When Paris Went Dark by Ronald C. Rosbottom Read Free Book Online Page B

when he stopped in the neighborhood’s most famous plaza, the Place du Tertre, a crowd instantly gathered. They were looking at their first German soldier—who suddenly lost his earlier exuberance. Turning around, he sped back behind his lines to safety.
    Because French authorities had devised few sensible plans about how to protect against the military capture of Paris, they had been forced to resort at the last minute to the open-city strategy. Had Parisians fought to defend their capital street by street, at least for a while, the sense of helplessness, despair, and humiliation that they would feel for years might have been somewhat mitigated. Many of the eyewitness accounts we have from the first Germans to enter the city underline both their surprise at the ease of occupying the world’s best-known capital and their pleasure at being able to enjoy its advantages from day one.
    Not one shot had been fired in the city’s defense. Now Teutons were riding brazenly through the streets of the City of Light for the first time since 1870, with plans to stay much longer. Their own curiositywas manifest in every action they took: How should we treat the occupants of a city that had not lifted a finger against us? Later in the day, when regular army formations began to roll more confidently down the city’s grand boulevards, Wehrmacht soldiers expressed consternation, even derision, at the many smiling, waving French: Don’t they have any pride? But the French were amazed—and relieved—at the handsome, “correct,” and well-behaved German ranks. To some, they almost seemed to have deserved victory over the poorly led and poorly trained French army.
    That first morning, Roger Langeron’s assistant informed him that two official German army automobiles had driven up to the Préfecture. Four officers had gotten out and walked calmly into the reception area, where they made a polite request to speak with the police chief. Langeron had been waiting for some sort of official communiqué since news had reached him earlier that German patrols had entered the city proper. They had taken up positions throughout Paris, but no official contact between his administration and the conquering army had yet occurred. When the young German officers arrived in his office, they were almost deferential, he thought, too young to have fought in the Great War and thus too green to understand the enormous symbolism of their victory over the French. The present German army was filled with men born during the last war or right after—youth who had been brought up on hatred for the way the French had treated their fathers in defeat and anger at the occupation of the Rhineland in the 1920s. Langeron also wondered if these officers might be from the German provinces rather than from a large city, for they seemed uncomfortable in the nerve center of Paris. The Germans politely requested that Langeron appear at the Hôtel de Crillon, their temporary headquarters on the Place de la Concorde, at 11:00 that morning to meet the general in command of the army that was supervising the Occupation. Finally, Langeron thought, he would receive instructions on protocol and his legal responsibilities. The Germans would tell him what the French military command of Paris could—or would—not do.
    Reports had continued to arrive at the Préfecture that Germantroops and vehicles, both logistical and armed, were entering Paris from the north and northeast. Strangely enough, horses and mules pulled much of the materiel. The wagons had pneumatic tires, but Parisian observers were startled and not a little amused by the disjunction between the reputation of the highly mechanized Wehrmacht, with its notorious panzer divisions, and this nineteenth-century mode of transport. The city remained quiescent; the citizens who had not left stayed inside, shutters closed. German foot and motorcycle patrols were traversing the city, from the Boulevard Saint-Michel on the Left Bank