Americans in Paris : Life and Death under Nazi Occupation

by Glass, Charles (Author)

• ISBN13: 9781594202421
• ISBN10: 1594202427
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-07
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The

Summary

Acclaimed journalist Charlie Glass looks to the American expatriate experience of Nazi-occupied Paris to reveal a fascinating forgotten history of the greatest generation. In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season, from the spring of 1940 to liberation in the summer of 1944, as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained. As citizens of a neutral nation, the Americans in Paris believed they had little to fear. They were wrong. Glass's discovery of letters, diaries, war documents, and police files reveals as never before how Americans were trapped in a web of intrigue, collaboration, and courage. Artists, writers, scientists, playboys, musicians, cultural mandarins, and ordinary businessmen-all were swept up in extraordinary circumstances and tested as few Americans before or since. Charles Bedaux, a French-born, naturalized American millionaire, determined his alliances as a businessman first, a decision that would ultimately make him an enemy to all. Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun was torn by family ties to President Roosevelt and the Vichy government, but her fiercest loyalty was to her beloved American Library of Paris. Sylvia Beach attempted to run her famous English-language bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, while helping her Jewish friends and her colleagues in the Resistance. Dr. Sumner Jackson, wartime chief surgeon of the American Hospital in Paris, risked his life aiding Allied soldiers to escape to Britain and resisting the occupier from the first day. These stories and others come together to create a unique portrait of an eccentric, original, diverse American community. Charles Glass has written an exciting, fast-paced, and elegant account of the moral contradictions faced by Americans in Paris during France's dangerous occupation years. For four hard years, from the summer of 1940 until U.S. troops liberated Paris in August 1944, Americans were intimately caught up in the city's fate. Americans in Paris is an unforgettable tale of treachery by some, cowardice by others, and unparalleled bravery by a few.

Author Biography

Charles Glass is the author of Tribes with Flags, Money for Old Rope, and The Northern Front. A world-famous journalist, he was chief Middle East correspondent for ABC News from 1983 to 1993 and has covered wars in Lebanon, Eritrea, Rhodesia, Somalia, Iraq, Egypt, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. His writing appears in Harper's Magazine, The Independent, and the Spectator.

Table of Contents

Maps	p. xi
List of Illustrations	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
14 June 1940
The American Mayor of Paris	p. 9
The Bookseller	p. 24
The Countess from Ohio	p. 37
All Blood Runs Red	p. 50
Le Millionnaire américain	p. 60
The Yankee Doctor	p. 66
1940
Bookshop Row	p. 89
Americans at Vichy	p. 98
Back to Paris	p. 113
In Love with Love	p. 121
A French Prisoner with the Americans	p. 136
American Grandees	p. 139
Polly's Paris	p. 144
Rugged individualists	p. 150
Germany's Confidential American Agent	p. 159
1941
The Coldest Winter	p. 169
Time to Go?	p. 174
New Perils in Paris	p. 180
Utopia in Les Landes	p. 188
To Resist, to Collaborate or to Endure	p. 193
Enemy Aliens	p. 204
1942
First Round-up	p. 213
The Vichy Web	p. 224
The Second Round-up	p. 239
'Inturned'	p. 246
Uniting Africa	p. 261
Americans Go to War	p. 268
Murphy Forgets a Friend	p. 275
Alone at Vittel	p. 280
The Bedaux Dossier	p. 283
1943
Murphy versus Bedaux	p. 291
Sylvia's War	p. 298
German Agents?	p. 304
A Hospital at War	p. 310
The Adolescent Spy	p. 314
Clara under Suspicion	p. 318
Calumnies	p. 325
1944
The Trial of Citizen Bedaux	p. 335
The Underground Railway	p. 341
Conspiracies	p. 347
Springtime in Paris	p. 350
The Maquis to Arms!	p. 358
Résistants Unmasked	p. 363
Via Dolorosa	p. 371
Schwarze kappelle	p. 374
Slaves of the Reich	p. 376
One Family Now	p. 378
The Paris Front	p. 385
Tout Mourir	p. 393
24-26 August 1944
Liberating the Rooftops	p. 407
Libération, not Liberation	p. 411
Epilogue	p. 413
Endnotes	p. 415
Acknowledgements	p. 491
Select Bibliography	p. 495
Index	p. 501
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