A recent exhibition of pictures from occupied Paris has revealed a more relaxed image of the city
Posted on 05/26/2008 12:36:11 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
A new book which suggests that the German occupation of France encouraged the sexual liberation of women has shocked a country still struggling to come to terms with its troubled history of collaboration with the Nazis.
A recent exhibition of pictures from occupied Paris has revealed a more relaxed image of the city
Like a recent photographic exhibition showing Parisians enjoying themselves under the occupation, the book’s depiction of life in Paris as one big party is at odds with the collective memory of hunger, resistance and fear.
“It is a taboo subject, a story nobody wants to hear,” said Patrick Buisson, author of 1940-1945 Années Erotiques (“erotic years”). “It may hurt our national pride, but the reality is that people adapted to occupation.”
Many might prefer to forget but, with their husbands in prison camps, numerous women slept not only with German soldiers – the young “blond barbarians” were particularly attractive to French women, says Buisson – but also conducted affairs with anyone else who could help them through financially difficult times: “They gave way to the advances of the boss, to the tradesman they owed money to, their neighbour. In times of rationing, the body is the only renewable, inexhaustible currency.”
Cold winters, when coal was in short supply, and a curfew from 11pm to 5am also encouraged sexual activity, says Buisson, with the result that the birth rate shot up in 1942 even though 2m men were locked up in the camps.
The book has stirred painful memories. One French reviewer called it “impertinent” and another accused Buisson of telling only part of the story by focusing on the “beneath the belt” history of the occupation. Le Monde, the bible of the French intellectual elite, chided the author, who is the director of French television’s History Channel, for painting life under the occupation as a “gigantic orgy”.
People who lived through the occupation found it insulting to suggest that they spent it in bed. “It makes me really angry,” said Liliane Schroeder, 88, who risked her life as a member of the resistance and has published her own journal of the occupation. “It’s shocking and ridiculous to say life was just a big party,” she told The Sunday Times. “We had much better things to do.”
Schroeder nevertheless described her life as a messenger in the resistance as a “marvellous time” in which “people got on with life even if they weren’t laughing”. Young women were useful to the resistance, she said, because “when a young woman and a man sat in a café it did not look as if they were plotting. They looked like lovers”.
French sensitivities about the country’s wartime record were demonstrated last month when an exhibition of photographs depicting Parisians enjoying life under the Nazis included a notice explaining that the pictures avoided the “reality of occupation and its tragic aspects”. The photographs showed well-dressed citizens shopping on the boulevards or strolling in the parks. People crowded into nightclubs. Women in bikinis swam in a pool.
Buisson dedicates a chapter in his book to cinemas, which he describes as hotbeds of erotic activity, particularly when it was cold outside. “At a few francs they were cheaper than a hotel room,” he writes, “and, offering the double cover of darkness and anonymity, propitious for all sorts of outpourings.”
The French even had sex in the catacombs, the underground ossuary and warren of subterranean tunnels in Paris: war, Buisson argues, acted as an aphrodisiac, stimulating “the survival instinct”. He said in an interview: “People needed to prove that they were alive. They did so by making love.”
It has been claimed that prostitutes staged the first rebellion against the Nazis by refusing to service the invaders but Buisson called this a myth. The Germans, he claimed, were welcomed into the city’s best brothels, a third of which were reserved for officers. Another 100,000 women in Paris became “occasional prostitutes”, he said.
Elsewhere, members of the artistic elite drowned their sorrows in debauchery. Simone de Beauvoir, the writer, and Jean-Paul Sartre, the philosopher, were devotees of allnight parties fuelled by alcohol and lust.
“It was only in the course of those nights that I discovered the true meaning of the word party,” was how de Beauvoir put it. Sartre was no less enthusiastic: “Never were we as free as under the German occupation.”
De Beauvoir wrote about the “quite spontaneous friendliness” of the conquerors: she was as fascinated as any by the German “cult of the body” and their penchant for exercising in nothing but gym shorts.
“In the summer of 1940,” wrote Buisson, “France was transformed into one big naturist camp. The Germans seemed to have gathered on French territory only to celebrate an impressive festival of gymnastics.” The author said he did not want to make light of a tragic part of French history, but there was a need to correct the “mythical” image of the occupation. “In this horrible period, life continued,” he said.
“It is disturbing to know that while the Jews were being deported, the French were making love. But that is the truth.”
Now Buisson is at work on a sequel, about how women were punished for sleeping with the enemy. The provisional title is Revenge of the Males.
How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?
Nobody knows. It’s never been tried...
My father, who was not only at Normandy bright and early on June 6, 1944, but also hit the beaches in four other landings, had a lot of stories about France. He said the bands of French resistance fighters they interfaced with were usually small but brutal. Just a reminder that there were a few brave souls in that country of cowards.
MM
Am I alone in getting the impression that all the French were in the resistance?
Gosh! Really?/s Obviously most Jews living in a specific country were citizens thereof... Since the persecution was based on identifying them as a separate group it's also obvious that a distinction between the majority people and Jews is totally legitimate. If you need a full qualifier, let's rephrase it to “It is disturbing to know that while the Jews were being deported, the non-jewish French were making love. But that is the truth."
20% of the French Resistance were Jewish, while Jews were only 1% of the total population.
Bu...buh.....but, the entire French nation was in the Resistance! How can you not care?
How do you think the Germans were able to identify these Jews and separate them out? Hmmmm.....a little 'local' help maybe?
Yes the French police, officials and railway had always a helping hand for the Germans running the killing machine.
There were more than 700 million members of the French resistance.
LOL. They must be related to those 800 million Germans who knew nothing.
If we are not making long range plans to consolidate each and every muslim into a middle-eastern locale, we are in need of new leadership.
Those who did resist were national heroes in my eyes. I read somewhere the average life expectancy of a resister was six months - so when you signed up for that you knew you were probably not going to make it to see your country freed. They stood up, at least in some small way, against the most barbarically total occupation force imaginable.
So which hotel did Hitler stay in when he rolled into Paris? I’ll bet he got good service.
It was “Springtime for Hitler” don’t you know.
“Am I alone in getting the impression that all the French were in the resistance?”
All Frenchmen were in the Resistance.
All Spaniards were anti-Franco.
And all the people from the PRC who have joined FR in the last two weeks are just average citizens.
Years ago there was a post here giving the numbers of the French Resistance before and after liberation. I wish I had saved it. I believe it tripled.
I'm sure the Frenchie bimbos were in more positions to collaborate than bent over.
I agree. Some Europeans say they’re worse than Americans!
A democrat election-sweep?: p
You mean those Nazis who fully cooperated with Muslims of all stripes to eradicate the Jews? Those Nazis who publicly and from top on endorsed Islam and it's "warrior culture"? Those Nazis who declared Muslim nations "honorary Aryans"?
I think your version isn't that plausible.
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