Brave Genius Read online

  In the last days of June, as the nation and the world struggled to comprehend what had befallen France, her future was unknowable. Would she, as the Pétain government pledged, “turn over this dark page in history” and be a “country which will continue to live with soul uplifted and free”? Or would she, as de Gaulle predicted, be enslaved “beneath the German jackboot”?

  For individual citizens, whose lives had been plunged into chaos and who despaired for their families, country, and freedom, the fundamental question was how to reclaim their future. How could they regain their liberty? Whom should they follow? Should they put their faith in the marshal, who promised to restore order to the nation, and who offered that only through “composure and labor” would France revive. Or should they heed the general who, though without any army, vowed to reconquer what had been lost?

  SOME, LIKE JACOB, had already chosen their path. In the course of time, Monod and Camus would find theirs. Some, however, saw no future. Joseph Meister, Louis Pasteur’s first patient, veteran of the First Battle of the Marne, and caretaker of the Pasteur Institute, retreated to his apartment, closed the windows, and turned on the gas on his stove.

  Part Two

  The Long Road to Freedom

  NOBLE SOULS, THROUGH DUST AND HEAT, RISE FROM DISASTER AND DEFEAT THE STRONGER.

  —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,

  THE SIFTING OF PETER

  CHAPTER 6

  REGROUPING

  Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

  —CHARLES DE GAULLE

  ALL ACROSS FRANCE, THE ANTS THAT HAD BEEN SPILLED BY THE invasion were trying to return to their nests. With the armistice signed, some six million refugees who had fled the German advance, mostly by escaping to the south and west, now had to make their way back to their homes, if they still had them. Amid the chaos and uncertainty, most thought first about finding and reuniting with loved ones. With the rush to escape the Germans, and the collapse of all public services, most families did not know the fate of their members in uniform. In six weeks, France had suffered more than 90,000 soldiers killed, 200,000 wounded, and 1.8 million taken prisoner by the Germans. And many of the roughly 3 million soldiers who were not captured or casualties, like Jacques Monod, in turn did not know where their families had ended up.

  Jacques did not stay put in Périgueux. After learning of the armistice, his unit headed farther south, with Jacques at the wheel of a bus carrying twenty-five soldiers. He stuck to secondary roads running along the edges of the granite plateaus of the Massif Central. After a twenty-four-hour journey, he reached an abandoned seminary in Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe, north of Toulouse. The unit decided to move in and await further orders.

  Jacques had not heard from Odette for more than two weeks—since he was in Versailles. He knew that the Germans must have reached Dinard and that it was part of the occupied zone. He was desperate to know that she was safe but did not even know where she was. In order to try to contact her, and to let his family know where he had ended up, he sent three letters on June 26 from Saint-Sulpice—to Odette in Dinard, to Odette at their apartment in Paris, and to his parents in Cannes. In the first, he wrote:

  Mon amour,

  I don’t have any hope of reaching you this way. But I want to try everything. Nothing is more important to me than to find you. I will only start living again when I have found you. I don’t have the courage to write more in this letter, which is only a sounding.

  I adore you.

  To his parents he wrote:

  My Dears,

  Will this letter ever reach you? I am just hoping. If it does reach you, my dears, telegraph me, and write to me right away. I know nothing of Odette, nothing of you, nothing of Philo. Nothing matters to me more than to find you again, to find my kids and my wife. It is impossible to think of anything else, to understand anything else. I adore you.

  A week later, he was comforted to receive a telegram and a letter from his parents saying that they were fine, and it included one hundred francs, for he had had no money for more than two weeks. But by July 3, he had still not heard from Odette. He wrote back to his parents to say that he was in “terrible anguish” over not knowing where his family was. He was thinking of placing a notice in newspapers throughout the occupied zone to try to locate her.

  On July 7, a telegram arrived from his mother—Odette was safe in Dinard! Odette had received Jacques’s “sounding” on the fourth but could not send a telegram right away because the service was not yet working again. She immediately wrote a letter to Jacques and one to his parents in Cannes, but the latter arrived first. After much hesitation she had decided to stay in Dinard rather than join the massive streams of refugees on the roads.

  After Odette’s letters finally reached him, Jacques poured out his relief:

  My dear angel,

  So it is true, you are over there. I found you again, I could not believe it despite Maman’s letters and cables. It took your two letters, from the 4th and the 6th, received today, to convince me that I could breathe and live again. I could not bear much longer this burden of anxiety. And now, I wish to have a God to thank … You were absolutely right not to leave. All of my anxiety was coming from the fact that I thought you had left, and were then stopped somewhere in the dreadful rabble. God only knows where you would be had you tried that.

  After telling her of his adventures, he raised the question of where they could meet once he was demobilized. Article IV of the armistice stated: “French armed forces on land, on the sea, and in the air are to be demobilized and disarmed in a period still to be set.” Jacques hoped that might occur relatively soon, but everything was vague at the time. They would have to wait, apart, until the situation was clearer, perhaps a few weeks. He asked Odette, “Hold my little ones against your heart. What a joy for us, my darling, to have in them all of the reasons to hope.”

