France was no longer a battleground where armies fought each other, but it is was still a war zone. From June 1940 to November 1942, metropolitan France was cut in two zones, the Occupied Zone controlled by the Germans and the Free Zone under Vichy control, separated by the Demarcation line. Part of North of France was under a separate administration while parts of Eastern France were reserved for future German settlement. From April 1941 to the end of the war, the Atlantic and Northern coast were off-limits for civilians. After November 1942, the whole of France was under German control, except parts of the South that were occupied by the Italians. Colonies were under control of Vichy France, with Indochina occupied by Japan. So the entirety of France was either ruled by an Axis power (Germany, Japan, Italy) that was at war with the Allied (and used the French territory for this, eg air bases for the Battle of Britain) or by Vichy, who collaborated with the former by providing them access to resources and manpower.

After the Armistice of June 1940, physical communications between France and other countries became either impossible or under strict surveillance. One did not simply walk (or drive, fly, swim, sail) into France. Any non-Axis foreigner could be a spy. After the Armistice, even foreign correspondants like William Shirer, who had followed the German army during the Blitzkrieg, were told to leave France to move to Germany, where they could be controlled more easily: the Germans did not want foreign observers walking around in France and taking notes. It was no longer possible to travel directly from the Americas to France: one had to go to Lisbon (by ship or by the Pan Am Clipper seaplane), find a way through Portugal and Spain and then cross the border to France. The Spanish border was closed in April 1941, including to German nationals. In any case, going to France (and leaving France) was highly controlled and only possible for people that Vichy and the Germans agreed to give permits to.

The situation was not much better in the colonies. In Indochina, communications were shut down early 1941 and the country was cut off from the rest of the world (except Japan) until the end of the war. The French Caribbean was a little freer from Axis influence but still under a hard Vichy rule (Note: the 1944 movie To have or have not (1944) takes place in Martinique in the summer 1940 and Humphrey Bogart's character operates a sports-fishing boat that he charters out to American tourists. However, Hemingway's original story was set in Cuba and written in 1937). All of this made French territories inaccessible to tourists from neutral countries.

Even if they could have come, tourists would have had a hard time in France. The war had taken a big toll both on the population (deaths, prisoners) and infrastructures (destructions). Life became harsh: French people were now subjected to restrictions (communications, travelling, curfews) and to the rationing of food, fuel, and other primary goods. Authorizations, passes and other ausweis were required for many daily activities. In a nutshell, the country was no longer hospitable to tourists. Unlike some modern chaotic war zones, where "disaster tourists" can indeed travel at their own risk, France was under the control of regular armies and police forces able and willing to enforce the rules.

So regular foreign tourists were no longer welcome in France. But there were, in fact, numerous foreign tourists in France during the Second World War: German soldiers.

The feldgrau tourists

The presence of vacationing German soldiers in France has been described in detail by Gordon (2018) and Torrie (2018), from whom I borrow what follows.

German soldiers stationed or rotated in France had a relatively easy time. In 1940-1941, they were busy "holding terrain, building defensive structures, and policing the local citizenry". From the invasion of the Soviet Union to D-Day, France was exploited for the rest and convalescence of soldiers back from the Eastern front. German soldiers and administrators have left a considerable amount of material - letters, diaries, photographs, even memoirs like those of Ernst Jünger - detailing their sightseeing activities, not just in Paris, but throughout the Occupied Zone. They visited cultural and historical sites, took guided tours, bought souvenirs and postcards, strolled in the gardens, photographed each other in front of monuments, asked politely for directions in the streets, patronized fine restaurants, danced in night clubs, attended church services, bathed with the locals, had sex in brothels, and then they wrote home about the great time they had. Future novelist Henrich Böll wrote to his girlfriend in January 1942 (cited by Torrie, 2018):

I really believe that Paris is the height of everything human and the deepest depths of mankind; and I experienced all of that in four hours!

Like regular tourists, German soldiers went shopping. The exchange rate was highly favourable to them. Unlike the impoverished French, the occupiers had a good purchasing power: a German soldier, whose basic needs were already looked after by the Army, had at his disposal the "equivalent of a modest monthly income for a French family of four" (Torrie, 2018). The soldiers went on shopping sprees and bought food, clothing (notably lingerie: silk stockings! brassieres!), perfumes, cosmetics and other luxury goods that the local population could no longer afford. Other participated in the black market, trading French goods for German ones sent by their own families. A good part of this non-violent plunder was sent back home. In other words, German soldiers practiced what has been called recently "militourism" (Teaiwa, 2016).

This surprising behaviour did not fail to amaze all those who expected the Germans to behave like barbaric hordes, more likely to burn down shops than to patronize them. In July 1940, French journalist and early resister Jean Texcier wrote in his clandestine pamphlet Conseils à l'occupé (Advice to the occupied): "Don't be under any illusion: these people aren't tourists" (Ousby, 1999). American correspondent William Shirer, who had managed to extend his stay in Paris after the Armistice, saw thousands of German soldiers congregating at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, looking like "naïve tourists" (cited by Torrie, 2018).

In fact, tourism was encouraged and supported by German authorities. It was part of the propaganda efforts aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the French, at least of those French who were not Jews, Communists, or on a list of dangerous people. It is important to note here German occupation in France may have presented itself as milder than what it was in the Eastern front, at least until the end of 1941, but it was still repressive, and the power imbalance between the "tourists" and the locals was anything but normal.

From mid-July 1940 through mid-August 1944, occupation authorities published every two weeks Der deutsche Wegleiter (The German Guidebook), also called Wohin in Paris? (Where to go in Paris), a bona fide tourist guide that listed the entertainment, attractions and sporting events available in Paris. German military and civilian organizations organized bus and metro tours as rewards for soldiers, and it has been estimated that 1 million soldiers had taken part in such tours by May 1941. Germans working for civilian organizations also found excuses to visit France. Paris and its area (Versailles...) were the main tourist attractions, but German soldiers visited tourist places in the whole Occupied Zone (and later in whole France). They were particularly fond of the Mont Saint-Michel, and vacationed in Normandy and Brittany (Torrie, 2018). In these two regions, guides written by art historian E. Göpel were made available to German troops. From 1942 to 1943, a holiday resort in Port Navalo, on the Brittany coast, offered an attractive program of leisure activities to them: bathing and swimming in the sea, sailing, tennis, ping-pong... (Evanno, 2014). This good time was criticized by those who thought that the German soldiers in France were getting "soft", even "feminised", just like their occupied, unwilling, defeated hosts.

As the war progressed, German occupation became more brutal and France became less secure. Restrictions to tourism were progressively introduced and both the range of leisure activities and the distances allowed for travelling shrank for German soldiers. Still, in Spring 1944, as the Germans were bracing for the incoming Allied invasion, sightseeing tours went on in Paris. It is only after the Normandy landings that France, once described as a "paradise" by German soldiers in their letters, turned itself into a "hell" for them.

-> PART 2