Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 (19 page)

Through all of this turmoil the French capital remained remarkably passive. Paris was arguably the safest place in Europe, relatively unscathed in comparison with London, Rotterdam, Warsaw, or the major urban areas of Germany, such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. Police records show that random attacks and explosions continued to occur in the twenty
arrondissements
and in the immediate suburbs. Yet most Parisians were unaware or scarcely informed of the reach and force of German repression throughout France. People lived day to day, trying to avoid hunger, cold, and trouble. It seemed that everyone was waiting for the great Allied armada that was certain to land someday on French shores.

Chapter 13

A D
EEP
C
ONTRADICTION

A
fter November 1942, what difference did the approach of war make for the French economy? Although it was unanimously accepted that the Allied invasion of North Africa marked an important moment in the Occupation, German reactions naturally varied. “The situation in France is completely altered,” observed one official in the Hotel Majestic. The French population was now overcome with “resignation, fatigue, and worry,” wrote another. The opening of a southern front was simply “a turning point,” added a third.
¹
Why so?

First of all, cut off from its colonial possessions, France was bound to suffer even more severe food shortages. Vegetables, fruits, potatoes, grain, fish, wine, and olive oil counted among the products no longer available from the African continent—a reduction, according to one unverifiable source, of 40 percent in foodstuffs for the motherland. The French diet, in any event, was henceforth “extremely insufficient.” Occupation authorities calculated that nutrition in France, on a par with Germany in pre-war years, had sunk drastically: the average daily intake of a Frenchman was 1,462 calories versus 2,352 in Germany, about 38 percent less. Already plagued by shortfalls in coal supplies and electrical current, Parisians in particular were adversely affected.
²

In addition, with another winter approaching in December 1942, it was distressing that woolens could not be purchased in Paris shops and were available only on the black market. The existence of a thriving sub-economy of illicit goods had long been a disturbance for the Occupation, and it was an especially sensitive topic for Hermann Göring, the head of the Four Year Plan in Berlin, who was annoyed by French complaints that the Germans themselves were to blame—because they spent freely to obtain whatever they wanted—and that previous measures to control illegal sales had been “much too benign.” The upshot was an order from Göring's office in January 1943 that an initiative, a Schwarzmarkt-Aktion, should be undertaken to quash the black market in Paris by the end of March. This edict specifically included German military personnel in France for whom the “ruthless repression” of forbidden commerce would be “without any exceptions.” Regardless of rank, anyone found guilty was to face a court-martial. As usual, the Majestic meanwhile enlisted cooperation from the French police, who claimed to make 1,859 arrests of civilians in a “crushing effort” to respect Göring's wishes.
³
Subsequent German documents made clear, however, that all manner of shortages still persisted in the marketplace and that the black market did not disappear. The result was that rations were further limited in 1943 and that “strong tensions” were thereby created between a disenchanted populace and the Occupation.
⁴

A global reckoning of France's economic decline during the war years can only be quite approximate. A German staff report estimated that coal shipments to Paris from various mining regions met 50 percent of normal requirements in October 1943, 39 percent in November, and 25 percent in December. This progressive slump was attributed mainly to transportation problems, which also explained the shortage of wood and therefore paper supplies, thought to be diminished by 30 percent.
⁵
The SNCF submitted figures comparing food deliveries to Paris in November 1942 with November 1943: in one year, meat was down 50 percent, salt 25 percent, wine 24 percent, milk 17 percent, and so forth. In early 1944, as another memo stated, transportation was “stretched to the limit.” Constrictions of food and fuel stocks usually affected non-essential industrial firms at first, whereas those directly engaged in the manufacture of arms (the so-called Rü-Betriebe) were spared. But, unavoidably, they also became squeezed and were forced in mid-February 1944 to report a diminution in production of 9 percent. Later that spring, in the wake of Allied bombing and local sabotage, there was an almost complete cessation of coal shipments from northern mining fields. Worse, the Majestic admitted, no improvement was foreseeable.
⁶

