When Paris Went Dark (25 page)

To limit discussions of moral and violent resistance to the Occupier to its effectiveness at undermining the German war machine misses an
important point: the decisions and actions taken by French men and French women, and by new immigrants, against the Occupation (especially of Paris) did keep the Reich and their Vichy allies on the alert and did send a message to the world that Paris was not being benignly held prisoner. Everything from whistling at Germans while they marched in step to printing and distributing dozens of anti-Nazi tracts to throwing grenades into German crowds to assassination: these actions, though often uncoordinated, created an atmosphere of tension and a sense that one’s life was not totally in thrall.

Roger Langeron was concerned enough about the possibility of a violent resistance to the arrival of German soldiers to warn his men to be especially alert. As chief of police, he feared that hotheads would set off a merciless response from an overconfident German army. But the exodus of May and June, 1940, had cleared Paris of three-quarters of its inhabitants, and early summer was a time when the schools were closed. The doldrums of the season did the rest. The Germans found a quiescent, even polite population, and the only reactions they had to parry were an occasional rude remark or pointed stare. Until the early fall of 1940, all seemed in order. By October, though, Paris had regained a good deal of its population and some of its élan, and a palpable feistiness stirred its inhabitants. The shock of seeing Germans, in uniform and in mufti, walking casually or marching confidently throughout the city’s arteries began to fade, and resentment began to build. On public holidays, an occasional French flag could be seen or a whistled “La Marseillaise” heard. At first the Germans took these mild expressions of resistance to their presence calmly; one report sent back to Berlin even mentioned that in general the French were, in these first few months, “correct,” “loyal,” and “courteous.”
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Soon, though, the strain began to tell. Unable to ignore these scattered but recurrent protests (they correctly intuited that small signs of disrespect could presage a more vigorous resistance), the MBF, the German military administration of Paris, demanded that Chief Langeron put a stop to the impudent practices of the mostly young Parisians who mocked their occupiers. Otherwise, they threatened, there would be strong repercussions.

But this was easier ordered than done. The Wehrmacht was not a police force, and its generals resented having to keep civil order in Paris while having to maintain military preparedness.
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They increasingly relied on—and put enormous pressure on—the Parisian police department (which on paper reported to the Vichy minister of defense but which had significant independence from the central government). Soon these police officials, as well as mayors and prefects, were receiving so many arbitrary, unpredictable, nervous, and furious phone calls from German officials that they asked collectively in mid-1941 for more formal, less idiosyncratic requests. At the same time, increased demands were coming down to arrest Jews, find escaped prisoners, ferret out downed Allied pilots, check out letters of denunciation, and investigate minor acts of sabotage. There is no doubt that many in the French police force responded with assiduousness, even eagerly. The Germans remained suspicious that French efforts at controlling the intransigence of their compatriots were not as vigorous as they should be; that there were Gaullist and Communist moles throughout the force (indeed there were) and that the bureaucracy’s pursuit of Jews was unenthusiastic. The apprehensiveness shared by both the Vichy police and the Germans grew in intensity just at a time when the Germans needed complete and enthusiastic cooperation: the invasion of the USSR in June of 1941 had drawn the best-trained and youngest soldiers from France to the east. As a result, manpower had to be husbanded, and excessive demands were placed on the French authorities to do the repressive work of an occupying force. So even though there was no formal resistance early in the Occupation of Paris, individual acts of disrespect, insolence, and rudeness were taking their toll on
Zusammenarbeit
(working together—the German version of “collaboration”).

As early as the fall of 1940, the first organized team of Parisian resisters was created among the curators and administrators of the Musée de l’Homme, the anthropological and natural history museum situated on Trocadéro Hill, site of the 1937 international exposition, overlooking the Eiffel Tower. They were especially astute about publishing and distributing anti-Vichy and anti-German tracts, including
five numbers of a little paper named
Résistance
. These tracts called on French patriotism to encourage resistance against the Occupier; they also included news of the war gathered from English and Swiss radio stations broadcasting in France. They were successful at helping downed pilots escape back to Great Britain—forging papers, lodging them with sympathizers, and passing them beyond borders. But within a few months, a French spy in their midst would denounce the group; its members were arrested, and eventually executed in early 1942.

De Gaulle’s June 18, 1940, appeal had little military or political impact, but it did give those young people in France, especially in Paris, a name to throw up on the walls, a name to pit against those of Hitler and Pétain. Most French might barely have heard of de Gaulle, but nevertheless they began to adopt him as a symbol of a nascent French resurgence against the Germans and their Vichy lackeys. By early 1941, his was almost a household name, especially in Paris. Soon the words
Vive de Gaulle
and depictions of his adopted symbol, the two-barred Cross of Lorraine, began appearing insolently on Parisian doors, inside public urinals, and on Parisian sidewalks. Little by little, the upstart general was, mainly through the force of his amazing will, becoming the symbol of resistance throughout France and its colonies. For his part, Churchill found de Gaulle impressive though obdurate, but he had nowhere else to turn for a French leader who might keep the fight alive in the French empire. Roosevelt’s distrust of de Gaulle was even deeper; FDR persisted until his death in seeing him as a right-wing general only slightly less offensive than his former Vichy colleagues.

