Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 (4 page)

While on the subject of public behavior, it is fitting to add a word about rats. The Occupation, as it turned out, had to contend not only with human beings but also with small gray beasts with long tails who were veteran residents of the capital and who now thrived on a new bonanza of German trash, for which no regular collection was at first provided. From the perspective of Parisian rats, the Germans had by far the best garbage in town. No wonder they began flocking from their usual habitats to nearby military installations. Alarmed German commanders therefore ordered retaliation by poison, while declaring the need for a “general rat annihilation.” Again, it was necessary for that purpose to mobilize the Prefecture of Police, which responded by unleashing a special Service de Dératisation for the city.
²²
Finally, in the spring of 1941, a concerted extermination campaign began. As the new Prefect of Police, Admiral François Bard, explained, it would be impossible to determine precisely how many rats might actually be killed, because the poison being used took several days to take effect and many rats would expire uncounted in their holes. Still, he promised “a marked improvement” at once and anticipated another slaughter in the near future.
²³

In general, regarding the impact on daily life in Paris under their administration, German military authorities had reason to be pleased with the opening of the Occupation. Yet their evaluations of the “attitude” (
Stimmung
) of the populace were surprisingly frank and unflattering for the Occupation. The mass exodus from the capital during early June 1940 had stunned the Parisians, who lapsed into a state of shock and awe. This numbness soon wore off, however, once the refugees began to return in large numbers. They had not taken full measure of the tragic end of the Third Republic, had not meekly accepted military defeat, and were therefore “less friendly” toward their occupiers. This negative tendency became more pronounced in the autumn, German evaluations agreed, with the onset of food and fuel shortages and the beginning of rationing. Especially in Paris, long lines formed every morning in front of bakeries, meat counters, dairies, and tobacco shops, and in those lines people grumbled, sometimes loudly, invariably blaming the Germans for their collective discomfort.
²⁴

This consistently pessimistic picture was corroborated in early October 1940 by the head of the MBF's administrative staff, Dr. Jonathan Schmid, in a report to General von Streccius. He listed five reasons for the general decline of public morale in Paris: (1) the realization of defeat sinking in; (2) the visibly worsening economy; (3) the effectiveness of English propaganda; (4) the return of refugees from southern France; and (5) the continuing activity of Communist saboteurs.
²⁵
One month later, a secret Abwehr memo from the Hotel Lutétia, forwarded to the German Foreign Office in Berlin, concurred with this appraisal. It noted that Parisians, grumbling aside, had become “completely apathetic and indifferent” despite a “rather strong” lingering hope in some circles for an eventual English victory.
²⁶
To obtain a second opinion, it is useful to look much farther down the chain of command to the simultaneous reports submitted by more junior military officers who were in daily contact with the local population. Here, in familiar terms that well summarized the first phase of the Occupation, the French were described as “quiet and correct” or “reserved and cautious.” Although this repressed atmosphere did not preclude the perception of a growing Germanophobia in Paris, it did suggest that by the early summer of 1941, France had essentially submitted to the dictates of German military order.
²⁷
Nevertheless, it must have been sobering for military superiors to read parallel reports from the administrative staff and its Propaganda Section in the spring of 1941 indicating that French interest in collaboration had “effectively sunk to zero.”
²⁸

Nothing is harder to judge than this subtle interaction of the occupier and the occupied, a combination of irrationality, complicity, and deep resentment. One of the noticeable factors in this mixture, against which regulations were helpless, was an endless spate of speculations. A general breakdown of communications and of confidence in the impartiality of the media doubtless accounted for this phenomenon. The list of rumors is very long. The British were landing at French ports as well as bombing castles in the Loire Valley. Hitler was living in the Hotel Majestic. There was a revolt in the Balkans. The United States was entering the war. The Germans were going to leave Paris after inflicting a terrible bloodbath on the city. The Vichy government was moving to Paris. The Germans had invaded England. Thirty thousand armed Gaullists would soon be attacking the Occupation army. And so on.
²⁹
Yet at the same time, the Germans were making frequent note of the “absolutely tentative” attitude of the Parisian populace. If some of the upper classes were inclined toward collaboration, the lower were “absolutely uncertain.” With his tipsters and plainclothes policemen scattered in the city, Helmut Knochen gathered much of this small talk. He was convinced that the average Frenchman had no taste for politics, cared mostly about his own satisfaction, and regarded the Pétain regime with “a certain indifference.”
³⁰