  VICHY

  Camus was one of the millions of displaced vagabonds forced to improvise from day to day. After being stranded among refugees in Bordeaux, he made his way back to Clermont-Ferrand, in the non-occupied zone. He thought that the Paris-Soir staff would head back to Paris and continue publishing the paper there amid the Occupation. But Prouvost, his publisher, was named high commissioner for propaganda by the new Pétain government that was headquartered for a short while in Clermont, and then settled less than thirty miles away in the spa town of Vichy. Camus thus had a ringside seat to the machinations of the new regime.

  The shame of defeat and the humiliation of having to bow to the Germans were about to be exploited politically, and as a result, the anguish of those who yearned for France to regain her freedom was about to be compounded.

  The master architect of the new Vichy government was Pierre Laval, the publisher who had made his Clermont printing facilities available to the Paris-Soir newspaper team. Laval had twice been premier but had been excluded from power since 1936, and he was deeply resentful. While Pétain had earned his reputation at Verdun, Laval had been a pacifist during World War I, a position that garnered him a place on the Carnet B (a list of potential subversives) and the nickname “Pierre Loin-de-Front” (Pierre Far-from-the-Front). A chain-smoker who wore a trademark white cravat, Laval had gained a fortune between the wars, but little respect. He was widely seen as a shady character with dubious motives. He wanted back into the government, and he saw his opportunity in the wake of France’s collapse. His strategy was to serve and manipulate Pétain, whom Laval saw as only a figurehead—“a vase on the mantelpiece.” His first coup was to maneuver into the post of deputy prime minister in late June.

  Laval believed that France would secure the best peace terms with Germany and Italy only by emulating the victors’ dictatorships. He thus sought to dissolve Parliament and to equip Pétain with sweeping powers. He helped draft an audacious measure, without precedent in France’s history, for the National Assembly to pass
in short order. The initial text read:

  The National Assembly gives all powers to the Government of the Republic, under the signature and authority of Marshal Pétain, President of the Council, to promulgate by one or several Acts the new Constitution of the French State.

  This Constitution will guarantee the rights of work, of family, and of the country. It will be ratified by the Assembly which it will set up.

  To achieve his aims, Laval exploited both Pétain’s own vanity and the hero status the old warrior enjoyed among many members of Parliament. Their opponents would have been those who wanted to continue to prosecute the war from abroad, except the most effective members were stranded or detained in North Africa and unable to counter Laval’s maneuvers.

  To Camus’s disgust, Paris-Soir joined the chorus of worship that heralded Pétain as France’s savior. The newspaper ran an article proclaiming that the eighty-five-year-old had “the arteries of a man of forty.” Camus saw right through the dealings in Vichy, writing to Yvonne Ducailar to lament “the cowardice that surrounds me.” He told her, “What we are going to experience now is unbearable to think of, and I am sure that for a free man, there is no other future, apart from exile and useless revolt. Now the only moral value is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the name of the people.” Camus wanted to flee for Algeria, “the last French soil that is still free (without that ignoble thing called Occupation),” but there was no transportation available. He was trapped, at least for the time being.

  In the first days of July, Laval finessed Pétain and worked on the members of Parliament. He did not have to push the marshal too far to his own views, as Pétain blamed the British, the Parliament, and even French schoolteachers for the debacle. Pétain viewed the latter as unpatriotic Socialists who had failed to instill a sense of duty in the young. Pétain expected Britain to fall within weeks and to be completely destroyed by Germany. He believed that France, under his leadership, would survive relatively intact, albeit functioning like a province of Germany. The themes of his new order were “Work, Family, and Homeland.”

  Laval cajoled and pushed the Chamber of Deputies to accept his sweeping proposal, warning some of the deputies of a possible military coup if they failed to act, bribing others with promises of positions in the future government. He told them, “Parliamentary democracy lost the war. It must give way to a new regime: audacious, authoritarian, social, and national.” Even more boldly, he declared, “We have only one road to follow, and that is a loyal collaboration with Germany and Italy. We must practice it with honor and dignity. And I am not embarrassed to say so. I urged it during the days of peace.”

  A humiliating defeat was to morph into “loyal collaboration”? The specter sickened Camus. “Cowardice and senility, that’s all we are being offered,” he wrote to Francine in Oran. Only two weeks after the armistice and days before the National Assembly acted, Camus perceived very clearly what the new regime was about. He foretold what the consequences would be for France:

  Pro-German policies, a Constitution like those of totalitarian regimes, horrible fear of a revolution that will not happen, all this as an excuse for sweet-talking enemies who will crush us anyway, and to preserve privileges which are not threatened. Terrible days are in store: famine and general unemployment along with the hate they bring, which won’t be prevented by an old geezer’s speeches … We must also be aware of anti-British propaganda, which hides the worst motivations … I don’t need to tell you that we have lost the battle, and that those who led us in spite of ourselves to this disastrous war have further strengthened their power after this unnamable defeat.

