Rico's rants: The occupation of Paris

20 March 2015

The occupation of Paris

Slate has an article by Rebecca Onion, Slate’s history writer, who also runs the site's history blog, The Vault, showing a tourist map of occupied Paris, issued to German soldiers during World War Two:

This map, published in October 1940 as Pariser Plan. Paris by Moullier & Dermont, (37x52 cm), was used by German troops on leave in occupied Paris. The city, under German control since June of 1940, served as a relatively calm location for soldiers to take R&R. Distributed by the city’s military governor, the map directed visiting troops to take in the traditional sights of Paris: the Eiffelturm, Notre-Dame, and the Luxembourg Palast.
Writing in their book A History of the Twentieth Century in 100 Maps, Tim Bryars and Tom Harper point out that “no sites associated with the occupation are marked” on the straightforward tourist map. Bryars and Harper see the Gothic script— a font associated with Germany— as “a sufficient statement of control”. One of the landmarks included on the map is a memorial to the 1870 French military victory over Prussia, and Bryars and Harper suggest that troops whose fathers and grandfathers were veterans of that conflict might have visited the site in celebration: “The defeats of the past had been expunged by the decisive victory in the present.”
At the time of the map’s publication, the more vulnerable citizens of Paris were beginning to feel the impact of the occupation. In a timeline of the occupation of the city, historian Ronald C. Rosbottom notes that, in September and October of 1940, the Germans and the collaborating Vichy government issued their first anti-Semitic edicts, disallowing Jewish citizens from staying in the army and from owning businesses, and began an official census of the Jewish population of the city. October also marked the first roundup of French Communists. This was the beginning of a cascade of decrees, roundups, and deportations that would follow in the years to come.