On 6 June 1944, Operation Overlord began, putting in motion a series of events that would lead to the liberation of Paris in the August. In ‘1944: Paris Shorn’, the author describes how, in the euphoria of liberation, many women were accused of collaboration horizontale with the Germans. This implied that French women had sexual relations with the occupying forces, but women who had performed professional services for the Germans, such as cooking and cleaning, were also targeted by zealous mobs who beat them up and shaved off their hair. Women who were accused of ‘infidelity to the nation’ could even have swastikas drawn or branded onto their naked bodies before being paraded through the streets.

And yet I have a quibble. In her final sentence, Sebba says of Parisians’ behaviour. “It is not for the rest of us to judge but, with imagination, we can try to understand.” She is right to emphasise that understanding is needed, especially by those who never had to choose. But surely a judgment can and should be made that those who were in the “refusal camp” – as Rousseau put it – must take a higher moral ground than those who “went along with it”. Not to make a judgment is surely to fail to recognise the refuseniks’ special courage.

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Anne Sebba's history of the German occupation of Paris, seen through the eyes of its women, has much to recommend it. The book is extensively researched, using both primary and secondary sources, and covers the impact of the Paris Occupation by the Nazis from a variety of perspectives: the social and artistic elite, the fashion community, collaborators, Resistance participants, Jews, mothers - in addition to providing lots of contextual information. Their stories are occasionally familiar, appearing in some detail in a number of recent books of history and historical fiction (The Nightingale, The Lilac Girls, The Monuments Men, The Race for Paris, e.g.), but this is a more thorough catalog than those books provide. Since working as a correspondent for Reuters, [3] Sebba has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, Times Higher Education Supplement and The Independent. [4] She has been cited as an authority on biography. [5] Schillinger, Liesl (9 March 2012). "THAT WOMAN: THE LIFE OF WALLIS SIMPSON, DUCHESS OF WINDSOR". The Washington Times . Retrieved 6 June 2013. If you would like to discuss “Les Parisiennes” at your Reading Group here are some suggested areas for discussion. In the past few years, it seems that the role of women in war is getting more attention and study, at least in popular culture. Hopefully, Hollywood will catch up and instead of the fictional Charlotte Grey we will have a lavish movie about the real Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who also went by the name Hedgehog. Maybe instead of a one hour program on PBS Noor Khan will finally get her own Hollywood movie. Maybe in additional to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, HBO will finally have a series about women resistance fighters – and not the by now tried and tired cliché of the woman falling in love with the German officer she is suppose to be spying on. Don’t give me that. Give me Virginia Hall and Cuthbert. Please, please, someone do that.

Les Parisiennes makes use of the many personal accounts of women during the years of occupation, but not without difficulty: women were often forced to make complex choices during this period, some of which many and their families find difficult to explain or justify today. Consequently, some interviews were hard to secure. However, the author also makes use of women’s diaries, letters and memoirs, both published and unpublished.

Les Parisiennes

Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s . Anne Sebba. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 2016. A criticism is that the tales of the women are interspersed as you go along and this can be a bit confusing but I got used to it and didn't mind so much. There were some notable omissions such as Jacqueline Baker and Virginia Hall? I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it wasn't possible to include every woman.

Channel 4 Reveals Wallis Simpson's Secret Letters" (Press release). Channel Four Television Corporation. 23 August 2011 . Retrieved 22 April 2018. Joffee, Linda (14 February 1994). "Book Review". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022 . Retrieved 26 September 2009. Ethel Rosenberg by Anne Sebba review – a mother murdered by cold war hysteria". the Guardian. 27 June 2021 . Retrieved 28 June 2021. Lewis, Roger (2 September 2011). "That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Anne Sebba". Daily Telegraph. London. In 2009, Sebba wrote and presented The Daffodil Maiden on BBC Radio 3. It was an account of the pianist Harriet Cohen, who inspired the composer Arnold Bax when she wore a dress adorned with a single daffodil and became his mistress for the next 40 years. [6] In 2010, she wrote and presented the documentary Who was Joyce Hatto? for BBC Radio 4.This is a sweeping tour of the choices and life-paths of women under the German Occupation of Paris during World 2. Some are the few heroines we recognize from books and film who helped hide Jews or joined a Resistance network. Others are emblematic courtesans, entertainers, and war profiteers who forged self-serving connections with the new masters, including ones who spied and informed on Resistance activities, facilitated the roundup of Jews for internment, or reaped profits from the appropriation of their businesses, homes, and treasures. Between these poles were the vast majority of Parisian women who took a wait-and-see attitude, just trying to get along and find enough income for food and shelter. So many figures and their stories that they tend to blur together, but the collective does provide a fascinating journalistic portrait of a city under duress and themes of resilience and diverging modes of adaptation to the Occupation in its successive phases, well illustrated, indexed, and footnoted. Just don’t expect a penetrating historical analysis of causes and effects For me it was an excellent companion read to Sebastian Faulks’ recent novel “Paris Echo”, whose lead character pursues the history of women in Paris during the German Occupation. Like that book, with its highlighting of a woman who betrays a Resistance leader and his network out of personal jealousy, Seba’s collage helped me take a less judgmental attitude of those who ended up engaging in varying degrees of collaboration.