If there was a tide in the affairs of Frenchmen, that drift was not propitious for the Occupation. Confidential German reports continued to be frank and to paint a bleak picture of stiffening negative public opinion. “The Parisians want the Germans to withdraw soon,” said one, because they did “not view the German Occupation favorably.”
³¹
Knochen observed an “increasing anti-German tendency.” And Streccius's staff warned that an “anti-German attitude is beginning to gain ground.”
³²
Otto Abetz agreed, noting in mid-September that personal relations with the French citizenry had “considerably soured” since June and that one could well speak of “passive resistance.” He was seconded in that view by Professor Friedrich Grimm, who regularly traveled to Paris and provincial towns to give lectures (in French) for the Groupe Collaboration. If there had been an initial popular depression or at least stupor, he wrote, that was long gone, increasingly replaced by bitter recriminations. As a consequence, in his opinion, “a genuine reconciliation with France is not possible.”
³³

Such pessimism could not have taken the military administration by surprise, since its own sources were expressing much the same evaluation. In truth, the fledgling policy of collaboration was apparently failing. Otto von Stülpnagel's own staff was telling him so. Werner Best's unit could not deny “that the majority of the French are still hostile to everything German,” while Hans Speidel's office stressed “the deeply rooted mistrust of Germany.”
³⁴
Perhaps the whole situation was best summarized by a banal observation on 21 June 1941 by Commandant Schaumburg. He told of a singer at the music hall Alhambra who interjected into her act “sarcastic remarks” about collaboration that were spontaneously greeted by “applause throughout the room.”
³⁵
On the next day, news of the German invasion of Russia reached Paris.

Chapter 3

E
CONOMY AND
A
RMAMENT

T
he confusion and lack of planning so evident in other aspects of the Occupation were also apparent in German attempts to secure a grip on the French economy. In most regards, France's pre-war infrastructure remained intact. Farms and factories had rarely been damaged. However, transportation was a problem because rail junctions had been destroyed by the retreating French army and bridges had been purposely collapsed or buckled in combat, often falling so as to block waterways. The highly inefficient consequence was an initial dependence on trucks, which meant that supplies of food and fuel were slow to reach Paris. Meanwhile, refugees straggled back into the city, and the first signs of mass unemployment became obvious. Yet it was a warm and beautiful summer across the French countryside, where the population seemed quite astonished that the suffering of a conquered nation could be so relatively moderate. By early July the Germans noticed “a certain relaxation” of tensions that had caused the great exodus from the capital.
¹

German organization was slow to take shape. The first administrative innovation was an Inspectorate for Armament (Rüstung) under Major General Schubert, which was assigned to oversee repairs—of machines and vehicles, for example—and to procure unspecified materials “important for the German economy.” Meanwhile, an Economic Agency (Wirtschaft) was also created. These two units, usually identified in abbreviated form as Wi and Rü, were soon unified into a single Wi Rü Stab Frankreich, reporting to General von Streccius, with affiliated offices in Bordeaux, Rouen, and Troyes. The officer immediately in charge of this staff, General Franz von Barckhausen, arrived in the capital in early July, with dozens of other functionaries to follow in the next weeks. Not before the beginning of August did this office for economic affairs declare itself to be functioning. As previously noted, a separate Economic Section (Wirtschaftsabteilung) under Dr. Elmar Michel was also meanwhile attached to the MBF's administrative staff.
²

The most urgent needs of Paris, of course, were fuel and food. Electrical power had to be restored, and for that purpose French employees were “obliged” to cooperate in repairing high-tension lines. Likewise, coal was essential to supply energy for both electrical power and industrial plants—hence the priority given to reopening railways from coal fields in the Lille region, requiring participation by officials and
cheminots
of the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer (SNCF). Added to this was the necessity by early autumn of mobilizing crews for the coming harvest in which French peasants would be assisted by German military personnel. These were the earliest and most basic forms of “collaboration” (
Zusammenarbeit
). In the original vocabulary of the Occupation, that term was used freely, without the freight of political connotations that later burdened the neologism
Kollaboration
. Such was the message delivered by General Brauchitsch in mid-July and repeated by Streccius in a memo on the urgency of the reconstruction effort in France “insofar as is necessary for the fulfillment of German military, political, and economic objectives.” Precisely what those objectives were, it must be observed, still lacked a firm definition.
³

