War and Resistance, page 16
In France, the battle lasted just forty days before Marshal Pétain, a World War 1 veteran who had become the French leader after the previous government fell, signed an armistice with the Germans on 22 June 1940. This was the beginning of what is known in France as ‘the Occupation’, a dark period of French history which still haunts the country today.
In the early years of the Occupation, France was divided into three zones: an Occupied Zone, which covered all the north (including Paris), some of the centre, and all the western coast right down to the Spanish border, and was directly administered by the German military, though some French services, such as the police, continued to function, but overlooked by the Germans; a ‘Free Zone’, which covered some of the centre and most of the south, including the south east mainland coast and Corsica, and was administered by the ‘Vichy French’ government under Marshal Pétain (the central spa town of Vichy housed the government’s headquarters), which was theoretically independent of the Germans but in practice had to bow to them; and the ‘Forbidden, or Closed Zone’ in the north-east, close to Germany, which was earmarked for German ‘resettlement, and where local French people who had fled at the outbreak of war could not return to. Between each of these zones there were demarcation lines and check points. Later, after November 1942, when Hitler lost patience with the Vichy government, the whole of France was directly annexed by the Germans, except for the southeast corner of mainland France and the island of Corsica, which were occupied by one of Germany’s allies, Italy. Later still, after the fall of the Italian dictator Mussolini in 1943, and the new Italian government going over to the side of the Allies, the Germans took over those areas as well. It was not until late 1944 that the Allies, including Britain, the United States and the Free French under General de Gaulle, were able to liberate France, after fierce battles with retreating German troops. The war itself however didn’t end globally till 1945, with Hitler’s suicide and the surrender of Germany and its other main remaining ally, Japan.
Resistance both to German rule and the collaborationist policies of the Vichy government began in a small way in the early part of the war, but gathered strength as time went on, with organised underground movements, known as the Resistance, springing up from 1941 onwards. Other French people took an active part in collaboration or participated in the blackmarket; but the vast majority of people tried to keep their heads down and avoid trouble.
Although the characters in War and Resistance are fictional, some of the background details in France are based on real life. My parents were both children during the period of the Occupation, my father living in the Free Zone, in Toulouse, my mother in the Occupied Zone, in Biarritz. This occurred during very formative periods in their lives: my father was seven years old when the war broke out, and thirteen when it ended; my mother nine when it started and fifteen when it ended. As children ourselves, we heard quite a lot about that time and how it affected not only them as children but also older family members, such as parents and grandparents. As well, my own knowledge of Biarritz, where all my mother’s family still lives and where we ourselves spent many childhood holidays, informs the atmosphere of the setting of parts of the book from Chapter 12 onwards.
Readers of my previous novel, 1914, which is set in the first year of World War 1, will recognise characters from that novel in War and Resistance, including, of course, Louis Jullian, Sasha’s father, other members of his family, and friends from that distant time before the fateful year of 1914, and the beginning of a century of terrible global wars.
Australia, of course, as a close ally of Britain, was involved from the start in both wars, and after World War 2 received many thousands of refugees and displaced people from all over Europe. Bradfield Park, the setting for the epilogue, was one of many official migrant and refugee camps across Australia which people lived in before moving into the general community.
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Text copyright © Sophie Masson, 2019.
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Cover photograph: WWII: ‘Resistance to the Germans – French Army Returns to France’, Normandy, circa 14 August 1944. Photographer unknown. National Archives and Records Administration, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, USA.
Sophie Masson asserts her moral rights as the author of this work.
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Sophie Masson, War and Resistance
