Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation

by Charles Glass

  p. 342 ‘about starvation and the family’s’ ‘Tracing Noted Surgeon’, Boston Herald, 5 September 1944, in Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, File: Sumner Jackson.

  p. 342 ‘He was drawn’ Diary of Clemence Bock, p. 9, quoted in Hal Vaughan, Doctor to the Resistance: The Heroic Story of an American Surgeon and His Family in Occupied France, Washington: Brassey’s, 2004, p. 108.

  p. 342 ‘He from time to time’ Otto Gresser interview, Kathleen Keating, ‘The American Hospital in Paris During the German Occupation’, 14-page typescript, p. 6, American Hospital of Paris Archives, File: German Occupation by Kathleen Keating and Various Other Histories, 1940–1944.

  p. 343 ‘Nothing, of course, could’ Alice-Leone Moats, No Passport for Paris, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945, p. 172.

  p. 343 ‘were directly connected … Usually the men’ Ibid., p. 193.

  p. 344 ‘Not daring to knock … “Gee”, one of the boys’ Ibid., pp. 195–6.

  p. 344 Jane and Rosemary told Alice-Leone … ‘It was safe’ Ibid., p. 199.

  p. 345 Rosemary prepared Carlow Ibid., p. 200.

  p. 346 ‘You will always be followed … Once they have grilled’ Ibid., p. 180.

  p. 346 In February 1944, Drue Drue Tartière with M. R. Werner, The House near Paris: An American Woman’s Story of Traffic in Patriots, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944, pp. 235–6.

  Chapter Forty: Conspiracies

  p. 347 ‘Charles E. Bedaux was’ ‘Bedaux Legendary As Mystery Man’, New York Times, 20 February 1944, p. 28.

  p. 347 ‘consider whether he should’ ‘Bedaux Ends Life as He Faces Trial on Treason Count’, New York Times, 20 February 1944, p. 1.

  p. 347 ‘Bedaux submitted a list’ Edwin A. Lahey, ‘Bedaux and His Friends’, New Republic, 6 March 1944, p. 308. (Full article: pp. 307–8.)

  p. 348 ‘They subjected investigators’ ‘Dead Men Don’t Blab’, The Nation, no. 158, 11 March 1944, p. 297.

  p. 348 ‘I had been so used’ Gaston Bedaux, La Vie ardente de Charles Bedaux, Paris: privately published, 3 June 1959, p. 88.

  p. 349 ‘Perhaps I would not’ Edmond Taylor, Awakening from History, Boston: Gambit, 1969, p. 328.

  Chapter Forty-one: Springtime in Paris

  p. 350 ‘They have come from America’ Mary Berg (Miriam Wattenberg), The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto (originally published in English as Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary, New York: L. B. Fischer,1945), translation from the Polish by Susan Glass, Oxford: Oneworld, 2006, p. 245.

  p. 350 On board the Gripsholm ‘128 Still Aboard Liner Gripsholm’, New York Times, 17 March 1944, p. 5.

  p. 351 ‘boarded by an official’ Frank S. Adams, ‘35 Soldiers, Ill but Happy, First to Leave Gripsholm’, New York Times, 16 March 1944, p. 1.

  p. 351 One passenger was … ‘The Paris air’ ‘Paris Ghost City, Repatriate Says’, New York Times, 17 March 1944, p. 4.

  p. 352 ‘Life in Paris’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 181.

  p. 353 ‘Those who listened … We could not then’ Ibid., p. 182.

  p. 353 ‘the fallen houses … as he did’ Ibid., p. 183.

  p. 353 ‘It was an ironical’ Ibid., p. 181.

  p. 354 ‘The quarter presented … People in this’ Alice-Leone Moats, No Passport for Paris, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945, pp. 237–8.

  p. 355 On 9 April, she and René Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille d’après ses carnets intimes, Paris, Le Cherche-Midi, 2002, p. 315.

  p. 355 ‘I am not unhappy’ Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–1944, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 310.

  p. 355 Josée de Chambrun, one of the most Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille d’après ses carnets intimes, p. 312.

  p. 355 Moreover … they even consented’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 183.

  p. 356 ‘I hesitated a moment’ Ibid.

  p. 356 ‘During this ceremony’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, pp. 184–5.

  p. 357 ‘I imagine that … tracked it down’ Alice-Leone Moats, No Passport for Paris, pp. 217 and 222.

