Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation (64 page)

p. 117 ‘You will necessarily … No, my dear young’
Longworth de Chambrun,
Shadows Lengthen
, pp. 144–5.

p. 117 Works by Ernest Hemingway
‘L’Histoire de la Librairie Américaine de Paris’, Account written by Dorothy Reeder during the occupation in Paris, beginning, ‘When the war broke out …’, p. 1, American Library in Paris Archives, Box 20, File K.26. See also, in same file, Milton E. Lord, ‘A Report upon the American Library in Paris: Findings and Recommendations’, p. 1. See also Edgar Ansel Mowrer, ‘Nazis Forcing Own Culture on French People’,
Chicago Daily News
, 16 October 1940, p. 1: the Bernhard List ‘includes 143 items on four pages … Four other Americans appear on the Bernhard list: the newspapermen, Louis Fischer and H. R. Knickerbocker, Prof. Calvin B. Hoover, and Leon G. Turrou, formerly of the F.B.I.’ Mowrer added, ‘The American Lending Library in Paris was also visited but upon the librarian’s promise to respect German wishes, nothing was taken away.’

p. 117 ‘for purposes of study’
Ibid
.

p. 117 ‘No Jews are’
Longworth de Chambrun,
Shadows Lengthen
, p. 145.

p. 117 ‘My simple solution’
Ibid
.

p. 118 ‘GREETINGS BEST WISHES’
American Library of Paris Archives, Box 20, File K5.2 War Years (September–November 1940).

p. 118 ‘We are now open’
American Library of Paris Archives, Box 9, File E.3, Letter from Dorothy Reeder to Mr Michel Gunn, Rockefeller Foundation, 49 West 49th Street, New York, 19 September 1940. The letter is sparing with information, perhaps because it would have to pass the German censor. She added, ‘The Comtesse and the General are back.’

p. 118 ‘Few people came’
‘L’Histoire de la Librairie Américaine de Paris’, Account written by Dorothy Reeder during the occupation in Paris, beginning, ‘When the war broke out …’, p. 1, American Library in Paris Archives, Box 20, File K.26.

p. 118 ‘It is enough to say’
Ibid
.

p. 119 ‘I want particularly’
American Library of Paris Archives, Box 20, File K5.2 War Years (September–November 1940).

p. 119 ‘Dr. Gros has’
American Library of Paris Archives, Box 9, File E.3, Letter from Dorothy Reeder to Mr Michel Gunn, Rockefeller Foundation, 49 West 49th Street, New York, 19 September 1940.

p. 121 ‘a Mephistophelean little’
Time
, 15 November 1937.

p. 121 ‘He reminded himself’
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’,
The New Yorker
, 22 September 1945, p. 29.

p. 121 ‘Franco-American’ Bedaux
His biographers differ on his date of birth. Jim Christy, in
The Price of Power: A Biography of Charles Eugene Bedaux
, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1984, on p. 3 gives it as 10 October 1886. George Ungar’s film biography,
The Champagne Safari
, Canada, 1995, said it was 26 May 1886. Bedaux’s passport renewal form of 1941 also states that he was born on 10 October 1886. It is reproduced in C. M. Hardwick,
Time Study in Treason: Charles E. Bedaux, Patriot or Collaborator
, Chelmsford, Essex: Peter Horsnell, publisher, undated, probably 1990, p. 7.

p. 121 ‘a real Horatio’
‘Wally’s Host–A Tale of Sandhog to Millionaire’,
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 31 March 1937, p. 6.

p. 121 When a woman
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 15.

p. 122 Arriving aged 19
Ibid
., p. 21. Ungar,
The Champagne Safari
.

p. 122 ‘I soon found’
Liberty
magazine, 1930, quoted in Christy,
The Price of Power
, pp. 25–6.

p. 122 American labour unions … ‘proper use of’
‘Bedaux Arrested in Deal with Foe’,
New York Times
, 14 January 1943, pp. 1 and 3.

p. 122 In 1936, Charlie Chaplin
See Internet Movie Data Base,
Modern Times
.

p. 123 ‘Let us be the missionary’
Ungar,
The Champagne Safari
, Bedaux speech at 18 minutes 40 seconds.

p. 123 ‘stripped of its’
‘Mr. Bedaux’s Friends’,
Time
, 15 November 1937.

