Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation

by Charles Glass

  p. 96 ‘Among the collaborationists’ Silas P., ‘Letter from France II (July)’, Horizon, vol. 4, no. 23, November 1942, p. 351.

  p. 97 ‘He was there when [Paul] Valéry’ Adrienne Monnier, ‘Benoist-Méchin’, in Monnier, The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier, pp. 133–4.

  p. 97 She did not write what became In Laval’s government of 18 April 1942, Jacques Benoist-Méchain was promoted to ‘secrétariat d’Etat chargé de la main d’oeuvre française en Allemagne’. In September, he assumed the new post of ‘secrétariat général à la Police’ under René Bousquet and stood down in January 1944.

  Chapter Eight: Americans at Vichy

  p. 98 Miss Morgan, who had returned ‘Five Women Sail to Assist Allies’, New York Times, 3 March 1940, p. 3.

  p. 98 ‘About that time … Finno-hysteria broke out’ Polly Peabody, Occupied Territory, London: The Cresset Press, 1941, p. 3.

  p. 98 The American-Scandinavian Field Hospital’s ‘Hospital Formed to Help Finland’, New York Times, 11 February 1940, p. 28. The group’s headquarters were at 340 Park Avenue, and among the sponsors were Prince Carl, chief of the Swedish Red Cross, former President Herbert Hoover, Mrs Frederic Guest and Mrs Winston Guest.

  p. 98 ‘the Black Eagle of Harlem’ Peabody, Occupied Territory, p. 7. (I met ‘Colonel’ Julian in Beirut in 1975, when he announced an offer to restore Emperor Haile Selasse to his throne in Ethiopia. He may actually have come to Lebanon to sell arms to one faction or another in the nascent civil war. The adventures of this flamboyant character had already been recorded in Peter Nugent’s The Black Eagle of Harlem, New York: Bantam Books, 1972.)

  p. 99 ‘At each station’ Peabody, Occupied Territory, p. 104.

  p. 99 ‘Hell, we’ll be just … I turned on him’ Ibid., pp. 105–6.

  p. 99 ‘“Where is everybody”’ Ibid., pp. 110–11.

  p. 99 ‘The people were’ Ibid., p. 114.

  p. 100 ‘the Mayor had not waited’ Ibid., p. 115.

  p. 100 ‘Stepping into the street’ Ibid., pp. 117–18.

  p. 100 ‘During the first few days’ Ibid., p. 119.

  p. 101 ‘a French duchess’ Ibid., p. 122.

  p. 101 The American Embassy made its ‘Office Memorandum, American Consul Walter W. Orebaugh, to S. Pinckney Tuck, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim, Vichy’, 31 October 1942, Enclosure: List of Properties, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland, General Records of the State Department, Decimal File Box 1168, 351.115/136.

  p. 101 ‘They made up their minds’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 129.

  p. 101 Ambassador Bullitt had left Orville Bullitt (ed.), For the President, Personal and Secret: Correspondence Between Franklin D. Roosevelt and William C. Bullitt, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972, p. 476. Will Brownell and Richard N. Billings, So Close to Greatness: A Biography of William C. Bullitt, New York; Macmillan, 1987, pp. 261–2.

  p. 101 Bullitt caught up with Paul Saurin, ‘The Allied Landing in North Africa’, 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. II, 1957, p. 600. Saurin, parliamentary deputy for Oran, met Bullitt and Murphy at the Hôtel de Charlannes just after their arrival.

  p. 101 ‘seemed to have lost’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 129.

  p. 102 The Americans tended See Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944, New York: W. W. Norton and Company (also London: Barrie and Jenkins), 1972, pp. 60–63. Part of the thesis of Paxton’s excellent book is that the Vichy initiatives seeking collaboration with Germany were supported by Pétain, Admiral Darlan and a majority of ministers, rather than by Laval alone.

  p. 102 Pétain not only cut Paxton, Vichy France, p. 56. Laval was reported to have said to Pétain when he ordered the attack on the British, ‘You have just lost one war. Do you want to lose another?’

  p. 102 The dissenter was ‘Lone Dissenting Senator In France Is a U.S. Citizen’, New York Times, 10 July 1940, p. 4.

  p. 102 ‘During that morning’ Peabody, Occupied Territory, p. 119.

  p. 103 ‘the single example of courage’ Bullitt (ed.), For the President, pp. 490–91.

  p. 104 ‘Vive la République’ Ibid., p. 491. Brownell and Billings, So Close to Greatness, p. 262. See also William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969, p. 942. Shirer wrote that the voice was that of Senator Astier. He added, ‘The Third Republic was dead. It had committed suicide.’

