Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation (60 page)

Phillip Jackson, believing his mother had already died in a concentration camp, volunteered for the British army. Toquette, however, had survived many months in the Ravensbrück camp, although badly disabled from starvation and exhaustion, to be repatriated to Sweden through the efforts of Count Folke Bernadotte. She and Phillip were reunited in Paris two months after the German surrender. On 18 July, Toquette wrote to Sumner’s sister Freda, ‘I want you to know that I never ceased to be in love with Sumner for whom I had forever a great admiration and respect. He had such big qualities.’

p. 9 Two million people
Henri Michel,
Paris Allemand
, Paris: Albin Michel, 1981, p. 29.

p. 9 ‘The only living’
Robert Murphy,
Diplomat among Warriors: Secret Decisions that Changed the World
, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964, p. 55.

p. 10 ‘We in the embassy felt’
Ibid.
, p. 53.

p. 10 The exiled American Ambassador
Herbert Lottman,
The Fall of Paris: June 1940
, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992, p. 250.

p. 11 ‘The few people who remained’
Murphy,
Diplomat among Warriors
, p. 53.

p. 11 ‘Contrary to rumors’
Letter from Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, quoted in Orville H. Bullitt (ed.),
For the President: Personal and Secret, Correspondence Between Franklin D. Roosevelt and William C. Bullitt
, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972, p. 469.

p. 11 Robert Murphy, rather than let
Murphy,
Diplomat among Warriors
, p. 53.

p. 12 ‘Most Americans Staying’
New York Times
, 19 May 1940, p. 1.

p. 12 ‘They showed us’
‘U.S. Flier Returns, Bitter at France’,
New York Times
, 3 August 1940, p. 10.

p. 13 The embassy issued more
‘U.S. Property in France Has Light War Toll’,
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 16 July 1940, p. 9.

p. 13 ‘The American Church will’
‘The American Church in Paris’,
Sunday Bulletin
, 9 June 1940, p. 2, from the Archives of the American Church, 63–65 Quai d’Orsay, not catalogued.

p. 13 ‘No American ambassador’
Bullitt to Roosevelt, 30 May 1940, in Bullitt (ed.),
For the President
, p. 441.

p. 14 ‘But our government’
Will Brownell and Richard N. Billings,
So Close to Greatness: A Biography of William C. Bullitt
, New York: Macmillan, 1987, p. 94.

p. 14 Ernest Hemingway, who had left
Ibid
., p. 203.

p. 15 ‘the French Army’
‘Salient Excerpts from the White Book Issued by the German Foreign Office’,
New York Times
, 30 March 1940, p. 4.

p. 15 He had even arranged
‘Chemidlin’s Last Ride’,
Time
, 6 February 1939. The secret programme to train French pilots on the latest American warplanes became public when a Douglas Aircraft light bomber crashed and one of those injured turned out to be Captain Paul Chemidlin of the French army. The Senate Military Affairs Committee then discovered that, after the US army had turned down Bullitt’s request to train the French, he persuaded the army to arrange the test flights anyway.
Time
magazine correctly described Roosevelt’s intervention as ‘not a spy story but a new chapter in U.S. foreign policy’.

p. 15 ‘This Embassy is’
Bullitt to Hull, 11 June 1940, in Bullitt (ed.),
For the President
, p. 466.

p. 15 Gallup published its latest
Norman Moss,
Nineteen Weeks: Britain, America and the Fateful Summer of 1940
, London: Aurum Press, 2004, p. 124.

p. 15 ‘I have talked with’
Bullitt (ed.),
For the President
, p. 462.

p. 16 ‘As I said to you’
Ibid
., p. 466.

p. 16 ‘I propose to send’
Ibid
., p. 467.

p. 16 His communications, like everyone
Cable from Bullitt to Franklin Roosevelt, 12 June 1940, in
ibid
., p. 467.

p. 16 ‘Paris has been declared’
Cable from Chargé d’Affaires in Germany to Secretary of State, 13 June 1940, in
ibid
., p. 471.

p. 17 ‘Delegates till 5 a.m.’
Gerald Walter,
Paris under the Occupation
, New York: Orion Press, 1960, p. 18.

