In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.  France and England were Poland Allies so they declared war on Germany.  They had let Hitler have his own way for a few years, refusing to believe that it would end in a world war.  So, on September 2, 1939, England and France got ready to fight.  France had the “Maginot line”, it was a defense line with forts, barbed wires, etc., along the German border, it cost millions of francs and it was supposed to be impenetrable.  The Germans had their own defense line – the “Siegfried” line, so all during fall and winter 1939, nothing much happened and the war was called the “Phony War”, life was about the same except most of the men had been drafted.

In the spring of 1940, things changed.  Hitler saw that nothing could be done on the French border, decided to (abandon?) it and invade Belgium, which was a neutral country, and things started to fall apart.  From Belgium he invaded the North of France (there was no Maginot line there).  The French Army was overpowered by the mighty Germans, even though they fought valiantly and hundreds were made prisoners.  The British did not do much better; they had to retreat to Dunkirk and crossed the sea back to England.

As soon as the Germans started to advance, the civilians left, some with just a few articles of clothing, some had a few animals with them – dogs, horses and even cows – some were walking, some were on bicycles, some on tractors, very few had cars, it was the “exodus of 1940” and it was something that nobody was able to forget, and right in the middle of it an awful heat wave, the only thing they would say was “The Germans are coming.”

My father was working for a small factory making safes.  The factory closed its doors and went somewhere south, the workers were supposed to go there if they could, so my father said to pack a suitcase and we were going to leave.  He went to the train station to buy tickets for the train but he saw some men around the station in a strange uniform and realized they were Germans, so he came back home and said to unpack.  It had only taken three weeks since the beginning of the invasion.  All those people who were on the roads going south, not knowing where they were going, still kept going ahead of the Germans, but the planes came – bombs, machine guns…  Pretty soon there was real carnage all over, dead and wounded along the roads and ditches.

For us, on the North side of Paris in Asnieres, we just kept looking at these people passing by.  One man wanted to sell us a cow, but what could we do with a cow in an apartment!

Some days later, the German headquarters was installed in Paris, right there on the Champs Elysees, in one of the best hotels.  The Armistice was signed between Germany and France, a French government was appointed with Marshal Petain at the head.  He was a retired general who had been a hero during World War I, he was in his late 70’s and the Germans just used him, but also there were in the government Frenchmen who, for many reasons, some because they thought France would never be France again, some because they hated the British and some thought that the English armies would soon surrender and some because they hated the Jews and they wanted to “help” the Germans to deport them; in fact they rounded them up.  At first they were in a camp in France but then the Germans and the French “collaborators” like they were called, just handed them over.  Perhaps they did not know that in the camps in Germany, most of the deported Jews ended up in gas chambers.  The policemen who rounded them up said they were only obeying orders, after all the Germans were in charge!  Of course, after the war, those collaborators were punished.  Four years of occupation had started.

A few days later, as I was walking by the City Hall, I witnessed the removal of the French flag which was then replaced by the Nazi flag, it was such a shock.  At the time I thought it was the end of France and that we had become a part of Germany.  At first, people tried to live a life as normal as possible, we went back to our jobs, food was plentiful, we did our best to ignore the green uniforms in the streets, trains and subways.  But then food started to get scarce.  The Germans transported sugar, flour, potatoes and meat to Germany, as the German population did not have much.  We started to have bread which was made with everything but flour – it was dark and tasted awful.  Then we got rationed, we had coupons for everything and sometimes coupons did not do much good as there was no food.

The Black Market started – people with money and the ones with the right connections took advantage of the rest.  My Father had a ration of cigarettes, but he did not smoke much because e of his asthma, so I would give his cigarettes to a lady in my office who was a heavy smoker and she provided us with a little butter.  When the stores would get a shipment of food, long lines were formed.  My mother sometimes would wait over one hour to get a small amount of meat or fish.  What was called meat was some kind of meat loaf; we hated to think what was in it, but we would eat it anyway.  Sometimes by the time it was her turn, there was nothing left.

My friend Paulette and I would take a container and go to the dairy when it received some milk.  We would wait an hour or so and sometimes we would be lucky and would get a pint of milk.  Once, I happened to walk by a store and there was a long line there.  I asked what it was for and they said, “A bar of soap”, so I waited and got one.  I had a big smile when I reached home and we made that soap last.

