When Paris Went Dark (45 page)

Our engagement with the urban landscape is persistently one of interpretation. The history of a city resides in a combination of its architectural evidence
and
the present and past activities of those who have lived within that built environment. This is important: physical, mental, and spiritual engagements with a planned and unplanned architectural environment, not its geopolitical location, define the essence of any metropolis. And that essence changes with the knowledge that we as inhabitants, tourists, temporary residents, filmgoers, readers, and artists garner as we learn about the upheavals that powerful cities such as Paris have undergone.

Imaginative essayists and writers of fiction as well as historians and cultural critics have plumbed the psyche of those disoriented by the disappearance of liberty in a city known for that freedom. In his
Invisible Cities,
Italo Calvino, the Italian essayist, imaginatively wrote about how urban dwellers, both physically and in their dreams, adapt their city to their desires and vice versa—about their desires “constructing” their cities. “The city… does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps… the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”
¹⁷
Paris was physically marked during the Occupation, and many of those marks remain. A military
occupation leaves as well traces on the “invisible” history of a city, but its inhabitants make a daily effort to ignore them, to forget them. “We can keep only ‘one’ city in our mind verbally, though others are there [always], visually, experientially.”
¹⁸
Once the occupier has gone, the evidence of his presence diminishes; although, just as memory protected the invested city, memory also never quite allows the occupier to disappear completely. In our master example, Paris has yet to be “liberated” totally from the Occupation of 1940–1944.

“Paris” is not just a set of GPS coordinates but also, and maybe mostly, an imagined city; its special genius has always been based on this fabulous definition. We are far from the Terror of 1793–94, but many of the buildings where its executions and tortures took place are still standing. We are much closer to the 1940s. Some historians do not want us to forget what happened in the buildings occupied by the Germans and their Vichy accomplices. But in the end, what will remain of the memories of that period? What will be the equivalent of the tumbrel and the guillotine? Will de Gaulle be compared to Napoleon, who brought the nation out of the Revolution with his assertion in 1799 that “It is finished”? Will the memory of the Occupation and the Liberation be whitewashed? Do we really have to know about the Occupation in order to understand and “feel” contemporary Paris? When our children pass those little pieces of marble that say so-and-so died here, do they really care? Should they? Will these memorials eventually fall to the ground, forgotten? And if they do, if there is no written record on the walls of Paris, where will the memory of the Occupation and its legacies go?

Yes, the lights came back on, and Paris was no longer darkened, either by war or by the presence of its enemies. But as we have seen, the city has remained haunted by this period. “We’ll always have Paris” means that we will always have the memories of how we felt at some past moment—but
that
Paris is gone.

If reading this book has made you more curious about Paris and its violent midcentury history, and if you can still admire her almost unreal self-confidence, then I am pleased. If, on the other hand, the information in these pages has made you more suspicious of her charms,
more critical of her adaptation to the “plague,” then that, too, would please me. For either way, or both ways, you would have thickened your knowledge so that the next time you confront Paris, either in person or imaginatively, you will have more respect for her resiliency as well as for the hope that she still offers those seeking to escape the depravations of ignorance and cultural violence.

This list is long, for the project has been long. Venturing into a field that has been so deeply studied, and from a perspective that has been underemphasized, especially in English, took encouragement from many, good critics all of them, and all faithful to the idea that the path of narrative is the best means to find one’s way through the underbrush of history.

I have dedicated this book to my family, but it must also be dedicated in part to two friends whose help and encouragement kept me steadily and confidently on target. Stacy Schiff recognized early that my project was larger than my timid aspirations for it. She explained the world of trade publishing to someone who had only published with academic presses; she found my agent; she made me sit up straight when I slumped; she checked in regularly with sisterly encouragement. (I’d say “motherly,” but I’m much older than she.) Her generosity and friendship define those terms, and are equaled only by her brilliance as a writer.

And I take special pleasure in thanking my
pote
Philippe Rochefort, a French friend of more than four decades, and one of the most widely read, critically astute, and deeply generous men I know. Philippe served as my touchstone on all facts concerning his beloved France, especially the complexities of its history. He volunteered as chauffeur to sites of the Occupation (including a re-creation of Hitler’s own tour of Paris), sent me books and articles, suggested directions that I had ignored, and generally supported my efforts with wit and intelligence. In the end, his comment—“You have been fair to the French”—meant more to me than he knows.

