Part Three: The Growing Conflict — Chapter 10 - The Barman of the Ritz

JULY 15, 1941

Since June 23, the newspapers have been filled with articles about Operation Barbarossa, the Wehrmacht military successes, and the imminent defeat of Stalin, whom they claim has already fled Moscow. Only a few column inches are devoted to the food shortages in France.

But wine is in very short supply, even in Bordeaux and Béziers.

Hermann Göring, who is spending the weekend at the Ritz, is obsessed with what is happening on the Eastern Front. “In less than four months, the Soviet Union will collapse,” he tells anyone willing to listen.

Elmiger has been trying to assert his authority over the restaurant and room service staff; he has fired a handful of employees and is carefully monitoring the training of new recruits, leaving Süss to deal with the supplies.

At Frank’s bar, things are quieting. As always, his regular clientele has decamped to their summer homes by the sea. Travel to Normandy and Brittany is still forbidden, but many have managed to secure safe-conduct passes to travel to the Mediterranean.

Frank has remained in Paris. He is still getting very little sleep—for a whole week, he has been kept awake by a vicious toothache, but that’s almost a welcome distraction from his abject fear. Over the past three weeks, he has given Süss two fake passports and three safe-conduct passes.

He and Fersen worked out the details of their arrangement at the end of June in a bar in Saint-Lazare where there was no risk of being recognized. Each document will cost a few hundred Reichsmarks, all of which will go to the forger. Frank paid the up-front costs out of his own pocket since he could not bring himself to ask Süss for money. Fersen says he will take no commission, and Frank believes him. He plans to show his gratitude with a bottle of Denis-Mounié cognac or Château Cheval Blanc, which Fersen has not been able to get for far too long. When it comes to supplies, even diplomats do not have the same access as the Ritz.

The two men meet every second Sunday morning in the gardens of the Swedish embassy. The barman arrives with a duffel bag filled with banknotes. In exchange, the forged papers are delivered to cafés which, for a few Reichsmarks to the owners, serve as dead letter boxes. “It’s vital that no one sees us together,” insists Fersen, though he did come to the Ritz bar one night to meet General von Stülpnagel. When Frank was closing up, he found two safe-conduct passes for the Free Zone tucked in among the racing programs. As long as we keep things slow and steady, this should be manageable, thinks Frank. But he often breaks into a cold sweat, and is exhausted at endlessly having to lie to Speidel and Stülpnagel, who are now regulars, perched at the bar, as they were tonight.

“Can you tell me where Saint-Brieuc is, Herr Meier?”

“Brittany, Colonel.”

“Ah, so you were right, General.”

Speidel and Stülpnagel shared a supper of scallops from Saint-Brieuc flambéed in Armagnac, served with a 1937 Saint-Hippolyte, and are now at the bar sipping glasses of pear brandy. The comfortable life of a Wehrmacht officer in Paris. While Frank mixes two Bee’s Knees for Laura Corrigan and one of her friends sitting at the back of the bar, he listens to their conversation.

“Göring might only come to Paris for the occasional weekend now, but what he and his lackeys are doing has given the green light to the other looters,” Stülpnagel says. “A pack of scoundrels from our own ranks have turned Paris into a self-service shop, and the Nazi Party is covering for them.”

The colonel shrugs as if to say: what can we do?

“Don’t get me wrong, Speidel, I think it is only right and proper that we should profit. After all, it was France that crippled us with their Treaty of Versailles; now it has to accept defeat. But these day-to-day humiliations suffered by the people of Paris have been stoking their anger and resentment. Did you see last month’s parade marking the anniversary of our entry into Paris? A lot of the French women were wearing black ribbons in their hair. It was Jünger who finally enlightened me: they were in mourning, right under our noses! The captain was amused, but I did not find it funny.”

“Herr Meier, could I get another, please?”

Stülpnagel and Speidel make a point of speaking to Frank in French. Perhaps they have forgotten that his mother tongue is German and he can understand everything they say. Or perhaps it is simply that they are drunk. Stülpnagel is explaining that he recently gave orders for the house lights to remain on in cinemas during the screening of German newsreels, because under cover of darkness the audience would boo.

“The mood in Paris is increasingly hostile, don’t you find? We need to ease off a little. What would you do in my position, Speidel?”

The colonel evades the question by talking about an investigation he has entrusted to Jünger into the power struggles between the Wehrmacht and the Nazi Party dignitaries.

As for Stülpnagel, he is not prepared to wait. A single conversation with Jünger was enough: Nazi looting has to be curtailed, and quickly. Otherwise, the civilian populace will become incensed and cause trouble, forcing the army to crack down, triggering a vicious spiral.

“Jünger talked at length about the inability of the German aristocracy and old bourgeoisie to rein in the Nazis, who have turned brutish violence into a way of life…”

This is the true war, thinks Frank. A war that is fought within each camp, and within each and every one of us. He is still thinking of something that Süss said after coming back from an evening among the big shots at Lafont’s place: “This cruelty is part of the human condition.”

“The German upper classes were very useful to Hitler during his rise to power,” says Stülpnagel. “After all, they’re the ones who elected him chancellor. But they’ve become a stumbling block to him. Jünger thinks the reason we find it so difficult to curb the excesses of Nazi bigwigs is that our sense of propriety is no match for their rampant sadism. In a very real sense, my role here in Paris is to ensure a certain level of restraint. If by some misfortune we lose what little control we have over the SS, occupied France will quickly devolve into a lawless regime.”

Speidel looks bewildered. He drains the last of his brandy and is silent for a moment. Clearly, he is worried by what he has just heard.

“Is that also Captain Jünger’s view of Germany?” he says finally.

“I didn’t dare ask. Our discussion would have been more than enough to put us in a very difficult position if the Gestapo had overheard. After all, there are some who claim that Jünger is one of the Führer’s protégés. Damned if I can understand why, Speidel.”

Frank can hardly believe his ears. On the surface the Germans appear to be a highly disciplined wolf pack, an indissoluble unit. In reality, they are at each other’s throats.

The two men order some more pear brandy; Frank worries that they will finally realize that he can hear them, but Stülpnagel simply carries on. The conversation with Jünger has been playing on his mind for the past three days, he confesses. Something is changing in France, and his desire to go back to Germany is growing stronger by the day.

“What exactly are we doing here, Speidel? What have we been doing for the past year?”

“I can see our bookish agitator is having a taxing effect on you, Herr General,” says Speidel with a little chuckle.

This is the hour when brandy begets truth.

“Jünger? Yes, perhaps… I’ve been thinking more and more of a conversation I had with him recently. He was going on and on about Eumeninae, some small species of wasp. Known to be quite vengeful little creatures. He’s a strange man, fascinated by insects… but if I am honest, I have to say I’ve come to see us through Jünger’s eyes: a nest of greedy, retributive wasps.”

The general trails off, staring into his empty glass.