Strong in Will, page 1
STRONG IN WILL: WORKING FOR THE AMERICAN EMBASSY IN PARIS DURING THE NAZI OCCUPATION
MARIE-LOUISE DILKES
Edited by
VIRGINIA A. DILKES
Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2024 by
CASEMATE PUBLISHERS
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and
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Copyright © 2024 Virginia A. Dilkes
Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-378-8
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-379-5
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Cover image: The Digital Collections of the National WWII Museum, “American embassy. Paris.” Paris, France. Circa May 1945.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
To the Modern Reader
Dedication
1.August 25, 1939–June 14, 1940: Serving with the American Embassy in Paris in Turbulent Times
2.June 15, 1940–December 31, 1940: Serving with the American Embassy in Paris during the Occupation
3.January 1, 1941–June 3, 1941: The American Embassy in Paris Relocates to Vichy
4.June 4, 1941–July 20, 1941: The American Embassy Facility in Paris Becomes a Consulate
5.July 20, 1941–December 26, 1941: The American Consulate Leaves Paris
Epilogue January 1, 1942–October 11, 1944: Serving with the U.S. Legation in Switzerland
Endnotes
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
Europe before World War II
Preface
“Quand Même” is how Marie-Louise Dilkes expressed her joy. It was her motto inscribed on a nameplate on her desk. She loved America, she loved France, and she enjoyed working for the American Embassy in Paris. She was willing to do whatever it took to keep these three loves alive in her heart and in her soul.
Personal Background
Marie-Louise Dilkes was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 12, 1886, and died in Paris on March 30, 1964. She was educated at the Holy Child Academy in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania. She was a follower of Christian Science in the last 30 years of her life.
In 1917 through family connections, she volunteered to join the Emergency Aid of Pennsylvania,1 which sent her to Paris to help establish the American Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Club,2 a retreat for American soldiers from the stress of battle of the Great War. When her brother, a combat engineer in WWI, was on leave, he went to see her in Paris.3
She was the secretary for the American Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Club and worked under Dean F. W. Beekman of the American Episcopal Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris.4 Marie-Louise Dilkes fell in love with Paris and stayed on after the Great War to work as a code clerk for Colonel T. B. Mott,5 Military Attaché for the American Embassy in Paris. At the conclusion of these duties, she returned to the United States and worked for the Embassy of Belgium in Washington, D.C. She was the personal secretary to the Belgian Ambassador to the United States, initially Baron de Cartier de Marchienne6 and later Prince Albert de Ligne,7 who awarded her the Croix de Chevalier de l’Ordre de Léopold II. All four of these men would recommend her for appointment as receptionist for the American Embassy in Paris. To further support her application for appointment, it is worth noting that Marie-Louise’s sister, Dolores, was married to Richard Morin8 who was Vice Consul for the American Embassy in Paris (1929–1933) and a Foreign Service officer at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. (1933–1935).
Historical Background
When Nazi Germany invaded France in June 1940, members of the French cabinet fled Paris to the Château de Cangé, then to Bordeaux, and ultimately established the French government in Vichy, which became the de facto seat of government of unoccupied France. The American Embassy stayed in Paris until May 1941 when some staff members were reassigned to establish the American Embassy in Vichy. In June 1941 the German authorities ordered all French and all foreign employees of the Embassy, including Americans, to vacate the American Embassy in Paris.9 The United States knew it still had to have a presence in Paris to address the needs of five thousand American citizens caught in the turmoil. Through negotiations with Berlin, on June 4, 1941, the American Embassy closed its main entrance on 2 Avenue Gabriel and opened the facility on June 10 as the American Consulate in Paris using the side entrance on rue Boissy d’Anglas. Twelve men and three women were assigned as staff for the now American Consulate in Paris. Marie-Louise Dilkes was one of the three women.10
This book is of her experiences as a member of the American Embassy in Paris during the dark years of 1939–1941, the American Consulate in Paris (1941), the American Consulate in Lyon (1941), and the U.S. Legation in Bern, Switzerland (1942–1944), where she was assigned after Nazi Germany took over all of France. With the success of the Allied landings in Europe in 1943–1944, the Nazi scourge was diminishing across Europe, and Germany surrendered Paris to the Allies in August 1944. At the end of August, Marie-Louise Dilkes received orders to be part of a team to reopen the American Embassy in Paris. She wrote of the triumphant reentry into France, with the help of the U.S. 7th Army, and the reestablishment of the American Embassy in Paris on October 14, 1944.
