Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [98]
Observers that the Germans sent to Roquefort made no criticisms of Bedaux’s methods, but they complained Vichy had made a mistake in assigning the venture to an American. American citizenship, until now an asset in Nazi-occupied France, was about to become a liability.
Charles Bedaux worked most of August on France’s planned Trans-Sahara railway, an old imperial goal that by the beginning of the war extended a mere 40 miles from the Algerian port of Nemours to the Moroccan border. Bedaux connected the line to another stretch that had been built in 1931 for manganese mines in the desert at Boufra. His efforts throughout the late summer to patch together a Sahara rail network achieved little. There were difficulties as well at the Kenadsa mines, where he failed to increase coal production. He went to Algiers and paid another visit to Robert Murphy at the US Consulate.
Bedaux was becoming one of Murphy’s more useful sources on French politics. Murphy reported to Washington that Bedaux told him that Admiral Jean-François Darlan, whom Pétain had promoted to vice-premier in February, was ‘sold lock, stock and barrel to the Germans, that his policy has been based on a belief in the ultimate German victory, but that at present he is extremely uneasy that he may be backing the wrong horse … He said that of French public men today General Weygand impressed him as about the only prominent one who had character to keep his word.’ Bedaux also thought that his friend Pierre Laval would not soon return to office under Pétain. While receiving political intelligence and analysis from Bedaux, Murphy did not reciprocate with American support for schemes in Vichy-controlled territories that might be useful to Germany.
On 29 September 1941, Bedaux saw Robert Murphy again in Algeria. This time, Murphy asked him to meet him at ‘the little nine-hole golf course near Algiers, a perfect place for security-proof discussions’. Like Abetz in Paris, Murphy may have been avoiding the bugging devices that the war had introduced to most diplomatic missions. Murphy warned Bedaux that his work at Kenadsa might be curtailed, explaining that by January 1942 ‘the roster of participants in the war, and the situation in North Africa, will have changed’. On the same day, the American Embassy in Vichy cabled the secretary of state about Bedaux, who ‘let it be known that he is cooperating on friendly terms with the Nazis in developing the trans-Saharan railway. His particular interest pertains to the neighborhood of Colomb-Béchar, which is a mining center. Several months ago, he stated rather boastfully that he was closely connected with Abetz and other Nazis in the Paris region, and he also stated that in his opinion (and with some satisfaction) that the war would be won by Germany.’
TWENTY
To Resist, to Collaborate or to Endure
IN PARIS, SOME OF THE WOMEN AND MEN Sylvia Beach loved most were risking their lives to protest or resist the occupation. ‘There were a few Nazi sympathizers in Paris, called “collabos”,’ she wrote, ‘but they were the exception. Everybody we knew was for resistance.’ One of them was the daughter of her friends Henri and Hélène Hoppenot. Henri Hoppenot was the French diplomat who had arranged, at Adrienne’s request, documents for Arthur Koestler to escape from Paris in 1940. He was also an author and librettist, while Hélène was an accomplished photographer. Their teenage daughter, Violaine, had been a subscriber at Shakespeare and Company’s lending library for years. Sylvia had written to her own father on 27 February 1940 about her ‘young friend Violaine who was named after [Paul] Claudel’s play “La Jeune Fille Violaine” and prefers politics to poetry’. Claudel, a favorite in Odéonia, was Violaine’s godfather. Encouraged by Sylvia, Violaine Hoppenot had been admitted to do postgraduate study