Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation

by Charles Glass

  p. 17 ‘Delegates till 5 a.m.’ Gerald Walter, Paris under the Occupation, New York: Orion Press, 1960, p. 18.

  p. 17 Dentz acquiesced, sending Lottman, The Fall of Paris, pp. 337–40. Lottman’s account of the surrender is one of the most thorough and reliable. See also John Williams, The Ides of May: The Defeat of France, May–June 1940, London: Constable, 1968, pp. 316–20. p. 17 Some Germans did not Williams, The Ides of May, p. 37.

  p. 18 ‘That doesn’t matter’ William Smith Gardner, ‘The Oldest Negro in Paris’, Ebony, vol. 8, no. 2, February 1952, pp. 65–72.

  p. 18 General Bogislav von Studnitz, commander Roger Langeron, Paris, juin 1940, Paris: Flammarion, 1946, p. 42.

  p. 18 ‘were born with monocles’ Michel, Paris Allemand, p. 59.

  p. 19 ‘the moment had arrived’ Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors, p. 56.

  p. 19 ‘You are Americans … The whole city’ Ibid., pp. 56–7.

  p. 19 Inside the Crillon’s gilt Ibid., p. 57.

  p. 19 ‘as if we were’ Ibid., pp. 57–8.

  p. 20 Von Studnitz gave … ‘brushed aside this’ Ibid., p. 58.

  p. 20 The war he added … ‘none of us’ Ibid., p. 58.

  p. 20 ‘although it was only 10.30’ Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter letter to Orville H. Bullitt, reproduced in Bullitt (ed.), For the President, p. 469.

  p. 20 Von Studnitz invited Hillenkoetter letter in Ibid., p. 470.

  p. 20 ‘Colonel Fuller was’ Quentin Reynolds, The Wounded Don’t Cry, London: Cassell and Compay, 1941, p. 40.

  p. 20 ‘Never … We’re confident’ Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1941, pp. 374–5.

  p. 20 ‘His hands trembled’ Clare Boothe, ‘Europe in the Spring: An American Playwright Reports on a Continent’s Last Days of Freedom’, Life, 25 July 1940, p. 80.

  p. 21 Back in his office … ‘nice fellas’ Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors, p. 59. Murphy wrote that Mitchell came to Paris with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and remained when it went bankrupt. The show opened in Paris in 1889 as part of the World Exposition, and it did not go bankrupt until long after its return to the United States.

  p. 21 Von Studnitz, recalled … Fuller and Hillenkoetter Hillenkoetter letter in Bullitt (ed.), For the President, p. 470.

  p. 22 ‘The general wanted’ Lottman, The Fall of Paris, p. 361

  p. 22 From an upper window Author’s interview with Mme Colette Faus, Paris, 22 January 2007.

  p. 22 ‘On that day’ Philip W. Whitcomb, testimony in France during the German Occupation, 1940–1944: A Collection of 292 Statements on the Government of Maréchal Pétain and Pierre Laval, translated from the French by Philip W. Whitcomb, Palo Alto, CA: The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, vol. III, 1957, p. 1606.

  p. 23 The triumphalism of Roger Manville and Heinrich Fraenkel, The July Plot: The Attempt on Hitler’s Life in July 1944, London: The Bodley Head, 1964, p. 63.

  p. 23 Martial parades established Early that morning, the French writer Paul Léautaud was leaving his house in the Paris suburbs when he saw the wife of the local mayor at her door. He wrote in his diary, ‘She tells me that the radio has announced that Paris is under the protection of the American ambassador. I say, “We’re doing well. The American ambassador in front of the German army! That should prevent us from being bumped off. The American ambassador will come: Look here! He’s dead!” As usual, I mimed what I said. I made her laugh, her and her children.’ See Paul Léautaud, Journal littéraire, vol. XIII, February 1940–June 1941, Paris: Mercure de France, 1962, p. 81.

