Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

while the battle still raged overhead. SS General Krukenberg presented the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross to former
milicien
Eugène Vaulot for having destroyed six Soviet armoured vehicles. Few of these last defenders of the New Europe returned to their homes.
    The British, not having suffered the divisive effects of occupation, had few traitors to deal with. One of the most famous was in Paris in August 1944. John Amery, the son of Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India and Burma, had developed an infatuation for the Nazi regime. He had made broadcasts from Berlin urging Britons to fight for Hitler, and the Nazis used him to lead the Legion of St George, the British contribution to the New Europe. Only sixty-six volunteers emerged, which did not make a centuria, let alone a cohort or a legion. Amery, arrested in Paris at the Liberation, was flown back to London for trial. He was hanged on 19 December 1945.
    The other Englishman in Paris whom the British authorities wished to interview was not so much a traitor as a victim of his own political naïvety. One of the first jobs given to Major Malcolm Muggeridge on his arrival in Paris was to keep an eye on P. G. Wodehouse, who was still at the Hotel Bristol, where he had been installed by the Germans. Arrested with his wife at their villa at Le Touquet in 1940, he had been interned in the Silesian lunatic asylum of Tost. Released shortly beforehis sixtieth birthday, he was asked by the Berlin representative of CBS to make a broadcast to the United States. Not realizing that this would be used by German radio for their own purposes, Wodehouse made the broadcast in his typically jolly way, making light of his imprisonment and giving the impression that life under German domination was not too bad.
    This story emerged at a bad moment in Britain. Wodehouse’s failure to hate anybody at this time of total war was incomprehensible to most people who had endured the Blitz, and some of his throwaway remarks – the most notorious was ‘whether England wins or not’ – provoked great anger. The worst onslaught came in a broadcast by the journalist William Connor, ‘Cassandra’ of the
Daily Mirror
. This was personally authorized by Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who had overridden the objections of the BBC.
    Just over a week after the Liberation, Wodehouse wrote to the Home Secretary in London, ‘hastening to report to you my presence here’: ‘This is not the occasion for me to make a detailed statement, but may I be allowed to say that the reports in the Press that I obtained my release from internment by agreeing to broadcast on the German radio are entirely without foundation. The five talks which I delivered were arranged for after my release, and were made at my own suggestion.
    ‘That it was criminally foolish of me to speak on the German radio, I admit. But the only motive in doing so was to give my American readers a humorous description of my adventures, as some response to the great number of letters which I had received from them while I was in the camp. The five talks covered the five phases of my imprisonment, were purely comic in tone and were designed to show American listeners a group of Englishmen keeping up their spirits and courage under difficult conditions.’
    The British authorities could not make up their mind what to do, so left Wodehouse where he was. On the night of 20 November, however, a woman at dinner with the Prefect of Police announced that Wodehouse, who had broadcast from Berlin, was living openly in Paris at a hotel. Luizet wasted no time. Four leather-jacketed policemen armed with submachine-guns were promptly dispatched to bring him in.
    Malcolm Muggeridge went round to the police station where Wode-house was held. Ethel Wodehouse had been brought in as well, with herpekinese Wonder; the police inspector in charge was only too relieved to be rid of its hysterical yapping, so ‘Mme Wodenhorse’ was allowed to leave. All that remained was to convince the French authorities that ‘M. Wodenhorse’ was ill and that he should be transferred to a sana-torium under the guard of Major Muggeridge. On 1 December, Duff Cooper saw Wodehouse’s stepson-in-law, Peter Cazalet. They agreed ‘that the best thing that could happen would be if the French would agree to get him moved out of Paris and allowed to live quietly in the country’.
    When George Orwell came to Paris, Muggeridge took him round to introduce him to