When Paris Was a Nazi Resort

it's a spring night in Nazi occupied Paris an unusually cold one The Frigid temperature is magnified by the near incessant downpour even so the City of Lights is uncharacteristically quiet with a patter of rain being interrupted only by the occasional chatter of Vermont patrols With A hurried footsteps of parisians rushing home before curfew shutters down on them but there is life here somewhere on the ru Roya in paris's eight alvendismo a soft brassy glow is cast onto the wet cobbled streets from the window of a nearby restaurant it's the famous Bistro maxims The Bistro is bustling and its Aroma is Rich with ingredients that have become increasingly scarce for the average Parisian since the occupation inside sitter gaggle of Vermont and Parisian Elites gorging themselves on fine wine red cheese and all manner of other Delicacies in one corner a vermacht colonel dines with a French collaborator in another the top brass of the Paris military headquarters treat themselves to an extravagant meal nowhere to be found however is a normal Frenchman no it is only the German occupiers who get a skirt paris's stringent rationing quotas and indulge in what used to be the city's most famed horror just a few minutes walk from maxson's German officers are drinking in all the pleasures of one of paris's high-end brothels low on 2-2 the average Soldier however not being able to afford the rates of a finer institution settles with one of paris's many street prostitutes a practice that German High command had been trying to crack down on due to their obsession with hygiene German soldiers are permitted only to visit brothels cleared for use by medical professionals who conduct regular medical examination of sex workers for soldiers accustomed to the relative prudishness of Germany Paris must have seemed a cornucopia of pleasures and excess for one soldier Robert Fulcher recently permitted a visit to Paris after months at a rural posting it was a city of Plenty in this 21st edition of the Deutsche vague lighter he describes the Thrills of visiting the Moulin Rouge Cabaret whose quote scantily clad girls were a far cry from what was on offer in the Homeland he went on to praise the Parisian Metro the charmingly narrow streets of the Bohemian quarter and the many coffee shops and boulevards he writes that the city had given him a taste of civilized life again after months on duty fluger was one of the many lucky soldiers who had the opportunity to visit Paris presumably through the Nazi or strength through Joy program a system of holiday allocation first implemented in Germany in the 1930s to keep morale and thus productivity High through the kdf system Paris became a thoroughfare of touristic activity for Vermont Personnel during the occupation period with sightseeing tours organized for visiting soldiers one Russian journalist staying in Paris during the occupation wrote that quote every day tens of buses filled with soldiers and brassy blonde German women in Mouse gray uniforms stopped in front of Notre Dame the invalids and other monuments of the city the German Cafe organization made visits to the marvels of the capital for its new tourists another famed journalist the American William Shire noted that quote most of the German troops act like naive tourists and this has proved a pleasant surprise for the parisians it seems funny but every German Soldier carries a camera Vermont tourism in Paris was blooming with German authorities claiming that as many as one million German soldiers had been given tours of the city between June of 1940 and may of 1941. the extent of military tourism within occupied Paris is further reflected in the previously mentioned deutschevik lighter this official guidebook translated into English as the German guide was written by the vermouth headquarters in Paris and made available to Garrison in visiting soldiers free of charge an issue of The Vig lighter was released every two weeks and included instructions for navigating paris's Metro System the underground Railway was something that many soldiers found particularly difficult to wrap their heads around as most cities in Germany lacked any form of underground public transportation also enclosed within the guide was a rundown of popular sites restaurants and museums as well as a detailed overview of upcoming Opera performances and nightclub events for information on the more Central attractions Paris had to offer soldiers could consult one of the German language newspapers that had been established since the city fell under their control one such newspaper the Paris at saitong made recommendations on which erotic venues hosted the best shows the most attractive of which was apparently the Cabaret tabohim it was not uncommon to see an ocean of dark gray uniforms at many of these venues with the historian Alan riding estimating that at one Cabaret theater Le fully Berger around 80 percent of all the attendees were German so Paris was crawling with Germans but not just because it was an occupied City no it was replete with them because it was a city which they gave begrudging respect they were fascinated by the beautiful architecture and art and seduced by its food and entertainment for soldiers that had only ever heard of Paris or seen it in photos the opportunity to experience it was an Irresistible One One German infantryman exclaimed upon entering Paris on bicycle that he had never seen such a beautiful city another called it a second spiritual Fatherland it was this Fascination that saw Paris spared much of the violence and destruction that its sister season the rest of France suffered essentially even though the Germans in principle viewed the French and their culture as inferior and backwards in practice they were not about to demolish one of Europe's Most sophisticated and beautiful cities in fact all the better that they enjoy it so they did Jeremy turned Paris into a rest and relaxation center for its soldiers a resort intended to provide reprieve from the stresses of the front it was so effective in this regard that soldiers started to employ the saying leaving [Music] or live like God in France Paris and occupied France acquired this reputation relative to the conditions elsewhere in Europe which were far worse for example one German Soldier stationed in Angier committed suicide when he was informed that he would be redeployed to the Eastern Front to fight the Soviets the campaign in the East was so much