p. 123 Among them was ‘Colonel’
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 63.

p. 123 The next year, his first
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’,
The New Yorker
, 22 September 1945, p. 29.

p. 124 He claimed later
Ibid
., p. 34.

p. 124 ‘Men, women, children … worldly, boldly battered’
Ibid.
, pp. 30 and 29.

p. 124 In 1924, Bedaux
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 62. ‘Parisys Silenced?’,
Time
, 15 February 1926.

p. 124 The Bedauxs, who had no
Ungar,
The Champagne Safari
. The film includes footage of the Bedauxs that Charles commissioned to record his 1934 expedition.

p. 125 Bedaux loved inventing
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 61.

p. 125 ‘A man loves’
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism III’,
The New Yorker
, 13 October 1945, p. 48.

p. 125 Within ten years
Yves Levant and Marc Nikitin, ‘Should Charles Eugene Bedaux be Revisited?’, Paper presented to the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Business Research Unit, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, Wales, 14–15 September 2006, p. 11. See also Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’,
The New Yorker
, 22 September 1945, p. 29.

p. 125 The young counts
Franz Joseph was Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary from 1848 to 1916.

p. 125 Friederich met Bedaux
Author’s correspondence with von Ledebur’s family in Vienna, June 2008.

p. 125 He approached a German
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’,
The New Yorker
, 6 October 1945, p. 32.

p. 125 Through him, Bedaux became
Ibid
.

p. 125 Bedaux commissioned her
Ibid
.

p. 126 ‘My wife and I believe’
‘Wally’s Host–A Tale of Sandhog to Millionaire’,
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 31 March 1937, p. 6.

p. 127 ‘my wife and I’
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 146.

p. 127 ‘She was so much finer’
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’,
The New Yorker
, 22 September 1945, p. 40.

p. 127 ‘unceasing affection … knew how to help’
Gaston Bedaux,
La Vie ardente de Charles Bedaux
, Paris: privately published, 3 June 1959, p. 88.

p. 127 Bedaux’s wedding present
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’,
The New Yorker
, 6 October 1945, p. 32; and Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 59.

p. 127 Friedrich von Ledebur, who met
Federal Bureau of Investigation interview with Frederick Ledebur, Telemeter, 21 January 1944, US Department of Justice Communications Section, from FBI files supplied under Freedom of Information Act, unnumbered file, pp. 64692, 64693 and 64694. FOIPA No. 1088544-001. (All records released by the FBI are from RG65, Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, World War II, FBI Headquarters Files, 100-49901 Sections 1–2, Charles Bedaux (FOIPA), Box number 113.) FBI agents questioned Ledebur in Ventura, California, on 20 January 1944.

p. 128 Subsequently, the duke
Fritz Wiedemann had been a captain in the 16th Bavarian Regiment, commanding Corporal Adolf Hitler. He became Hitler’s adjutant in 1934 and was close enough to the dictator to be able to criticize him from time to time. However, in 1938, after the savagery of the Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany, Hitler dismissed Wiedemann and Dr Hjalmar Schacht, who had criticized the thugs responsible. Wiedemann was assigned, along with his mistress, the half-Jewish Princess Stefanie von Hohenlohe, as German Consul-General in San Francisco. See John Toland,
Adolf Hitler
, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1976, p. 509.

p. 128 Watson had enjoyed a private
Edwin Black,
IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation
, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001, pp. 132–3.

p. 128 ‘the slightest concern’
‘Mr. Bedaux’s Friends’,
Time
, 15 November 1937.

p. 129 Bedaux suffered what was
This story is told, in differing details, in Christy,
The Price of Power
, pp. 167–83; Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’,
The New Yorker
, 6 October 1945, p. 34; and Martin Allen,
Hidden Agenda
, London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 86–98. Gaston Bedaux’s privately printed biography of his brother,
La Vie ardente de Charles E. Bedaux
, on p. 61, refers to the incident briefly: ‘Unhappily, from the other side of the ocean, for reasons that I shall ignore, an angry reception had been prepared.’ Charles told his brother that, from that day, ‘his life was constantly in danger’.

p. 130 Bedaux went to Britain
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 206.

p. 130 When Bedaux discovered
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism II’,
The New Yorker
, 6 October 1945, p. 36.

