Paris During Nazi Occupation Was ‘One Big Romp’
by Matthew Campbell - Times Online:
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.
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.
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It must suck being French during certain times of the year.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:45 pmSorry franchie.
And then when the Americans got to Paris, we were treated with the same sort of welcome no doubt.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:02 pmwell, Marc, I am still proud of being a product of the german occupation of the Vth century
“It is disturbing to know that while the Jews were being deported, the French were making love. But that is the truth”
this is the key that demonstrates that this man is a fuckin idiot :
if he knew a bit of psychology, he would know that people tend to focus on making love in stressing times, and even, if he just recalled his own life, he would have seen that is a basic mammalian comportment ; anyway I see there the explanation quoted by Simone de Beauvoir (? though I never red that from her)
There was a previous post on the former Paris exhibition,
many links were provided, that said, collaboration wasn’t a french discovering, and that was widely shared by the other occupied countries, but this “novelist” is taking his fantasms for granted.
The french population had not discovered the sexual emancipation till 1968 ; I can attest how my frequentations were supervised by my father.
“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”
yeah, I remember in my Grammar-school, we had to parade in shorts and or mini-skirts for the “fête de la jeunesse”, that was a remain of the Vichy times that has been forgoten for a few decades now,; anyway, I found that ridiculous, and chocking, in that way that we had to expose our legs (not lateron though
)
a naturist camps, “nimporte quoi” whateva BS is OK for this man…
I have already spoken of that exhibition of the “sex in war” on my blog, I can’t find at which date for the moment, though one of my american friends saw it, and had the opportunity to visit this exhibition last november, he should tell about it, because he comes on board.
Though the paper article that I quoted didn’t mention that the pics were specifically from the last WWII, but also from WWI and all the wars that encountered France, no mention of these poor abandoned wifes whose husbands were prisonners, but more of “sex houses” or brothels girls, which were a french specifity of the 19th century till the end of WWII that was
May 26th, 2008 at 5:21 pmKBoomr113
And then when the Americans got to Paris, we were treated with the same sort of welcome no doubt.
check here :
http://mysoupis.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post.html
May 26th, 2008 at 5:36 pmPerhaps you would have preferred the tender mercies of the Red Army, or of the Romans and other ancient armies in the sack of a city (e.g. Vercingetorix at Alesia). Some of the rapes were also no doubt faked (Duke lacrosse team, anyone?) in an attempt to blackmail GI’s into giving them various things like money, chocolate and nylons or taking them away from the hellhole of wartime and post-war France.
May 26th, 2008 at 6:52 pmAmerican women would only fuck em if she had a razor blade in her red, white and blue pussy, Semper Fi.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:02 pmPerhaps you would have preferred the tender mercies of the Red Army, or of the Romans and other ancient armies in the sack of a city (e.g. Vercingetorix at Alesia). Some of the rapes were also no doubt faked (Duke lacrosse team, anyone?) in an attempt to blackmail GI’s into giving them various things like money, chocolate and nylons or taking them away from the hellhole of wartime and post-war France.
Lone Wolf,
Don’t take it personally,
it’s a study made by one of your eminent teachers in criminology
Unfortunately, rapes are an inherent sin of the occupation armies
the percentage remains low, though more important and unpunished in Germany, the vainced country
But there was a different treatment in trial, wether you were Black or White
the rapes related are not fakes, they are reported in the army justice documents, from there Lilly started his researches, they were likely superior, cause the population didn’t systematically complained to the army police, because of their shame and fears.
Blackmail the GI… ? no, your guys were the corruptors, they bought their sex life through gadgets that they were largely provided to induce the population in adopting the capitalism culture… apparently that worked
Now, all the world armies have such comportment, (I put the exemple ofthe french army in Algeria too)
Luke37,
American woman is likely an human being, so no exceptional behaviour would be expected there too
May 27th, 2008 at 2:11 amabout the exhibition “amour guerres et sexualité 1914-1945″ (in french, a few illustrations)
a video (in french) about the sexuality in war times
http://ma-tvideo.france2.fr/video/iLyROoaftTKH.html
for those who understand french Patrick Buisson gives a few keys about his book :(audio)
http://www.france-info.com/spip.php?article131847&theme=81&sous_theme=176
Well Mr Buisson is an extrem-right journalist, he describes more the Vichy admiration towards
May 27th, 2008 at 5:13 amthe athletic german bodies, as for homosexual desires…
The angle of this story is odd vis a vi the sexual aspect
The point that was made when I originally saw this story was to destroy the myth of the “evil German occupation”.
By any sane standards the German soldier acted properly and correctly and if he didn’t he was punished.
Of course ANY story on this has bring in the Jewish suffereing as if all of France was Jewish. They were a persecuted minority get over it.
The list of that category in history is legion. Jewish people are no better than any other group Period.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:20 ama report in english on the exhibition
http://www.champs-elyseesblog.com/archives/2007/10/sex_and_war.php
May 27th, 2008 at 6:56 am