  p. 104 ‘The last scene’ Bullitt (ed.), For the President.

  p. 104 ‘Say there, Aldebert’ Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille d’après ses carnets intimes, Paris: Le Cherche-Midi, 2002, p. 235. This story comes from a diary of Josée Laval de Chambrun. The diaries are held by the Fondation Josée et René de Chambrun in René and Josée’s former house at 6-bis Place du Palais Bourbon, Paris 75007. The directors of the foundation allowed me to read, but not to copy, Josée’s diaries for the occupation years. Many of the entries, however, are reproduced in Pourcher’s book. The directors did permit me to read and copy René and Josée de Chambrun’s letters and other documents.

  p. 104 ‘I was introduced’ Peabody, Occupied Territory, p. 122.

  p. 104 ‘I am going to … Of all the people’ Ibid., p. 123.

  p. 105 ‘Without suspecting that’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 132.

  p. 105 ‘A row of high screens Ibid., p. 128.

  p. 105 ‘What a kowtowing’ Ibid.

  p. 105 ‘Of course not’ Brownell and Billings, So Close to Greatness, p. 262.

  p. 105 ‘In those first weeks … I think most’ Robert Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964, p. 71.

  p. 106 ‘The old soldier … The Marshal was then Ibid., pp. 72–3.

  p. 107 ‘The president wants’ René de Chambrun, Mission and Betrayal, 1940–1945: Working with Franklin Roosevelt to Help Save Britain and Europe, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1992, p. 66.

  p. 107 ‘Radiograms reporting the advance’ Letter from René de Chambrun to New York, recipient’s name blocked out by the FBI, 31 May 1945, from FBI files supplied under Freedom of Information Act, unnumbered file, FOIPA No. 1088544-001. See also de Chambrun, Mission and Betrayal, pp. 67–8. René de Chambrun, I Saw France Fall: Will She Rise Again?, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1940, p. 199.

  p. 108 ‘I maintain that’ Chambrun, Mission and Betrayal, p. 69.

  p. 108 Alice had once caught ‘Two for Cissy’, Time, 2 August 1937.

  p. 109 ‘You have been able’ René de Chambrun, Pierre Laval: Traitor or Patriot?, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984, p. 62.

  p. 109 Aware of food shortages de Chambrun, Mission and Betrayal, p. 115.

  p. 110 ‘refreshed and ready’ ‘Black Week’, Time, 24 June 1940.

  p. 110 ‘France will remain firmly’ de Chambrun, Pierre Laval, p. 63.

  p. 111 ‘The president has’ Ibid., p. 64.

  p. 111 ‘René de Chambrun’ ‘Concrete Guy’, Time, 21 October 1940.

  p. 111 ‘like his mother’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 137.

  p. 112 ‘He is a plausible’ British Embassy, Washington, Telegram from Mr Butler (Washington), No. 2675, Registry Number C 12267/7407/17, Foreign Office Files p. 211, British National Archives, Kew.

  p. 112 ‘we don’t like’ Ibid.

  Chapter Nine: Back to Paris

  p. 113 ‘It was late’ Polly Peabody, Occupied Territory, London: The Cresset Press, 1941, pp. 151–2.

  p. 113 ‘put both fists … This was my’ Ibid., p. 155.

  p. 114 ‘My old lady’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 139
.

  p. 114 ‘a German official … The use of the’ Ibid., p. 139.

  p. 115 ‘During those first’ Ibid., p. 142.

  p. 115 ‘young, attractive … a grand sense’ ‘Life in Paris, Special Wednesday Reportage’, First Library Broadcast, Paris-Mondiale, 21 February 1940, in the Archives of the American Library of Paris, Box 20, File K.5 (American Library Clippings, 1939–1940).

  p. 116 ‘pasted U.S. seals’ 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. 116 ‘It is a funny point’ Ibid., p. 10.

  p. 116 The occupation meant Ibid., p. 12.

  p. 116 ‘a stiff Prussian-looking’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 144.

  p. 117 ‘held each other’ Ibid.

  p. 117 ‘You will necessarily … No, my dear young’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, pp. 144–5.

