Book Review: Americans in Paris

Americans in Paris, by Charles Glass. Photo / Supplied

Samuel Johnson may have been overstating it when he said "every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier". But for those of us lucky to have lived without having to be tested in war, the question of "how would I have behaved?" has no little fascination.
In this engrossing study of Americans who stayed in France during the years of Nazi occupation journalist Charles Glass reminds us that civilians are tested too and that the verdict is not always straightforward.

For historic and emotional reasons many Americans have always had a love affair with France (Paris in particular), so when the Wehrmacht marched into the French capital there were thousands of Americans who had ignored advice to return home at the outbreak of war and were still there.

Some had family ties, some had businesses, some were involved in American institutions and others had just become so involved in their lives in France they could not bring themselves to leave.

Glass concentrates on a well chosen few who encapsulate the experiences of the many "negotiating the moral maze of occupation".

Each has a story worthy of a book in itself. Clara Longworth de Chambrun was a blue blood devoted to the American Library in Paris and her Franco-American son was married to the daughter of the Vichy French politician Pierre Laval. Sylvia Beach ran an English language bookshop that was a social centre for writers like Joyce, Hemingway, Auden, Spender and Dos Passos. Sumner Waldron Jackson was a medical specialist working at the American Hospital in Paris, married to a French nurse.

In Charles Bedaux, a naturalised American millionaire business efficiency expert who owned the chateau at which the Duke of Windsor was married, Glass brings us a character who might have come straight from the pages of a novel. In counterpoint, he references Eugene Bullard, an Afro-American ex-fighter pilot who was shamefully treated by US authorities and who found in France opportunities denied him in his home country, and Charles Anderson, another black American who carried on turning up for duty at his employer's empty office until liberation when he was 83.

As the war went on and America switched from being a neutral state to a combatant, the Americans in France found themselves in an increasingly difficult physical and ethical environment.

Clara Longworth took the line that some accommodation with the Germans was the only way to ensure the survival of the Library and she believed some of her friends who collaborated "had shielded France from the worst of German occupation". Later she said that giving directions to a lost German soldier was the sole occasion when "moved by the Christmas spirit I gave aid or comfort to one of our foes" but she had little time for the Resistance.

Bedaux lived in a vacuum and pursued his business schemes almost oblivious to who he was dealing with and even Beach, who was resolute in her defiance and support for the Resistance, found it necessary to thank a French fascist for his help in securing her freedom.
For most, their principles and their private lives were a constant struggle of reconciliation. Several took great risks to protect Jewish acquaintances.

Glass provides a convincing picture of those times and is careful to accommodate many shades of grey and to recognise the failings of those who emerged triumphant. It was the Americans, not the French, who made sure that the French division which liberated Paris was that which could most easily lose its North African members and enter as an all-white contingent.

The verdicts of history on some of the players is very different to what it might have been at the end of the war and the epilogue rounds off the stories. Bedaux, who committed suicide in the face of treason accusations by the Americans, was honoured by the French in later years for hindering German production and protecting Jewish property. Longworth was eased out of her roles for being too close to the discredited Lavals. Some carried on and resumed their lives.

But Sumner Jackson, the strong silent Yankee who conducted the most committed and courageous defiance of the Nazis, was killed in the closing week of the war, when the British attacked ships carrying prisoners of the Germans.

Stories end better in fiction than in Glass' honest and thought provoking history.

Americans in Paris, by Charles Glass, Harper Press $29.99.

John Gardner is an Auckland reviewer.