The Germans needed people for their factories as their men were in the military, so they came looking for young people.  At first they asked for volunteers, telling them they could earn a lot of money.  One girl in my office said she would go because she and her widowed mother needed money, but two young men were told to report to the German Headquarters or else!  It was the beginning of “Forced Labor”.

At first the North of France was occupied and the south was not – it was supposed to be a “Free Zone”.  My cousin was there and no letter could be exchanged, only a printed card with a few words:  “I am well” or “I am sick”, etc.  In 1942, the Germans decided to occupy the rest of the country as in the South there was the start of the “Underground” or “Resistance”, people who were ready to do their best to sabotage the German installations.  England also had not given up, so they started to bomb the German positions in France.

We had an underground shelter in the next street where we would go every time there was an alert, with our gas masks sometimes on our face because we had been warned of a possible “gas war”.  My mother could not stand the mask on her face and pretty soon we would just carry it with us but the civilian population was never gassed.  After a while, we decided to go in our own cellar.  We lived in a small apartment building, three stories high, and each tenant had a cellar.  We would store coal for our kitchen

range and heaters for the bedroom and dining room.  We also had wine bottles there and other things, so we would sit on folding chairs, waiting for the end of the alert.  Of course there was not much protection there.  After a while, my father said he could not go to work the next day if he had to stay in the cellar most of the night, and I said the same.  So we stayed in our beds.  Sometimes I would put a pillow on my head so I would not hear all the commotion but my father would sleep through it.

We had a curfew of 9 p.m. – after curfew you could be picked up and put in jail.  If a German soldier happened to be killed by a Frenchman, ten hostages would be shot.  If you happened to be in jail that night, you could be chosen to be shot; if it was a German officer, twenty people might be shot.  The husband of the secretary in the office next to mine was one of the unlucky ones.  Right after he was killed, she quit and joined the Resistance.

One day my friend Paulette and I were walking in Paris down the Champs Elysees – of course, there were Germans walking also but we would ignore them even though they were trying their best to smile.  Sometimes they would make fun of us.  The German officers were the worst, they looked so arrogant, thinking “Here we are, the Masters of France…”  Well, one lady across the avenue from us started to yell “Vive la France!”  Right after we heard a shot and we started to walk as fast as we could and did not wait to see what happened next – we went down a subway station.

Still, we all kept going.  We would snatch some news on the radio if we could get the English BBC.  There was a lot of interference; still we would learn that things were getting better, that Germans had been defeated in a few places.  We were hoping that the Americans would land somewhere in France, though we could not figure out how they would be able to do it with all the German defenses on the French coast and other coasts, but still, hope started to take root.  We learned of the Americans landing in Italy and that the Germans had been defeated there.

In the meantime, food was getting real scarce, the rations of dark bread got smaller and coffee did not look like coffee, just another mixture of something.  My cousin Christiane and her husband Rene owned a small vegetable market.  At times they had potatoes and they wanted to give us some, but they lived on the other side of Paris and we were in the North suburbs.  They had a car but no gas, so I decided to go there.  I took a big shopping bag, the biggest I could get, and took the train and subway.  They filled my shopping bag, about twenty pounds.  It was heavy but I managed.   I had taken the last train and I arrived at the train station about one mile from my house, ten minutes past curfew.  No one was in the street but me, but pretty soon I heard the noise made by German boots half a block or so behind me.  I was so afraid he would take my bag of potatoes, though I am certain that is not what he was after!  Anyway, I started walking as fast as I could, taking one street, then another, different from the regular way to my house and, after awhile, I lost him.  I finally reached home where I found my parents quite worried, but I had my potatoes and we made them last.

More and more, the RAF and the Americans were bombarding the German positions.  The French Resistance was getting stronger.  They were blowing up the bridges, ammunition and trains carrying troops.  Of course, we had a black-out before sunrise and at sundown.  The streets had blue lights and we could hardly see where we were walking.  In fact, one early morning, when I was rushing to get to the train station, I did not see a garbage can, fell down and wrecked my knee.  Trains and buses also had blue lights and we all looked like ghosts!