The history of the American Embassy in Paris and the splintering of its staff in 1941 into the American Consulate in Paris and the American Embassy in Vichy are outlined. Through the trials and tribulations of war, both of these components of the American Embassy were able to come together to reestablish the American Embassy in Paris by the end of 1944.
The splintering of the American Embassy in France (1941–1944)
Assignments for Marie-Louise Dilkes in WWII
Introduction
Marie-Louise Dilkes worked for the American Embassy in Paris from 1933–1954. As the American Embassy receptionist, she experienced the chaotic times in Europe with the rise of Hitler and all that followed. While her career as a member of the Embassy staff spanned 21 years, her writing focused on the years 1939–1944. She wrote her manuscript, which she titled Paris Notes, in Paris in 1955.1
Marie-Louise began her Notes: “Monsieur Pierre Audiat2 has written in the preface of his interesting book Paris Pendant la Guerre3 that no one, no matter how learned he is or how great his intuition or imagination, is able to feel or evoke the atmosphere of Paris during the German Occupation unless he himself had breathed it. Even memory would not be adequate nor would material facts be sufficient.”
She wrote, “One must indeed have lived in occupied France during those eventful days to have felt and experienced that atmosphere. From the hearts and souls of the French, there was a surge of fierce passions, of strong emotions strongly controlled, and so often unhappily uncontrolled, as those great, bitter waters closed over them and their country. There were scorn, hatred, distrust, resentment, mockery, defiance and a sullen acceptance of the rules of Occupation as days moved into months and months into four long, unhappy years.”
While she endeavored to describe the atmosphere of Paris during the Occupation and to relate some of the facts of the war as they came into her experience, she did not focus on what made her contribution to this part of history so unique: her role as receptionist to the American Embassy in Paris during World War II. Using subtitles, I have extracted her experiences as a member of the Embassy staff, which drew out how much the Embassy impacted the lives of Americans, Parisians, and all who passed through the door to the American Embassy in Paris.
The writings of Marie-Louise Dilkes are very much a portrait of a woman born in the 1880s, 1886 to be exact, and who lived to experience the tragedies of two world wars. In her focus on detail, she emerges as a woman who was educated, elitist, and emotional. She enjoyed seeing France through the architecture that surrounded her and the writings through the ages that inspired her. She was well-read and often cited literature in her writing. Marie-Louise would quote from the Bible and from French, British, and American literature, especially poetry; from the classic or bestseller books of the times; and from American, French, Belgium, German, Italian, and Swiss newspapers.
Paris with arrondissements
She hobnobbed with the elite, from dukes and duchesses of the United Kingdom to European royalty to people of high position. Marie-Louise was comfortable among the elite since she was born into a family of privilege. The Dilkes family was a member of Main Line Philadelphia society. Her father, George R. Dilkes,4 had owned the Southern Steamship Lines5 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She carried her privileged life and society friends to Paris and tried to live her life in France accordi
She made no bones about her support for the Allies, especially the Americans, the French, and the British, and her hatred for the Nazis. She hated those who would destroy the France she loved. Her manuscript is filled with her thoughts on what the world should be or what she wished it could be. The engaged reader will not have a problem discerning Marie-Louise Dilkes’ thoughts and opinions from what is happening in the world around her.
Mary-Louise Dilkes is my aunt. I never met her. Readers first met her in the writing of Charles Edward Dilkes, her brother and my father, which related his experiences as a combat engineer in World War I in his book Remembering World War One: An Engineer’s Diary of the War. Marie-Louise and her brother were able to get together in Paris in April 1919 when he was on leave while serving with the U.S. Army of Occupation.
Through her World War II memoir, I have come to understand the love Marie-Louise had for America and France. Through her writing it was interesting to visit the places that were a part of her life—and then to research those places today. It would have been nice to have known my Aunt Marie-Louise. She was a woman of her times and one for the generations to come.
Virginia Dilkes, 2023
To the Modern Reader
Editorial adjustments were made for the modern reader. I addressed Marie-Louise Dilkes’ use of punctuation, her long chapters, her footnotes, and her spelling of some words.
Marie-Louise liked to use punctuation to bring the reader in, especially through her use of exclamation points and ellipses. I changed some of her exclamation points to periods to save the emphasis of her emotion to when it mattered most. One of the challenges as editor was how to retain her emotions yet keep with what she was trying to evoke. She liked to end her sentences with ellipses as if her writings of those dark years went beyond words.
