Just Finished Reading: The Unfree French – Life under the Occupation by Richard Vinen (FP: 2006)

What would you do if your traditional enemy had over run your countries defences and where moving to a swift and decisive victory? Run? Where to? Friends in the country? Just away from the fighting? Would you stay in the hope that the enemy would pass you by on the way to bigger prizes? Would you hide and hope? Would you make yourself useful and welcoming – in other words Collaborate? Or would you run, hide and then come back to fight? Or would you hope that you can just get on with your life under the Occupation merely serving different masters?

These are just some of the questions the author tries to answer as he shows how French society bent to and adapted to the four yearlong German Occupation between 1940 and 1944. France capitulated to the Blitzkrieg after only 6 weeks, her forces in disarray, and her politicians in shock at the incredibly swift enemy advance. French soldiers were told to surrender and did so in droves fully expecting to be on their way home within days or weeks after the armistice. For many this was not to be and many stayed in camps or working in German farms and factories until the end of the war. Meanwhile civilians either continued as before – with, in effect, different tax collectors – or were shipped off to factories deeper in the Reich while their own country was asset stripped. For a while at least the semi-autonomous region known as Vichy (because of the new de facto political ‘capital’) retaining a kind of normality and many who could not or would not stay in the northern occupied area fled there.

Gradually accommodations where made – Germans were housed amongst French families, conversations took place, relationships and babies often followed. Some even fought for and with the Germans on the Eastern Front against their joint enemy – Communism. Then, inevitably, they came for the Jews, for the politicals, for the undesirables. Some French happily gave them up or assisted in their capture. Others hid them, helped them escape and generally obstructed their capture even before it became obvious what was happening to them. People had to eat and restrictions brought on by the Occupation brought with them opportunities for profit – both from the general population and from the Germans themselves. Everyone, it seemed, used the Black Market at some point in their lives.

Then gradually at first came resistance and opposition. At first uncoordinated and naïve but later better planned and increasingly effective. Taking all kinds of forms from direct action attacks to underground newspapers, to assisting in the return of downed airmen, sabotage and passive resistance and later intelligence gathering for the Allies as Liberation approached the idea of Resistance became a part of French national pride.

Despite being somewhat academic in places and dry in others this was still a fascinating insight to a nation living under a pervasively brutal occupation that affected the lives of everyone no matter their level of contact with German soldiers or their level of involvement with or against the Occupation authorities. It was often a sobering read and often presented me with the question – only sometimes articulated by the author – of what I would have done in these circumstances. Thankfully I never had to find out, luckily being born into a generation that has never experienced this sort of thing. If you want an idea of what it was like for the people who did actually live through this desperate time then this book is a definite place to start. Recommended.

One more book on the Occupation coming up – this one dealing with the long anticipated Liberation!