These circumstances were exacerbated by ever rising quotas for the delivery of French goods and foods to the Reich. The amount of such requisitions was personally set and insisted upon by Göring, who left no doubt that their objective was “the best possible result for Germany.” Directions from the Four Year Plan were binding, as the French were instructed at a conference in August 1943. Their only part in the discussions would concern the proper means to fulfill the required quotas.
⁷
Increased shipments of grain and meat from France were special objects of German attention, although it was obvious that the dietary gap was sure to widen as a consequence. Complaints from Vichy about the “extraordinary difficulties” of compliance were generally acknowledged but ignored. They included the reluctance of French farmers to cooperate, repeated sabotages of equipment such as threshing machines, inroads of enemy radio propaganda throughout agricultural areas, and even some incidents of “open rebellion.”
⁸
The MBF's Economic Section conceded that German demands were not only difficult but “in some cases impossible.” Moreover, it was evident that the Occupation lacked adequate means to impose its will or completely satisfy the demands from Berlin. With the menace of an Allied invasion hovering overhead, the Wehrmacht's field commanders could not disperse their troops throughout all of rural France. Yet without such a broad deployment of force, there was no assurance that the assigned quotas would be reached. In short, the allegedly almighty Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich possessed “completely insufficient instruments of power.”
⁹

The current wisdom was that French wages were 20 to 25 percent lower than the German average, whereas French prices were 10 to 15 percent higher—a circumstance, if remotely accurate, that Pierre Laval called “unbearable.”
¹⁰
But Laval's campaign to raise wages was beaten back by Fritz Sauckel, who insisted that inflation, along with the black market, must be strangled in its Paris cradle. Initially, his sole concession was to allow a modest 10 percent raise for skilled workers in the metal trades essential for the German war effort. This measure only provoked hard feelings, as well as absenteeism “bordering on sabotage,” in other branches of industry. To ease that tension, in turn, Sauckel finally agreed to allow textiles and mining to join metallurgy, and, near the bottom of the scale, he also granted Laval's urgent request to boost salaries above the subsistence level for employees in electricity, chemicals, and insurance.
¹¹
But there he drew the line. He reminded the French that he exercised full authority granted directly by Hitler to control the price and wage structure in all of Western Europe and that it would be “positively absurd” to permit an exception for them. Not only did he demand stricter enforcement of price controls, he proposed that prices actually be rolled back to their 1939 level.
¹²
This announcement was greeted with consternation even within Sauckel's own administrative team in Paris, where the practicality of such a drastic reduction was questioned in light of estimates that French prices had increased 130 percent since the beginning of the war. Sauckel's response was somewhat vague on whether he would press the matter, but he admonished his subordinates that they must be “tough and unyielding” in the fight against inflation. There were to be no more wage increases that did not promote armament production by lengthening the workday.
¹³
That directive was in fact followed, as some skilled laborers began to elevate their income by putting in more than fifty hours a week. Yet Sauckel was far from placated. After meeting with French cabinet ministers Cathala and Bichelonne on 4 February 1944 and agreeing to certain wage adjustments, he gathered the next day in the Hotel Ritz with members of the MBF staff and rescinded them, as the transcript noted, “to be sure without the knowledge of the French.” In principle, the Vichy regime was amenable to “the stabilization and eventual reduction of prices,” but only if some “wage corrections” were admitted by the Occupation and it was recognized that a return to pre-war levels was “not possible.”
¹⁴
Sauckel's
volte face
on wages brought confusion to these attempts to sort out negotiation of salary limits and, ordinarily withdrawn to Bavaria or Berlin, his presence in Paris became more infrequent. Thus out of touch, his dominance over regulations waned in 1944 as the French economy approached the brink of disintegration.

