by Susan Ronald
Yet in 1940, when Florence took up her residence in Paris at the Hôtel Bristol, almost all this history was still before her.
21
THE “ANYTHING GOES” OCCUPATION
The World’s gone mad today, and Good’s bad today …
—COLE PORTER lyrics to “Anything Goes”
Hôtel Bristol was leased to the American embassy as a refuge for the thousands of American citizens still living in France in 1940—as it was the only hotel that had been kitted out with an air raid shelter in its basement that was impervious to poison gas.1
Until that June, America’s Ambassador William Bullitt had lived high on the hog and virtually without any American loss in the city. That is, if the ambassador’s consignment of 150,000 cigarettes that fell into enemy hands a month earlier during the Battle of France didn’t count.2 Bullitt was nominated by the fleeing French government to declare Paris an open city to the Nazis; was an eyewitness to the formation of the Vichy government; and warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt that July that Maréchal Pétain believed the Third Reich would allow his government to be headquartered at Versailles instead of Vichy. Versailles could then be declared a sort of Vatican City, able to grant sanctuary as required to French citizens.3 Naturally, the ambassador knew better and warned his closest American friends to get out. Friends like Florence Gould.
The sultry millionairess and the footloose, debonair American ambassador had been close since his arrival in Paris in October 1936. Although the hotline of her old friendship with Bullitt cooled with his departure on special assignment to President Roosevelt in July 1940, he had given her good pointers on how to adopt a lower profile should she obstinately refuse to leave France.
Florence was far from being the only American citizen to remain. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas joined the exodus and hid out in the Free Zone for the duration. Josephine Baker devoted her ample efforts to resisting and spying for the Allies from the get-go. Florence was otherwise inclined, unwilling to let politics or war get in the way of her life story. Yet, like many, she feared—or claimed to fear—the rough handling by the occupiers.
That said, friends of the occupation were, unexpectedly, treated with iron fists, while perceived enemies were not only tolerated, but courted as emblems of Nazi reasonability. Two extreme examples were writer Robert Brasillach and Pablo Picasso. The virulently anti-Semitic and fascist Brasillach joined the French army at the time of its mobilization, and was captured. He remained a POW in a camp reserved for French officers for ten months—just enough time to finish his play Bérénice. Brasillach was released in April 1941. Picasso, too famous to disappear into a camp as a degenerate artist with communist sympathies, eventually returned home to Paris, and had the most prolific period of his painting career.4 Although clearly a master of “degenerate art,” Picasso exhibited and continued his career as before the occupation. He, like Matisse, who remained on the Riviera, was offered asylum in the United States. Both refused.
Where Matisse endeavored to find “his own way to limit the moral shock of this catastrophe” through “the narcosis of work,” artist Pierre Bonnard—Florence’s favorite painter—tried to emulate Picasso. “I immediately went back to work so as to recover my equilibrium,” Bonnard wrote from Nice in September 1940, “but here there are such low spirits, such widespread fear that Nice may be occupied at any moment that, through contagion, my work is difficult, unproductive.”5 In this confused atmosphere, the Salon d’Automne at the Orangerie took place as usual with works by French masters leading the rich tapestry of artists. Soon other art exhibitions followed, like the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon du Dessin et de la Peinture à l’Eau, with living artists needing to declare that they were (a) French and (b) not Jewish, Freemason, or communist to exhibit their works. These salons required, of course, collaboration with the occupiers each step of the way. As the satirist Jean Galtier-Boissière put it, “Collaboration is: give me your watch and I’ll tell you the time.”6
* * *
In the literary world, writer André Gide believed in the Soviet ideal, until he went to the Soviet Union and wrote Retour de l’U.R.S.S. Gide was crestfallen at the total absence of freedom of thought there, stating, “I doubt whether in any other country in the world, even Hitler’s Germany, thought be less free, more bowed down, more fearful (terrorized), more vassalized.”7 He wrote that in 1937. Gide took a different road than Picasso, and most French writers, by bolting to French North Africa.
