Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 (20 page)

Throughout it all, Occupation officials in Paris repeated tirelessly that their goal was to render the French economy as useful as possible for the German war effort. And after Operation Torch and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proclamation of the Allied policy of “unconditional surrender” at the Casablanca conference in January 1943, Dr. Michel specified for the Majestic that the effort should be “total.” One must therefore wonder to what extent the stated goal was achieved. What, in other words, did occupied France actually contribute to the Nazi war economy? One indication may be gained from information provided by the Renault factory in the Paris suburb of Billancourt. Despite the bombings and some loss of skilled labor to the Reich, this plant's production of trucks rose through most of 1942, reaching about 1,500 vehicles a month by that autumn. A peak was attained in October at 67 units daily, after which the level dropped slightly to an average of about 50. Output then leveled off during 1943 before it began to decline once more in 1944. According to contemporary German accounts, that trend was altogether typical of French industry as a whole.
²⁶

Aggregate figures available for the first two years of the Occupation detail the enormous quantity of raw materials and manufactured goods transported from France to Germany by the summer of 1943.

Source: “Leistungen der französischen gewerblichen Wirtschaft für Deutschland,” 31 July 1943, AN Paris, AJ
⁴⁰
, 779.

To these statistics must be added the “crucial importance” of French agricultural products for the Reich. For the year 1943, for instance, they included 1.4 million tons of grain, 270,000 tons of meat, 24,000 tons of butter, and 4,200,000 hectoliters of wine. By early 1944, according to the MBF's Economic Section, gathering reliable statistics on the chaotic French economy was “totally excluded.” Yet one of its staff reports included estimates that 65 percent of the French labor force was engaged in the German war effort, which was consuming 72 percent of France's total production and 93 percent of its industrial goods. However approximate they were, viewed by the Occupation these calculations certainly spoke of successful exploitation on a grand scale.
²⁷

The foregoing panorama of the French economy during 1943 and early 1944 provides the setting for a thick description of the most serious political crisis of the Occupation since the hostage issue erupted in August 1941. This primarily concerned demands by the insatiable Sauckel for a vastly increased recruitment of French labor for the Reich. The first “Sauckel Initiative” had limped to the finish line by the end of 1942, filling its quota of 250,000 workers to be transferred to Germany, of which 150,000 were classified as skilled, mostly in metallurgy.
²⁸
Supposedly, it was to be a one-time action. But even before January 1943, Sauckel disclosed plans for a second initiative, that is, the transfer of another 250,000 laborers in the first four months of the year. Complaints from the French, who naturally felt betrayed, as well as some negative rumbles within the MBF's own military administration about a likely reduction of French productivity, did not deter him. Flaunting telegrams of support from the Führer and from Albert Speer, Sauckel responded that recruitment would be curbed only if huge gaps might thereby be created in the French arms industry. Hitler's orders allowed no contradiction and “absolutely must be kept.”
²⁹
Reports from both the Commandant of Greater Paris and the Gestapo about the “significant unrest” in the French work force left Sauckel unruffled. Although labor recruitment was still legally voluntary, the German procedures actually resembled a labor draft. When, to Sauckel's annoyance, Vichy officials referred to these roundups as “deportation,” he dismissed his French critics as “procrastination artists” (
Hinhaltekünstler
).
³⁰

It is worthwhile here to eavesdrop on one of several personal confrontations between Sauckel and Laval at the Paris Embassy in the Rue de Lille. There, on 12 January 1943, Sauckel laid out the terms of the next recruitment effort: another 250,000 French workers were to be transferred to Germany, of which again 150,000 were to be skilled. The
Relève
would remain in effect at a ratio of one POW returned to France for every three skilled workers. They would need to move fast, however, by transporting 4,500 a day across the Rhine. Laval was incredulous. Sauckel did not seem to understand that “I represent a country having no army, no fleet, no colonial empire, and no more treasure.” To be sure, “I am doing everything to expedite a German victory,” Laval boasted, but whereas Sauckel could assure German workers that they were supporting the Reich, he could not tell the French that they were working for France. “My task is made harder every day,” Laval pleaded, faced as he was with “the impossibility of continuing in this way.” Sauckel did not flinch. The French were responsible for the war, he claimed, because their politicians sided with English plutocrats and American Jews. Furthermore, whatever France contributed to the war effort, the German sacrifice was greater. “You must know one thing,” he barked, “the German people will win this war. They will fight on, even if in Europe one stone does not remain on top of another.”
³¹

