Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

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  Acknowledgements

  A couple of clarifications: first, I am not related to Professor Richard Cobb, the historian of France, although in a bizarre coincidence my father was called Richard and Professor Cobb had a son called Matthew. Second, as those of you who search for me on the Internet will discover, writing history is not my day job. Since I published The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis in 2009, I have been touched by the generosity of the community of French historians in the UK, who welcomed this outsider and have been both kind and supportive. My thanks go to all of them. In particular, Julian Jackson and Rod Kedward have turned out to be as insightful and kind hearted as their writings suggest, and their encouragement helped give me the confidence to write this book. My Manchester colleague Jean-Marc Dreyfus focused my mind on the grim aspects of the pillaging of the Parisian Jews by the Germans, while Simon Kitson helped me try and unravel the story of what happened to the tricolour after June 1940. I hope that my discussions with the historian of art Victoria Beck Newman will lead to a joint project on the work of Pablo Picasso during this period.

  My publisher, Mike Jones, and my agent, Peter Tallack, helped me set up this story and gave me the opportunity to turn a vague idea into something much more precise and detailed. Katherine Stanton, my copy-editor, showed me how to cut down some particularly baggy material and make it much more nimble. She also scrutinised the manuscript and picked up so many of my mistakes. I am also especially grateful to my readers, who have spent a vast amount of time going through the manuscript, encouraging me or suggesting useful rewrites: Dr Ludivine Broch of Birkbeck College whose knowledge of the railways in the occupation is unparalleled, Jerry Coyne whose help I have bought by guest-blogging at whyevolutionistrue.com, and Martin Empson who helped me emphasise class issues and Professor John Merriman of Yale University, who encouraged me to explore the social geography of Paris, and Christina Purcell who helped me make things clearer. I am particularly indebted to my friend Barbara Mellor, who picked nits, bravely volunteered to help check the proofs, came up with some great translations and has been an enthusiastic partner in working on the Lainville family. A special mention goes to David Drake, who is writing a book on Paris during World War II (Paris at War: 1939–1944), that will provide the back-story to much of what I have written about here. David was a tremendous help, exchanging sources, sharing frustrations about the exact nature of various aspects of the Vichy regime and helping me declutter my prose. He even sent me a CD, Jazz sous l’Occupation, which makes an ideal audio accompaniment to reading and writing on this period. The book would be much the poorer without his help. I would also like to acknowledge the kindness of Hélène Steinberg and the late Bill Ford, who welcomed me to Paris in 1984 and first showed me the traces of the liberation on the walls of Paris. Bill would have loved arguing with me about this book.

  Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac answered my questions generously and patiently, and expressed his immense personal frustration at being stuck in London during the liberation of Paris. Comrade Ben Lewis translated many of the German texts I used, thereby
enabling me to get an essential insight into what was happening in Paris. My colleague Reinmar Hager also helped by responding rapidly to e-mails when I was uncertain about how exactly to translate a particular passage from German. Sébastien Studer generously sent me a pdf of his excellent unpublished thesis on Alexandre Parodi. I am especially thankful to Gilles Primout, an amateur historian who has created an excellent website on the liberation of Paris, full of eye-witness accounts and useful detail. It is highly recommended to anyone who can read French: liberation-de-paris.gilles-primout.fr/ [accessed July 2012].

  Librarians around the world have helped in all sorts of ways, and my thanks go to the staff at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, the UK National Archives, the US National Archives and Records Administration, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College London, and the Musée du Général Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris – Musée Jean Moulin. The following people all generously sent me information and documents: Cathleen Pearl and Amelia Meyer of the National Guard Memorial Museum; Francine Bouré of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rheims; Lisa Saltzman of Bryn Mawr College; Barbara Seddik of the Office de Tourisme de la Ferté; and Mary Laura Kludy of the Virginian Military Institute Archives. Above all, I am grateful to the bemused member of staff at the Archives Nationales in Paris who, when I asked to see a particular document, replied in an amused voice, ‘Mais Monsieur, pourquoi? Tous les documents sont sur notre site Internet!’

  While I was writing this book, Tina was writing up her Ph.D., so we were a two-book household, not something I recommend. Despite this, Lauren and Evie seem to have survived and even flourished. My gratitude goes to all three of them – without their forbearance, support and love, none of this would have been possible.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1 Lottmann (1992), p. 319.

  2 It was over twenty years after the end of the occupation before a satisfactory attempt was made to come up with a typology of the forces of collaboration (Hoffmann, 1968). Hoffmann distinguished between collaboration with Germany for reasons of state (‘collaboration d’état’), and collaborationism with the Nazis, which could be based on ideology or mere realpolitik. Over the four years of the occupation, this nauseating kaleidoscope of reaction shifted and changed its pattern as individuals moved between the various types and sub-types delineated by Hoffmann – it was, as he admits, ‘infernally complicated’. It is even more complicated to discern exactly how decisions were taken, and who – Vichy or the Germans – had effective control of which area of policy or administration in which area of the country. While it is undoubtedly the case that the Germans were in ultimate control, they were not interested in deciding everything in occupied France – that was precisely why they used Pétain, Laval and the rest of their gang.