Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure
Page 28
“Wine is the good companion of soldiers’’: Édouard Barthe is quoted by Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac in Les Français de l’An 40, tome II, p. 463.
Return to text.
“Any Frenchman over thirty remembered the blind wastage’’: Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–44, pp. 11–12.
Return to text.
The shipment of wine to the front being a state secret is cited in a French Ministry of War report of January 26, 1938.
Return to text.
“Gentlemen, you are about to witness’’: The Oxford Companion to World War II, p. 408.
Return to text.
“like a lot of small corks, to plug holes in the line’’: from Alistair Horne’s essay on the Fall of France, ibid., p. 411.
Return to text.
“We can beat the Boches’’: article by Liebling in The New Yorker War Pieces, p. 39.
Return to text.
TWO Nomads
biggest migration of people seen in Europe since the Dark Ages: The Oxford Companion to World War II, p. 392.
Return to text.
“They don’t know, nobody knows, where they are going’’: from the Cahiers of Paul Valéry, quoted by Robert O. Paxton in Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944, p. 13.
Return to text.
“Nearly every Frenchman had been nurtured on stories of German atrocities’’: ibid., p. 15.
Return to text.
“It was a retreat without glory’’: René Engle, Vosne-Romanée, un Mémoire, p. 24.
Return to text.
“The Germans swept in like angels of death’’: Florence Mothe, Toutes Hontes Bues, p. 147.
Return to text.
losses—90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded: cited in Oxford Companion to World War II, p. 408.
Return to text.
“le don de ma personne’’: Pétain quoted by Paxton, Vichy France, p. 37.
Return to text.
“the leader who saved us from the abyss’’: ibid., p. 14.
Return to text.
“Of all the shipments to the armies’’: from an essay written by Pétain for Gaston Derys’s Mon Docteur le Vin, 1935.
Return to text.
“No one admitted responsibility’’: H. R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France: A Study of Ideas and Motivation in the Southern Zone, 1940–1942, p. 11.
Return to text.
Marc Bloch’s disillusionment with the French high command is described by Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties, p. 364.
Return to text.
“No one who lived through the French debacle’’: Paxton, Vichy France, p. 3.
Return to text.
“it allowed the Germans to appear organized and generous’’: H. R. Kedward, Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance, 1940–1944, pp. 3–5.
Return to text.
“Don’t worry about the heating’’: Paxton, Vichy France, p. 19.
Return to text.
Hitler’s lust for booty: ibid., p. xii.
Return to text.
“The real profiteers of this war’’: Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War, 1939–1945,
p. 117.
Return to text.
Château Haut-Brion’s conversion into a hospital for French soldiers and later into a rest home for the Germans was described to us during an interview with Jean-Bernard Delmas, manager of the estate. Delmas’s father was in charge of Haut-Brion’s winemaking during the war.
Return to text.
The use of bells at Cos d’Estournel for target practice: from an interview with Bruno Prats, former owner of the château.
Return to text.
The German takeover of Château du Clos de Vougeot was related to us by Jacques Chevignard, executive secretary of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, Burgundy’s wine fraternity.
Return to text.
The German rampage at Sézanne-en-Champagne was described by Maître Antoine Petit in the catalogue for the auction of some of the Hôtel de France wines, November 29, 1998. He elaborated on the destruction during an interview with us following the sale.
Return to text.
At least 250 trainloads of goods destined for Germany had been looted: Wright, Ordeal of Total War, p. 119.
Return to text.
“In the old days, the rule was plunder’’: ibid., p. 117. Also quoted by Jacques Delarue, Trafic et Crimes sous l’Occupation, p. 80.
Return to text.
Göring’s retort that the French franc be used for toilet paper: Delarue, ibid., p. 80.
Return to text.
The story of Felix Kir was discovered in a series of articles he wrote for the Dijon newspaper Le Bien Publique. The series, Dijon sous l’Occupation, was published in January and February 1965.
Return to text.
Vichy’s rush to hammer out an armistice agreement is noted by Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 7–11.
Return to text.
The power struggle within the German command over how France should be treated is discussed by, among others, Wright, Ordeal of Total War, pp. 116–20.
Return to text.
The adoration of Pétain is cited by numerous sources, among them an essay by Kedward in Oxford Companion to World War II, p. 392.
