Read And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris for Free Online Page A

every night in a maid’s room in the building’s attic. ( Pierre Jahan/Roger-Viollet )

    Pablo Picasso, who spent the occupation in Paris, wrote a surrealist play, Le Désir attrapé par le queue (Desire Caught by the Tail), which was performed privately in Michel Leiris’s home on March 19, 1944. Brassaï recorded the occasion in a photograph that shows, among others, Simone de Beauvoir holding a book to Picasso’s left, Albert Camus engaging with the dog below him and Jean-Paul Sartre, with a pipe to Camus’s right. Some Picasso paintings are displayed in the background. ( Estate Brassaï-RMN )

    Two of France’s most popular actors, Arletty and Jean-Louis Barrault, were the stars of Marcel Carné’s movie Les Enfants du paradis , which was shot largely during the occupation but released only after the liberation of France. By then, Arletty was in disgrace for having had a German lover. ( Rue des Archives/RDA )

    The writer Albert Camus, left, who joined the resistance in late 1943 and edited the clandestine newspaper Combat , is seen here after the liberation of Paris with the resistance leader Jacques Baumel and the writer André Malraux, who is wearing a French army uniform. ( René St. Paul/Rue des Archives )

    A week before the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, the French Communist Party called for an insurrection and thousands of young Parisians took up arms, building barricades and harassing the retreating German forces. ( Roger-Viollet )

    General Charles de Gaulle, who for more than four years had led the French fight against Germany, first from London, then from Algiers, returned to Paris on liberation day, August 25, 1944. The following morning, he walked down the avenue des Champs-Elysées and was acclaimed by Parisians. ( Roger-Viollet )

    After the liberation of France, writers and artists were among tens of thousands of men and women brought to trial on charges of collaborating with the enemy. The writer Robert Brasillach, left, was condemned to death and shot on February 6, 1941. Sacha Guitry, right, was jailed for sixty days, but legal proceedings against him continued until August 1947, when his case was shelved. ( Top Foto/Roger-Viollet )

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    EVERYONE who has written a book about the occupation of France in recent decades owes a debt to Robert O. Paxton for his pioneering work on the subject. I owe a particular debt to Professor Paxton, who generously agreed to read my manuscript and, in doing so, corrected myriad errors and offered immensely useful ideas to improve the text. I was no less lucky that Robert Gottlieb, editor extraordinaire, was willing to read my manuscript at a stage where his erudite mind and sharp eyes could still shape the final result. My deepest thanks to these two Bobs.
    I am also grateful to other experts and friends who read all or parts of this book and saved me from many pitfalls, among them Daphné Anglès, Lenny Borger, Myriam Chimènes, Hector Feliciano, Debra Isaac, Karine Le Bail, Gisèle Sapiro, Yannick Simone and C. K. Williams. As a journalist, I would have felt even more of an intruder in the world of historians had I not been able to interview many who had firsthand experience of the cultural life of Paris during the occupation. I am enormously appreciative of the time, memories and reflections of Claude Anglès, Jean Babilée, Héléna Bossi, Pierre Boulez, Leonora Carrington, Danielle Darrieux, Dominique Delouche, Michel Déon, Dominique Desanti, Michel Francini, Françoise Gilot, Stéphane Hessel, Elina Labourdette, Madeleine Malraux, Micheline Presle, Denise René, Jorge Semprun and Annie Ubersfeld, as well as those of the late Marcel Carné, Maurice Druon, Marguerite Duras and Willy Ronis.
    I would also like to record my recognition of the academics and historians who, while too numerous to name outside my bibliography, have done much of the hard work that has made my overview possible. As well, the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent