Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation »

Charles Glass is the author of Tribes with Flags, Money for Old Rope, and The Northern Front. A world-famous journalist, he was chief Middle East correspondent for ABC News from 1983 to 1993 and has covered wars in Lebanon, Eritrea, Rhodesia, Somalia, Iraq, Egypt, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. His writing appears in Harper's Magazine, The Independent, and the Spectator.

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.

Library Journal

Once upon a time, historians told stories about the brave and the cowardly, about heroes, villains, and the many whose lives lay somewhere in between. That's what Glass (former chief Middle East correspondent, ABC News; Tribes with Flags) has done in this extraordinary narrative of the lives of the nearly 5000 Americans who lived in Paris during the German occupation from June 1940 to August 1944. For Clara de Chambrun, related by marriage to FDR on one side and the Vichy premier Laval on the other, life went on much as before—dinners at Maxim's, fine wine, dresses from Schiaparelli. But Sumner Jackson, chief surgeon at the American Hospital, was at constant risk for his work with the Resistance, spiriting Allied soldiers out of Paris. Millionaire Pierre Bedaux carried on business as usual, only with Germany now. Eventually arrested by the United States and charged with treason, he killed himself rather than face public humiliation. Glass is scrupulously fair to his subjects: there are no clear-cut villains in this story (although there are some heroes). VERDICT This is outstanding popular history, well researched and told and never oversimplified. It's difficult to conceive of anyone who wouldn't enjoy this exceptional book.—David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Maps

List of Illustrations

Introduction 1

Pt. 1 14 June 1940

1 The American Mayor of Paris 9

2 The Bookseller 24

3 The Countess from Ohio 37

4 All Blood Runs Red 50

5 Le Millionnaire americain 60

6 The Yankee Doctor 66

Pt. 2 1940

7 Bookshop Row 89

8 Americans at Vichy 98

9 Back to Paris 113

10 In Love with Love 121

11 A French Prisoner with the Americans 136

12 American Grandees 139

13 Polly's Paris 144

14 Rugged Individualists 150

15 Germany's Confidential American Agent 159

Pt. 3 1941

16 The Coldest Winter 169

17 Time to Go? 174

18 New Perils in Paris 180

19 Utopia in Les Landes 188

20 To Resist, to Collaborate or to Endure 193

21 Enemy Aliens 204

Pt. 4 1942

22 First Round-up 213

23 The Vichy Web 224

24 The Second Round-up 239

25 'Inturned' 246

26 Uniting Africa 261

27 Americans Go to War 268

28 Murphy Forgets a Friend 275

29 Alone at Vittel 280

30 The Bedaux Dossier 283

Pt. 5 1943

31 Murphy versus Bedaux 291

32 Sylvia's War 298

33 German Agents? 304

34 A Hospital at War 310

35 The Adolescent Spy 314

36 Clara under Suspicion 318

37 Calumnies 325

Pt. 6 1944

38 The Trial of Citizen Bedaux 335

39 The Underground Railway 341

40 Conspiracies 347

41 Springtime in Paris 350

42 The Maquis to Arms! 358

43 Resistants Unmasked 363

44 Via Dolorosa 371

45 Schwarze Kappelle 374

46 Slaves of the Reich 376

47 One Family Now 378

48 The Paris Front 385

49 Tout Mourir 393

Pt. 7 24-26 August 1944

50 Liberating the Rooftops 407

51 Liberation, not Liberation 411

Epilogue 413

Endnotes 419

Acknowledgements 491

Select Bibliography 495

Index 501