The Occupation and Liberation of France

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Dunkirk, May 1940.

 

The evacuation from Dunkirk, on the northern French coast, brought back to Britain 338,226 British and other Allied soldiers and 170 dogs. Churchill, was careful not to call the ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ a victory but merely a ‘deliverance’. The French saw it differently – they considered the evacuation of Dunkirk not in terms of an heroic rescue but as a betrayal. On June 14 the swastika was flying from the Arc de Triomphe and on the 22nd, France surrendered to the Germans.

         

Street scene in occupied Paris, 1942. Two German officers pass by an open air cafe; nobody really pays attention to them. The occupation was "light" -- no shootings in the middle of the street, no martial law, and French administration left intact. Of course, it was a different case if you collaborated with the Gestapo.

 

A shaved woman during the liberation of France, 1944.