  Chapter Two: The Bookseller

  p. 24 As the first German Adrienne Monnier, Trois agendas d’Adrienne Monnier, Texte établi et annoté par Maurice Saillet, Paris: published ‘par ses amis’, 1960, p. 37. Sylvia’s autobiography, written twenty years later, disagrees with Adrienne Monnier’s diary on Sylvia’s whereabouts when the Germans marched in. In Shakespeare and Company (London: Faber and Faber, 1960, p. 218), Sylvia wrote that she was in the office of a doctor friend, Thérèse Bertrand-Fontaine, when she saw refugees leaving Paris and German soldiers marching in after them. This is more likely a recollection that compressed distinct events, because all of Paris’s refugees had left at least one day before the Germans entered the city. I have relied on Adrienne’s diary, which was written at the time.

  p. 24 ‘endless procession of’ Beach, Shakespeare and Company, p. 218.

  p. 24 ‘Those boots always’ Niall Sheridan, interview with Sylvia Beach, Sylvia Beach: Self-Portrait, documentary film on Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), Dublin, 1962.

  p. 25 ‘ I never left Paris’ Noel Riley Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983, p. 401.

  p. 26 Alice B. Toklas called Ibid., p. 100.

  p. 26 ‘these two extraordinary’ Janet Flanner, ‘The Infinite Pleasure: Sylvia Beach’, Janet Flanner’s World: Uncollected Writings 1932–1975, London: Secker and Warburg, 1980, p. 310.

  p. 27 ‘DAMN the right bank’ Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 61.

  p. 28 ‘loved to browse’ William L. Shirer, Twentieth Century Journey: Memoir of a Life and the Times, vol. I: The Start, 1904–1930, Boston: Little Brown, 1984, p. 241.

  p. 28 ‘Probably I was’ Sylvia Beach wrote this in an unpublished draft of her memoirs, Shakespeare and Company. Quoted in Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 78.

  p. 28 ‘the intrepid, unselfish’ Flanner, ‘The Infinite Pleasure: Sylvia Beach’, p. 309.

  p. 29 ‘probably the best known’ Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 41.

  p. 29 ‘their club, mail drop’ Flanner, ‘The Infinite Pleasure: Sylvia Beach’, p. 310.

  p. 30 ‘But something must’ Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 355.

  p. 31 ‘He was beginning’ ‘Hemingway Curses, Kisses, Reads’, Paris Herald Tribune, 14 March 1937.

  p. 31 A year later Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 386. The award is also listed in Sylvia’s entry in Americans in France: A Directory, 1939–1940, Paris: American Chamber of Commerce in France, 1940, p. 72.

  p. 32 ‘Loud noise of planes … we should live’ Monnier, Trois agendas de Adrienne Monnier, p. 36.

  p. 32 ‘she could not be’ Beach, Shakespeare and Company, p. 213.

  p. 32 ‘did try to get away’ Ibid., pp. 217–18ff.

  p. 32 ‘fell right between’ Monnier, Trois Agendas de Adrienne Monnier, p. 29.

  p. 32 Adrienne kissed the spot Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 398.

  p. 33 ‘I still had some’ Arthur Koestler, The Scum of the Earth, London: Cape, 1941, reprinted London: Eland Books, 1991, p. 103.

  p. 33 ‘For a few days’ Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue, vol. II, The Invisible Writing, London: Collins with Hamish Hamilton, 1954, p. 420.

  p. 33 The president of International PEN Emmanuelle Loyer, Paris à New York: Intellectuels et artistes français en exil 1940–1947, Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2005.

  p. 33 ‘It is impossible’ ‘Celebrities Forced to Flee France Arrive Here by Way of Lisbon’, New York Times, 16 July 1940, p. 1.

  p. 33 Two American diplomats Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 400.

  p. 33 ‘From the day the Jews’ Adrienne Monnier, ‘On Anti-Semitism’, La Gazette des Amis des Livres, Paris, December 1938, reprinted in Adrienne Monnier, The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier: An Intimate Portrait of the Literary and Artistic Life in Paris Between the Wars, translated by Richard McDougall, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976, p. 378.

  p. 33 Sylvia had sold artists’ prints Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, p. 383.

  p. 34 ‘What if the Germans’ Monnier, Trois agendas d’Adrienne Monnier, p. 38. There is an excellent translation of Adrienne’s occupation diary in The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier, pp. 391–402.

  p. 35 ‘I was amazed’ Robert Murphy, Diplomat among W
arriors: Secret Decisions that Changed the World, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964, pp. 59–60. Murphy added, ‘I reflected ruefully that the United States Government might have practiced to advantage some of that German foresight. In our own early ventures in military government, Washington’s neglect of this phase of waging war created unnecessary difficulties for General Eisenhower, and especially for me as his political adviser.’ That was twenty years before the US occupation of Vietnam and forty before its occupation of Iraq.

  p. 35 ‘The German soldiers’ Roger Langeron, Paris, juin 1940, Paris: Flammarion, 1946, p. 45.

  p. 35 The Germans honoured Telegram of 4 July 1940 from Bullitt to Department of State, in Orville H. Bullitt (ed.), For the President, Personal and Secret: Correspondence between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and William C. Bullitt, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972, p. 478.

  p. 35 Married to an aristocrat David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich: A History of the German Occupation, 1940–1944, London: Collins, 1981, p. 24.

  p. 35 Another American loss ‘U.S. Property in France Has Light War Toll’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 16 July 1940, p. 9.

  p. 35 ‘So these are Bullitt’s’ Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors, p. 60.

  p. 36 In the evening, Bullitt Langeron, Paris, juin 1940, p. 54.

  p. 36 ‘If order is maintained’ Ibid., p. 46.

