Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

determined not to give up colonial possessions. It also made them sensitive to what at times appeared like a new occupation of France, this time by the United States army.

11
    Liberators and Liberated
    For some time after the Liberation and even the end of the war, white-helmeted military policemen used to halt the traffic on the Place de la Concorde to give priority to US vehicles approaching the American Embassy.
    Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander, was no thick-skinned autocrat, yet even his relationship with the provisional government suffered from the distrust which had grown up between President Roosevelt and de Gaulle during the war. The plan to install Allied rule as if France were conquered enemy territory was bound to poison any alliance.
    Allied forces came ashore in Normandy comprehensively prepared. The ‘France Zone Handbook No. 16, Part III’ ostensibly dealt with ‘Local Information and Administrative Personalities’, but was in fact a guide to Parisian brothels,
arrondissement
by
arrondissement
. Prepared in May 1944, presumably from information supplied by Allied intelligence services, it warned that the list was ‘not necessarily exhaustive’ and that ‘owing to the shortage of all medical supplies’ there had been ‘a very great increase in the number of VD cases in the country’.
    Whether or not foreknowledge of the brothel known as ‘Aux Belles Poules’ in the rue Blondel, or the unnamed establishment at 4 rue des Vertus (‘street of the Virtues’), or the ‘House of All Nations’ in the rue Chabanais hastened the American advance on the capital is hard to judge. But clearly American troops made good use of the information so liberally provided by their commanders, because within a year US military authorities felt obliged to print barrack posters whichproclaimed: ‘Gonorrhea. Do you want a
Family
? 12% of all men who contract Gonorrhea become STERILE . Keep fit to go home.’
    The puritan General Montgomery put brothels out of bounds to British troops and posted military police in red-light districts. This did not put a stop to business. In spite of all the summer storms, the fields next to bivouac areas were used instead.
    To the dismay of French patriots, the exuberance of the Liberation was rapidly tarnished by pilfering or dabbling in the black market. For many people it was a question of survival, as it had been during the Occupation. Even Yves Farge, later the Minister of Supply, admitted that there were those ‘condemned to trade illegally or perish’. Yet the black market was at first seen as a French disgrace, both by the Allies and by the French themselves.
    Early posters issued by the provisional government concentrated on the threat to French patriotism: ‘French people do not have the right to make their fellow citizens go hungry’… ‘Officers and soldiers of our Allies are astonished at the prices charged in certain shops and restaurants.’ It soon became apparent, however, to both civil and military authorities that members of the Allied forces were profiteering just as shamelessly. In fact many people suspected that the black market had moved into a higher gear with the rackets operated by certain quartermasters and young entrepreneurs determined to make a fortune before they returned to the States.
    Since French shops were virtually bare, almost all the items provided by the American military cornucopia – coffee, gasoline, tyres, cigarettes, boots, soap, ammunition, morphine, Spam or whisky – were resold on the black market, thus flaunting a wild capitalist streak at a government trying to introduce an effective war socialism.
    On 13 January 1945, newspapers carried a proclamation by the military governor of Paris to the population: ‘Anyone found in possession of gasoline, arms, munitions, equipment or war material will be tried by court martial.’ But such warnings did little good. The theft and sale of fuel supplies in jerrycans even started to endanger the attack on Germany.
    Colouring the gasoline did little good. The court martial of American soldiers, several of whom received extremely severe sentences, made nodifference. The profits to be made were so easy and so large that French drug dealers moved in on the racket, sometimes in alliance with American servicemen. It was above all the effrontery of the black-marketeers which drove the government almost to despair. On one occasion, the Minister of Supply issued an order to ‘seize three