Later to the game, but just in time, was my editor at Little, Brown—Geoff Shandler. When I described to writer friends how Geoff edited
my manuscript, they all offered a version of the same theme: “I didn’t know editors like that still existed.” Geoff believed in this project from the beginning, even before I was sure about its shape. And he has read several versions of it, several times—cutting, editing, reorganizing, and gently suggesting. The result has his fingerprints all over it.

Catherine Lafarge and English Showalter were early evaluators of my first forays into Hitler’s tour of Paris. Their firm analyses structured my earliest attempts at organizing the complexity of the project. Catherine regularly offered advice, information, and more books than I was able to read. English has been calmly and supportively at my side since we first met almost fifty years ago.

Two fellow scholars of the Occupation and its representations in film and literature, Judith Mayne and Leah Hewitt, were essential readers, deepening my focus when it might have been superficial, and unselfishly offering perspectives from their own work.

Finding an agent as a first-time trade author was an adventure. I benefited from long discussions with Ike Williams, and his colleague, Katherine Flynn, and especially with Michael Carlisle and his assistant, Lauren Smythe, both of whom got me off to a good start. But being adopted by Geri Thoma, now of Writers House, was the opening I needed. Geri took me on after only an hour’s conversation, and it has been a perfect match. Her warmth, intelligence, uncanny knowledge of the ever-changing world of publishing, and her generous sense of humor (which has gotten me through many panicky phone calls) have all made this book better.

The Little, Brown editing, design, production, and marketing teams have built a remarkable safety net. As long as there are teams this gifted, publishing in the United States has a healthy future indeed. I extend my warm gratitude to Michael Pietsch, Reagan Arthur, Allie Sommer, Pamela Marshall, Miriam Parker, Lisa Erickson, Amanda Brown, Amanda Lang, and Keith Hayes. Liese Mayer was an early and enthusiastic guide. Many authors complain about the hard-heartedness of copyeditors, but this author was fortunate enough to have Barbara Clark, an intelligent and sensitive reader. My estimable publisher in the United Kingdom, John Murray, Ltd., through the persons of Roland Phillips and his aide,
Becky Walsh, have reminded me that this book is being read by those who know intimately the period it covers.

At key points in the writing of this narrative, I have benefited from the wise criticism and encouragement of Joseph Ellis, Dennis Porter, Elaine Showalter, William O. Goode, and Drake McFeely. Scholars and amateurs in this and ancillary fields have also offered suggestions and advice: Melanie Krob, Stanley Burns, Roger Hahn, Alan Marty, Allan Mitchell, Bert Gordon, Robert Paxton, Alan Riding, Anthony Grayling, and Robert Weil.

Friends old and new have shown polite interest as I rambled on about Germans in Paris. Just being there meant a lot to me: Harriet Welty Rochefort, Maggie and Bob Pearson, Nicola Courtright, Jason Rosenblatt, Marc de la Bruyère, Roger and Gayle Mandle, Hope Glidden, Laurent Gargaillo, Sidne Koenigsberg, and Rob Dumitreseu.

Closer to home, colleagues in the “Valley”—that is, at Amherst College and its nearby Five-College sisters—listened and debated and suggested: Polina Barskova, Marietta Pritchard, Lucia Suarez, Clark Dougan, Mark Kesselman, Christian Rogowski, Tom Dumm, Sara Brenneis, Sigi Schutz, Lawrence Douglas, Chris Benfey, Ute Brandes, the late Don Pitkin, Bill Taubman, Judy Frank, Heidi Gilpin, Scott Turow, and especially Catherine Epstein. Others will certainly remind me that I forgot to mention their generous help. Sigh. The world of social media is an unruly one, but Julia Hanley’s calm savvy made me sociable.