  Chapter Three: The Countess from Ohio

  p. 37 The American Embassy beat The embassy left the Hôtel Bristol on 1 December 1940. See Dorothy Reeder, ‘The American Library in Paris: September 1939–June 1941, CONFIDENTIAL’, Report to the American Library Association, 19 July 1941, American Library Association Archives, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, p. 9.

  p. 38 ‘promised to remain’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 101.

  p. 38 ‘Was it really’ Dorothy Reeder: ‘The American Library in Paris: September 1939–June 1941, Confidential’.

  p. 38 ‘theory that, should’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 99.

  p. 38 ‘My temperamental dislike’ Ibid., p. 99.

  p. 38 Pierre, who as the eldest Americans in France: A Directory, 1939–1940, Paris: American Chamber of Commerce in France, 1940, p. 83: the Marquis de Chambrun listed his residences as 19 avenue Rapp, Paris 7, and the Château l’Empery-Carrières, Lozère.

  p. 39 ‘My husband argued’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 99.

  p. 39 ‘There were trucks’ Ibid., pp. 103–4.

  p. 39 ‘I recall the silhouettes’ Ibid., p. 105.

  p. 40 ‘an excited servant … compromised by giving … all thought of self’ Ibid., p. 109.

  p. 40 ‘By birth and education’ Ibid., p. 3.

  p. 41 Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War Adolphe de Chambrun, Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War: A Foreigner’s Account, translated by General Aldebert de Chambrun, New York: Random House, 1952.

  p. 41 recounted his friendship Chambrun declined, because his Catholicism would not let him attend the theatre on Good Friday.

  p. 41 ‘never considered the … Like all his family’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Like Myself, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936, p. 93.

  p. 42 She perfected her French Clara became a close friend of Aldebert’s older sister, Thérèse, who was married to Count Savorgnan de Brazza, the Italian-born French explorer for whom Brazzaville in West Africa was named. She was close to others in the same aristocratic circle. See Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Like Myself, p. 29.

  p. 42 The award was presented Pétain’s full name was Henri-Philippe-Bénoni-Omer Pétain, but he was usually called Philippe Pétain.

  p. 43 ‘But there is an end’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Like Myself, p. 243.

  p. 43 ‘the appearance of General’ Ibid., p. 277.

  p. 43 It was said that American Colonel Charles E. Stanton, in a speech at Lafayette’s tomb in the Picpus Cemetery on 4 July 1917, said, ‘Lafayette, we are here!’ See ‘Immortal War Slogans’, New York Times, 11 January 1942, p. 25.

  p. 43 ‘In the spring of 1925’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Like Myself, p. 327.

  p. 43 The French Academy awarded Mary Niles Mack, ‘Between Two Worlds: The American Library in Paris during the War, Occupation and Liberation (1939–1945)’, Library Trends, Winter 2007, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, p. 7.

  p. 44 Two years later Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille d’après ses carnet’s intimes, Paris, Le Cherche-Midi, 2002, p. 105. See also ‘Miss Laval is Bride; Becomes U.S. Citizen’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 20 August 1935, p. 17.

  p. 44 ‘Swarthy as a Greek’ ‘Man of the Year’, Time, 4 January 1932.

  p. 44 In October 1931 Time commented on Laval’s meeting with President Herbert Hoover at the White House: ‘President Hoover is well known to dislike almost all Frenchmen. He and Premier Laval had high words which they called “free and frank”. Smoking U.S. cigarettes at the furious rate of 80 per day, the didactic Frenchman in striped trousers, black jacket, white tie and suede-topped buttoned shoes wagged his short forefinger at the President in high-laced shoes and conservative business suit, making hotly such points as that France will not stand for having another Moratorium [on German war reparations payments to France] thrust forward from the U.S. “suddenly and brutally”.’ See Ibid.

  p. 44 Friends said that Interview with Thierry Bertmann, godson of René de Chambrun’s close American friend, Seymour Weller, Paris, March 2006.

  p. 45 ‘There was too much of it’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 109.

  p. 45 ‘a wild scheme’ Ibid.