It would be difficult to invent a dramatic scene that more perfectly captures the essence of these two protagonists, one an abject supplicant, the other a fanatic. The outcome was swift and predictable. To avoid excessive bullying by German recruiters, the French agreed on 10 February to implement a formal labor draft, the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), which recalled the Bousquet-Oberg deal on the police, trading French servility for a modicum of independence from German control. It was a decidedly unpopular measure, as the Gestapo observed, meeting the “sharpest rejection” and stirring increasing enmity toward Germany among the population, including a “massive flight” of young Frenchmen to the
maquis
.
³²
Yet judged solely by statistics, it succeeded. Like the first “Sauckel Initiative,” the second reached and indeed slightly exceeded its quota. The rub was that Laval expected Sauckel, as a reward, to grant an extended pause. Instead, he immediately presented the French with yet another quota of 50,000 recruits for the month of April 1943.
³³
Laval balked. Moreover, vigorous objections circulated from both the Hotel Majestic and the French Embassy. But Sauckel summoned Laval once more and revealed his determination to mount a third recruitment campaign: 120,000 workers to the Reich by the end of May and another 100,000 in June. With a pathetic whimper, Laval protested that such an effort was “materially possible but morally impossible,” suggesting that Sauckel would succeed only in arousing further opposition among French workers and thereby unintentionally make himself Charles de Gaulle's closest accomplice. Of course, Sauckel insisted and Laval conceded.
³⁴

The third “Sauckel Initiative” was a failure. From the beginning it was plagued by three enervating conflicts. The first was a personal friction between Sauckel and Heinrich von Stülpnagel. Ever keen to protect his frayed prerogatives, the MBF objected to Sauckel's presumption of unrestrained authority over the French economy, which had led to “mutual distrust and reservations.” His staff members in the Majestic found that excessive demands imposed on the STO were proving “very disruptive.” In addition, Stülpnagel's military field commanders showed little enthusiasm for the repeated bouts of recruitment, as one of them reported, especially since the French displayed “absolutely no inclination to take up work in Germany.”
³⁵
The second conflict involved labor needs within France. After November 1942, the imminence of a possible Allied invasion created a renewed urgency for the Organisation Todt (OT) to complete the construction of the Atlantic Wall. OT's own labor requirements accordingly grew, for which the third “Sauckel Initiative” created “a conflict with our purposes.” The shortfall of OT's quotas became painfully evident: a goal set for mid-July 1943 was to settle 23,000 new workers in the coastal regions, of which but 5,000 appeared.
³⁶
The third, and most fundamental, conflict was the still unclarified contradiction between the goal of increasing French production while siphoning off skilled labor for Germany. Latent since Sauckel first set foot in Paris, this problem grew exponentially with every new round of recruitment quotas delivered by him from Berlin. Here was the festering root of resentment within the MBF's Rü staff, that is, among those Occupation officials assigned to expedite the output of the French arms industry. They therefore indicated no regret whatever while reporting at the end of June that the third initiative was “an obvious failure.” The numbers bore them out. By the end of July, Sauckel's latest quota was barely half-filled, and his program was encountering “steadily growing difficulties.”
³⁷
Yet remarkably, he was already plotting a fourth initiative for 1944. When informed of this, the Minister of Industrial Production, Jean Bichelonne remarked in a classic bit of French understatement: “It is perhaps too much.”
³⁸

Bichelonne brought these matters front and center. In an uncharacteristic (for a Vichy cabinet member) move, he took the initiative and expressed to Stülpnagel a wish to increase French productivity for “the European war economy.” He wondered if direct talks with Speer might advance that cause. Several weeks later he received a cordial personal reply from Speer himself, who invited the astonished Frenchman to be his guest in Berlin. On the morning of 17 September 1943, the two met in Speer's office, where they agreed on the desirability of developing France's economic contribution. However, such an objective could be realized only by raising French production of coal. That subject was a principal item on the agenda of an afternoon session at the Wannsee—the site of a more notorious conference many months earlier—at which both sides concurred that a significant boost of French coal supplies (200,000 tons a month) would require the introduction of 15,000 new miners. This task might take four to five months, during which Germany agreed temporarily to provide the needed fuel. Yet all was not harmony. A summary of the two meetings disclosed a mutual incomprehension because the Germans “absolutely do not understand the passionate opposition of the French people to work in Germany.” But the key sentence was this: “Minister Speer and his staff do not foresee an increase in the number of French laborers working in Germany.”
³⁹

