The myths of occupied Paris
Sam White
• Paris Come August, and a dismal chain of anniversaries set in for the French, lightened. only by that of the Liberation of Paris. Lightened did I say? That is hardly the word, for the mood now encompasses an irrestible urge to scrateh at the sore of how Paris behaved during the occupation. The romantic glow has faded from this City's liberation and has given way to a more realistic not to say a downright cynical view of the event itself and the four years that preceded it. It is as though the original romantic version, fostered by the Left at home and abroad, of France as a nation of heroes betrayed by a few scoundrels has given way to the reverse — of France as a nation of collaborationists redeemed by the acts of a handful of heroes. It is this latter view, of course, which was so successfully propagated by that masterpiece of skilful distortion, the film Le Chagrin et la Me, the authors of which had sharp personal and political motives for pouring scorn on their countrymen. This August, however, has seen the annual debate over the events of thirty-four and more years ago take on a more passionate note than ever with renewed pleas by Colonel Remy for some kind of 'historic compromise' between de Gaulle and Petain. This has been an old hobby horse of Remy's, and he is in an excellent position to promote it, having been one of the first resistance leaders in occupied France and one of the first to join de Gaulle. His argument, which does more credit to his Christian heart than to his head, is that France at the time needed both a sword and a shield — with de Gaulle of course providing the first and Petain the second.
It is an argument which might have had a certain plausibility, if the shield itself had not turned into an anti-resistance sword and if Petain had not promulgated anti-semitic decrees improving even on the Nuremberg ones. Remy's theory is enthusiastically supported by Alfred Fabre-Luce, an old time apologist for Main among whose arguments is that fewer Jews were deported from France than from any other of the occupied countries. One reason for this which seems to have escaped Fabre-Luce is that it was easier to round them up in smaller countries like Holland, but undoubtedly he is right that the Vichy version of the Nuremberg decrees • was more loosely applied, until the last days of the war, than elsewhere and his own survival as a half-Jew is, as far as he is concerned, a satisfactory proof of this. It is somewhat less so for those who did not have the right family or political connections. One last point emerges from the debate, and this is provided by Ray
mond Aron, not usually found among the apologists for Vichy. He argues that the French collapse in 1940 was a blessing in disguise, because it averted the kind of casualties which France after the bloodletting of the first world war simply could not afford. This was, of course, the basic reason for the pacifism of all political parties in France before the war, from left to right, and it became a fully national pacifism with the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact when the Communists called a halt to their anti-Hitler crusade.
All this brings us back to the question of how Paris behaved during the occupation— an issue, which nags at one like the reputed infidelities of a favourite mistress. To supply some new answers to this, Paris-Match over August devoted four special issues to Paris under the occupation and I have supplemented this with a reading of the second volume of Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs which largely cover this period. It is interesting to note for example that, though Paris was hungry during this period, to the point where some people may have been tempted to denounce their grandmothers for a good black market chateaubriand, culturally it was undergoing a considerable renaissance. It was the golden age of the French theatre and the French cinema, launching a torrent of talent such as Paris has not seen before or since. For the single season of 1940-41, no fewer than 110 plays were running in Paris of which thirty-five were new ones, while in the year of Stalingrad eighty-three films were made, many of them ranking as classics. Playwrights like Guitry and Cocteau, Giraudoux and Sartre, Salacrou and Anouilh, either consolidated their reputations or made them during the occupation. Then there were film directors like Clouzot and Becker and Brisson and performers like Danielle Darrieux, Gerard philipe, Serge Reggiani and literally tens of others who achieved the greater part of their fame during this period. The same was true of the minor arts such as the music hall—the voice of Piaf haunts this period — and jazz, in which France almost gained world ascendancy during this time.
At this point it is useful to turn to one of the articles in the Pads-Match series entitled 'I Amused Myself Greatly During the Occupation.' It is written by a woman who was nineteen in 1940, a great beauty who had the great fortune or great misfortune to become the mistress of one of the French collaborationist high-ups. The article, peppered with name-dropping, is a picture of occupied Paris as seen from Maxim's. It is, as may. be imagined, highly amusing and very revealing. There its famous head Spectator 2 September 1918 waiter, the more than portly Albert (saved from a grisly fate after the liberation by the intervention of the restaurant's British shareholders), dispensed his own foga of social justice by relegating wartime pro' fiteers and Germans in uniform — including Goering — to lesser tables while keeping a table ostentatiously empty reserved for All Khan. Apart from the absent Ali, the main dining room was reserved for the literarY and cultural elite, the titled, the Gertnarl Ambassador to occupied France, Ott° Abetz and his staff, and the higher dig. nitaries among French collaborators. There, too, some had their favourite Jews. whom they protected; Luchaire, the Inns' prominent of the press collaborationists, for example, employed Simone Signoret as his secretary before launching her on her Ott career, while Guitry fought successfully for the release of Colette's Jewish husband. There was also the animated table of literary celebrities, presided over by Ficlence Gould and there was Raimu and Pan! Mor and Serge Lifar and Marie Bell an° Alice Cocea and Drieu la Rochelle, Altogether, as the author points out, desPite the absence of 'le smoking' Maxim's Was never smarter then it was then. And then there were first nights, such as of Monterlant's Reine Morte at the Comedic Francaise or of Sartre's Les Mouches or the Par; ticularly memCirable and sumptuous one J, Claudel's Le Soulieir de Satin, which wit" interruptions for aid raids lasted sever/ hours. To cap it all there were the fantastic fashions which seemed to set no store by the textile shortages and which seemed to make every woman look twenty years younger, t° the dismay of their teenage daughters' Nobody who was in Paris in the claY„s, immediately following the liberation w112 ever forget the ballooning skirts of wome_13 cyclists or the legs painted to make it apPe,n that they were wearing silk stockings or montainous headgear that they affeeteu,, Never did the couturiers have it so go_ov, and never were the dictates of a Lucien
go long and Coco Chanel or a MaggY more assiduously followed. All this ma.
i‘e' Mlle de Beauvoir's account of the oecti; pation years, as seen largely from the calé terraces of Le Dome and Le Fiore, see! exceedingly pedestrian. All the more pede,' trian because the resistance scareeloY Intrudes on her narrative. We are allowed gather that Sartre is in some way connee his with it, but what the exact nature of activities were is left vague. Made She does mention a trip they both to the occupied zone to try and enlisn t.tnne. support of Gide and Malraux in abnuattish.:e, wide writer's resistance group, records failure in both cases. She recohreo rather bitchily, that Malraux received t erne in a rich friend's villa in the South of Fral,.14,as where 'exquisite chicken rnarylandre exquisitely served.' She records SaArttvio theatrical successes at the time he I but plays running during theoccupationr eri
, were punished after the liberation of r does not appear to be aware that lessedoing ,
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