Free Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 by Allan Mitchell Page A

cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine

    An intimidating sight known to every Parisian during four years

PART III
    H OLDING O N
    (November 1942–June 1944)

PART IV
    P ULLING O UT
    (June–August 1944)

E PILOGUE
    The Long Handshake

    T he Germans were great record-keepers. During the four years and two months of the Occupation of Paris, they managed to produce tens of thousands of documents that recorded in minute detail every conceivable aspect of their military administration. Even though a substantial portion of those papers was either scattered or deliberately destroyed as the Occupation came to a close, huge quantities of them remain—vastly more than a single scholar could digest in a lifetime. From that surfeit of evidence it is necessary to select, and on that selection the historical record must be based. Of all the documents written near the Occupation's end or shortly thereafter, one stands out. Although this memorandum was undated and unsigned, it was clearly composed by an officer within the military administration at the Hotel Majestic, one who witnessed the final days and then sat down to describe the Occupation's evolution and dénouement. 1
    According to this extraordinarily perceptive account, the Allied invasion came as no surprise. Planning for the eventuality of an evacuation of Paris had proceeded for months before the June 1944 landing, and few in the Majestic harbored any illusions that such an outcome could be averted. By the beginning of August, with the news that the Allied surge from Normandy could no longer be contained, that assumption became a certainty. Yet the capital seemed quieter than ever. Because of the shortage of electricity, city lights burned only for one hour at dawn and another before midnight. Theaters, cinemas, bars, and restaurants were closed. Meanwhile, German military staff members in the Majestic worked on, and they continued every day to receive visits from the same French officials who had come to their offices during the past months and years. If not friends, they had come to know one another and had developed a close personal relationship. All of them, French and German, knew that the end was approaching, but no one dared to express that reality in words. As a rule, there was no jesting or hinting, no clever remark or strained parting salutation. Instead, the only indication of a farewell was an unusually lengthy silent clasp of hands. 2
    To understand the significance of that gesture, one must keep a firm grasp of chronological sequence. The German Occupation had evolved over time, and with it so had the meaning of collaboration. No doubt, that term has become a dirty word in the lexicon of French history, but only gradually did it acquire the thoroughly pejorative connotations that we now associate with it.
    During the first phase of the Occupation, before the German invasion of Russia, nothing seemed more natural than, in a literal sense, “working together.” That was immediately apparent, for instance, when German soldiers joined French farmers in the harvest of early autumn 1940. Everyone had an interest in the gathering, distribution, and sale of foodstuffs that, as a result, initially remained in abundant supply. In central Paris, commerce thus resumed quickly after the fall of France, and the cooperation of French and German functionaries to promote it was taken for granted. Meanwhile, in Paris the Germans were to be seen everywhere: in the metro, on the streets, in restaurants and shops, at the theater, and also in bars and brothels. Each personal encounter implicated the French ever deeper in approval or acceptance of the unavoidable circumstances of Occupation. Collaboration assumed a multiplicity of forms, and complicity became a commonplace of daily life. The persistence of a black market provided a perfect example. Attempts to suppress it proved to be of little avail, since French and Germans alike benefited from it. The geographic division of France, the