The full implications of that remark did not become apparent until late November. By then Sauckel had revealed his incredibly ambitious projections for Aktion 44, a conscription in the next year of one million workers to meet the needs of French industry and the Organisation Todt, as well as another million for transfer to Germany. Not alone, Speer was skeptical. His already wavering support for Sauckel had tipped into frank negativity with the failure of the third labor recruitment effort in France. In the process, he became convinced that it made more sense to award further contracts to French industrial firms, thus keeping the bulk of their labor force in France and avoiding the unpopular shift of workers to the Reich, at least until all requirements set by the military administration in Paris were satisfied. If Hitler still hesitated to abandon Sauckel, Speer's personal access to the Führer and his broad influence in Berlin would weigh heavily on the outcome. Sauckel was overmatched.
⁴⁰

Simple in its basic outlines, this story brought to an inglorious close one of the most controversial and emotionally trying aspects of the Occupation. That Sauckel's labor recruitment program was to be canceled altogether right after the Normandy landing would be no surprise. Its demise was already assured. For the record, it is worthwhile to tabulate here the final returns.

For Greater Paris, those figures were respectively 84,142, 69,756, and 28,278 for a total of 182,176. It is striking that the participation of Paris in Sauckel's programs steadily declined from a third to a fourth, then to a fifth. Finally, as Paris went, so went France.
⁴¹

Chapter 14

A W
ANING
H
OPE

T
he war news went from bad to worse, and there was very little that German propaganda could do about it. Whatever the official message of military bulletins, this was the assessment of Occupation authorities in Paris. As for the French, rumors of the fierce battle raging at Stalingrad in late 1942 raised “great expectations” of an Allied triumph, as one district field commander reported from the suburbs, a theme constantly being discussed in bread lines and over an
apéritif
or two at neighborhood bars. Observations of the Sicherheitspolizei went ever further: many Parisians were expecting an imminent German collapse, an Anglo-American landing in the spring of 1943, and a complete Allied victory by the end of that year. If such spirited optimism was unjustified, the trend of public opinion was undeniable and could only be confirmed by Adolf Hitler's communiqué to the Paris Embassy on 3 February 1943 that “the battle of Stalingrad has ended.”
¹

As Friedrich Grimm rather weakly suggested, maybe the verdict at Stalingrad would actually be beneficial, at least from the standpoint of propaganda, because it was sure to magnify the French fear of Bolshevism. But this notion found little echo in either the military administration or the Gestapo. In fact, one memo related that the Bolshevik bogey, little heeded any more, was generally greeted with “a condescending smile.” Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Nazi head of the Sipo-SD in Berlin, detected “an ever widening anti-German attitude among French workers.” His underlings in Paris concurred. True, there was some anxiety about Soviet expansion, but that was easily trumped by the desire for a German defeat.
²

In the hallways of the Hotel Majestic, the opinion hardened that French dispositions were “mostly determined by military events.” Of course, other factors, such as food shortages, German requisitions, labor recruitment, deportations, and air raids, also mattered. Yet as a propaganda officer at the Paris Embassy loquaciously noted, it was “doubtful that the possibility still exists to influence the basic attitude of the greatest part of the population until the beginning of a more favorable military situation.” By the summer of 1943, that was unquestionably the consensus within the Occupation.
³

Longstanding differences nonetheless reappeared. As support for collaboration began to crumble, some Germans became openly contemptuous of the wobbly French. Fritz Sauckel wrote back to Hitler's crony Martin Bormann in Berlin that the public in Paris just did not grasp the hard facts of the war. Whereas the Reich was straining to the utmost, “here everything peacefully takes its accustomed course.” He was especially caustic about Parisian women, some of whom were still cavorting in “unimaginable luxury.”
⁴
Helmut Knochen expressed himself in a similar fashion, deploring the passivity of most French bureaucrats, “the considerable difficulties” among workers with regard to Sauckel's labor recruitment program, and the general “lack of understanding” for Nazi policy toward Jews—all evidence, as he saw it, of “insufficient volition.”
⁵
These remarks provoked complaints at the German Embassy. Knochen's report on the remaining possibilities for effective propaganda were “tendentious and one-sided,” wrote Rudolf Schleier. It was simply not true, as Knochen insisted, that the French now treated Germans with “arrogance and disdain.” Nor did they regard the approach of Allied armies with satisfaction; rather, with anxiety. And there was no evidence that the French administration was encouraging “open resistance.” Such disclaimers and rebuttals became common currency while the Occupation attempted to salvage whatever it could of that elusive entity—favorable public opinion.
⁶