p. 130 At the end of June
‘U.S. Property in France Has Light War Toll’,
Chicago Daily Tribune
,16 July 1940, p. 6.

p. 131 The Bedaux Company’s Dutch headquarters
Federal Bureau of Investigation interview with Frederick Ledebur, Telemeter, 21 January 1944, U.S. Department of Justice Communications Section, from F.B.I. files supplied under Freedom of Information Act, unnumbered file, pp. 64692, 64693 and 64694. FOIPA No. 1088544-001.

p. 132 An excellent horseman
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 202. Friedrich von Ledebur later worked in films as a coordinator of horse stunts and an actor. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946
Notorious
and played Queequeeg in John Huston’s
Moby-Dick
in 1956. Also in
Moby-Dick
was his English ex-wife, Iris Tree, the daughter of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. His last film role was as Admiral Aulent in Fellini’s
Ginger and Fred
in 1976. See Internet Movie Database at
www.imdb.com/name/nm0496428/
. He died, aged 86, in 1986.

p. 132 Abetz was married
W. Sternfeld, ‘Ambassador Abetz’,
Contemporary Review
, London, August 1942, p. 86. See also ‘There It Goes?’,
Newsweek
, 4 January 1943, p. 38.
Newsweek
wrote, ‘Handsome, elegant, speaking perfect French, Abetz penetrated the most exclusive circles.’

p. 132 ‘Bedaux was more dynamic’
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 217.

p. 133 ‘This millionaire, French’
Bernard Ullmann,
Lisette de Brinon, ma mère: Une Juive dans la tourment de la Collaboration
, Paris: Editions Complexe, 2004, p. 96.r

p. 133 He invited Bedaux
Ungar,
The Champagne Safari
, at 1:02:30. See also Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 216.

p. 133 The friendship that
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism I’,
The New Yorker
, 22 September 1945, p. 31.

p. 134 ‘He is a man drafted’
Christy,
The Price of Power
, p. 216.

p. 134 ‘During this preliminary’
Pierre Laval,
The Unpublished Diary of Pierre Laval
, with an introduction by Josée Laval, Countess R. de Chambrun, London: Falcon Press, 1948, p. 71.

p. 134 Medicus supplied Bedaux
Henri Michel,
Paris Allemand
, Paris: Albin Michel, 1981, p. 46.

p. 134 Dr Franz Medicus was a regular
Janet Flanner, ‘Annals of Collaboration: Equivalism III’,
The New Yorker
, 13 October 1945, p. 32.

p. 134 Before the war, de Brinon
Alexander Werth,
France: 1940–1944
, London: Robert Hale Ltd, 1956, p. 126. Werth gives a thorough account of de Brinon’s career on pp. 126–30. See also William Shirer,
The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940
, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969, p. 385n.

p. 135 The Germans declared
Ullmann,
Lisette de Brinon, ma mère
, pp. 44 and 108.

p. 135 Bedaux gave Pierre-Jérôme
In the confused world of ideological commitments of that time, Pierre-Jérôme was attracted to groups that his openly fascist stepfather admired. His brother wrote, ‘As an adolescent in the 1930s, he adhered to the youth movements of the extreme right that flourished in the Latin Quarter without realizing that hate or contempt for Jews was in integral part of their doctrine.’ See
Ibid
., p. 16. Pierre-Jérôme had enlisted in the army in 1939 and was among the cadets at Saumur who resisted the German advance. Bernard wrote that his brother took provisional employment in a prefecture in the Basses-Pyrénées soon after the beginning of the occupation. See
Ibid
., p. 113. Bedaux’s son, Charles Emile, told his father’s biographer Jim Christy that Charles Eugene employed de Brinon’s stepson in his French company. Author’s correspondence with Jim Christy, July 2008.

p. 135 His wife’s absence
Ullmann,
Lisette de Brinon, ma mère
, p. 124. Lisette knew of the affair and was jealous of Mittre.

p. 135 For her part, Lisette
Werth,
France: 1940–1944
, p. 126.

p. 136 ‘the flowers, the walkways’
André Guillon, ‘Testimony of a French PoW on His Time at the American Hospital of Paris’, 13-page typescript in French, p. 1, American Hospital of Paris Archives, File: André Guillon. (My translation.)