  Chapter Forty-two: The Maquis to Arms!

  p. 359 ‘From German sources’ Neal H. Petersen (ed.), From Hitler’s Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996, p. 37.

  p. 359 Help came from an unexpected Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965, pp. 190–91n.

  p. 360 While in Niort Ibid.

  p. 360 Posch-Pastor adopted the alias Hal Vaughan, Doctor to the Resistance: The Heroic Story of an American Surgeon and His Family in Occupied France, Washington: Brassey’s, 2004, p. 105.

  p. 361 ‘The lawyer was quite’ Alice-Leone Moats, No Passport for Paris, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945, p. 243.

  p. 361 ‘We all admire’ Ibid., p. 244.

  p. 361 That night, Alice-Leone Moats Ibid., p. 274.

  Chapter Forty-three: Résistants Unmasked

  p. 363 ‘all general meetings’ Telegram 48-52 to London, 3 July 1943, from Allen Dulles, in Neal H. Petersen (ed.), From Hitler’s Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996, p. 77.

  p. 364 ‘compromising letters addressed’ Incoming Telegram, [US Minister to Switzerland Leland] Harrison to Secretary of State, 7 August 1944, RG 59, Decimal File 1940–44, Box 1160, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./8-744, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

  p. 364 Hints that something was wrong Hal Vaughan, Doctor to the Resistance: The Heroic Story of an American Surgeon and His Family in Occupied France, Washington: Brassey’s, 2004, p. 105, p. 109.

  p. 366 ‘We were all arrested’ Handwritten letter from Charlotte (Toquette) Jackson to her sister-in-law, Mrs Clifford (Freda) Swensen, 18 May 1945, Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, File: Sumner Jackson.

  p. 366 ‘Today is the day … My courage is’ Letter from Charlotte (Toquette) Jackson to her sister, Alice (Tat) Barrelet de Ricou, 31 May 1944, quoted in Vaughan, Ibid., p. 112.

  p. 367 ‘We had spent 8 days’ Phillip Jackson, handwritten letter, ‘Dear Friends’, 10 May 1945, from Neustadt, Holstein, Germany, Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, File: Sumner Jackson.

  p. 367 ‘We were then separated’ Ibid.

  p. 367 ‘As I was an’ Interview with Phillip Jackson, May 2000, Paris, in Vaughan, Doctor to the Resistance, p. 114.

  p. 368 ‘informed U.S. Legation’ Letter via airmail pouch from Minister, American Legation, Berne, to Secretary of State, 8 June 1944, Document 351.1121, Jackson, Sumner W./6-2944, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

  p. 368 ‘Swiss Legation Vichy’ Incoming Telegraph, Harrison to Secretary of State, 13 July 1944, RG 59, Decimal File, 1940–44, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./7-1344, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

  p. 368 ‘On June 27, 1944’ ‘Memorandum for the American Embassy in Paris’, Enclosure No. 1 to Despatch No. 1148 from American Embassy, Paris, 27 February 1945, 13 July 1944, RG 59, Decimal File, 1940–44, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./3-545, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

  p. 368 ‘At the same time’ Ibid.

  p. 369 ‘We are not in the war’ ‘The Unliberated–The France Still in Chains Writhed with Hope and Hate’, Time, 19 June 1944.

  p. 369 The Resistance did ‘Patriots Cut Rails From Paris South’, New York Times, 11 August 1944, p. 3.

  p. 369 ‘The star of hope’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 212.

  p. 370 Paris, as its supply Dominiqe Lapierre, ‘August 1944, When Allied Flags Began to Appear in Paris Windows’, International Herald Tribune, Paris, 22 August 1994.

  Chapter Forty-four: Via Dolorosa

  p. 3
71 ‘One fine day’ Phillip Jackson, handwritten letter, ‘Dear Friends’, 10 May 1945, from Neustadt, Holstein, Germany, Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, File: Sumner Jackson. See also State Department typed transcript of the same letter, RG 59, Decimal File, 1945–49, Box 1710, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./5-2445. On p. 367 Phillip is quoted that he spent 16 days in the Gestrapo prison, however, in this quote it is 14 days.