p. 17 Dentz acquiesced, sending
Lottman,
The Fall of Paris
, pp. 337–40. Lottman’s account of the surrender is one of the most thorough and reliable. See also John Williams,
The Ides of May: The Defeat of France, May–June 1940
, London: Constable, 1968, pp. 316–20.
p. 17 Some Germans did not
Williams,
The Ides of May
, p. 37.

p. 18 ‘That doesn’t matter’
William Smith Gardner, ‘The Oldest Negro in Paris’,
Ebony
, vol. 8, no. 2, February 1952, pp. 65–72.

p. 18 General Bogislav von Studnitz, commander
Roger Langeron,
Paris, juin 1940
, Paris: Flammarion, 1946, p. 42.

p. 18 ‘were born with monocles’
Michel,
Paris Allemand
, p. 59.

p. 19 ‘the moment had arrived’
Murphy,
Diplomat among Warriors
, p. 56.

p. 19 ‘You are Americans … The whole city’
Ibid
., pp. 56–7.

p. 19 Inside the Crillon’s gilt
Ibid.
, p. 57.

p. 19 ‘as if we were’
Ibid.
, pp. 57–8.

p. 20 Von Studnitz gave … ‘brushed aside this’
Ibid
., p. 58.

p. 20 The war he added … ‘none of us’
Ibid
., p. 58.

p. 20 ‘although it was only 10.30’
Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter letter to Orville H. Bullitt, reproduced in Bullitt (ed.),
For the President
, p. 469.

p. 20 Von Studnitz invited
Hillenkoetter letter in
Ibid
., p. 470.

p. 20 ‘Colonel Fuller was’
Quentin Reynolds,
The Wounded Don’t Cry
, London: Cassell and Compay, 1941, p. 40.

p. 20 ‘Never … We’re confident’
Virginia Cowles,
Looking for Trouble
, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1941, pp. 374–5.

p. 20 ‘His hands trembled’
Clare Boothe, ‘Europe in the Spring: An American Playwright Reports on a Continent’s Last Days of Freedom’,
Life
, 25 July 1940, p. 80.

p. 21 Back in his office … ‘nice fellas’
Murphy,
Diplomat among Warriors
, p. 59. Murphy wrote that Mitchell came to Paris with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and remained when it went bankrupt. The show opened in Paris in 1889 as part of the World Exposition, and it did not go bankrupt until long after its return to the United States.

p. 21 Von Studnitz, recalled … Fuller and Hillenkoetter
Hillenkoetter letter in Bullitt (ed.),
For the President
, p. 470.

p. 22 ‘The general wanted’
Lottman,
The Fall of Paris
, p. 361

p. 22 From an upper window
Author’s interview with Mme Colette Faus, Paris, 22 January 2007.

p. 22 ‘On that day’
Philip W. Whitcomb, testimony 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. III, 1957, p. 1606.

p. 23 The triumphalism of
Roger Manville and Heinrich Fraenkel,
The July Plot: The Attempt on Hitler’s Life in July 1944
, London: The Bodley Head, 1964, p. 63.

p. 23 Martial parades established
Early that morning, the French writer Paul Léautaud was leaving his house in the Paris suburbs when he saw the wife of the local mayor at her door. He wrote in his diary, ‘She tells me that the radio has announced that Paris is under the protection of the American ambassador. I say, “We’re doing well. The American ambassador in front of the German army! That should prevent us from being bumped off. The American ambassador will come: Look here! He’s dead!” As usual, I mimed what I said. I made her laugh, her and her children.’ See Paul Léautaud,
Journal littéraire
, vol. XIII, February 1940–June 1941, Paris: Mercure de France, 1962, p. 81.

p. 24 As the first German
Adrienne Monnier,
Trois agendas d’Adrienne Monnier
, Texte établi et annoté par Maurice Saillet, Paris: published ‘par ses amis’, 1960, p. 37. Sylvia’s autobiography, written twenty years later, disagrees with Adrienne Monnier’s diary on Sylvia’s whereabouts when the Germans marched in. In
Shakespeare and Company
(London: Faber and Faber, 1960, p. 218), Sylvia wrote that she was in the office of a doctor friend, Thérèse Bertrand-Fontaine, when she saw refugees leaving Paris and German soldiers marching in after them. This is more likely a recollection that compressed distinct events, because all of Paris’s refugees had left at least one day before the Germans entered the city. I have relied on Adrienne’s diary, which was written at the time.