  p. 117 Works by Ernest Hemingway ‘L’Histoire de la Librairie Américaine de Paris’, Account written by Dorothy Reeder during the occupation in Paris, beginning, ‘When the war broke out …’, p. 1, American Library in Paris Archives, Box 20, File K.26. See also, in same file, Milton E. Lord, ‘A Report upon the American Library in Paris: Findings and Recommendations’, p. 1. See also Edgar Ansel Mowrer, ‘Nazis Forcing Own Culture on French People’, Chicago Daily News, 16 October 1940, p. 1: the Bernhard List ‘includes 143 items on four pages … Four other Americans appear on the Bernhard list: the newspapermen, Louis Fischer and H. R. Knickerbocker, Prof. Calvin B. Hoover, and Leon G. Turrou, formerly of the F.B.I.’ Mowrer added, ‘The American Lending Library in Paris was also visited but upon the librarian’s promise to respect German wishes, nothing was taken away.’

  p. 117 ‘for purposes of study’ Ibid.

  p. 117 ‘No Jews are’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 145.

  p. 117 ‘My simple solution’ Ibid.

  p. 118 ‘GREETINGS BEST WISHES’ American Library of Paris Archives, Box 20, File K5.2 War Years (September–November 1940).

  p. 118 ‘We are now open’ American Library of Paris Archives, Box 9, File E.3, Letter from Dorothy Reeder to Mr Michel Gunn, Rockefeller Foundation, 49 West 49th Street, New York, 19 September 1940. The letter is sparing with information, perhaps because it would have to pass the German censor. She added, ‘The Comtesse and the General are back.’

  p. 118 ‘Few people came’ ‘L’Histoire de la Librairie Américaine de Paris’, Account written by Dorothy Reeder during the occupation in Paris, beginning, ‘When the war broke out …’, p. 1, American Library in Paris Archives, Box 20, File K.26.

  p. 118 ‘It is enough to say’ Ibid.

  p. 119 ‘I want particularly’ American Library of Paris Archives, Box 20, File K5.2 War Years (September–November 1940).

  p. 119 ‘Dr. Gros has’ American Library of Paris Archives, Box 9, File E.3, Letter from Dorothy Reeder to Mr Michel Gunn, Rockefeller Foundation, 49 West 49th Street, New York, 19 September 1940.

  Chapter Ten: In Love with Love

  p. 121 ‘a Mephistophelean little’ Time, 15 November 1937.

  p. 121 ‘He reminded himself’ Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’, The New Yorker, 22 September 1945, p. 29.

  p. 121 ‘Franco-American’ Bedaux His biographers differ on his date of birth. Jim Christy, in The Price of Power: A Biography of Charles Eugene Bedaux, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1984, on p. 3 gives it as 10 October 1886. George Ungar’s film biography, The Champagne Safari, Canada, 1995, said it was 26 May 1886. Bedaux’s passport renewal form of 1941 also states that he was born on 10 October 1886. It is reproduced in C. M. Hardwick, Time Study in Treason: Charles E. Bedaux, Patriot or Collaborator, Chelmsford, Essex: Peter Horsnell, publisher, undated, probably 1990, p. 7.

  p. 121 ‘a real Horatio’ ‘Wally’s Host–A Tale of Sandhog to Millionaire’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 31 March 1937, p. 6.

  p. 121 When a woman Christy, The Price of Power, p. 15.

  p. 122 Arriving aged 19 Ibid., p. 21. Ungar, The Champagne Safari.

  p. 122 ‘I soon found’ Liberty magazine, 1930, quoted in Christy, The Price of Power, pp. 25–6.

  p. 122 American labour unions … ‘proper use of’ ‘Bedaux Arrested in Deal with Foe’, New York Times, 14 January 1943, pp. 1 and 3.

  p. 122 In 1936, Charlie Chaplin See Internet Movie Data Base, Modern Times.

  p. 123 ‘Let us be the missionary’ Ungar, The Champagne Safari, Bedaux speech at 18 minutes 40 seconds.

  p. 123 ‘stripped of its’ ‘Mr. Bedaux’s Friends’, Time, 15 November 1937.

  p. 123 ‘the most completely’ Ibid.

  p. 123 Among them was ‘Colonel’ Christy, The Price of Power, p. 63.

  p. 123 The next year, his first Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’, The New Yorker, 22 September 1945, p. 29.

  p. 124 He claimed later Ibid., p. 34.

  p. 124 ‘Men, women, children … worldly, boldly battered’ Ibid., pp. 30 and 29.

  p. 124 In 1924, Bedaux Christy, The Price of Power, p. 62. ‘Parisys Silenced?’, Time, 15 February 1926.

  p. 124 The Bedauxs, who had no Ungar, The Champagne Safari. The film includes footage of the Bedauxs that Charles commissioned to record his 1934 expedition.

  p. 125 Bedaux loved inventing Christy, The Price of Power, p. 61.