My home was one block from the railroad bridge and two blocks from the river bridge, and we knew the Americans and English air forces were trying to get all the bridges leading to Paris, which was about three

miles from us.  One evening they came and started dropping their bombs, they missed the railroad bridge but got the station where many passengers were arriving and many were killed.  One bomb fell in the courtyard of a Catholic school about half a block from my house, luckily there was nobody there at the time.  Our windows were shattered but my Mother and I were leaning against the opposite wall and we were not hurt.  My father arrived a short while later and he was okay.

Another time, I was at a friend’s house (Georgette) when the siren announced the arrival of planes.  I left right away and ran home.  Later on I learned that a bomb had fallen right there in front of my friend’s house and there was a huge crater in the street.  Their house was damaged but they were unhurt.  If I had left their house five minutes later it would haven the end of me!

In the spring of 1944, the Germans were retreating all over; on the Russian front the Russians were advancing every day.  The American and English air forces were bombarding Germany, even Berlin.  Up to then the Berlin civilians did not know what war was for them.  Hitler kept saying that complete victory was going to be soon, of course, after a while they realized that it was all lies, but it took them four years.

We were still trying to get the English BBC every day, and more and more we believed that the Allies were going to land somewhere on the French coast, we were not supposed to listen to the BBC, the Germans and the French collaborators kept saying it was all lies; your radio could be confiscated and you could be charged with working with the French Underground.  We did not trust the lady downstairs – she hated the Americans and English, saying they were as bad as the Germans.  I don’t think she would have denounced us but we were careful, we kept the sound real low.  On June 6, 1944, we heard that the Allies had landed in Normandy.  We were hoping it was true, but it was so hard to hear with all the interference.  The French newspaper, which of course was run with the consent of the Germans, did not say a thing about it for a couple of days.   Finally they said that the Americans had tried to land in Normandy, but they had been driven back with heavy casualties.  A few days later, they said that the Americans had advanced a few miles.

The French Resistance was doing a good job, sabotaging and blowing up the German installations – little by little, the Germans started to retreat and, two months later, the Allies were in the Paris suburbs.  All Paris got excited.  At first they said that the Germans and Allies were going to fight right in Paris, but the Germans decided to retreat, bypass Paris and regroup.  On August 24, the Allies and “Free France” were ready to enter Paris.  Free France had been led by General de Gaulle, who had never accepted the French defeat.  He had started it in England and after a couple years, he had a nice contingent of Frenchmen who had managed to flee France, so it was a small army with tanks and everything, General Leclerc was their commander.  Anyway, on the day before they entered Paris everything stopped – no trains, buses, subways, etc.  Workers were let go.  In my office, we were let go at noon.  That morning we had received a typhoid shot, I am sure many other workers had one also; they were afraid of contaminated water and food as we had a heat wave besides.  Because there was no transportation of any kind, I had to walk home from work, in all about six miles.  I did not feel very good when I arrived home, not just because of the long walk, but also from the side effects of that shot.

As I said before, we were living about two blocks from the river bridge which was the last one standing before entering Paris.  The Germans who were retreating wanted to use it, and they did for a while, but people decided to do something about it.  They removed the street cobblestones, and along with some furniture and mattresses, made a barrage with them.  My Father was supposed to be playing cards at a friend’s house but instead, here they were with the other “fighters” working on the barrage.  One German tank started to cross the bridge, firing its guns, but the fighters threw a couple of bottles filled with gasoline and the tank exploded.  No other tank tried it.  The fighters were proud of themselves including my Father.

All over Paris, people rose and fought the Germans with everything they could get.  Members of the Resistance had managed to get a tank and machine guns and attacked the big German Headquarters in the center of Paris.  The Germans had barricaded themselves in there, but after awhile they surrendered.  Hitler had given the order to “blow up Paris” if they had to evacuate the city and they had dynamite in many of Paris’ historic buildings.  But the German General in charge of Paris had been there for four years and loved the city, could not see the destruction of so many beautiful things, and did not follow the order (good for him!).

Next day, Free France, led by General Leclerc, entered Paris.  The French people were ecstatic, French flags all over.  At the office everyone had made earrings with blue, white and red sequins and we had small flags on our desks.

The Allies entered later but continued on their way eastward to push back the Germans towards Germany.