It would not be easy. “Today we must confess,” Schleier admitted at a meeting of German officers in late August 1943, “the majority no longer believes in a German victory.” Yet Carl Oberg tried to reassure all concerned. He had recently visited Hitler and found him “gleaming with the assurance of victory.” There were unconfirmed rumors of a plot to unseat him, a villainous threat that could only plunge Germany into a civil war. “The German people do not want peace,” Oberg thundered. “The German people want victory, cost what it will.” He concluded with an emphatic “Long live the Führer!”
⁷
But such declamations no longer had much, if any, positive effect. Diplomatic and administrative correspondence during the following months registered the nearly unanimous opinion that the drift of things was decidedly negative and that German propaganda lacked the means to deter it.
⁸

The usual instruments of propaganda were consequently somewhat compromised. Most severely curtailed was the cinema. Restrictions on electricity required limiting the number of film presentations per week and closing some theaters, production facilities, and technical laboratories. By the summer of 1943, French film production had fallen by half. Furthermore, for a simple reason, one key element of earlier propaganda efforts lost much of its effectiveness. The Germans were no longer able to supply newsreels with heroic scenes of their military advances. Now, at best, they could feature only episodes of stubborn defense in Italy and Russia, accounts of heavy casualties inflicted on enemy troops, or lamentations about Allied bombings that were destroying cathedrals and other cultural treasures in Germany. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
⁹
One noteworthy exception was a documentary made about Marshal Pétain's visit to Paris in the spring of 1944. Pleased by the assembled footage, Otto Abetz seized the opportunity to refute allegations of Anglo-American propaganda that Pétain was merely a prisoner of the Germans and hence bereft of broad popular support. Otherwise, in the late stages of the Occupation, there was not much to show except a few frothy German film hits like Zarah Leander's
Die grosse Liebe
and Marika Rökk's
Der Tanz mit dem Kaiser
, as well as the fresh spectacle of a feature in color,
Die goldene Stadt
.
¹⁰

The main problem for the newspaper press and other publications was paper. After the Operation Torch landings, a few dailies, including notably the
Figaro
, were shut down for political reasons because of their “quite hostile and anti-collaborationist position.” Others were restricted by the German manipulation of paper supplies, especially in provincial cities like Lyon, where it was thought better to circulate the more easily and tightly controlled Parisian press. Particularly favored by the Occupation were
Le Petit Parisien
,
Paris Soir
, and
Le Matin
.
¹¹
In Paris in late February 1943, 120 French journalists were instructed that three propaganda themes were to be emphasized: the recovery of national unity, exemplified by the erasure of the demarcation line and the administrative reintegration of the departments of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais; the necessity, like it or not, for the French to participate actively in the German war effort, thus abandoning their passivity; and, inevitably, the peril of Bolshevism, against which the Reich was magnificently defending all of Europe, including France.
¹²
Censorship was meanwhile continued with lists of banned writings and frequent directives of dos and don—ts to newspaper editors. They were told, for instance, to print fewer reports of damage caused by Allied air raids and, when covering such events, always to stress that the attacks were conducted by Anglo-American bombers, not by “unknown” assailants. Also, it was thereafter forbidden to refer to rescues by a “catastrophe corps” (
Katastropheneinsatz
); rather, the terminology to be used was an “air war corps” (
Luftkriegseinsatz
).
¹³
During Pétain's appearance in Paris in April 1944, he gave an improvised speech at the Hôtel de Ville that contained some inappropriate and ambiguous phrases, or so the German Embassy thought. A “correct text” was therefore provided by German propaganda experts to French radio and press. To ensure adequate coverage of the occasion, Paris newspapers were offered a temporary 50 percent increase of paper allotments, which several of them refused.
¹⁴
By this time the paper shortage was becoming acute, so that most dailies were limited to four pages three days a week and two pages three days a week. This pittance was further constricted by an across-the-board 25 percent reduction of paper for the press in November 1943. The estimated pre-war allotment had been 1,500 tons of paper a week. In 1942, it was down to 600 tons, and the approximate weekly ration for 1943 was 300. Accordingly, circulation of the newspaper press was condemned to a drastic decline by 1944.
¹⁵

