Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

war record were in evidence. They included Comte Jean de Vogüé – ‘Vaillant’ in the Resistance – who was wearing his FFI armband, and the Duchesse d’Ayen, whose husband was a prisoner in Germany. She did not yet know that he had died in Belsen.
    At the top of the pyramid, well-connected Resistance heroes and Gaullists had a simple choice. Either they cut themselves off in moral indignation from friends and relations who had been Pétainists or they had to adopt a more forgiving attitude. If Nancy Mitford’s fictionalhero, Charles-Édouard de Valhubert, is to be believed, the most aggravating sin tended to be social rather than political. His family lawyer had been a collaborator: ‘You just don’t know what that means. Two hours of self-justification before one can get down to any business. There’s no bore like a collaborator.’
    Those under a cloud often argued that the conflict between good manners and patriotism under the Occupation had been most difficult. There had been no guide to etiquette in such circumstances. Should a woman reject a seat offered by a German in the métro? Should one have refused to receive civilized, non-Nazi Germans whom one had known from before the war? Should one have turned one’s back on a German friend in a public place?
    Much, of course, depended on the individual case, but the different accounts of how people had behaved varied widely. The most improbable men and women claimed to have been in the Resistance, while those who had behaved heroically said very little. ‘One rule here,’ wrote Susan Mary Patten, ‘is that those who suffered prefer not to talk about it, and it is next to impossible to worm Resistance stories out of them.’ Maître Max Fischer, who had played a prominent part in the Resistance in the Vaucluse, admitted that he felt uncomfortable talking about his time in the
maquis
with anyone but his
anciens compagnons
; in their company, one spoke of little else. Back in Paris after the Liberation, Fischer wanted to put the past behind him and get on with his career in the law. Yet he was obliged to wear his medals in court; and those of his older colleagues who had sworn the oath of allegiance to Pétain, thus certainly compromising their chances of a decoration, cast sour glances at this young
blanc bec
who had already earned the Légion d’Honneur and the Médaille de la Résistance.
    Gaullists often found themselves in a curious position on encountering old friends who had supported Marshal Pétain. More often than not, the Pétainist turned abruptly away in a mixture of embarrassment and shame, or even ran off down the street. Many, on the other hand, remained unrepentant. Those whose sympathies lingered with the white cockade of the Bourbons and despised ‘the slut Marianne’ of the Republic showed once again that they had learned little and forgotten little. Comte Jean-Louis de Rougemont, who had served with great bravery in the Resistance, returned to his old regiment after the Liberation‘expecting to be treated as something of a hero’, but the reception he received was worse than chilly. The wives of fellow officers avoided him ‘like a leper’, regarding him as no better than a Communist fellow-traveller.
    Some never concealed their Pétainist sympathies, even from Allied diplomats. When Adrian Holman, the British minister, and his wife arrived to stay for a weekend in 1945 with an
ancien régime
family, they were told that a mass would be held for the imprisoned Marshal in their private chapel. The Holmans promptly left.
    ‘One asked nothing in Paris in those days,’ said one of Martha Gellhorn’s characters. ‘There was a terrible discretion between friends.’ Certain subjects were scrupulously avoided, unless you knew somebody very well and were alone. Nobody mentioned head-shaving, especially not the cases which had occurred in fashionable areas. There was also an unsavoury hypocrisy. The sales staff in smart shops who had served Germans without a tremor now patriotically refused to serve the wife of a collaborator.
    Moral judgements at that time were thoroughly capricious. Somebody who had been merely imprudent, and no more selfish than most, could be whispered about as if they had denounced friends to the Gestapo; while others who might well have been executed if taken by the Resistance suffered little more than social ostracism. Baron Guy de Rothschild described an incident at one party. ‘A Free French officer