A word must be said here about the constantly unnerving threat of labor strikes. In Paris, as in other French industrial centers, a general strike never materialized. Yet work stoppages were common and sometimes ominous. In late November 1942, for instance, over 4,000 Citroën workers (more than half of the factory's labor force) went out on strike for higher wages, and a few weeks later two armament plants in Paris briefly closed in protest over labor recruitment, resulting in eighteen arrests.
¹⁵
Although it did not reach an eruption, such agitation never ceased, and the Gestapo was not alone in warning of “significant unrest.” Indeed, the Germans hesitated to carry out inspections of industrial facilities for fear of further stirring hostility among the workers.
¹⁶
Carl Oberg was among those who expressed concerns about the strike threat. In a December 1943 memo to Heinrich Himmler, he cautioned his chief about the “extraordinary confusion” of German labor policy in France, especially since his Sicherheitspolizei would “under no circumstances” be capable of suppressing serious trouble in the work force, given that the French police were “increasingly unreliable.”
¹⁷
One can only conclude from this that the Occupation was extremely fortunate that no concerted strike movement developed. In May 1944, the French information service reported thirty-eight strikes that month nationwide. Yet from extant records it is impossible to reconstruct an accurate statistical account of them over time. Besides, that became gradually less relevant as labor disruptions, as well as attempts to contain them, blended into a confused and splotchy overall picture of resistance and repression.
¹⁸

There were other worries for the Occupation. In early December 1942, the Commandant of Greater Paris compiled a list of fifty-one recent sabotages in his jurisdiction.
¹⁹
Like strikes, sabotages were difficult to measure in size or number. But if the urge to quantify could not be fully requited, the anecdotal evidence was voluminous and convincing. Acts of sabotage could never be stopped, and reference to them littered administrative records. Without question, they became more and more frequent as the months passed and reached a climax near the time of the Normandy invasion. Railway installations and electric power lines were particularly vulnerable. One comment by the MBF's Economic Section in May 1944 might stand here for all the rest: sabotage to France's electricity grid, it said, was being conducted “systematically and with continually rising effectiveness.”
²⁰

The same was true of Allied bombing raids in French territory, for which, thanks to the SNCF, better numbers became available. Although scattered and imperfect, they offer a consistent image of unrelenting havoc inflicted on the French transportation system. For the period from 1 July 1942 to 28 February 1943, a total of 451 air raids on railway installations was recorded, in which 77 persons were killed and 348 wounded. Moreover, 176 locomotives were destroyed, with 61 being damaged.
²¹
During 1943, “a serious increase” occurred, and a pattern became discernible. Allied pilots concentrated at first on pounding repair facilities (
ateliers
) and railroad junctions before turning to attack stations and individual trains. These forays became “more and more intense,” so that rail traffic in western France was “seriously paralyzed.” From 12 to 24 May 1943, there were a reported eighty-five bombing raids on railroads, that is, more than a dozen each day. On two days in mid-September, bombers struck sixteen freight trains, five passenger trains, three German military convoys, and eight railway terminals. Nineteen locomotives were destroyed or damaged, five persons were killed, and twenty-two were wounded. In view of this devastation, the head of the MBF's Economic Section, Dr. Elmar Michel, was forced to conclude that the transportation infrastructure in France had become “extremely strained” and that shipments to Paris were consequently encountering “the greatest difficulties.”
²²

In addition to the railways, French industrial firms were also taking a beating. Large manufacturing plants in the Paris region, such as Renault, Citroën, and Dunlop, were repeatedly bombed. In late November 1943, the Majestic received a list of thirty-one damaged factories that required some repair. To deal with this problem, a “catastrophe corps” (
Katastropheneinsatz
) was organized to move engineers and workmen from site to site.
²³
The Allied air campaign was meanwhile complemented by clandestine sabotage. During the first half of March 1944 alone, the MBF staff recorded 177 locomotives struck by air raids, 68 disabled on the tracks by explosive devices, and 48 derailments. The count for the month of April was higher: in all 788 locomotives were damaged, of which 178 were totaled. With most of the SNCF's workshops out of commission, these were literally irreparable losses.
²⁴
Little wonder that Heinrich von Stülpnagel announced a month before the Allied invasion of the Continent that the Occupation was facing “a very grave crisis.” With France's transportation network crippled, coal supplies had dwindled, several industrial plants had been forced to close, and total production had diminished by 30 percent.
²⁵