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.
A million Frenchmen died defending Paris in WWI.
Well, actually, I’ve lived in the UK for some time now and the myth of the ugly amerikaner is truly dead. It may have been true in the post WWII era until the 70s, but now, most Americans in Europe are well educated, polite and courteous. Interestingly, most Europeans love Americans, and nearly all hate the American govt, but they can separate that out. German tourists, on the other hand are boors.
“How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?
Nobody knows. It’s never been tried...”
Another good one -
Why are all the avenues of Paris lined with trees?
Because Germans like to march in the shade.
Le boo hoo...
It wasn't just France. The entire American left was rabidly anti-war through the 30's and right up to the day the the USSR was invaded and their Commisar masters told them to be pro-war.
The reason that there was no anti-war movement during WWII is never publicized. The reason was that the Left was ordered to back the war by the only authority they recognized, Stalin.
So in other words, a “sexually liberated woman” is a whore.
The Brittany and Normandy coasts consist of separate ethnic groups such as the Bretons and Normans. They definitely are friendlier than Parisians. Their ancestors originated from Northern European or Viking stock before emigrating to the British Isles. The food in these areas can often be very different than what is found in Paris.
I found the French on the Cote d’Azur also very friendly, particularly the rather exotic-looking gals whose parents were forced from Algeria in the 1960s.
“So in other words, a ‘sexually liberated woman’ is a whore.”
Or, to put it in contemporary terms, an infidel.
Hitler and Speer — now there’s a real pair of Party animals!
and don’t forget Islam and the Nazi were as one in the “final solution” - the extermination of Jews
Interesting...
This girl pays the penalty for having had personal relations with the Germans. Here, in the Montelimar area, France, French civilians shave her head as punishment.
Photo Credit: National Archives and Records Administration, item 111-SC-193785. Smith, photographer, August 29, 1944.
More accurately:
A million Frenchmen died in WWI because their assh*le leaders were still p*ssed at 'Germany' for the French's humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and were just itching to get even - at any cost. Which is also why the terms of the Versailles Treaty were so draconian and singular against 'Germany', who didn't even start the flocking war, while Austria-Hungary (and its other allies) who DID start the war against Serbia, got off relatively Scot free in comparison.There, much better.
"I have found the missing link between the ape and man- it is a Frenchman".
In Lyon and Paris both, I never encountered any rude French.
bump
Actually when I was in Paris for 6 weeks in 2001 I only encountered a couple of rude French people. Most were wonderful and didn’t mind that I didn’t speak French worth a damn. The immigrants were the rude ones.
My experience too. Of course it got even better when my obviously American wife was with me -- Parisian French is her other native language.
The Third Reich had two Muslim Divisions.
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