And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris (33 page)

On May 10, 1940, after eight months of “phony war,” Germany invaded Western Europe and quickly outmaneuvered the French army. In the panic, millions of French families fled south, on trains, in cars, on bicycles and finally on foot. (
LAPI/Roger-Viollet
)

At dawn on June 23, 1940, nine days after Paris fell, Hitler paid his only visit to the city. Claiming he wanted to be accompanied by artists, he posed in front of the Eiffel Tower with the architect Albert Speer, left, and the sculptor Arno Breker, who remained his favorites throughout the war. (
U.S. National Archives
)

Under the June 1940 armistice, southeast France remained unoccupied. Much of show business gathered in Cannes and, for a while, enjoyed itself. Three leading actresses, left to right, Michèle Morgan, Micheline Presle and Danielle Darrieux, posed on the beach with Gregor Rabinovitch, a Jewish movie producer who was soon forced to flee France. (
Courtesy of Madame Micheline Presle
)

After France’s defeat, the nightlife of Paris quickly resumed, with Wehrmacht officers and soldiers often making up most of the audience for saucy cabaret shows. (
Roger Schall
)

Varian Fry, an American journalist who was sent to Marseille by the New York–based Emergency Rescue Committee, helped some two thousand artists, intellectuals and other refugees to escape occupied France. Here he sits in his office beside André Breton’s wife, Jacqueline Lamba, while, right to left, Breton, André Masson and Max Ernst look on. (
Varian Fry Papers, Rare Books & Manuscript Library, Columbia University
)

On October 24, 1940, returning from a meeting in Hendaye with Spain’s Generalísimo Franco, Hitler stopped at Montoire in the Loire Valley to receive Marshal Pétain, the “head of state” of the Vichy regime. A few days later, Pétain endorsed collaboration with the German occupiers. (
Roger-Viollet
)

The Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, considered music to be the best way of demonstrating Germany’s cultural superiority over France. Many German orchestras and choirs toured France, some of them giving lunchtime concerts on the steps of the Paris Opera. (
LAPI/Roger-Viollet
)

On September 29, 1940, the Louvre was reopened in the presence of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, seen here with a French curator, although only statues and sculptures were on display and the paintings galleries remained closed. (
LAPI/Roger-Viollet
)

Herbert von Karajan, a frequent visitor to occupied Paris, posed with the French soprano Germaine Lubin after conducting her in a Berlin Staatsoper production of Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde
at the Paris Opera in May 1941. (
LAPI/Roger-Viollet
)

Rose Valland, seen above in uniform after the war, was stationed throughout the occupation at the Jeu de Paume, where she kept a secret record of art looted from Jews. (
Collection C. Garapont/Association la Mémoire de Rose Valland
)

The paintings shown here were considered “degenerate” and were either destroyed or exchanged for pre-twentieth-century art. (
Archives des Musées Nationaux
)