Coco Chanel (48 page)

There were many Frenchmen who, as ambassador William Bullitt had put it, would remain “as fine as they have ever been.” Yet while it is difficult to write briefly about something as momentous as the occupation without gross simplification, Cocteau's repugnant detachment reflected one aspect of the tragedy of France in 1940. Intellectual and artistic life had taken on a darker intensity since the debilitating horrors of the First World War. The French experience had convinced many that violence and irrationality ruled, and that European society was in crisis. The poet Paul Valéry had written, “We realized that a civilization was just as fragile as a life.” Since the First World War, the country had been at political loggerheads with itself—between left and right, between Catholic conservatism, fascism and communism—and many went into this new war already in a worn-out state of pessimism. “Frenchmen had exhausted, in the charnel house of the First World War, their reserves of national pride, of confidence in those who led them, even of horror and indignation over their own fate.”
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Afterward, many would simply want to forget those Dark Years, as those between 1940 and 1944 became known.

The battle for France had lasted no more than six weeks, concluding in a total military defeat. Pétain had signed an armistice with Germany, and half of the country, including Paris, was occupied by thousands of German troops. Unprompted by Germany, Pétain's Vichy government now threw out democratic institutions and set about persecuting what it saw as the three most unwanted social elements: Freemasons, Jews and communists. From the outset, Vichy also had a policy of collaboration with Germany. By the end of the war, 650,000 civilian French workers had been put to work in German factories; another 60,000 had been deported to German concentration camps; 30,000 French civilians were shot as hostages or members of the Resistance and aside from about 4,000 Jews who died in French camps, almost 80,000 others would be sent from there to die in Auschwitz.
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The late Charles Péguy, taken up as a hero by both the resisters opposed to Vichy's anti-Semitic laws and also by Vichy itself, had written: “In wartime he who does not surrender is my man, whoever he is, wherever he comes from, and whatever his party . . . And he who surrenders is my enemy.”
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That opposing sides were able to take this same man as one of their heroes is representative of the complexity of French reactions to the occupation. It reveals the extent to which “antagonists might share as many assumptions with their enemies as with those on their own side.” Since the sixties, it has been shown that de Gaulle's “heroic re-interpretation of the Dark Years . . . in which most of the horrors inflicted on France had been the work of the Germans alone . . . and in which de Gaulle and the Resistance had incarnated the real France” was a gross exaggeration. De Gaulle's propaganda, that the mass of French people, apart from a handful of traitors, was solidly behind him and the Resistance, was constructed in the belief that this was the way to get his countrymen back on their feet.

However, in the sixties, when the French came to challenge de Gaulle's heroic version of their past, and when they were increasingly reminded that millions had revered Pétain, they also saw that the laws of Vichy France were representative of much of France. And the country largely faced the fact that it was Vichy that had discriminated against Jews and Freemasons, that it was French policemen, not Germans, who arrested the Jews and communists and sent them to concentration camps. The Resistance was a very small minority, and most people had been
attentistes
—those who would wait and see. A gradual redressing of the balance in France has meant that this attitude is no longer hidden. It is overwhelmingly recognized that the history of the occupation should not be written in black and white, but in many shades of gray. This has much bearing on our understanding of how Gabrielle was to spend a good part of the war.

 

The prestige of intellectuals in France meant that the war invested their actions with particular significance. Although a good number fled to the unoccupied south, for many, the surest—almost the only—means to avoid compromising oneself was to go abroad into exile. A large number of artists and intellectuals were helped to do this early on, by the French and by a number of foreigners. One of the most significant groups was the hastily organized American Emergency Rescue Committee. Most of the escapees—many of them known to Gabrielle, and a good number of them her friends—went toto America. The artists included Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, André Breton and Jacques Lipchitz, Man Ray and Fernand Léger. Among the film directors were René Clair and Jean Renoir. The many writers who left included André Masson, the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

After legal or forged visas had been found for them, some sailed from Marseille; others were smuggled over the Spanish border. A few, such as the Russian émigré painter Marc Chagall, were slow to realize that they, too, must escape. The benign-tempered Chagall had gullibly believed his French citizenship would protect him from anti-Semitism, and left France only having been reassured that there
were
cows in America. Marcel Duchamp sailed for New York in 1942. Those who left France behind were often vilified for deserting their country “in her greatest hour of need.” The artists were, of course, a minute fraction of the population, and for a time, many of those who remained saw Marshal Pétain as their best hope. Wanting a return to some kind of stability, they could convince themselves that returning to work was not only necessary so as not to starve, it was also their duty. This fitted perfectly with German strategy for a compliant France.

Otto Abetz, the German ambassador, was a protégé of the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Although both were great Francophiles, their underlying motivation was sinister. Abetz admired French culture and its food and wine. He had a French wife, too. He also believed that the French should know their place.