By late July 1940, then, German reports on the economic situation in France were replete with optimistic appraisals such as “satisfactory,” “good progress,” “further improvement,” and so forth.
⁴
Yet there were three nagging difficulties for which the Occupation had no ready panacea. The first was unemployment. Predictably, the disruptions caused by military combat and the massive southward flight of population had closed a multitude of businesses and factories in the Paris region. Normalcy could not be rapidly restored. Consequently, a German report on 17 July stated that the Department of the Seine already had 83,000 persons registered as unemployed, of which 60 percent were women and at least 25,000 were either over the age of 65 or “incapacitated” (
unfähig
). Not only was the national economy thereby weakened, but a considerable strain was being put on financial means to provide social assistance for the needy. A portion of the necessary resources would come from employers and the rest, presumably, from the French government. All of this was supervised by the Employment and Social Welfare Section (Abteilung Arbeitseinsatz und Sozialwesen) of the Occupation, which also supplied some alarming statistics: by mid-August social aid in Greater Paris was being provided for 180,000 individuals without work, an increase of 125,000 in one month. No improvement of this trend was in sight.
⁵

A second issue was inflation. This problem was forever confounding for the Germans, who never succeeded in calming the ceaseless fluctuation of prices and wages. In principle, their policy was to impose a system of strict price controls, fixing a limit at the level of 1 September 1939. But that proposal proved to be a leaky pot. Symptomatic was an administrative report in late July that identified nearly 8,000 cases of price gouging in Paris requiring investigation. Eighty-nine trials resulted, ending with forty convictions that could bring a maximum sentence of three months in prison and a fine.
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Moreover, some inflationary pressures could scarcely be contained. Even if food prices were fixed in Parisian shops, the black market was irrepressible, especially as the Germans themselves were among its best customers. Restaurants were required to post menus with announced prices, but what of special dishes prepared to suit personal tastes or group requests? The better restaurants were especially known to charge German officers, without their complaint, more dearly than regular French patrons. Luxury goods in France, notably in the more elegant clothing emporiums, traditionally bore no price tags, and bargaining between owners and customers was a common, long-established practice. Was it really the duty of German finance inspectors to change an entire culture?
⁷

Thirdly, and crucially, the Occupation had to contend with an unsettled labor market. A first tip-off came in mid-July with a notification from Berlin that Field Marshal Hermann Göring, head of the famous Four Year Plan, demanded a transfer of miners to the Ruhr from the coalfields of Belgium and northern France. These orders were followed in early August by similar instructions to recruit agricultural labor for the Reich.
⁸
Later that month the shipment of workers from France began. At first they were entirely foreigners, mostly Poles and Czechs, and largely unskilled. On 15 August 1940, about 500 were sent from Paris to Germany by rail. Further transports departed on 22 and 28 August, including some married couples and a few children aged seven to thirteen. Gruesome to say, but literally true, it was good practice for the German administration and the SNCF.
⁹

Beyond the details, a fundamental question about the fate of the French economy was gradually emerging. Was the primary German purpose to integrate or to eliminate the productive capacity of France? This question was explicitly posed when orders arrived from Berlin to ship French machines, tools, and raw materials to the Reich. Yet it was unclear how such instructions could be carried out without at the same time reducing the potential of French firms to supply parts for the German arms and aircraft industry. The Wi Rü staff therefore advised that it would be “hardly possible” to do both at once.
¹⁰
The Germans had neither a policy nor a plan for its implementation. That uncomfortable truth was underscored in late September by Hans Speidel, who again raised the overarching issue of whether the objective of the Occupation was to incorporate France into the New Order or to “wipe it out” (
völlig zerschlagen
) as a European and colonial power. Everything, he added, would depend on the answer; until then, “political ambiguity will hinder clear and purposeful effort.”
¹¹

The formulation of an economic policy for France came in bits and drabs throughout that autumn. A first pronouncement by Göring can be traced back to 14 August, when he attempted to draw a distinction between direct and indirect French participation in the war industry. The former, meaning the supply of finished military products, was categorically rejected by him. Hence, France should provide only parts of machines and weapons that could then be assembled in Germany. Such an arrangement was unfeasible in practice, however, and it was never actually implemented.
¹²
Göring nonetheless persisted, especially in his alternate role as chief of the German Luftwaffe. In September he let it be known that the transfer of machines, parts, and skilled labor to bolster Germany's aircraft industry must be given “unconditional priority.” This message was immediately echoed by a Wi Rü staff memo declaring that all efforts must be devoted “to raise the war potential of the German arms industry.”
¹³
A brief visit by Göring to Paris in mid-September was undoubtedly intended to reinforce his authority in the matter, although he seemed to be rather more concerned about inspecting French paintings to be purloined for his private art collection.