Literary life in France was a cauldron of politically motivated viewpoints on the left and right long before the occupation. After, Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that there were only two stark options set before the French people: collaboration or resistance. He was guilty of oversimplifying the dilemma facing those who made their living through the arts. He also conveniently neglected to recall that he—who thought of himself and his coterie at Café Flore as resisters—staged his plays Les Mouches and Huits clos to audiences during the occupation.8
This was the troublesome nub of the problem. Were musicians, singers, dancers, and actors meant to cease work entirely and starve to prove they were good French men and women? Were writers to stop writing to prove they were not collaborators? Were publishers to cease all publications, putting their employees out of paid work and making them targets for the draft into the deadly Organisation Todt as slave laborers? Were restaurant owners to close; grocers to bar clients from buying food; trains and buses to stop; all to prove they were not collaborating with the occupier? Life, and any public interaction, imposed collaboration of some nature on the people of the Occupied Zone and Vichy alike. Jean Cocteau wrote in his diary three years into the occupation, “At no price should one let one’s self be distracted from serious matters by the dramatic frivolity of war.”9 Florence agreed wholeheartedly with her friend Cocteau. Others took offense at the perceived decadence of these enfants terribles.
Brasillach returned to his fascist best with his pro-German, pro-Vichy journal, Je suis partout (I am everywhere), in which he verbally assassinated the former prime ministers Blum, Daladier, and Reynaud for France’s humiliation, naturally spicing his deadly commentary with anti-Semitic diatribes. He hit a bull’s-eye when he wrote that one of the greatest fears among French writers, artists, singers, dancers, and musicians was that they were passionate about French cultural institutions staying alive: operas must be played; French books must be written; French cinema must be acted and produced; French art auctions and art exhibitions must continue. For them, this was not collaboration. It was keeping France for the French. That the fabric of society was being “vassalized,” in Gide’s parlance, didn’t matter. Florence convinced herself that she was doing her bit for French culture during the occupation, too.
* * *
Otto Abetz perceived that there were three great powers in France: banking, the Communist Party, and the Nouvelle Revue Française. The first two were easily dispensed with by the occupation. Banks were taken over by the Reichsbank, and any Jewish bankers either went into hiding, emigrated, or were eliminated. Communists were on the same watch lists, and received an equivalent treatment, if caught, as political opponents of the Nazi ideal.
The Nouvelle Revue Française, however, was groomed and polished for the Nazi cause. Jean Paulhan, a secret resister, had been the editor of the NRF, as everyone called the publication, since 1925. This made him one of the most powerful men in France, since his magazine was adored by the French intelligentsia. Yet to continue with the NRF, its publisher, Éditions Gallimard, was forced to accept a deal with Abetz, whereby the German ambassador’s good friend and pro-Nazi Pierre Drieu de la Rochelle would replace Paulhan. In exchange, Gallimard could continue to publish authors not particularly sympathetic to the Nazi cause, so long as they were not overtly anti-Nazi or Jews. Unsurprisingly, German classics and other propaganda publications made up for French proscribed books, keeping the figures for books published during the occupation artificially high.10 Gaston Gallimard beca
me one of the occupation’s most cooperative, self-censoring puppets, under the pretext that at least French thought was assured of pursuing its mission. Paulhan, meanwhile, began the underground press Les Éditions de Minuit, with the print works often manned by Paulhan himself, at some considerable risk to life and limb.
Having bent the three most powerful forces in France to his will, Abetz turned his attentions to his first love—looting France’s treasures—leaving censorship in the capable hands of the German Institute’s chief, Karl Epting, and his Francophile head of literary censorship, Gerhard Heller. That’s not to say that Epting, too, did not indulge in a bit of grand larceny, as was the Nazi predilection. While he tried to literally “break into” the lucrative art-looting trade, Count von Metternich of the Kunstschutz soon put a stop to Epting’s disgraceful sideline. Where Epting succeeded, however, was in his thefts aimed at changing history: purloining thousands of documents for eventual destruction or rewriting from the Foreign Ministry, including the original signed Versailles Treaty, along with the table on which it was signed. Both were sent to Berlin as presents for Hitler, while the other documents awaited the Nazi Party’s pleasure. In case there had been any doubt as to his motives, Epting told an assembled audience of French intellectuals soon after that they “must give up the idea of being world leaders.”11 With Abetz’s full-blooded support, the German Institute became the heart of the new French cultural world.
