for the post-war world. Sylvia Beach attempted to keep her English language bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, functioning as it had in the 1920s when it was a beacon for American, British and French writers. She preserved her humanity by defying the Germans in small ways and giving moral support to French friends whose resistance was more open and violent. Clara Longworth de Chambrun, whose brother had been America’s Speaker of the House of Representatives and husband to Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, worked tirelessly for the benefit of the readers at the American Library of Paris–even when this meant dealing with German officials. For her, duty lay in holding firm, obeying a Vichy government that she believed was legitimate and waiting for D-Day to deliver France from its agony. Her relationship to the occupying power was complicated by the fact that her Franco-American son, Count René de Chambrun, was married to the daughter of Vichy France’s prime minister, Pierre Laval. Her husband, Count Aldebert de Chambrun, was a direct descendant of the Marquis de Lafayette and had been born in Washington, DC. The American Hospital of Paris, which the Germans coveted, was kept out of their hands through the deception and conscientious effort of this American citizen and former general of the French Army. The American Hospital’s chief surgeon, Dr Sumner Jackson, took the clearest decision of all: from the first day of the occupation, he resisted. Although he risked his life, and those of his wife and young son, the Yankee physician from Maine never doubted for a moment where duty lay: not in survival, not in cooperation, but in determined resistance to what he saw as the overriding evil of the age.

  The Americans in inter-war Paris were young and old, black and white, rich and poor–as diverse a collection of opposed beliefs and backgrounds as in any American metropolis. Among them were communists and fascists, Democrats and Republicans, the apolitical and the apathetic, opportunists and idealists. They were writers, painters, musicians, businessmen, bankers, journalists, clergy, photographers, physicians, lawyers, teachers, diplomats, spies, conmen and gangsters. Until the Germans turned France into a version of their own prison-state, African-Americans, homosexuals, lesbians and bohemians felt freer in Paris than in the socially more repressive United States. German occupation was not enough to send all of them home.

  In the spring of 1940, after nine months of the drôl
e de guerre or phony war, normality was returning to Paris. Parisians of all nationalities had become accustomed to war without battles and shared the illusion that the Germans would never penetrate the ‘impregnable’ Maginot Line. Most, apart from realists like General Charles de Gaulle and Ambassador William Bullitt, did not believe Germany would or could attack France. Restaurants were doing brisk business. Charles Bedaux was throwing lavish parties for European royalty. Josephine Baker reopened on the Champs Elysées with Maurice Chevalier in an extravagant song and dance revue. American Eugene Bullard’s Le Duc jazz club in Montmartre attracted sell-out audiences. Americans in the city led enchanted lives, discussing art and love affairs in cafés, some sending their children to the American school and most preparing for summer in the south. Even as the Germans were approaching in late May, the Runyonesque sports columnist of the Paris Herald Tribune, Sparrow Robinson, wrote, ‘Owing to unsettled conditions, the racing card scheduled for this afternoon at Longchamps has been called off.’

  The ‘unsettled conditions’ referred to the Nazi blitzkrieg that conquered Denmark, Holland and Belgium. Refugees from the occupied countries escaped to France. Belgian cars and horse-drawn carts packed with clothing and furniture were the first omens that France would also fall. German Panzer divisions broke into France through the poorly defended Ardennes forest, beginning the Battle of France that Britain and France would lose in three short weeks. This engagement –a swift, merciless advance by Wehrmacht armour and Luftwaffe air power–suddenly altered the balance of power in Europe. The British Expeditionary Force retreated from Dunkirk, and the Germans captured more than a million French soldiers. The way to Paris lay open to Hitler’s armies. Most Parisians, French and foreigners alike, fled the city ahead of the Germans. Escape was a mistake. The Germans bombed refugee columns on the roads, but they did not bomb Paris itself. As fighting raged along the River Meuse, Ambassador Bullitt pleaded with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to provide the French and the British with aircraft to withstand the German invasion. Roosevelt promised surplus planes for shipment from Canada, but it was too late.