In chapter 3, we learned of the only major public demonstration that occurred in Paris during the Occupation: the manifestation on the Champs-Élysées on November 11, 1940, Armistice Day. Other, smaller “spontaneous” marches and gatherings were held throughout France, but they were carefully monitored and controlled. Hundreds of these protests were patronizingly called “marches by housewives” and were held in opposition to the cost of and scarcity of food. The authorities were concerned that such expressions of frustration could turn into
general opposition, and, sure enough, some, particularly those in large cities, were actually organized by resistance groups, especially the Communists. One was planned in mid-1943, on Paris’s Left Bank, near the Place Denfert-Rochereau. There stood a huge grocery store, part of the popular chain Félix Potin, with as many shelves empty as full. Appearing to lead a “spontaneous” event (almost like today’s flash mobs), Lise Ricol-London jumped onto a trestle table just as the store’s doors opened. Several accomplices threw hundreds of leaflets into the air as she called out to frustrated Parisian housewives:

De Gaulle’s Cross of Lorraine.
(© Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)

Although she was attacked by Potin salesmen and others, Lise managed to escape the police. But she left behind evidence of a fiercely patriotic, and fiercely feminine, Parisian resistance, one that would grow slowly during the final eighteen months of the Occupation.

Resistance, especially this sort of hit-and-run strategy, is much easier in a city than in rural areas. Cities are, as Hitler and his cohort recognized, primed to stymie a rigid system of controls. As we have seen and will see, the metropolis offers many boons to those who would resist authority. First is the gift of anonymity. Strangers in cities are not immediately noticed; neighbors may be likely to pick out aliens, but the city provides so many covers for an individual that he or she can “pass,” often with audacity. There are also many places to hide in a city, many shortcuts, hidden and public, that allow an individual to escape quickly when pursued. We have already seen how porous apartment buildings can be. The subway system—in fact, all public transportation—provides secure ways to lose oneself and one’s pursuers. But the advantages of moving in a crowd, of jumping on and off transportation, outweigh the dangers of being trapped in a dead end when being checked or pursued. In addition, an old European city such as Paris is a labyrinth of streets, alleys, and byways, many unknown to foreigners no matter how carefully they study Michelin maps and Baedeker guides. And the capital offered a maze of sewers, Métro tunnels, and abandoned quarries that provided the same sense of protection as a countryside’s forests, ravines, and mountains do.

Paris, too, was dotted with many very public sites—such as cemeteries, large churches, flea markets, parks, river quays, marketplaces, large restaurants, and cafés—that could all serve as private meeting places for not-so-innocuous conversations. As well, the demographics and social personalities of neighborhoods can provide a sense of solidarity eminently useful to those on the run or seeking refuge.

The city itself has many entrances and exits: train stations, ports, and highways. The Germans did try to build barriers and controls to check vehicles at all the
portes
(major entrances) of Paris, but alternate routes were quickly and cunningly found. The Seine, which divides Paris, was a major resource for those who would escape the police; passengers could hide on barges as they glided through the city or be deposited at urban ports along with the cargo. Paris is a small city, about thirty-four square miles (not including its two large forested parks, the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes), and can easily be traversed on foot in a day, north to south or east to west. This would seem an advantage to the Occupier, but with a population of about two million, easy access to the suburbs, and—despite Haussmann’s great renovations of the late nineteenth century—a labyrinthine street layout, it was not a metropolis conducive to mass surveillance. It had a very large student population and an equally large immigrant population, both of them sympathetic to resistance or resentment toward an occupying army. This “shadow” citizenry, themselves anxious about discovery, served often as protective coloration for others hiding from the authorities. As a result, cells of resistance began to develop almost immediately once the fact that Germans were to be in Paris for a long time began to percolate through its inhabitants’ psyches.

The mimeographed tract was an early sign of nonviolent resistance. By the end of the Occupation, dozens of these one-to-four-page “newspapers” had appeared on the streets of Paris. Their distribution was only one challenge for their editors. First, paper had to be found, and large amounts of it had to be hidden from authorities who were already seeking to control its allocation. Virgin stencils were priceless, and because they could effectively produce only a few hundred copies, they had to be replenished constantly. Most important, mimeograph (or
ronéotype
) machines and printing presses had to be “borrowed” or stolen and moved from safe house to safe house. The noise associated with printing machines was another problem; isolated apartments and the basements of shops and apartment houses were used, but they were searched with increasing attention by the authorities. One prominent
editor hid a small printing press in his apartment; soon he heard that he had been denounced, so he and a friend dismantled it and put its pieces in their pockets and briefcases. Making several trips to the Seine, they threw the pieces into the fast-flowing river. When the Gestapo arrived, there was no press, no sign of ink or stencils, and no ink on the hands of the editor or his friends. They nonetheless arrested the printer and questioned him for several days before he admitted that he had thrown the infernal machine into Paris’s river. At that confession, surprisingly, the police let him return home. It was as if they were more afraid of a wandering printing press than of the man who had wanted to use it.

Some writers wanted to do more than print tracts and news sheets with names like
Pantagruel, Résistance,
and
Valmy
(site of a great victory over the Prussians in 1792). One of them was Jean Bruller (a.k.a. Vercors). Bruller, as noted earlier, was the author and publisher of
Le Silence de la mer
(
The Silence of the Sea
), perhaps the best fiction ever written about passive resistance. To publish a hundred-page story was going to take more than a mimeograph machine; Bruller needed a printing press. He first sought out a printer who had access to paper, but he did not want to print the small book. Once he had a commitment for the paper, enough for three hundred copies, Bruller inquired about other printers who might help. His supplier asked him to return in eight days. Bruller was not too concerned, because the manuscript was still in his hands and he could always claim, if denounced, that he was going to use the paper for printing something innocuous. Eight days passed; he returned to the first printer. “I’ve found a press for you. Let’s go,” said his new collaborator. Soon Bruller found himself outside Paris’s largest hospital complex, the Pitié-Salpêtrière, on the Left Bank, just southeast of the Gare d’Austerlitz. This hospital was then and had been for a century one of the most respected in Europe.
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