The plan he had presented to Hitler entailed France becoming a “satellite state,” obliged to accept its “permanent weakness.” To bring this about involved playing on the country's internal rivalries and hopes of an entente with Germany. Knowing that an attitude of confrontation would unite the French against Germany, Abetz was in concordance with his instructions from Hitler: “Everything must be done to encourage internal divisions and thus the weakness of France.” Nonetheless, Abetz's was always a careful approach, with a good deal of effort placed on propaganda, while the Propaganda-Abteilung and the embassy permanently vied for control. The Propaganda-Abteilung had a staff of 1,200 and controlled the press, radio, literature, propaganda, cinema and culture, including theater, art and music. The objective was to promote German influence, to undermine and erase the dominance of French culture in Europe, and to promote collaboration. Abetz believed his seductive approach was superior to the Propaganda-Abteilung's more heavy-handed one, which involved assassination and reprisal. In 1942, Abetz won this battle, and his German Institute became a center of cultural collaboration, with exhibitions, lectures, popular German-language classes, and concerts promoting the most distinguished German musicians.
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From the outset, Abetz was courteous, encouraging a return to “normality” as quickly as was possible following the occupation. The remarkable Jacques Copeau, whose career had been devoted to challenging the stuffiness of bourgeois boulevard theater, became the director of the Comédie Française, the national theater, while Gabrielle's friend the Ballets Russes dancer Serge Lifar became the Vichy-appointed director of the Paris Opéra Ballet. Ever-sinuous and insinuating, Lifar wasn't too concerned by having to ingratiate himself with his Nazi masters. He toured in Germany, and notoriously paraded the claim that Hitler had “handled” him on his visit to the Opéra. Hitler admired the place so much he apparently knew its floor plan by heart.

The Free French in London got wind of Lifar's bragging and, broadcasting via the BBC, had soon condemned him to death. Gabrielle's sometime friend Comte Etienne de Beaumont, as unperturbed by the Nazi presence as Lifar, had desperately wanted his post, but his attempts at ingratiation had been to no avail. Maurice Sachs, who had swindled Gabrielle over her library, was one of those who turned the war into an escapade in the transgression of every moral code. He also managed successfully to hide his Jewishness. After the occupation, he lived for a while with a German officer, began playing the black market, and also spent a period in a homosexual brothel. In early 1942, he went to Germany, where he became a crane operator, and was delighted when the Gestapo discovered how skillful he was at informing. His death by lynching, when the Allies occupied Germany, is supposed to have taken place at the hands of his fellow prisoners.

Under the watchful eye of Abetz's propaganda staff, cinemas and theaters in the occupied zone were reopened. The making of new films was encouraged, and newspapers and publishers were permitted to recommence printing. The attitude of their masters was, at the same time, repressive regarding anything “decadent,” anti-German or pro-Jewish. Not long after the armistice, when the Pétain government in the south began to put anti-Semitic prohibitions into practice, most of the intellectual Right across the country, and some of the Left, had already joined in spirit this aspect of repression.

France was by no means unique in its anti-Semitism. Many Europeans, including Great Britain, were mildly anti-Semitic, some were more so than others. The more extreme in France wanted a fascist France allied with Germany, to build a cleansed Europe. Otto Abetz was assigned the project of “safeguarding” all objects of art: public, private and, especially, Jewish owned. Abetz embarked on the job with enthusiasm. Many works of art were taken from their owners and stored in the Parisian Jeu de Paume museum, while much else was hauled off to Germany. The worst perpetrator of this theft was Goering, who “pillaged on a heroic scale.” If there hadn't been so much internecine warfare between the different German departments, a great deal more art would undoubtedly have left the country. Despite the plundering, some works were regarded as just too decadent, and in 1943, a pyre was secretly lit at the Jeu de Paume on which were burned works by artists such as Picasso, Joan Miró and Max Ernst. Picasso, meanwhile, was selling work to those German officers who, secretly, recognized his gifts.

With occupation, there was an understandable wish for escapism, and although France was really a huge prison, with a captive audience like never before, for those in the arts prepared to “collaborate” enough to have their work put on, this period proved to be strangely fertile. While the occupation has often defied description by those who experienced it, it has also caused utter bafflement in those who did not. One thing, though, is clear: it was virtually impossible not to collaborate with the conquerors if one was to work at one's profession. Almost all activity required a license, and none were issued without strict German approval. If licenses were not sought, this meant refusal for the publication of books, the production of plays, the showing of films and exhibitions and the performing of any concerts. The extremely courageous artists who gave up working under these conditions were very few in number. Any signs of anti-German sentiment were forbidden, and any Jewish artistic presence whatsoever was eliminated.
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The apparently relaxed cultural policy of the conquerors emerged from the principle that cultural distractions would keep the population unaware and contented. Meanwhile, the real attitude of the Germans toward French culture was a divided one, involving jealousy and contempt. There was jealousy of the preeminence of French culture in Europe combined with contempt for its perceived artistic decadence. German Francophilia was, then, double sided: admiration coexisting with an attitude of superiority. And those very French attributes that made the country so attractive—the refinement and
douceur de vivre
, the pleasure of civilized living—were also what condemned her to the second rank in the eyes of her invaders. However, a good number of intellectuals and artists were so relieved at the urbanity and admiration shown by some of their masters they failed to observe what actually lay beneath. Serge Lifar and Jean Cocteau, who continued working, like many artists before and after them, were staggeringly politically naive. What we are to make of the record of Gabrielle's war years, however, remains to be seen.

Late in that summer of 1940, when Gabrielle had been reinstated at the Ritz, having accepted the one small room offered her, she sent all her best furniture back to her apartment above the salon on rue Cambon. And whatever her private thoughts about the occupation, there were two immediate tasks Gabrielle was now obliged to fulfill. One was a task she wished to perform; the other was an onerous one she was forced into.