Amherst College has been extraordinarily generous in supporting this project—financially and morally, through sabbaticals, extensive financial support for travel and research, and student research assistants.
When Paris Went Dark
took shape under its aegis. Deans of the Faculty Lisa Raskin and Gregory Call always answered my requests for support. Their leadership has ensured that the faculty of our college are not impeded in their work by a paucity of funding. I am also grateful for the generous support of alumni and trustees, especially the selfless generosity of Axel Schupf, who repay the College faithfully for the memorable educations they received here.

Among the staff at Amherst who made this project so much easier, I
would like to thank John Kunhardt, Susan Sheridan, Jayne Lovett, Megan Morey, Betsy Cannon-Smith, Ellie Ballard, and the staff at Amherst’s Frost Library and its Center for Informational Technology. The Mead Art Museum at Amherst, and its director, Elizabeth Barker, deserve thanks as well for their generous support. In the French Department office, Liz Eddy and Bobbie Helinski effortlessly (it appeared) eased me through even the modest bureaucracy of this college.

Other institutions have provided me with the space, the resources, the aid, and the comforts that every writer who ventures over much-traveled ground needs. Allow me to thank the staffs at the Mémorial de la Shoah and its Centre de documentation juive contemporaine in Paris, the Archives nationales de France, the Musée de la Résistance nationale in Champigny-sur-Marne, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (especially Michael Grunberger, director of collections), the Cinémathèque française, the Musée du Général Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris/Musée Jean Moulin, the archives of the Préfecture de la police de Paris, the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, the Bibliothèque de nationale France, the New York Public Library, and the libraries of Smith College, Hampshire College, and Mount Holyoke College, the W. E. B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and especially the archivists at the Imperial War Museum, London.

I have talked to many, many citizens of France and Paris who either lived through these events as adults, as teenagers, or as youngsters. Some did not want to be identified, so I must thank them anonymously but no less deeply. Others may—and should—be named, for they give heft to a story slowly disappearing into cloudy history: Marie-Jeanne Rochefort, Brigitte and Guy Bizot, Arnaud de Bontin, France Batoua, Madeleine and René Boccara, Pierre-Élie de Borone, Anne-Marie Chouillet, Jean and Denise Dréno, Roger and Ellie Hahn, Viviane Lemaire, and Hessy Taft.

Finally, and with the honors that such placement brings, there is an army of young people, all students of mine, who have listened to me for years as I carved this tale from the history of twentieth-century France. In courses on the history of Paris and France, on the urban
imagination, on World War II in film and literature, and others, they have followed as I taught new texts and let my enthusiasm for the history of the Occupation hijack the syllabus. Most important, they worked for me as research assistants, fitting my own demands into their already busy schedules, for they were all serious students. I acknowledge here their diligence, their imagination, and their friendship: Ethan Katz, himself now a historian of the period and prominently mentioned in my bibliography; Chris Chang and Sam Huneke, both currently PhD students in history, and David Crane, Jesse McCarthy, and Brian Thayer. Kane Haffey gave freely his time to photograph this author, almost succeeding in making him look authoritative. And special thanks must go to a patient and punctilious trio who were crucial during the especially chaotic final months of preparations: Michael Harmon, Elizabeth Mardeuz, and the almost unbelievably competent, perceptive, and imaginative Lu Yi. This young scholar from Shanghai has worked with me longer than anyone. I’ve asked my wife if we can adopt him so that he won’t leave after he graduates from Amherst, but clearly he has other plans: yes, a PhD in history.

Collaboration has bad connotations in a book about the Occupation, but in this case, I could not have succeeded, if indeed I have, without the generous collaboration of these supportive institutions, and especially these thoughtful people who have accompanied me on this narrative journey.

Ronald C. Rosbottom was born in New Orleans and raised in the American South. He was educated at Tulane University and Princeton University, and he taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the Ohio State University. For the past two and a half decades he has been a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts, where he is the holder of an endowed chair, the Winifred Arms Professsorship in the Arts and the Humanities. He has published extensively, editing or authoring five books and dozens of articles and reviews on French and English narrative literature. For many years, he was the executive secretary and a member of the executive board of the Amercian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. At Amherst, he has taught courses on the history of Paris, the legends of Napolean, and on how World War II has been represented in film and literature. A frequent visitor to Paris and France, Rosbottom is married to cookbook author Betty Rosbottom and lives in Massachusetts.