p. 24 ‘endless procession of’
Beach,
Shakespeare and Company
, p. 218.

p. 24 ‘Those boots always’
Niall Sheridan, interview with Sylvia Beach,
Sylvia Beach: Self-Portrait,
documentary film on Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE), Dublin, 1962.

p. 25 ‘ I never left Paris’
Noel Riley Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties
, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983, p. 401.

p. 26 Alice B. Toklas called
Ibid.
, p. 100.

p. 26 ‘these two extraordinary’
Janet Flanner, ‘The Infinite Pleasure: Sylvia Beach’,
Janet Flanner’s World: Uncollected Writings 1932–1975
, London: Secker and Warburg, 1980, p. 310.

p. 27 ‘DAMN the right bank’
Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 61.

p. 28 ‘loved to browse’
William L. Shirer,
Twentieth Century Journey: Memoir of a Life and the Times
, vol. I:
The Start, 1904–1930
, Boston: Little Brown, 1984, p. 241.

p. 28 ‘Probably I was’
Sylvia Beach wrote this in an unpublished draft of her memoirs,
Shakespeare and Company
. Quoted in Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 78.

p. 28 ‘the intrepid, unselfish’
Flanner, ‘The Infinite Pleasure: Sylvia Beach’, p. 309.

p. 29 ‘probably the best known’
Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 41.

p. 29 ‘their club, mail drop’
Flanner, ‘The Infinite Pleasure: Sylvia Beach’, p. 310.

p. 30 ‘But something must’
Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 355.

p. 31 ‘He was beginning’
‘Hemingway Curses, Kisses, Reads’,
Paris Herald Tribune
, 14 March 1937.

p. 31 A year later
Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 386. The award is also listed in Sylvia’s entry in
Americans in France: A Directory, 1939–1940
, Paris: American Chamber of Commerce in France, 1940, p. 72.

p. 32 ‘Loud noise of planes … we should live’
Monnier,
Trois agendas de Adrienne Monnier
, p. 36.

p. 32 ‘she could not be’
Beach,
Shakespeare and Company
, p. 213.

p. 32 ‘did try to get away’
Ibid
., pp. 217–18ff.

p. 32 ‘fell right between’
Monnier,
Trois Agendas de Adrienne Monnier
, p. 29.

p. 32 Adrienne kissed the spot
Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 398.

p. 33 ‘I still had some’
Arthur Koestler,
The Scum of the Earth
, London: Cape, 1941, reprinted London: Eland Books, 1991, p. 103.

p. 33 ‘For a few days’
Arthur Koestler,
Arrow in the Blue
, vol. II,
The Invisible Writing
, London: Collins with Hamish Hamilton, 1954, p. 420.

p. 33 The president of International PEN
Emmanuelle Loyer,
Paris à New York: Intellectuels et artistes français en exil 1940–1947
, Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2005.

p. 33 ‘It is impossible’
‘Celebrities Forced to Flee France Arrive Here by Way of Lisbon’,
New York Times
, 16 July 1940, p. 1.

p. 33 Two American diplomats
Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 400.

p. 33 ‘From the day the Jews’
Adrienne Monnier, ‘On Anti-Semitism’,
La Gazette des Amis des Livres
, Paris, December 1938, reprinted in Adrienne Monnier,
The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier: An Intimate Portrait of the Literary and Artistic Life in Paris Between the Wars
, translated by Richard McDougall, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976, p. 378.

p. 33 Sylvia had sold artists’ prints
Fitch,
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation
, p. 383.

p. 34 ‘What if the Germans’
Monnier,
Trois agendas d’Adrienne Monnier
, p. 38. There is an excellent translation of Adrienne’s occupation diary in
The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier
, pp. 391–402.

p. 35 ‘I was amazed’
Robert Murphy,
Diplomat among Warriors: Secret Decisions that Changed the World
, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964, pp. 59–60. Murphy added, ‘I reflected ruefully that the United States Government might have practiced to advantage some of that German foresight. In our own early ventures in military government, Washington’s neglect of this phase of waging war created unnecessary difficulties for General Eisenhower, and especially for me as his political adviser.’ That was twenty years before the US occupation of Vietnam and forty before its occupation of Iraq.