Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure

by Donald Kladstrup

  “I was stupefied,” Huet said. “We were completely abandoned.” So were thousands of other soldiers.

  As the bombing grew more intense, Huet led his company to cover in one of the concrete bunkers built as a line of defense along the coast. From there, they could see the last of the rescue boats slip out of sight. In despair and frustration, they stared at the huge guns mounted in their bunker, all fixed in place and pointed out to sea. According to Huet, “Even if we could have turned them toward the Germans, they would have done us no good. Their range was too long; we would have just fired over their heads.”

  Realizing it was only a matter of time—a short time—before they would be captured, Huet and his men did the only thing they could: they sat down and uncorked their last bottles of Vouvray.

  As minutes passed, the bombing began to let up. Curious about what was happening, Huet peered from the bunker and was dumbfounded. At the bunker on his right, the French flag, the Tricolore, was being lowered and a German one was being raised in its place. Huet moved quickly to the other side of his bunker and saw the same scene being repeated at every other bunker along the coast. Only one French flag still flew, the one above his bunker. With tears in his eyes and his men looking on, Huet approached the flagpole and slowly lowered the flag. Ripping it into tiny pieces, he then parceled them out to each of his men, stuffing one piece into his own pocket. The rest, he burned.

  Afterward, everyone sat back down, resigned to the fate that awaited them. “There was nothing else we could do,” Huet said. “We were not armed to fight; we were a transport company. When the Germans came, we had to surrender.”

  Less than a month later, France itself formally surrendered—but not before 10 million people, a quarter of the country’s population, had been turned into nomads, fleeing south, away from the advancing Germans. It was the biggest migration of people seen in Europe since the Dark Ages. “They don’t know, nobody knows, where they are going,” one witness said. Under a broiling sun broken only by fierce thunderstorms, children became separated from their parents; hundreds of lives were lost in low-level strafing by German fighter planes. But no one stopped; no one dared to.

  “Nearly every Frenchman had been nurtured on stories of German atrocities during World War I,” according to historian Robert O. Paxton. One of them, Burgundy winemaker Henri Jayer, recalled how his father warned him, “You must leave at once; the Germans are barbarians! They will cut off your hands if you don’t do what they want.”

  That same fear prompted the father of champagne maker Henri Billiot to insist that his family flee as well. Billiot’s father, who had “lost his health” in the earlier war, was convinced that the entire family would be massacred if they failed to leave. “In the rush and confusion, one of my grandfathers became separated and panicked,” Henri said. “He walked all day and night looking for us, but it was hopeless. Finally, he just gave up and returned home, where he suffered a stroke. I am sure it was the fear, his not knowing what had happened to the rest of us, that caused it.”

  Many of the refugees were soldiers who once guarded the Maginot Line. Now, the only lines they occupied were those that stretched for miles, moving away from the frontier they were fleeing. “It was a retreat without glory,” René Engel, a winemaker from Burgundy, said. Engel, who fought in World War I, recalled soldiers discarding their weapons as they passed his house, fleeing through the vineyards because roads were so congested. “It was a sight that we, veterans of Verdun, watched with a heavy heart.”

  For some, however, it was “kind of exciting.”

  Robert Drouhin, who was eight years old, remembers seeing people weighted down with food, mattresses, even birdcages. “Sometimes, my sisters and I would stand and wave,” he said. “We did not realize how dangerous the situation was.”

  Or how dramatically life was about to change.

  The Germans had moved amazingly fast. By June 12, they had overrun Champagne. Two days later, they entered Paris. Other units continued on, rolling down the highway past the vineyards of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. On June 28, their advance reached the Pyrenees and finally came to a stop. Their primary destination, however, was the port city of Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast, the commercial center of France’s wine trade.

  “The Germans swept in like angels of death,” said one resident, recalling how the sunlight glinted off their motorcycle goggles. Within hours they were setting up checkpoints, requisitioning homes and office buildings and taking control of the port. On hand to greet them was the French government which had fled Paris two and a half weeks earlier and turned the city into its temporary capital. Officials immediately entered into discussions about France’s future.

  Almost overnight, nearly everything about this ancient port city had changed. It bristled with gun emplacements; flags with Nazi insignias were draped everywhere. The port itself, a vital shipping point for Bordeaux wine producers for more than two hundred years, was now teeming with armed soldiers and being converted into a German naval base.

  The most dramatic change, however, was the population. Earlier that month, it had been 250,000. Now, crammed with refugees who had fled the German invasion, it was nearly a million.

  Like Robert Drouhin, Hugues Lawton found the unfolding drama incredibly fascinating. Hugues’s father, one of Bordeaux’s most prominent wine merchants, was a veteran of World War I and had told him stories about the war. “I never dreamed I would ever see anything so interesting, so I was determined to see the action,” said Hugues, who was fourteen years old at the time. Fortunately, he happened to be looking out the window when the Germans arrived. “I saw the first German tanks come in, and it was quite a thrill.” But even in his excitement, Hugues felt a tingle of fear. “I remember seeing this German soldier go by on a motorbike; his nostrils were flared, he was so proud. I could not understand that.”