Her long chapters are kept intact although I segmented them through subtitles. Her footnotes are kept as original footnotes while I used endnotes to clarify and explain the background history. Some of the endnotes and words in the glossary will seem trivial to the older generation or those versed in European World War II history. The spelling of words is kept as the common form used in the 1940s. Spellings may differ based on how the British spell the words in contrast to the American way of spelling: phoney or phony; rumour or rumor; despatch or dispatch; enquire or inquire; armour or armor; grey or gray.
Even though the world had recognized Russia as one state in the Soviet Union since 1922, Marie-Louise never referred to Russia as the Soviet Union in her writing. The reader will be able to discern when she is referring to the Soviet Union as Russia.
I hope Strong in Will gives the reader insight into how her position as receptionist to the American Embassy in Paris made her a part of the unfolding events of World War II.
Virginia Dilkes
Dedication
To my father who shared his history and that of the Dilkes family and their contributions to America’s history through their participation in two world wars …
To my mother who kept the Dilkes legacy alive …
To my brothers and sisters who supported telling the story …
To my children, Jim, Judy, and Anne, who encouraged me …, and
To my grandchildren, Rachel, Robert, and Caroline, who are the future.
Virginia A. Dilkes, Editor
Marie-Louise Dilkes
CHAPTER 1
August 25, 1939–June 14, 1940
Serving with the American Embassy
in Paris in Turbulent Times
Paris, August 25, 1939
Dear D.1
War seems imminent tonight. All day tanks and camions have been passing through the city toward the frontier. Few taxis find their way about the streets, autobuses are scarce—the drivers are being called to the colors. Posters noting the different classes that are being called up have been affixed through the city. The stations are filled with soldiers starting on their long journey from which thousands shall never come back. Tonight, the Prime Minister, M. Daladier,2 spoke over the radio urging the men, women, and children of France to be strong and united in the defense of La Patrie before the German menace that is threatening all Europe. All day the newsstands have been surrounded by people frantic for the latest news. From the École Militaire near my apartment house on the Avenue de la Bourdonnais come the vibrant strains of “La Marseillaise.” With it ringing in my ears I close my shutters with a heavy heart and turn to my bed certain that my sleep will be troubled.
The morning broke with rain over the city. I walked to the [American] Embassy, found the large reception hall at the entrance crowded with Americans seeking information and help of various kinds. Most of them were registering and making desperate efforts to have aid in finding places on already crowded boats for America. Some U.S. battleships are waiting at Villefranche in the south of France to repatriate United States citizens. The French are calm and resolute. They try not to think of Munich almost a year ago when the Arc de Triomphe was alight with hope, and when cheers resounded for Daladier as the savior of the country.
I sailed for home, you remember, on October 6, 1938. I recall the dinner party at the home of one of my friends the evening before my departure and the day after the conference of Munich. There were about ten guests: some Americans, two British subjects, a few French, and a German who was seated on my right—a young blond Nazi, married to a French girl. The girl was not in Paris at the time, but as memories went back to another gathering when I had met her, I could hear her deep voice as she turned to me and in admiring tones exclaimed, “Hitler and Mussolini! They are the greatest statesmen in Europe, in the world perhaps today, and there is not another man intelligent enough to negotiate with them.” At the time I wondered at these words coming from a French citizen and was not surprised, a few months later, to find a card announcing her marriage to a German.
As dinner proceeded on this evening after Munich, there was a feeling of trouble pending, or if not trouble, certainly of something disturbing. I turned to answer a trivial question asked by my German partner. There was a certain insolence in his bearing, a sureness in his attitude. For a moment there was tense silence. Suddenly the Englishman opposite me, his features taut, leaned toward the German and asked: “How did you feel after Munich? Did you feel that you were the victors? Did you feel that you had lost, or were you of the opinion that you were standing pat?”
The reply had a patronizing tone: “I think that the German leaders felt they had gone far enough.” Our host hastily changed the subject, and the dinner proceeded with no further incident.
That was a year ago. Today France is taking no chances. She is preparing for war. At home, in America, as I write this, you are peacefully going about the daily routine. France is so far away….
American Embassy Families Ordered to Dinard
August 26, 1939
Dear L.3
The tension seems lighter today as the papers announce that Hitler has called the American, British, French, and Japanese ambassadors in Berlin for a conference—after pressure had been put on him by President Roosevelt, the King of Belgium, and the Pope—in an effort toward peace.4
German merchant ships en route to America had been ordered, in mid ocean, to return to Germany. One such ship was the SS Bremen5 of the German line, which also carried tourists. United States tourists with return passage had feared to take it. The SS Bremen however proceeded to New York where its passengers safely disembarked. I frequently wondered why our compatriots took the risk of coming to Europe in all this turmoil, a condition that has existed for months.