Radio was a different matter. As before, the air waves were ruled by Britannia, much to the chagrin of German propaganda personnel in Paris. Radio Paris, they had to concede, was no match for Radio London, and the Vichy-sponsored French national radio network (Radio nationale), still disorganized after its headquarters had been recently moved back to Paris, promised no improvement.
¹⁶
A remedy was not in sight. The Germans faced the fact that there were nearly ten million private radio sets in France, 83 percent of them with shortwave reception. As Joseph Goebbels himself admitted, a total confiscation was beyond the pale. An effort to do so, it was calculated, would require a full-time staff of 3,000 to work for three years or 12,000 for three months—a sheer impossibility.
¹⁷
Irregular cuts in electrical current posed another problem, upsetting the schedule of essential propaganda broadcasts like the
Voix du Reich
, as well as a controversial talk show hosted in fluent French by a noted German personality known as “Dr. Friedrich.”
¹⁸
In the confusion, some attempt was made in the spring of 1944 to confiscate all radios in Normandy and other French coastal areas on the Channel. But this uncompleted action only served to underscore the futility of fully regulating the irrepressible advance of modern communications technology.
¹⁹

In Paris, the Occupation made a considerable effort to maintain an air of normalcy, as if to pretend that things were well in hand and the Germans comfortably in charge. This meant staging handball tournaments, soccer matches, and rowing regattas on the Seine. Especially popular was a Ping-Pong contest, held at an auto club on the Place de la Concorde, between the Paris All-Stars and Slovakia. In addition, innumerable language and Bible classes were made available to the public, and many outdoor concerts continued to attract sizable crowds.
²⁰
A special event in March 1944 was a boxing exhibition to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of the former French champion Georges Carpentier, famously once a foe of Jack Dempsey. At ringside, his German counterpart Max Schmeling was introduced and “lustily received,” according to the delighted Abetz. Schmeling was also given huge applause when he entered the ring at the conclusion. Perhaps in sports and music, at least, it may be permissible to speak of successful German propaganda.
²¹

Kultur
(with a capital K) was also not neglected. At the beginning of 1943, forty-four theaters were operating in Paris. Piano concerts, with such international celebrities as Wilhelm Kempff and Walter Gieseking, were frequent. The Berlin Philharmonic appeared again at the Paris Opéra, and all nine of Beethoven's symphonies were presented in five concerts at the Palais de Chaillot. The Comédie Française even staged a production in German of Gerhard Hauptmann's
Iphigenia in
Delphi
.
²²
Was it excessive? That question was raised by propaganda officials in Berlin, who feared that too many events, especially German poetry readings, might be poorly attended and that eager Occupation authorities in Paris could be overestimating the cultural appetite of the French public. Thus, “a considerable reduction” was perhaps in order. Another obvious concern, once more, was the shrinking supply of electricity. In December 1943, it became necessary to order a curfew of 10:00 PM for all Parisian theaters, concert halls, cinemas, restaurants, and nightclubs. Exceptions were made for weekends.
²³

Yet the torrent of high culture continued unabated. Alone during the month of March 1944, barely ten weeks before D-Day, the Paris Opéra managed to mount six ballets, in addition to operatic works by Gluck, Wagner, Verdi, Gounod, Berlioz, and Richard Strauss. Not to be outdone, the Opéra Comique presented two operas each by Puccini (
Tosca
and
La Bohème
), Bizet (
Carmen
and
Les Pêcheurs de Perles
), and Massenet (
Manon
and
Werther
), plus Debussy's
Pelléas
et Mélisande
. All were presumably subsidized by appreciative Occupation authorities.
²⁴
The Gruppe Kultur in the MBF's Propaganda Section was in the meantime preparing a final flourish by making arrangements for 113 concerts in the summer. Likewise, Karl Epting's German Institute composed a wish list of coming attractions for the 1944–1945 season that included, besides the ubiquitous Kempff and Gieseking, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, the Munich Philharmonic, and a return engagement by the Wiener Sängerknaben. Public lectures in Paris were announced that included a galaxy of academic stars like Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Werner Heisenberg, Erich Wolff, and the distinguished historians Rudolf Stadelmann and Gerd Tellenbach.
²⁵
Foreseen originally for the end of May 1944 but moved to the second day of June, one gala evening featuring Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic had to be postponed again when the conductor failed to appear in time. The problem, it seems, was that Karajan's second wife, Anita Gütermann (whom he married in 1942), had one Jewish grandparent. When her application for a visa to France was initially rejected “for military reasons [
sic
],” the concert was rescheduled for 9 June 1944. This date, falling three days after the Normandy invasion, turned out to be inconveniently late.
²⁶