Finally, at the end of October, the director of the military administration's Economic Section, Dr. Michel, issued a set of general guidelines (for which he credited Göring) that would now govern the French economy. Succinctly put, they contained four main points: (1) the primary objective was to increase German war potential; (2) to that end, administrators in Paris must identify and promote those French firms useful for military production, even if that meant closing others; (3) civilian consumption in France should be reduced to a minimum; and (4) all Jewish businesses were to be terminated.
¹⁴
A supplementary report ten days later declared the policy issue of integration or elimination of French industrial capacity to be thereby resolved, although some practical difficulties of implementation admittedly remained.
¹⁵
There is no way to measure the impact of these successive declamations, but it is hard to evaluate them as much more than political posturing that did little in fact to clarify the future course of the French economy. At least the obvious priority was unequivocally stated: the military wants and needs of Nazi Germany would henceforth be paramount.

Policy statements accomplished nothing to improve the standard of living in Paris as the first winter of the Occupation approached. Conditions, as the always alert Helmut Knochen remarked in early October, were becoming “ever more difficult.”
¹⁶
By the time Otto von Stülpnagel assumed command at the end of that month, it was possible to locate three perpetual sources of discontent. First, there was the unstable labor situation. Unemployment in Paris continued to climb. German staff memos estimated that about 570,000 adults in Greater Paris were without work, which was fully two-thirds of the total in the Occupied Zone. Those numbers, constantly augmented by the return of refugees and the lack of raw materials needed to reopen industrial plants, did not begin to recede until December. Not before the end of January 1941 could a significant reduction be reported.
¹⁷

Second, the recruitment of workers for the Reich was lagging. By the beginning of October 1940, fewer than 6,000 had volunteered. Three months later that figure barely exceeded 20,000. One notable development was the willingness of some French laborers to leave the country in order to find employment at higher wages in Germany. Not until the beginning of February 1941, however, did French recruits outnumber Polish labor exported from France.
¹⁸
The laborers came primarily from Paris, where unemployment was highest. Pathetic reports from German recruiters told a lamentable story of their lack of success in attracting candidates outside of the capital. One German official recorded “a very meager result” from his efforts in several rural villages. Instead of wasting further time, he returned to Paris.
¹⁹
Another in nearby Orléans found recruits there to be mostly “used,” that is, old, ill, or handicapped. Many of them were drifters, often jobless as well as homeless. Competent French laborers were scarcely to be found “because they reject employment in Germany.”
²⁰
A different explanation was simply the rising need for labor to be retained within France, especially for farm and forestry work, but also for the Organisation Todt (OT), that formidable German engineering enterprise charged first with restoring French railroads and waterways and then with constructing fortifications of the Atlantic Wall.
²¹
Thus, the balance slowly began to tip from unemployment to labor shortage, creating a situation that would soon require more drastic measures of recruitment.

Third, the energy supply was insufficient. France had always been a coal-poor country, and that deficiency now threatened to become acute. Simultaneous estimates by Michel and his administrative superior, Jonathan Schmid, stated on 2 October that coal deliveries to Paris were about half of current needs and the total of energy supply no more than 75 percent, which was “completely insufficient.” No improvement could be signaled a month later as the weather turned raw.
²²
It happened that the winter of 1940–1941 was exceptionally cold. Canals iced over, while many railway tracks in northern France froze and became unusable. Accordingly, food and fuel supplies to French cities, notably Paris, suffered “a considerable degradation.”
²³
As always, shortages, work stoppages, the lack of heating and hot water, and the high price of cigarettes—to name only a few of the common complaints—were all blamed on the Occupation. One report to the German Embassy in Paris from Nancy described the bitterness expressed by French women lining up before a market, where one cried out: “It's high time that these thieves [German soldiers] were driven out. We women are going to help.” Essentially, the same reporter later added, the entire Occupation was a “question of the stomach” (
Magenfrage
). Unless authorities could resolve the bedrock economic issues of jobs, wages, and supplies, any attempt at persuasion of the occupied populace through propaganda would be futile.
²⁴