Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

French trucks transporting food, travelling with papers signed Eisenhower’.
    To the exasperation of the French government, there were other ways for American soldiers to make a killing at its expense. All US forces were exempt from French exchange controls and import duties. This meant that servicemen were allowed to convert their pay in French francs back into dollars at the official rate of exchange. Many of them promptly sold their dollars for francs on the black market at a great profit. Another money-making activity at the expense of the French government emerged later. ‘I am told,’ Caffery reported to Washington, ‘that a large number of New York firms are mailing American cigarettes and nylon stockings to [Army Post Office] addresses here. Much of this merchandise is illegally bartered or sold by American purchasers enjoying benefits of APO exemption from French customs control.’
    The nylon stockings may not have been destined for the black market. For American soldiers, they were the most obvious bait to persuade young Frenchwomen to go out with them. Overall, exploitation was probably evenly balanced between the two sides. ‘Lise’s main sport since the Liberation,’ wrote Simone de Beauvoir of a young woman who lived in the same hotel, ‘was what she called “hunting the American”.’ This meant charming them into parting with cigarettes and rations, which she then resold.
    For attractive
midinettes
(the young Parisians who worked in the fashion industry and shops) there was no shortage of American soldiers on seventy-two hours’ leave from the front, with dollars saved up and eager to see Paris. The GIs were bowled over by the
midinettes,
who were brilliantly inventive in their clothes and especially their hats, piled high in Carmen Miranda-like fantasies. ‘The hats in Paris are really terrific,’ one young soldier wrote in a letter home, ‘very high, usually like a waste basket turned upside down with feathers and flowers all over them.’
    The welcome for the young soldiers had been quite genuine at first, largely because of what they represented. ‘The easygoing manner of theyoung Americans,’ wrote Simone de Beauvoir, ‘incarnated liberty itself… once again we were allowed to cross the seas.’
    Young Frenchmen, however, would not have agreed with the US Embassy euphemisms which described their troops as ‘ardent and often very enterprising’ in the pursuit of women. Many reports, in fact, suggest that within a few months of the Liberation, certainly by the spring of 1945, American ardour was no longer appreciated by most Parisian girls, who did not like the arrogance that went with it. Summoned by a whistle and a proffered packet of ‘Luckys’, one girl earned the cheers of French onlookers by taking a cigarette from the GI, dropping it to the ground and grinding it under her foot.
    This coolness was accompanied by another development which embarrassed and shocked the American military authorities. According to a SHAEF report, very young girls had begun to loiter in large numbers outside US army camps, offering themselves to GIs. It is hard to tell whether this was juvenile prostitution driven by hardship or thrill-seeking by children disturbed by the war. The Americans put forward various suggestions, including the imposition of a curfew for girls under sixteen and an increase in the age of consent to sexual intercourse from thirteen to fifteen, but the French government reacted frostily to any hint of interference from its ally.
    With fewer young Frenchwomen prepared to go out with soldiers, the behaviour of servicemen began to provoke trouble. The conduct of US airborne troops in Nancy, a designated rest area from the front, led to a rash of complaints. What American officers regarded as the natural high spirits of their men was more often seen by the French as insulting behaviour.
    The Hotel Meurice was the Paris officers’ mess for SHAEF. Staff were also billeted at the Crillon, but those in the Meurice remember the smell in cupboards from the thick, greased leather of Wehrmacht boots. Morgan’s Bank in the Place Vendôme was taken over as SHAEF’s offices in Paris, but the bulk of Eisenhower’s swelling military court was out at Versailles.
    SHAEF was dominated by the Americans, with General Walter Bedell Smith as Eisenhower’s chief of staff, but the British were also well represented. Bedell Smith’s deputy was General Freddie Morgan,the chief planner of