  p. 45 Although Clara favoured … René founded the Ibid., p. 53.

  p. 45 ‘she had referred’ Vincent Sheean, Between the Thunder and the Sun, New York: Random House, 1943, p. 67.

  p. 46 ‘There we found’ General Aldebert de Chambrun, ‘Financial Crisis in 1935; Attempted Assassination at Versailles’, in France during the German Occupation, 1940–1944: A Collection of 292 Statements on the Government of Maréchal Pétain and Pierre Laval, translated from the French by Philip W. Whitcomb, Palo Alto, CA: The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, vol. III, 1957, p. 1558.

  p. 46 ‘The sights on the road’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 110.

  p. 46 ‘Madame de Polignac’ Ibid., p. 111.

  p. 46 ‘No gas Madame’ … ‘There is if you heat it.’ Ibid., pp. 111–12.

  p. 47 ‘Having explored … he was in fact’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Like Myself, p. 113.

  p. 48 ‘And then, just as’ René de Chambrun, I Saw France Fall, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1940, pp. 155–6.

  p. 48 ‘It is historically interesting’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 98.

  p. 48 ‘That any man’ Ibid., p. 107.

  p. 48 ‘nothing would have been left’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Like Myself, p. 114.

  p. 49 ‘the very symbol’ Ibid., p. 116.

  p. 49 ‘Both of them were’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun (Document No. 167) in France During the German Occupation, 1940–1944, vol. III, 1957, p. 1362.

  p. 49 ‘Our three weeks there’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 113.

  Chapter Four: All Blood Runs Red

  p. 50 ‘I said good-bye’ From Bullard’s unpublished memoir, ‘All Blood Runs Red’, reproduced in P. J. Carisella and James W. Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death, Boston: Marlborough House, 1972, p. 236.

  p. 50 ‘I had a stroke’ Quoted ibid., p. 238.

  p. 50 ‘During the bombardments … lay cut in half’ Ibid., p. 239.

  p. 51 ‘This near lynching’ Craig Lloyd, Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris, Athens, GA and London: University of Georgia Press, 2000, p. 12.

  p. 51 ‘there never was any name-calling’ Carisella and Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death, p. 70.

  p. 52 ‘I was always’ Ibid., p. 156.

  p. 52 ‘a
certain person in Paris’ Ibid.

  p. 53 The squadrons in which Lloyd, Eugene Bullard, p. 58.

  p. 53 He was also the only black A subsequent investigation by the US air force found that the US Army had initially recommended Bullard ‘for transfer to the [US] Air Service as a sergeant rather than receive a commission’. William C. Hemidahl, Chief, Reference Division, Center of Air Force History, ‘Memorandum for AF/DPP, From: Center for Air Force History, Subject: Application for Correction of Military Records–Bullard, Eugene J.’, 3 August 1994, p. 1. All other American flyers were granted immediate American officers’ commissions. Major General Michael McGinty, the director of Air Force Personnel Programs, concluded in 1994 that ‘Eugene Bullard was not granted entry into the American Air Service because of his race.’ Michael McGinty, Major General, USAF, ‘Memorandum for SAF/MIBR, From: HQ USAF/DPP, 1040 Air Force Pentagon, Subject: Application for Correction of Military Records (DD Form 149)–Bullard, Eugene J., 123-45-6789’, 8 August 1994. No African-American pilot was commissioned until 1943, and that was in a racially segregated squadron.

  p. 54 ‘If someone needed’ Quoted in Lloyd, Eugene Bullard, p. 103.

  p. 55 Bullard opened another William Shack, Harlem in Montmartre, Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 2001, p. 109.

  p. 55 ‘Like most American men’ Carisella and Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death, p. 229.

  p. 55 Fluent in German, French Lloyd, Eugene Bullard, p. 111.

  p. 55 ‘Of course, they figured’ Carisella and Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death, p. 231.

  p. 56 ‘Bullard, I didn’t know’ Ibid., p. 233.

  p. 56 Trumpeter Arthur Briggs Rudolph Dunbar, ‘Trumpet Player Briggs Freed After Four Years in Camp near Paris’, Chicago Daily Defender, 23 September 1945, p. 3.

  p. 57 ‘Major Bader assigned’ Carisella and Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death, p. 241.

  p. 58 ‘to take advantage’ Letter from Roger Bader, Galeries Saint-Michel, boulevard Saint-Michel, Paris V, 20 September 1947.

  p. 58 Bullard walked and hitch-hiked Lloyd, Eugene Bullard, pp. 118–20.