  p. 125 ‘A man loves’ Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism III’, The New Yorker, 13 October 1945, p. 48.

  p. 125 Within ten years Yves Levant and Marc Nikitin, ‘Should Charles Eugene Bedaux be Revisited?’, Paper presented to the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Business Research Unit, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, Wales, 14–15 September 2006, p. 11. See also Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’, The New Yorker, 22 September 1945, p. 29.

  p. 125 The young counts Franz Joseph was Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary from 1848 to 1916.

  p. 125 Friederich met Bedaux Author’s correspondence with von Ledebur’s family in Vienna, June 2008.

  p. 125 He approached a German Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’, The New Yorker, 6 October 1945, p. 32.

  p. 125 Through him, Bedaux became Ibid.

  p. 125 Bedaux commissioned her Ibid.

  p. 126 ‘My wife and I believe’ ‘Wally’s Host–A Tale of Sandhog to Millionaire’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 31 March 1937, p. 6.

  p. 127 ‘my wife and I’ Christy, The Price of Power, p. 146.

  p. 127 ‘She was so much finer’ Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’, The New Yorker, 22 September 1945, p. 40.

  p. 127 ‘unceasing affection … knew how to help’ Gaston Bedaux, La Vie ardente de Charles Bedaux, Paris: privately published, 3 June 1959, p. 88.

  p. 127 Bedaux’s wedding present Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’, The New Yorker, 6 October 1945, p. 32; and Christy, The Price of Power, p. 59.

  p. 127 Friedrich von Ledebur, who met Federal Bureau of Investigation interview with Frederick Ledebur, Telemeter, 21 January 1944, US Department of Justice Communications Section, from FBI files supplied under Freedom of Information Act, unnumbered file, pp. 64692, 64693 and 64694. FOIPA No. 1088544-001. (All records released by the FBI are from RG65, Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, World War II, FBI Headquarters Files, 100-49901 Sections 1–2, Charles Bedaux (FOIPA), Box number 113.) FBI agents questioned Ledebur in Ventura, California, on 20 January 1944.

  p. 128 Subsequently, the duke Fritz Wiedemann had been a captain in the 16th Bavarian Regiment, commanding Corporal Adolf Hitler. He became Hitler’s adjutant in 1934 and was close enough to the dictator to be able to criticize him from time to time. However, in 1938, after the savagery of the Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany, Hitler dismissed Wiedemann and Dr Hjalmar Schacht, who had criticized the thugs responsibl
e. Wiedemann was assigned, along with his mistress, the half-Jewish Princess Stefanie von Hohenlohe, as German Consul-General in San Francisco. See John Toland, Adolf Hitler, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1976, p. 509.

  p. 128 Watson had enjoyed a private Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001, pp. 132–3.

  p. 128 ‘the slightest concern’ ‘Mr. Bedaux’s Friends’, Time, 15 November 1937.

  p. 129 Bedaux suffered what was This story is told, in differing details, in Christy, The Price of Power, pp. 167–83; Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’, The New Yorker, 6 October 1945, p. 34; and Martin Allen, Hidden Agenda, London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 86–98. Gaston Bedaux’s privately printed biography of his brother, La Vie ardente de Charles E. Bedaux, on p. 61, refers to the incident briefly: ‘Unhappily, from the other side of the ocean, for reasons that I shall ignore, an angry reception had been prepared.’ Charles told his brother that, from that day, ‘his life was constantly in danger’.

  p. 130 Bedaux went to Britain Christy, The Price of Power, p. 206.

  p. 130 When Bedaux discovered Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’, The New Yorker, 6 October 1945, p. 36.

  p. 130 At the end of June ‘U.S. Property in France Has Light War Toll’, Chicago Daily Tribune,16 July 1940, p. 6.

  p. 131 The Bedaux Company’s Dutch headquarters Federal Bureau of Investigation interview with Frederick Ledebur, Telemeter, 21 January 1944, U.S. Department of Justice Communications Section, from F.B.I. files supplied under Freedom of Information Act, unnumbered file, pp. 64692, 64693 and 64694. FOIPA No. 1088544-001.

  p. 132 An excellent horseman Christy, The Price of Power, p. 202. Friedrich von Ledebur later worked in films as a coordinator of horse stunts and an actor. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 Notorious and played Queequeeg in John Huston’s Moby-Dick in 1956. Also in Moby-Dick was his English ex-wife, Iris Tree, the daughter of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. His last film role was as Admiral Aulent in Fellini’s Ginger and Fred in 1976. See Internet Movie Database at www.imdb.com/name/nm0496428/. He died, aged 86, in 1986.