  What many could not understand was how an army which even some German generals considered the strongest in Europe could be defeated so quickly and easily. So staggering were the losses—90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, more than one and a half million taken prisoner—that when an old soldier from World War I called on his countrymen to lay down their arms, everyone was ready to comply and breathed a sigh of relief.

  Marshal Philippe Pétain, the “hero of Verdun,” had been serving as ambassador to Spain when Prime Minister Reynaud summoned him home to boost the country’s morale. When Reynaud resigned on June 16, the eighty-four-year-old Pétain agreed to take over and form a new government. By noon the next day, he was on the radio addressing the people of France. “With a heavy heart, I tell you that it is necessary to end the fighting.” Pledging to give himself to the country (le don de ma personne), the old Marshal said he would sign an armistice with Germany and that France, under his guidance, would return to its former glory. His logic was based on the belief that the country stood alone, that Britain would not survive a German attack and that France, by signing a peace treaty with Berlin, would emerge from defeat stronger and more united than ever in a new Europe dominated by Germany.

  Pétain’s assurances were like a soothing balm and ninety-five percent of the public supported him. He was hailed as a male Joan of Arc, “the leader who saved us from the abyss.” Among those who heard Pétain’s June 17 broadcast was May-Eliane Miailhe de Lencquesaing. “His words were just what we wanted to hear,” she said. “We were all Pétainists.”

  Those in the wine trade were especially enthusiastic. They knew Pétain owned a small vineyard on the Riviera. They also remembered what he had written about the role of wine during World War I: “Of all the shipments to the armies, wine was assuredly the most awaited and most appreciated. To procure his ration of wine, the French soldier braved perils, challenged artillery shells and defied the military police. In his eyes, the wine ration had a place almost equal to that of ammunition supplies. Wine was a stimulant that improved his morale and physical well-being. Wine, therefore, was a major partner in the victory.”


  Although there was no victory this time, most French took comfort in the belief that they had at least escaped the chaos another all-out war would bring. To further cushion the blow of defeat, Pétain argued that, under the Third Republic, the people of France “had not been honestly led into war in 1939, but dishonestly misled into defeat.” It was finger-pointing at its very worst. As historian H. R. Kedward points out, “No one admitted responsibility; everyone blamed someone else. Ordinary soldiers blamed their officers, the General Staff blamed the politicians, the politicians of the Right blamed those of the Left and vice versa, the government of Pétain blamed the ministers of the Popular Front, they in turn blamed the army, most people blamed the Communists, the Communists blamed the internal Fascists and the Fascists blamed the Jews.” There was, adds Kedward, “enough fragmentation here to refloat French politics for a generation.”

  What no one disputed was that this was a war France hoped to avoid. When it was declared, the reaction was a mixture of surprise, dismay and resignation. Although public opinion polls in the summer of 1939 indicated most people favored war if Germany attacked Poland, there was little overt enthusiasm when it finally happened—especially on the battlefield. Marc Bloch, a historian who was a staff captain in the French First Army Group, blamed the “utter incompetence of the high command” and its passivity in the face of the German threat for France’s defeat. He described how his own commander sat “in tragic immobility, saying nothing, doing nothing, but just gazing at the map spread on the table between us, as though hoping to find on it the decision he was incapable of taking.”

  It did not help that France had the wrong kind of tanks. Most were designed for supporting the infantry, not for the lightning warfare which Charles de Gaulle had advocated and which German forces used so effectively. The army was also hampered by an antiquated communications system. One officer complained to his superiors that a carrier pigeon system would have been more effective. He was not only serious, but also probably correct.

  “No one who lived through the French debacle of May–June 1940 ever quite got over the shock,” says historian Robert O. Paxton. “For Frenchmen, confident of a special role in the world, the six weeks’ defeat by German armies was a shattering trauma.”

  It was especially shattering for André Terrail, owner of Paris’s famed restaurant La Tour d’Argent. He was terrified that the Germans would discover his wine cellar.

  “For my father, that cellar meant everything and he was heartsick,” his son Claude said. “It was his passion, his life’s work, his very soul.”

  André Terrail had spent years putting together one of the greatest cellars in the world, a cellar that contained more than 100,000 bottles on the eve of World War II, many of them from the nineteenth century. So great was its reputation that even before World War II, the rich and glamorous—from financiers like J. Pierpont Morgan to movie stars to most of the titled nobility of the world—were drawn to the Tour as much for the riches of its cave as for its famous duck. The thought of losing that entire cellar was more than André could bear.

