Posted on 07/16/2008 7:32:06 PM PDT by loreldan
Paris in the month of May was in full aphrodisiac bloom.
The girls were swinging along the boulevards in their short, flowery skirts, their hair flowing loose behind them.
On the radio, the singer Tino Rossi - France's answer to Rudolph Valentino - belted out his latest romantic favourite.
But a few short weeks later, on June, 14, 1940, the German army marched into the capital and occupied it for four years.
France has never forgotten its humiliation - or its bewilderment - in having to adjust to a life of close proximity to the old enemy, with all the resentment, guilt and, worst of all, sneaking
Everyone was surprised the tall, blond invading newcomers did not set about raping the population as the French had expected. Instead, they handed out bread and tarts.
Moreover, they were so handsome and so brave in comparison with the drunken French soldiers who had surrendered the fight.
Soon, every French child was crying out that he wanted to be German, while every young French girl was lusting after the newcomers as though they were allies, not enemies, offering them oranges and standing on tip-toe to look into the plush interior of their limousines.
And French housewives, deprived of companionship while their soldier husbands were held prisoner, were happily sleeping with the enemy.
The French have long sought to draw a veil over these aspects of the occupation, claiming heroic acts of resistance during the period when, in fact, they were little more than collaborators.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Well...this hardly bodes well for French-English national relations.
I suppose something could happen.
Theoretically...
I’m sure some of this happened but I wonder if it was so widespread as is claimed here.
I am reading the Winston Churchill volume “Alone” which is his account of that portion of the war when France fell.
Churchill was meeting in France with French officials during the Battle of France, and they discussed what to do if Italy entered the war. Churchill thought they should immediately bomb the industrial centers near Milan to give the Italians a taste of war, which he didn’t think they could stomach.
They wanted to have the bombers take off from airfields in Southern France, and when word got out, scores of French civilians went to the airfield and dragged carts and other things across the field to prevent the missions from being able to take off. They didn’t want to piss off the Germans and risk retaliation.
I didn’t know that.
lol...a wee bit inflammatory.
“Collaborator” used to be the worst word in any european language.
Now, it’s something to be aspired to.
Hell, you can’t blame the women - it was their first chance to sleep with a winner.
Danielle Steele wrote a novel about this. An American woman who married a French soldier lived in the countryside of France. Her husband was a POW and her house was taken over by a German officer. She ended up having a child with the German and living as husband and wife so to speak until the war was over. Not that it has anything to do with this.
But I can understand survival, and if you have to use what you have, use it. But still, to party it up with the enemy while your men are being held captive and your Jewish countrymen are sent to die? This tells me don’t trust the French. As if I needed to be reminded of that.
Or men who would sleep with them, despite lack of bathing and lack of lack of hair?
Sort on interesting this side of the German occupation of France is now coming out. The Daily Mail had an article awhile ago about a photo exhibit of German occupied Paris showing in Paris and causing quite a stir. The controversy was it was impossible to tell from the photos the city was actually occupied by Nazis. Parisians, the women looked great in their 30s/40s fashions, were going about their business and many looks like enjoying life. One photo had a lone German officer, who appeared only armed with a brief case, descending into the Metro and another photo had Nazis banners flying over a Paris boulevard. The photos went against the story built over in post-war France that life under German occupation was hell.
That sounds familiar! Didn't the liberals take this position after 9/11?
They shaved off their hair, drew swastikas on their faces, ripped off their clothes and made them walk barefooted through the city.
The men who collaborated with the Germans? They got shot.
It tells me not to trust a woman.
POST OF THE DAY!
Well, this might be true too.
Just because every Frenchman and Frenchwoman wasn’t a Resistance member doesn’t mean that no one was. Just because some Frenchmen and Frenchwomen were collaborators doesn’t mean that everyone was. History is both wheat and chaff and only a fool expects otherwise. IMHO.
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