MAY 10, 1940
PARIS, FRANCE
6:00 A.M.
The war resumes on a Friday.
“German planes swarmed all over Western Europe,” the New York Times reports in this morning’s edition, “to the outskirts of Paris and London today in complete disregard of neutral borders.”
Air-raid warnings wail in Paris as Heinkel and Dornier bombers zoom low in formation. The morning air is cool as antiaircraft guns open fire. Tens of thousands of Parisians dutifully walk and run to the Métro tunnels at Madeleine, Place des Fêtes, and République. Taking the stairs to the underground railway platforms, they wait for the all clear, enduring dank air, no running water, and a frustrating lack of toilettes.
But these thousands are the minority in a city of 3 million people. The rest of Paris sees no need to cease making breakfast, sipping coffee, making love, and otherwise preparing for a three-day holiday weekend.
By 8:00 a.m. it is over. “Paris’s air alarm lasted an hour and fifty-two minutes,” notes the Times. “Anti-aircraft batteries fired furiously. Streaking past Paris, the planes continued on to the sea.”
Then Paris goes back to normal, the citizens once again marching down into the Métro—this time to catch the train for work.
The sirens sound again at 4:55 in the afternoon, but Parisians remain calm and even blasé as the drôle de guerre—“funny war”—seems to be ending. Or, as the British call it, putting a spin on the French translation: the “phony war.” For the eight months since Germany invaded Poland, France and its ally Britain have been on high alert, awaiting the inevitable moment when the Nazi power turns its attention westward. Both sides have declared war on one another. The next logical step is to fight.
Yet, until this morning, absolutely nothing has happened.
In the meantime, Paris has been transformed by preparations for combat: sandbags line bridges, buildings, and monuments such as the Eiffel Tower; the city is blacked out from dusk to dawn; stained glass windows have been removed from cathedrals as a precaution against aerial bombing; and great trenches have been dug in public parks as air-raid shelters.
Posters in cafés remind patrons that German spies might be eavesdropping on their conversations. Yet these placards, like the trenches and sandbags, are so commonplace and have hung on the walls so many months that they are all but ignored.
Even today’s air-raid sirens fail to instill fear. The Germans may be invading Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, but to the people of Paris they are hardly an immediate threat. The Boche, as the French derisively call the Germans, are hundreds of miles away, soon to be beaten back by the vaunted French army.*
At 7:30 p.m., Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, the French minister of propaganda, makes it official: “The real war has begun,” he announces.
But Monsieur Frossard’s pronouncement, delivered over the radio in the measured cadence of a career bureaucrat, comes so late as to be laughable. The people of Paris have already seen and heard the cacophony of this “real war” for themselves.
And they are unconcerned. The real war may have begun, but Paris is safe.
Let the weekend begin.