  p. 371 ‘finally had been’ ‘Memorandum for the American Embassy in Paris’, Enclosure No. 1 to Despatch No. 1148 from American Embassy, Paris, 27 February 1945, 13 July 1944, RG 59, Decimal File, 1940–44, Box 5280, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./3-545, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

  p. 371 ‘Inquiry of Swiss Foreign’ Incoming Telegram, Harrison to Secretary of State, 28 August 1944, RG 59, Decimal File, 1940–44, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./8-2844, US National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

  p. 372 ‘Journey by bus’ Phillip Jackson, handwritten letter, ‘Dear Friends’, 10 May 1945, from Neustadt, Holstein, Germany, Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, File: Sumner Jackson. See also State Department typed transcript of the same letter, RG 59, Decimal File, 1945–49, Box 1710, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./5-2445.

  p. 372 When he and Phillip ‘Paragraph of a Cable Received’, from Leland Harrison, US Minister to Switzerland, to Secretary of State, 2 June 1944, Cable number 3504, RG 389: Records of the Provost Marshal General, American POW Information Bureau, General Subject File, 1942–1946, File: Vittel Vosges (Frontstalag 194), US National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Harrison wrote that the Germans moved the camp because ‘black market operations were indulged in by certain elements at Compiègne for quite a while’.

  p. 372 ‘Red Cross parcels’ Phillip Jackson, handwritten letter, ‘Dear Friends’, 10 May 1945, from Neustadt, Holstein, Germany, Massachusetts General Hospital Archives, File: Sumner Jackson. See also State Department typed transcript of the same letter, RG 59, Decimal File, 1945–49, Box 1710, Document 351.1121 Jackson, Sumner W./5- 2445.

  p. 372 ‘We were escorted’ Ibid.

  Chapter Forty-five: Schwarze Kapelle

  p. 374 ‘Hitler’s dead’ Roger Manville and Heinrich Fraenkel, The July Plot: The Attempt on Hitler’s Life in July 1944, London: The Bodley Head, 1964, p. 130.

  p. 375 ‘the nightmare of a shadowy’ Edmond Taylor, Awakening from History, Boston: Gambit, 1969, p. 328.

  Chapter Forty-six: Slaves of the Reich

  p. 376 ‘Nobody knew why … A man of’ George Martelli with Michel Hollard, The Man Who Saved London: The Story of Michel Hollard, D.S.O., Croix de Guerre, London: Companion Book Club, 1960, pp. 235–6.

  Chapter Forty-seven: One Family Now

  p. 379 ‘Kindly make it clear’ Neal H. Petersen (ed.), From Hitler’s Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996, p. 334.

  p. 379 Enfière informed Laval Hubert Cole, Laval: A Biography, London: Heinemann, 1963, p. 262.

  p. 379 On the morning of Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965, p. 75.

  p. 379 Laval was having dinner Pierre Laval, The Unpublished Diary of Pierre Laval, London: Falcon Press, 1948, p. 172.

  p. 380 ‘A notice of arrest’ Ibid., p. 175.

  p. 380 ‘President Herriot and you’ René de Chambrun, Sorti du rang, Paris: Atelier Marcel Jullian, 1980, p. 237.

  p. 380 ‘it was a marvelous summer day’ Josée Laval de Chambrun, ‘The Last Luncheon with Pierre Laval’, in René de Chambrun, Pierre Laval: Traitor or Patriot?, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984, Exhibit I, p. 193. See also Josée Laval de Chambrun, in ‘A Luncheon on 17 August 1944’, 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, vol. II, Palo Alto, CA: The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1957, pp. 1022–5.

  p. 380 ‘Abetz looked very much embarrassed … anecdotes and reminiscences’ de Chambrun, pp. 194–5.

  p. 381 René followed his wife Ibid., Sorti du rang, p. 239.

  p. 381 ‘There is a side’ de Chambrun, Pierre Laval: Traitor or Patriot?, p. 110. Seymour Weller was the cousin of Clarence Dillon, who bought Château Haut-Brion in 1935 at the suggestion of Aldebert de Chambrun. René had been sponsored by Dillon in New York and was a regular guest at his house in Far Hills, New Jersey, before the war.

  p. 381 The American was his friend Seymour Weller’s cousin, Joan de Mouchy, told the author in 2006 that, when a German officer warned him he was about to be interned, he would check into the American Hospital for a supposed operation. Weller was the cousin of Joan’s grandfather, Clarence Dillon, who owned the Château de Haut-Brion vineyards. Pierre Laval sponsored Weller for French citizenship in 1939.

  p. 382 ‘I hurried to Matignon … She knew that I’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, p. 216.