  He had already survived two wars, the Franco-Prussian in 1870–71 and World War I, in which he was wounded and taken prisoner. When war was declared again, André was so depressed he left Paris and placed the restaurant in the hands of his longtime manager and friend, Gaston Masson. André’s son Claude, who was with the French air force in Lyon, flew back to help.

  “To be a Frenchman means to fight for your country and its wine,” he said.

  Claude arrived in Paris on May 12, 1940, just two days after the Germans had crossed the Meuse River from Belgium. It was warm and sunny, the kind of day that makes Paris the most beautiful spot on earth. Indeed, there was almost a festive mood in the French capital. There were long queues in front of movie houses and most of the cafés were full. Claude must have been shocked by the Parisians’ attitude. He knew how weak the French air force was, and he realized that the German breakthrough was a major blow.

  With the military on high alert, Claude had only been granted a six-hour leave, and it was rapidly expiring. He and Masson already had agreed that the best way to protect the restaurant’s wine in such a short time was to wall it in. With so much wine, however, it swiftly became apparent that they could not hide everything, so they resigned themselves to choosing 20,000 of the very best bottles, especially those from 1867, André Terrail’s pride and joy.

  The pace was furious, the mood almost frantic as Claude and Gaston, with help from the restaurant’s staff, began sorting bottles. Cases of famous labels and vintages were hauled from one side of the cellar to another as one brick after another was slapped into place.

  “We had only five hours left to do the job,” Claude remembered, “but we got it done.”

  A month later, on June 14, under skies heavy with soot from the oil reserves the retreating French government had ordered burned, forces of the Third Reich marched into the now nearly deserted city. With them came a special emissary from Hitler’s chosen successor, Field Marshal Hermann Göring. The emissary’s first stop was La Tour d’Argent. “I want to see your cellars, the famous cellars,” he announced, “and especially the bottles from 1867.”

  Realizing what was at stake, Gaston Masson invited the officer in and tried to remain calm. Taking a deep breath, he informed his visitor that all the 1867s had been drunk.

  “What? That can’t be! Are you sure? I have been told about that wonderful wine,” said the German.

  Masson apologized, but he was positive it was all gone. “Of course, if you would like to check . . . ,” Masson said.

  So, with a small contingent of his soldiers, the German followed Masson into the elevator and down to the cellars five floors below. For more than two hours, they opened cases, turned bottles and checked labels. They searched every corner, every nook and cranny, all to no avail. Not a single bottle of 1867 could be seen.

  When the Germans finally gave up and left, however, they did not go empty-handed. All 80,000 remaining bottles of wine were seized.

  It was a small taste of things to come.

  On June 22, a railroad boxcar was pushed into a small forest clearing in northeastern France and dusted off. It was the very train car in which Germany had been forced to surrender in World War I. Now, with Hitler and his generals looking on, France was forced to do exactly the same thing—sign an armistice that imposed many of the same harsh conditions that so humiliated Germany in 1918. The French army was reduced to 100,000 men; its once-proud troops were relegated to maintaining internal security; astronomical occupation costs were imposed; and more than half the country was placed under formal occupation. The zone occupée, which included the northern three-fifths of France as well as a strip of land running down the Atlantic coast to the Spanish border, contained most of France’s industrial wealth and population. The unoccupied zone, or zone libre, was by far the poorest part of France, and it was where Marshal Pétain was told to headquarter his government.

  Separating the zones was a Demarcation Line, an internal military frontier, which the Germans could open or close as they wished. Passes were required and travelers were subject to searches. In the first weeks after the armistice, the Line was open only to selected workers and administrators, those whom the Germans felt were essential to the recovery of basic industries and services in the north. Prevented from crossing were millions of refugees who had fled the invasion. It was a calculated move by the Germans. By forcing Pétain’s government to keep the refugees for two or three months while they established an efficient occupation in the north, “it allowed the Germans to appear organized and generous,” according to historian Kedward. Grievances about food and other problems, therefore, were directed against French rather than German authorities.

  Still, at that early point, most French were not overly concerned about the division. It was a temporary situation, they thought, and the new government of Pétain believed so too. On June 29, when officials moved from Bordeaux to the health
spa town of Vichy, one government minister told owners of the city’s Hôtel du Parc, “Don’t worry about the heating, we’ll be back in Paris by fall.”

  The cheery optimism faded fast.

  Marshal Pétain had believed that if he was a “good collaborator” and cooperated with the Germans, Hitler would be pleased and the occupation would soon be lifted. He was wrong. Hitler was not interested in collaboration; he was interested in “booty,” in milking France for everything he could.

  “The real profiteers of this war are ourselves,” Hitler said, “and out of it we shall come bursting with fat! We will give back nothing and will take everything we can make use of. And if the others protest, I don’t give a damn.”

  The fat Hitler alluded to included one thing above all, what former French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier called “France’s most precious jewel”: wine. Its importance lay not only with marketplace profits; it was also a symbol of prestige, sophistication and power.