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Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation | 
| Author: Charles Glass
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $32.95
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Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 102878
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st American Edition
Pages: 544
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 2
ISBN: 1594202427
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.3610816092313
EAN: 9781594202421
ASIN: 1594202427
Publication Date: January 7, 2010
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Product Description
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 & 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
 Americans in Trouble February 15, 2010
Michael B. Crutcher (Louisville, KY USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Americans in Paris, Life & Death under Nazi Occupation, by Charles Glass, tells the fascinating story of Americans trapped in Paris after its capture by the Germans in World War II. In doing so, author Glass meditates on larger issues: what is the nature of collaboration with the enemy? Can one live under foreign occupation and remain loyal to one's country? Where does one cross the line between treason and loyalty?
Glass estimates that perhaps 2,000 Americans lived in Paris under German rule. He tells the story of occupation through the lives of four different families. The hero of the piece is Dr. Charles Sumner, the chief surgeon at the American Hospital, who not only labored mightily to keep the hospital open under German rule (and free of German patients,) but at night was a leader in the resistance, ferrying downed Allied pilots to safe houses and ultimately on a long, clandestine path to neutral Spain. He endangered his wife and son through these activities and all three paid a severe price for them.
"Villain" is probably too harsh a term to use for another American in the book, the notorious Charles Bedeau. Born in France but a naturalized American, Bedeau continued to do business with the Germans after occupation, even promoting a Trans-African pipeline. Bedeau is a curious mixture of the amoral and naïf. While cozying up to the Germans, Bedeau opened his chateau to the Americans as a temporary embassy (it had served in 1937 as the site of the wedding of the Duke of Winsor and Wallis Simpson.) Traveling to North Africa to promote his pipeline on a German letter of transit, he kept the American state department's Robert Murphy fully informed of his pipeline scheme. The author even hints that Bedeau was aware of the 1944 plot to kill Hitler. Was Bedeau a traitor or just a business schemer oblivious to a world crashing around him?
Best known today of the Americans in the story is Sylvia Beach, the owner of the famous left-bank bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, a refuge for writers such as Hemingway and James Joyce. Beach was fiercely anti-Nazi and closed her bookshop on rumors that the Germans intended to loot it. She welcomed the partisan uprising that preceded, prematurely, the retaking of Paris by Allied troops. But even Beach was not above intervening with the occupation authorities on behalf of a friend.
Lastly, there is the fascinating and complex Chambrun family. Aldebret de Chambrun was an aristocrat married to Clara Longworth, a Cincinnati native, the sister of a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a cousin of the Roosevelts. Their son Rene, with dual American and French citizenship, married Josee Laval, the daughter of Vichy France's Prime Minister, Pierre Laval. Laval was an arch-collaborator, responsible for the deportation of thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps. Aldebret was the Chairman of the American Hospital and, with Dr. Sumner, struggled to keep it open. (He was unaware, however, of Dr. Sumner's resistance connections.) Clara de Chambrun ran the American Library, but disdained the partisans as communist agitators. Their son Rene went to Washington, D.C., to urge his cousin Franklin Roosevelt (unsuccessfully) for arms to aid the British. He traveled again to Washington to secure food supplies for Vichy France, which found most of its agriculture production diverted to the German war machine. On his first trip, he was labeled a hero. On his second trip, he was decried as a collaborator.
The author graphically describes the brutality of the Germans and the fear they instilled in Parisians. He also uncovers stories that should make Americans blush with shame. Black Americans in both WWI and WWII were denied the right to fight in units with their white countrymen. In WWI, General "Black Jack" Pershing refused to permit the all-black "Harlem Hellfighters" to march in a Paris victory parade. In WWII, General Walter Bedell-Smith, Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, directed the French division making its ceremonial entrance into Paris to rid itself of one-third of its troops because they were dark-skinned colonials.
I found Charles Glass's book well written and thoughtful. It is not and does not purport to be a complete history of the occupation or of Vichy France, although it provides great insights into each. It is the human element that Glass captures so well. One can empathize with Sylvia Beach as she shivers in her unheated apartment and simply note with astonishment when Rene de Chambrun hits it big at the racetrack. Life in Paris went on, but the strains of occupation brought out both the best and worst of its citizens, including its Americans, and sometimes the best and worst were present in the same person. Highly recommended.
Absolutely Brilliant Book! December 12, 2009
hasselaar (Belgie)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and plan on reading it again, soon. The descriptions of expatriate life under NAZI rule among the Cultural"elite" of Paris is absolutely engrossing. The various descriptions of writers, diplomats, artists, and many more attempting to live according to their various moral compasses is fascinating. Some dealt well with life during the German occupation, according to their own lights. There were those who helped Jews and other persecuted classes to escape from Vichy France, as well as those who chose to collaborate with the invaders.