  Pétain’s government included Admiral Darlan and General Weygand. Both leaders of the houses of Parliament, each of whom had long been staunch Republicans, gushed with praise for Pétain and supported Laval’s proposal. Speaker Édouard Herriot said, “Around the Marshal, in the veneration which his name inspires in us all, our nation has rallied in its distress. Let us be careful not to trouble the accord which has been established under his authority.” On July 9, the Chamber voted 395 to 3, and the Senate voted 229 to 1 to affirm that the Constitution needed revision. The next day, the National Assembly voted 569 to 80 to dissolve itself and, in effect, to turn the country over to Pétain and Laval.

  FOR WEEKS AT Saint-Sulpice, Monod spent most of his days playing bridge and chess, hoping for another letter from Odette and waiting for his demobilization instructions. The mail was slow and irregular. It took seven to ten days for a letter to reach its destination, so information about where they might reunite or about work prospects in Paris were out of date before one or the other received a response. There was some good news: Philo was demobilized and made it home to Cannes, and Odette’s sisters Suzanne and Madeleine made it safely to England. But Jacques and Odette’s relief was tempered by their anguish at learning that Odette’s brother Étienne and her brother-in-law Ado had both been taken prisoner. With just Odette’s sister Lise and mother remaining in France, Jacques and the twins would be even more the center of Odette’s world.

  Jacques wanted Odette to leave Dinard as soon as possible, because the German formations on the coast were targets for the RAF, but not before he knew where he was going and when. Finally, he was officially demobilized on July 29, and the family was reunited in August in Paris. They returned to their apartment on rue Monsieur-le-Prince, near the Sorbonne, and tried to pick up the threads of their former life. Jacques had contacted the rector of the Sorbonne while he was in Saint-Sulpice. He was desperate to return to his studies on bacterial growth and finish his doctorate. He resumed his research in the very old laboratory that opened onto a gallery of stuffed monkeys.

  CHAPTER 7

  ILL WINDS

  I embark today on the path of collaboration.

  —MARSHAL PHILIPPE PÉTAIN, October 30, 1940

  LIKE OTHERS WHO RETURNED TO PARIS OR OTHER NORTHERN parts of the country, the Monods had the added challenge of not just reuniting their family and regaining their livelihood but of facing everyday life in the presence of a foreign army. The changes to the capital were difficult to stomach.

  Across the city, it seemed as though the red-and-black swastika flags flew from nearly every window. The Germans had taken over most government buildings and had requisitioned many choice hotels and private homes as offices and residences. The Majestic Hotel had become military headquarters, the Ritz the home of the Luftwaffe, and the Chamber of Deputies was converted into offices for the Kommandant of Greater Paris. Parisians who needed permits or had other business with the Germans had to go to the large Kommandantur Building, identified in huge white letters, that dominated the Place de l’Opéra. All of the official facilities were heavily guarded by armed sentries.

  At every intersection, there were signposts with black and white gothic lettering in German. There was no French traffic; virtually all of the vehicles on the streets belonged to the German military, or were sleek black staff cars that ferried officers around the capital.

  And then there were the soldiers. The Monods could not avoid them when they took the twins out for a stroll in their double pram. Blue-gray and dark-green uniforms were everywhere—in the cafés, on the grand boulevards, and at the monuments. Some restaurants had been converted to soldiers’ canteens.

  While the German officers and bureaucrats indulged in the spoils of war, and their soldiers enjoyed the Parisian sights, the costs of their victory were being paid by the French. Article XVIII of the armistice agreement stated simply: “The French Government will bear the costs of maintenance of German occupation troops on French soil.” In August, those costs were set at 20 million reichsmarks per day, retroactive to June. The value of the mark was then fixed at 20 francs, an overvaluation by at least 50 percent. The 400 million francs per day that the French were obliged to pay represented about 60 percent of national income, and was enough to support an army of 18 million men. As a result, Germans in Paris
had enormous spending power and soon cleared out store shelves of all kinds of items—perfume, jewelry, clothes, wine, chocolate—that had not been available in Germany for years.

  As Camus had predicted, hunger quickly became one price of defeat. While some rationing had been in place since the beginning of the Phoney War, food shortages were made much more severe by damage to crops, the reduction of imports from French territories, the displacement of labor that left stores and farms shorthanded, and massive German requisitions. Much more stringent rationing was imposed in Paris in September, and throughout France by October 1. People could obtain ration cards at local town halls after standing in long, slow lines. They were allotted different amounts of food according to their age and occupation. Adults over twenty-one but under seventy years old were entitled to 350 grams of bread per day, 350 grams of meat per week, and 500 grams of sugar, 300 grams of coffee, and 140 grams of cheese per month. Babies received less bread but were allotted milk, whereas the elderly were not. Other than the babies, the total caloric allocations were inadequate. To stave off hunger, the French substituted new foods, such as turnips and rutabagas, which had formerly been fed only to cattle. Ersatz coffee was brewed from roasted grain and chicory, and drunk without milk or sugar. Odette had to spend much of her day waiting in lines and strategizing where to find food for the twins.