Meanwhile, the German literary censor of the Propaganda-Staffel at 52 avenue Champs-Élysées, Gerhard Heller, became a great friend of Florence’s, remembering her fondly in his retrospective biography of the occupation years, entitled Un Allemand à Paris, published in 1981. Undimmed by the passage of time, his memory of the occupation is nostalgic: dining pleasantly at the Ritz; having a good chinwag with his French author friends, like Jean Paulhan and Marcel Jouhandeau; or enjoying the sybaritic lifestyle as the invited guest of French Harper’s Bazaar petite chain-smoking editor, Marie-Louise Bousquet, or Florence Gould. What Heller does reveal despite himself, however, is that the Wehrmacht had instantly halted all publishing from the time of the occupation until his arrival on the scene some four months later, with all manuscripts awaiting his censorship sword. Only those authors holding Nazi viewpoints were spared. Some 2,242 tons of books and manuscripts were pulped just on his say-so, in one of the greatest book-burning exercises of the war.12 Despite his selective memory, Heller wielded tremendous power.
There were a few writers who somehow managed to maintain a sense of humor, and had the good sense to write it down for posterity. Drieu de la Rochelle was knocked off his crowing perch about his prediction of a German victory four months into the occupation by the journalist Jean Galtier-Boissière. Back in 1915, Galtier-Boissière had founded the satirical weekly paper Le Crapouillot while fighting in the trenches—the French version of the equally aptly named British Wiper Times. While Drieu was in full flow praising the new German ambassador, Galtier-Boissière spoke his mind—as he always did—and told Drieu to expect a long war and an English victory. Drieu met this incredible prediction with a Gallic shrug. Galtier-Boissière was relentless: “My dear Drieu, I’ll bet that you will be shot.” “What about you?” Drieu asked in reply. “Me too! But in my case … by mistake.”13
* * *
Florence lived by Cocteau’s maxim, believing that war and the occupation inconveniences could be overcome. She would remain true to her fun-loving, sexually charged, hedonistic self, sensing the game to be played as merely more exciting. With a king’s fortune at her ready disposal, it rarely occurred to her that she was playing a deadly game. Even then, those lucid moments emerged from the whirligig of the upper crust’s self-indulgence only when close friends were in danger, or finally, with the glaring recognition that Germany would lose the war. Arrogance had its virtues.
When she took up residence in the autumn of 1940 at the Hôtel Bristol, Florence continued to receive friends. At the outset, the only recognizable difference was that some of them were in a Nazi uniform. So, while the occupiers whitewashed France’s everyday life of Jewish, communist, anti-Nazi, and Freemasonry influences, Florence went to Maxim’s with friends, nodding to Göring and Abetz seated nearby, or enjoyed the dining spectacle among the most select of le Tout-Paris at the sequined floorshows at Chez Carrère. Unashamed and fearless, she donned her best gowns and jewels when attending performances at the opera and ballet, and often went to see her old friends Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier perform at the Comédie-Française.
Florence could not stop indulging herself. She attended auctions of “ownerless” and “degenerate” art, in Nazi parlance, bidding alongside Hitler’s art dealers at Hôtel Druout, or down the road a hundred yards at Galerie Charpentier; sometimes winning, sometimes not, but always paying dearly. The definition of “ownerless” meant looted from Jews and other enemies of the state. On the other hand, “degenerate” meant modern, unfinished (like the paintings of the Impressionists), or not to Hitler’s tastes. While the artworks became “ownerless,” the Paris art market thrived.
Florence enjoyed going to lavish parties at the German embassy given by Abetz. Hobnobbing with Marie-Laure de Noailles and her salonnières in the film industry or attending the musical salon of Winnaretta Singer de Polignac’s niece, Marie-Blanche, heir to the fashion house of Lanvin, or joining her friend Marie-Louise de Bousquet in her literary and musical salons made the occupation quite pleasant.