It was most intriguing to read of the mind-sets of those who made the decision to cooperate with the NAZIS. The various methodologies behind their justification of what was, basically, collaboration showed the tenuous link between physical bravery and moral cowardice. The book will "grab" you from the first page of the introduction, not letting go of your senses until the final page of the book
I highly recommend this book as being most relevant for scholars, artists and everyone else who could possibly become involved in a situation forcing rather difficult decisions between right and wrong. For those followers of famous writers, poiticians, and scientists of the time,this book adds a delicious "filler" to the lives that one had assumed were already well-documented in the annals of literature, science, and politics.
Read this book, then read it again, you will not regret the time spent observing real people facing one of the greatest moral dilemmas fo the 20th Century.
Highly Recommended!
WWII - A New Perspective January 24, 2010
Carrie L. Wade (Tempe, Arizona)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you love France, if you are a WWII buff, if you are a reader who enjoys a well written narrative - then, this book is for you! I cannot recommend this book enough. Buy it, sit down with a cup of coffee and devour it as I did. This book has provided me with a whole new, fresh and exciting perspective of what was going on "behind the scenes" in Paris during the German occupation. In the movie "Casablanca" you see when the Nazi's are entering Paris - now you will learn what was really going on behind many of those shuttered windows and darkened store fronts. This is a superb read.Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation
A Little-Known Story of World War Two January 4, 2010
George Webster, Ph.D., (Orlando, FL USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
During World War Two, I frequently flew over the Paris area. As I gazed at that beautiful city, it never occurred to me that Americans might be down there. But down there they were, and Charles Glass gives us an enthralling story about them. Paris has always been a center for culture, and many of the world's greatest writers, artists, and musicians lived in, or frequented, the city. With the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, thousands of American residents of Paris returned to the United States. More fled just ahead of German tanks when Germany defeated France, but that still left several thousand American artists, musicians, writers, wealthy types, and businessmen that considered Paris their home. For example, there was Sylvia Beach, whose famous bookstore had been frequented by the world's greatest writers. There was Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun, a relative of President Roosevelt, who headed the American Library of Paris. There was Charles Bedaux, a millionaire businessman, who aroused the wrath of the United States Government, even though he secretly worked against the Germans. And there is the tragic story of Dr. Sumner Jackson, Chief Surgeon of the American Hospital in Paris, who risked his life aiding downed Allied fliers to escape from the Germans.
There was little difficulty for the Americans during 1940 and 1941, while America was neutral in the war. But when Germany declared war on the United States, many Americans were sent to internment camps and some to slave labor in Germany. The German Army generally acted correctly toward the American civilians, but the SS, which was a bunch of right-wing crazies, mistreated Americans and even sent some to the death camp at Auschwitz. As Allied bombing of French targets rose during 1943 and 1944, American civilians worked with increasing hazard to help downed fliers escape. Finally, the Allied invasion of France and the liberation of Paris brought chaos, but blessed freedom to the Americans in Paris. The story is absolutely fascinating.
Adds greatly to our understanding of the French Occupation January 7, 2010
Todd Bartholomew (Atlanta, GA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
While most of the historiography of World War II focuses on military history, international relations, diplomatic history, and economics, more recent scholarship has re-examined aspects of the social history and cultural history of civilian life during the war, and is a good companion piece to the recent Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour. "Americans in Paris" builds on that scholarship by exploring the lives and experiences of a number of the five thousand Americans trapped in Paris during the German Occupation of 1940 to 1944. These expatriate Americans who remained behind had few options but to stay put for the duration of the war. Rather than focusing on some of the most famous Americans, such as Josephine Baker, Glass instead focuses on a range of people, some wealthy, some notable, and most just ordinary, to highlight their plight during the war. The end result can be at times surprising, because not every American was ostensibly pro-Allies, as some supported the Nazi regime and the Vichy French.
There is a mistaken tendency to believe that Americans would have somehow been immune or protected from the worst excesses of the Germans, but the truth is quite different. In fact, those Americans trapped in Paris believed that as citizens of a neutral nation they had little to worry about, but the truth was quite different. As President Roosevelt ratcheted up the Lend-Lease Program the Germans came to view the Americans within Europe as a potential threat for collaboration and espionage with the Allies. As a result the Americans in Paris were viewed not only with suspicion but contempt by the Germans, and quickly become pulled into the wartime civilian intrigue. And the Americans in Paris fell victim to the same shortages and privations as their French compatriots. With the declaration of war in December 1941 Americans were subjected to closer scrutiny and surveillance by the Germans. Much like Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German Occupation, "Americans in Paris" catalogs the abuses suffered by civilians under German occupation and the service these Americans provided to the Allied cause. What emerges is a story of bravery, determination, and perseverance in the face of tyranny, and sometimes rank cowardice and collaboration. Glass has a tendency to jump around a bit chronologically, leaving story lines to resume them again later, and in some cases we never learn what became of some of the Americans after liberation in 1944. Glass also tends to focus on some characters more than others, and some, such as Ambassador Bullitt, could have helped flush out the narrative, as could the aforementioned Josephine Baker. Thoroughly engaging and a lively read, "Americans in Paris" sheds light on a neglected chapter of World War II that could and should be explored further.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 38
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