NOELLE
Paris: 1940
4
On Saturday, June 14, 1940, the German Fifth Army marched into a stunned Paris. The
Maginot Line had turned out to be the biggest fiasco in the history of warfare and France
lay defenseless before one of the most powerful military machines the world had ever
known.
The day had begun with a strange gray pall that lay over the city, a terrifying cloud of
unknown origin. For the last forty-eight hours sounds of intermittent gunfire had broken
the unnatural, frightened silence of Paris. The roar of the cannons was outside the city, but
the echoes reverberated into the heart of Paris. There had been a flood of rumors carried
like a tidal wave over the radio, in newspapers and by word of mouth. The Boche were
invading the French coast…London had been destroyed…Hitler had reached an accord
with the British government…The Germans were going to wipe out Paris with a deadly
new bomb. At first each rumor had been taken as gospel, creating its own panic, but
constant crises finally exert a soporific effect, as though the mind and body, unable to
absorb any further terror, retreat into a protective shell of apathy. Now the rumor mills had
ground to a complete halt, newspaper presses had stopped printing and radio stations had
stopped broadcasting. Human instinct had taken over from the machines, and the Parisians
sensed that this was a day of decision. The gray cloud was an omen.
And then the German locusts began to swarm in.
Suddenly Paris was a city filled with foreign uniforms and alien people, speaking a
strange, guttural tongue, speeding down the wide, tree-lined avenues in large Mercedes
limousines flying Nazi flags or pushing their way along the sidewalks that now belonged
to them. They were truly the über Mensch, and it was their destiny to conquer and rule the
world.
Within two weeks an amazing transformation had taken place. Signs in German
appeared everywhere. Statues of French heroes had been knocked down and the swastika
flew from all state buildings. German efforts to eradicate everything Gallic reached
ridiculous proportions. The markings on hot and cold water taps were changed from chaud
and froid to heiss and kalt. The place de Broglie in Strasbourg became Adolf Hitler Platz.
Statues of Lafayette, Ney and Kleber were dynamited by squadrons of Nazis. Inscriptions
on the monuments for the dead were replaced by “GEFALLEN FUR DEUTSCHLAND.”
The German occupation troops were enjoying themselves. While French food was
too rich and covered with too many sauces, it was still a pleasant change from war rations.
The soldiers neither knew nor cared that Paris was the city of Baudelaire, Dumas and