Most notoriously, Florence and Bousquet headed up a network of souris gris—“gray mice”—who were society women willing to prostitute themselves to high-ranking Nazi officials in exchange for all sorts of favors besides cool cash. To call them “mesdames” or “procuresses” would be to denigrate their role. Florence saw a business opportunity alongside Bousquet, and became her silent financial partner as well as an active participant in the “gray mice” scheme.14
Indeed, of all the women Florence befriended during the occupation, Marie-Louise Bousquet proved the most significant. The gray mice network had given Bousquet—and by extension Florence—unprecedented access to all the German high command, including the German navy, the German embassy in Vichy, the German secret service (counterespionage services) at the Hôtel Lutetia, and the German high command offices at Hôtel Crillon, offices of the Kommandatur of Greater Paris. Bousquet used Florence’s apartment at 2 boulevard Suchet for her secret rendezvous with the pug-faced “Colonel Patrick”—better known as Colonel Arnold Friedrich Garthe, chief of the Abwehrleitstelle (counterespionage) of Paris. The friendship of the two women, abetted by their German lovers, enabled Florence to conclude a lucrative deal with the German navy for the exclusive rights to the chocolates manufactured at the Goulds’ Rozan factory at Clermont-Ferrand. It was also instrumental in setting in train the machinery for Florence to become a first-class black marketeer.15
As any good businessperson would do, Florence developed her own connections from the earliest days of the occupation. Often in the background, facilitating and smoothing over the cracks in the pavement of this new, uncharted society, was a parade of Nazi lovers, each entrusted with a specific task by Florence. As she would later brag over a glass or ten of champagne, “men are not worth a great deal, they can be bought for very little.”16
Werner Klingeberg, aged only thirty when Florence met him, fell for her charms from the outset. As a friend of Melchior de Polignac from their Olympic Committee days, Klingeberg was greeted warmly by Florence on her return to Paris in the autumn of 1940. Klingeberg was director of the 1st Kommando SS in Paris and was the first to provide her officially with many favors, beyond her freedom of movement proffered by his laissez-passers. Klingeberg became Florence’s loyal barometer of who to trust, or not, within the Nazi hierarchy. He would introduce colleagues to her, one by one, with the intent of making the occupation as pleasant as possible for his part-time lover.17 From Florence’s perspective, Klingeberg and all other Nazi uniforms, save Ludwig Vogel, were men she used to protect her p
ersonal interests, her piles of gold, her collections, and her husband, who was integral to her continued good fortune.
Initially, Klingeberg used his lieutenant, George Kremling, to deliver the travel passes to Florence. Then, for some reason, a man known only as Captain Krausen of the rue de Galilee bureau entered the scene, replacing Kremling. Suddenly, Krausen demanded a 20,000-franc bribe for delivery of the passes. Additional permits allowing Florence to “bring funds from the South Zone” as well as a laissez-passer for her secretary, Mademoiselle Arnaud, were also included in Krausen’s demand.18 Later, Florence pretended that it was the mysterious Yugoslav Vionovitch who was directing these operations, not Klingeberg or Kremling. Within the year, however, it seems Kremling left Paris, having permanently blotted his record, and found himself posted to the punishing eastern front.
Another facilitator for Florence’s passes was Walter Steffens, chief of information services at the Hôtel Claridge in Paris. Steffens worked directly for Colonel Garthe, Bousquet’s lover.19 Florence asserted that she was introduced to Steffens through the ever-industrious Jean Guisan. Later, Florence credited Guisan—again erroneously—with her introduction to Major Willy Praeger-Gretsch a counterintelligence officer based at the Hôtel Lutetia. Who could blame her for such misinformation? After all, she could hardly admit to outsiders that she was performing an essential service to the officers at the Lutetia through the gray mice network, could she?
Then Praeger-Gretsch “asked” Florence to hire a girl known only as Miss Galliard as her secretary for 2,500 francs a month, a short time later.* Florence complied, knowing that the girl was not only Praeger-Gretsch’s mistress, but also a spy within her household.20 Yet Florence continued to do as she wished, refusing to learn the art of discretion or the desire to dissemble. She knew she had become untouchable.