  p. 382 ‘in whose hands’ Laval, The Unpublished Diary of Pierre Laval, p. 175.

  p. 382 ‘The German police’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 217. Laval wrote that, in fact, three of his ministers managed to disappear: Cathala, Grasset and Chassaigne (Pierre Laval, The Unpublished Diary of Pierre Laval, p. 175).

  p. 382 The three Chambruns Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, p. 93.

  p. 383 ‘I was in love with the daughter’ Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille d’après ses carnets intimes, Paris: Le Cherche-Midi, p. 70.

  p. 383 The Federal Reserve chief Sylvia Jukes Morris, Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce, New York: Random House, 1997. On p. 17, the author wrote that Clara and Aldebert had dinner in Washington with Eugene and Agnes Meyer in 1932 just before Meyer bought the Washington Post. René was living in New York at the time. The author added, ‘Not many years before, Alice’s [Roosevelt’s] husband, Nicholas, Speaker of the House, had been surprised in flagrante delicto with Cissy [Patterson] on a bathroom floor.’

  p. 383 There was also an aversion Clara confessed that, when her cousin Margaret married Pierre de Chambrun in 1895, ‘I could not disguise from myself that I felt badly about Margaret’s marriage, just as two years before I had taken her conversion [to Catholicism] rather hard, not that my own Protestantism was at all of a militant character, for we had all been brought up in the atmosphere of tolerance which is one of the best characteristics of Cincinnati’ (Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Like Myself, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936, p. 29). For Clara, tolerance won out when she married Pierre’s brother, the Catholic Aldebert, six years later. For René to marry a woman of German-Jewish background, though, may have been less acceptable. René’s reluctance to stray beyond family bounds explained, in part, his loyalty to a father-in-law whom the Allies believed incarnated French submission to Germany. Eugene Meyer bought the Washington Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933, and in 1939 Florence Meyer married Austrian character actor Oscar Homulka. Her younger sister, Katharine, married Philip Graham and later became publisher of the Washington Post.

  p. 384 ‘We had risked spending’ René de Chambrun, Sorti du rang, p. 239.

  p. 384 ‘Come now! Good’ Will Brownell and Richard N. Billings, So Close to Greatness: A Biography of William C. Bullitt, New York: Macmillan, 1987, p. 302.

  p. 384 Ibid., p. 304.

  Chapter Forty-eight: The Paris Front

  p. 385–6 ‘Heartbroken as I was … Inside the gardens’ Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen: The Story of My Life, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949, pp. 219–20.

  p. 386 ‘Whatever happens … the Führer’ Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965, p. 141.

  p. 387 ‘Amateurish barricades sprang’ de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 224.

  p. 387 ‘The children engaged’ Sylvia Beach
, Shakespeare and Company, London: Faber and Faber, 1960, pp. 222–3.

  p. 388 ‘We heard that ‘“they”’ Ibid., p. 223.

  p. 388 The area commander General Aldebert de Chambrun to the Board of Directors of the American Hospital of Paris, 9 December 1944, p. 5 (of a 7 page typescript), in Archives of the American Hospital of Paris, File: American Hospital Report: 1940–1944. Otto Gresser, the hospital’s superintendent of administrative services during the occupation, wrote that the Germans in Neuilly had ‘18 guns, 5 tanks, 60 trucks and a large supply of munitions’.

  p. 389 ‘I ask you to consider’ René de Chambrun, Sorti du rang, Paris: Atelier Marcel Jullian, 1980, p. 229.

  p. 389 On the morning of 19 August Collins and Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, p. 113.

  p. 389 ‘a fortress capable’ de Chambrun, Sorti du rang, p. 230.

  p. 390 ‘It is impossible’ Ibid., p. 229.

  p. 390 ‘Strange spectacle that’ Ibid.

  p. 390 The French and German soldiers Interview with Otto Gresser, in Kathleen Keating, ‘The American Hospital of Paris During the German Occupation’, May 1981, 14-page typescript, Archives of the American Hospital of Paris, File: The German Occupation by Kathleen Keating and Various Other Histories.

  p. 391 ‘many persons of extremely’ Longworth de Chambrun, Shadows Lengthen, p. 221.

  p. 391 ‘I recognized her’ Ibid., p. 221.

  p. 392 Clara had promised … ‘arrived safely at home’ Ibid., p. 223.

  Chapter Forty-nine: Tout Mourir