worse than life in France that someone saw fit to take their own life rather than suffer a near-death sentence anyway in a war-torn region destitute of all Comforts even in areas Untouched by fighting such as Mainland Germany rationing and rearmament had reduced the availability of staple goods and made life grueling and monotonous in Paris a soldier could have a fling with a local French girl take a stroll down opulent boulevards and indulge in good food another plus was that it was just about as far away from fighting as one could be in occupied Europe it was a life to be envied by every Verma Soldier but while German soldiers enjoyed the riches of Paris the local French citizenry languished although they enjoyed a degree of normalcy and comfort not found in areas such as occupied Poland and Ukraine the French was still second-class citizens in this new Europe they suffered through malnourishment while their German occupiers dined like kings and to add insult to injury to keep up with food demand many Parisian students were conscripted to work in farming so they may have been toiling in the fields for food that would only land on the table of a Verma officer instead of their own this sort of conscription which was initially voluntary acquired a more mandatory character as the war entered its later years by February of 1943 the sto or compulsory Labor Service was in full effect levying thousands of able-bodied Frenchmen to work in Germany domestically the mandatory draft was seen in a very negative light with it sometimes being characterized as a way for Germans to quote kidnap French youths away from their families violence against French citizens was also present political dissidents students and Jews were surveyed arrested were sent to forced labor camps that is if they were lucky otherwise it was not uncommon for people to quote disappear after the Gestapo made a midnight visit to their apartment these Unfortunate Souls were often subjected to torture with some even dying in the process in total thirty thousand French civilians would be executed by German Security Services a statistic that is almost certainly too low given the clandestine nature of their operations to make things harder a Gestapo destroyed stacks of incriminating documents prior to the Allied liberation of Paris in August of 1944 this loss of data likely obscures the true death count another disheartening reality of occupation was that Paris was consistently a pawn in the power game between the Vichy French puppet state and their German Masters reflecting this the French philosopher jean-pos South described how Paris had become a shadow of its former self he said Paris owed its quote languorous existence to the number of freight trains and trucks the Germans let enter each week whenever Vichy became uncooperative whenever the Vichy president dragged his feet when it came to providing Berlin workers the injection were immediately suspended Paris was fading away and yawned hungrily under the empty sky so France's most famed and important city was essentially stripped of its agency its autonomy for the average citizen it was as if Paris had become Purgatory its role as a political industrial artistic Center had wilted away as if overnight the streets that had been built for bustling crowds and a purposeful existence became the backdrop to a mechanical life this all the while German soldiers traips through their city as if it were an oversized Resort pillaging their food stores their own benefit and enacting political repression against their citizens the reason Paris became a resort City in the first place for the Vermont is because there was a Danica balance of artificial normalcy that had been established between French citizens and German occupiers Germans were initially polite respectful and for the most part kept their Jack Boots out of the mouths of regular citizens the French for their own part mostly accepted the German presence with sartha describing them as quote more furniture than men so French citizens depersonalized the occupiers and therefore were able to ignore them and get on with their lives more easily this artificial normalcy which lent itself to Paris being a city of escapism for Verma soldiers was gradually ruined by the war with the Soviet Union in 1941. tensions between French citizens and Germans fled shattering the illusion of normalcy preferred for tourism as the war against the Soviets evolved in the favor of the Allies collaboration with Germans became less commonplace as French people realized Liberation may be possible the delicate balance where French people meekly accepted the German presence as a fact of life and therefore let the Vermont use the city however they liked was broken it became a lot harder to enjoy some quote rest and relaxation as soldiers became preoccupied with combating resistance Fighters and trying to prevent the next Metro bombing by 1943 all recreational tourism was permanently suspended as wartime demands for Manpower in the East grew the propaganda Minister Joseph gerbus Justified the change through the phrase quote First Victory then travel unquote so recreational trips to Paris became exceptionally rare and only those stationed there would still get to occasionally enjoy its perks reading the Deutsche Vic lighter you might have been fooled into thinking nothing had changed though since they continued to publish and recommend sites shows and restaurants right up until Paris was liberated by the allies its final issue this beige book was printed only 13 days before the city was freed from German occupation so ends the story of how the Germans turned Paris into their Resort it seems a little absurd that their marked soldiers who were perhaps destined for the Eastern Front to fight and kill and potentially commit horrendous war crimes at one point just acted like regular naive tourists in Paris it's difficult to imagine these soldiers were regular people and yet they were they picked up their cameras just as any regular tourist would and strolled down to the Eiffel Tower to make memories and take pictures their French hosts would rather they had not been there at all it was essentially tourism without consent but Paris will never see the likes of it again foreign

Channel: IMPERIAL

Views: 414,995

Keywords: Paris, WW2, History, Wehrmacht, Arc De Triomphe, Les Invalides, Moulin Rouge, Maxim's, Paris Occupation

Id: fTZW9Nezd88

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2023