In Asnieres where I lived, we only saw a couple of jeeps and we had our first sight of Americans.  They had to go slow because people were cheering them.

A couple blocks from my house had been a small German headquarters since 1940, in all maybe 75 men, and every morning at 6 a.m., they would march on Main Street, past my house, singing and making such a noise with their boots on the cobblestones.  They would always sing the same song, probably a war song, and even now I would recognize the tune if I was hearing it.  It was such a relief, after four years, not to hear this anymore.

The next day, there was a parade all along the Champs Elysees, the biggest avenue in Paris, French tanks and behind, General De Gaulle on foot, there was a huge crowd of people with flags, cheering.  My friend Georgette and her husband were going, also my cousins.  I wanted to go with them but my parents said no, it could be dangerous.  Of course I was pretty upset, but I guess it happened to be true.  In the middle of the cheering, shots were heard from the roofs of many buildings, snipers trying to get De Gaulle and others.  People started to scream and they were crawling on their hands and knees; some were killed and many were wounded.  We heard about it on the radio, but later on my cousin explained it to us.  They had to crawl also and hid behind trees but they were not hurt.  Of course my parents said they had been right… perhaps, but still it would have been exciting!

There was supposed to be a mass at the Notre Dame Cathedral, but there also somebody started shouting, so it was only a short service, some people were wounded but General De Gaulle was unhurt.

That same night we went to bed and in the middle of the night, we had an alert.  We heard planes, lots of them, we thought they were Americans or British on their way to bombard Berlin, but we recognized the engine noise, the German planes had a different sound than the Allies planes and, sure enough, they bombarded warehouses all along the river Seine – explosions all over and huge fires and also many casualties; it was a last attempt to hurt Paris.

So, we were liberated.  The French flag was once more atop the city Hall but food was still scarce.  At work I decide to eat at the cafeteria instead of coming home at noon, thinking I would have more to eat there, but no, just about every day we had rutabagas and red cabbage and sometimes a little meat or cheese.  I would get a terrible stomach ache right after and to this day, I can’t stand the sight of rutabagas or red cabbage!

My friend Georgette and her husband owned a small bar in Paris.  After the Americans came they would sometimes stop at the bar and ask if they could buy a bottle of cognac – they loved cognac – but Georgette, instead of money, would ask for a carton of cigarettes.  After she had a few cartons, she would ask me to take them to a place on the other side of Paris and exchange them for butter.  The cigarettes were in a small suitcase.  I had to take the subway, and there were a lot of police checking luggage for “black market” people.   I was so afraid to be stopped and asked to open my suitcase.  I never was stopped but I told Georgette I did not want to do it anymore.  This did not make her happy, and of course, I did not get my share of butter anymore!

That year, 1944, winter was very cold and snowy – a lot more than usual, especially in Paris.  We had no heat as our coal was long gone.  We had a gas plate to cook and heat water for washing, but we had gas only three times a day – morning, noon and evening – one hour each time.  We had been buying one newspaper a day for years and kept every one of them.  They were not very thick, but still we would tear every page, soak them in water, make little balls that we would roll very tight and, when dry, we would burn them in the coal range.  Luckily we had matches so it would give us a little heat in the evening.  Then we ran out of newspapers so the house was cold.  At night I would wear socks and a cardigan on the top of my night gown.  I had enough blankets, so it was not too bad, but I could not cover my head – I had to breathe – so there would be icicles on the sheet where my nose was!  Luckily winter did not last as long as the Wisconsin winter.

In the office there was no heat either.  In those years women in France were not wearing slacks, so I would wrap myself in a blanket from the waist down.  I would wear gloves with the fingertips cut so I could type.  But then the supervisor would call me to dictate a letter and I had to get out of my warm cocoon, walk in the cold hall to his office and there he would be, sitting at his desk, a blanket around his shoulders and his hat on his head.  What a funny sight! I had to smile.

In the meantime, he Allies were driving the Germans back to Germany but it was not easy, they had re-grouped and fought hard but finally, they realized that they had lost, on the West front they had the Allies and on the east front the Russians.  They were encircled and in May 1945, they surrendered, three months later the Japanese did the same.

So, after almost six years, the war was over and things started to improve little by little.  But it took months and months before life came back to normal in France.

~~ Madeleine Laborde Karlson

February 2000