Nooilforpacifists's Reviews > When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944

A slog. Begins and ends with all manner of Foucaultian theory, a snooze in itself. The middle section, describing the occupation itself, is quite interesting. Yet, Rosbottom seems more interested in the meta psychology than the simple telling. All made worse by the fact that he's simply not a good writer.


"[For the Nazis,] to admire Paris was fine, but to admire the French ingenuity that created was not. . . The German occupiers wanted to unmake dynamic Paris, to create a static simulacrum, preserving its most banal characteristics for their own enjoyment."


Requiring Jews to wear the yellow star "created a mobile ghetto."


A description by a young woman of American liberation:

"Tall, big men, are relieved of every vain worry in your presence. You climb the stairs to our apartment, our doors are open, you bring packages, all as it should be. That's it, the overwhelming advantages behind which you hide your weaknesses. And what are they? No inferiority complex about their inferiority. They say "I don't much like that!" ( Literature, music, art…)… They manage so well the immensity of their ignorance, as if it were a light feather."



Interestingly, only about 47 percent of the women shorn of all hair after the occupation were accused of "collaboration horizontale." "The rest were women betrayed by their female peers because they had worked with or served the Germans, because they had ended the war a bit better off than their compatriots, or they had in other ways insulted common mores."


Possibly most interesting is his repeated praise for Jacques Chirac, for (especially in his speech of 16 July 1996), insisting that all Parisians and all French citizens "recognize the mistakes of the past--and especially those committed by the Vichy state. Nothing must block out the dismal hours of our history if we are to defend a certain idea of humanity, of liberty, and dignity. In so doing, we struggle against those dark forces that are constantly at work. This ceaseless combat is mine as much as it is yours."