Return to text.
Vichy philosophy and policy is extensively discussed by Paxton and Kedward throughout their books.
Return to text.
Story of the sleeping Pétain is related by Johnson, Modern Times, p. 365.
Return to text.
German soldiers behaving like tourists in Paris and their fascination with its restaurants is recounted in Alistair Horne’s essay on the Fall of France, Oxford Companion to World War II, and in Bertram M. Gordon’s article “Ist Gott Französisch? German Tourism and Occupied France, 1940–1944,’’ published in Modern and Contemporary France in 1996.
Return to text.
THREE The Weinführers
German leadership’s ties to French wine trade came from interviews and other sources, including Florence Mothe, Toutes Hontes Bues, pp. 148–58.
Return to text.
The comments of Albert Speer about Goring’s love of Lafite are found in his book Inside the Third Reich.
Return to text.
“Spare me your little champagne peddler’’: Mothe, Toutes Hontes Bues, pp. 157–58.
Return to text.
“His asceticism was a fiction’’: Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, p. 346.
Return to text.
“To animate these rather barren evenings’’: Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 91.
Return to text.
“transform yourselves into a pack of hunting dogs’’: Jacques Delarue, Trafic et Crimes sous l’Occupation, p. 80.
Return to text.
“Will this integral part of French civilization be confiscated’’: Mothe, Toutes Hontes Bues, pp. 153–54.
Return to text.
“It was embarrassing how they bowed and scraped to him’’: ibid., pp. 160–61.
Return to text.
Segnitz’s reaction upon learning some Burgundy winemakers were trying to cheat him was told to us by his son.
Return to text.
The letters of Maurice Drouhin from prison were shared with us by his son Robert.
Return to text.
“Thanks to you, I am now the owner’’: Bulletin of the Centre Beaunois d’Études Historiques, No. 37, November 1990, p. 90.
Return to text.
The description of grim-faced soldiers preparing to move out to the Russian front came from an interview we had with the Marquis d’Angerville.
Return to text.
Segnitz’s “thank-you” letter came from the Drouhin archives.
Return to text.
The loss of two million bottles of champagne is cited by François Bonal, Le Livre d’Or du Champagne, p. 192.
Return to text.
Much of the information about Robert de Vogüé’s meeting with Klaebisch comes from interviews with his son Ghislain and with Claude Fourmon.
Return to text.
“Work Sundays!”: Cynthia Parzych and John Turner, Pol Roger, p. 14.
Return to text.
“How dare you send us fizzy”: Claude Taittinger, Champagne by Taittinger, p. 87.
Return to text.
Guy Taittinger’s charming of Klaebisch was described to us by Claude Taittinger in an interview and also in his book, ibid., pp. 87–88.
Return to text.
Use of information about champagne shipments by the Resistance and British intelligence: Parzych and Turner, Pol Roger, p. 36.
Return to text.
“Owing to the Germans’ mania”: Janet Flanner’s World: Uncollected Writings, 1932–1975, p. 51.
Return to text.
FOUR Hiding, Fibbing and Fobbing Off
The story of Henri Gaillard is gleaned from two logbooks that were discovered in a closet of Gaillard’s former station in the 1990s.
Return to text.
“hiding, fibbing and fobbing off”: Janet Flanner, “Letter from France,” The New Yorker, September 15, 1945, p. 72.
Return to text.
the management . . . “would be terribly, terribly sorry”: Patrick Forbes, Champagne: The Wine, the Land and the People, p. 215.
Return to text.
“It was almost a patriotic act”: recalled by Claude Taittinger in an interview with us and in his book, Champagne by Taittinger, pp. 36–37.
Return to text.
The story of how one winegrower hid his wines in a pond was related by André L. Simon to Wynford Vaughan-Thomas in How I Liberated Burgundy, p. 155.
Return to text.
Mayor Vavasseur’s encounter with the Germans was described to us in an interview with Gaston Huet.
Return to text.
the Germans “had the feeling that they were constantly being tricked”: A. J. Liebling, The New Yorker War Pieces, p. 349.
Return to text.
Madame Gombaud’s use of rat droppings is told by Nicholas Faith, Victorian Vineyard: Château Loudenne and the Gilbeys, p. 146.
Return to text.
“We knew certain things were going on”: from an interview with Professor Helmut Arntz, a former German soldier in Paris.
Return to text.
The story of Ronald Barton was told to us by his nephew, Anthony Barton, who now owns and manages Châteaux Langoa- and Léoville-Barton.
Return to text.
The heroics of Gaby Faux were described to us by Baron Eric de Rothschild and cited by Cyril Ray, Lafite, pp. 61–64.
Return to text.
“minor gestures of defiance”: H. R. Kedward, Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance, 1940–1944, p. 8.
Return to text.
“I couldn’t bring myself to touch”: from an interview with Suzanne Dumbrill in Champagne.
Return to text.
The clash between French students and German police is described by David Schoenbrun, Soldiers of the Night: The Story of the French Resistance, pp. 88–96.
Return to text.
“If we had been ‘occupied,’ to use the polite term”: Jean Paulhan, Summer of ’44, p. 91.
Return to text.
Jean Monmousseaux’s exploits were noted by Schoenbrun, Soldiers of the Night, p. 134, and described to us in greater detail in an interview with Monmousseaux’s son, Armand.
Return to text.
“They pillaged it neatly”: from an essay by Robert Aron, “Bordeaux Sauvé par Son Vin.”
Return to text.
conditions of life . . . had “declined from austerity to severe want”: Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944, p. 237.
Return to text.
FIVE The Growling Stomach
“The French are so stuffed”: Jacques Delarue, Trafic et Crimes sous l’Occupation, p. 79.
Return to text.
The decision to limit the caloric intake of the French, reported by Michel Cépède, Agriculture et Alimentation en France durant le Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, p. 151.
Return to text.
“The old and the ill need wine”: from Report to the Fifth Congrès National du Vin de France, p. 12.
Return to text.
“We said, ‘Don’t you want to get well’ ’’: ibid., p. 67.
Return to text.
France as the worst-nourished of Western occupied countries, and the real voice being “the growling stomach”: Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944, p. 238.
Return to text.
“Ja, we’re the doryphores . . .”: Irving Drutman, ed., Janet Flanner’s World: Uncollected Writings, 1932–1975, p. 52.
Return to text.
The disappearance of pigeons from a park in Bordeaux was reported by the newspaper Sud-Ouest, September 1997, as part of a collection of articles entitled “Procés Papon: l’Histoire d’une Époque,” looking back at wartime Bordeaux.
Return to text.
“We were so hungry that we ate the goldfish”: Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, p. 182.
Return to text.
“What helped a lot was wine”: ibid., p. 121.
Return to text.
Laws restricting the amount of wine which producers were allowed to make: Charles K. Warner, The Winegrowers of France and the Government Since 1875, pp. 160–61.
Return to text.
The table of statistics concerning wine production, ibid., p. 158.
Return to text.
“God made man”: from a book of poems and essays compiled and edited by Joni G. McNutt, In Praise of Wine, p. 218.
Return to text.
Information about Vichy’s antialcoholism policies can be found in Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 146–48.
Return to text.
Vichy’s decision to allow growers to water wine in order to stretch the dwindling supply is described by Warner, Winegrowers of France, p. 161.
Return to text.
Black market problems are cited in René Terrisse, Bordeaux 1940–1944, p. 160.
Return to text.
The story of Claude Brosse is found in Alexis Lichine’s New Encyclopaedia of Wines and Spirits, p. 317.
Return to text.
“No one could ever have imagined”: Lucie Aubrac, Outwitting the Gestapo, p. 52.
Return to text.
“When they finished, they poured a glass of heating oil”: ibid., p. 51.
Return to text.
“Sex and food are the only things that matter”: Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties, p. 365.
Return to text.
“le con qui se dort”: attributed to Georges Mandel, Minister of Colonies, by several sources.
Return to text.
Pétain’s stomping through the Midi to criticize winegrowers is described by Warner, Winegrowers of France, p. 162.
Return to text.
Laval’s plan to send French workers to Germany is explained by H. R. Kedward, Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance, 1940–1944, p. 61–62.
Return to text.
“war of annihilation”: Johnson, Modern Times, p. 380.
Return to text.
SIX Wolves at the Door
The legend of the wolves is recounted by Robert J. Casey, The Lost Kingdom of Burgundy, pp. 21–23.
Return to text.