Michael at the Invasion of France, 1943 Page 13
From the moment the Germans marched into France, the French people faced hardships. Food was the biggest problem. Bread and meat were rationed almost immediately. Other foods were soon added to the list along with goods like leather, coal, fabrics, and soap. Food prices tripled between 1939 and 1943. The winters of the Occupation were among the coldest and snowiest on record, and fuel was scarce.
Regular German soldiers, the Wehrmacht, kept order. But along with Hitler’s army came the secret state police—the Gestapo. The Gestapo’s job was to hunt down and kill anti-Nazis.
Most of the French people focused on getting enough food and fuel to stay alive. Others did what they could to defy their new rulers. They refused to speak to German soldiers, gave them the wrong directions, and wrote anti-Nazi slogans on walls and German posters. As the war continued, the behavior of the Nazi forces became increasingly brutal. More and more French men, women, and children joined the Resistance.
There were at least a hundred different resistance groups in France alone during the Second World War. Some focused on spreading information via underground newspapers. Other spied for the Allies or sabotaged German factories and communications. Still others formed a kind of underground railroad to keep Allied aviators out of Germany’s hands so that the soldiers could make their way back to England and continue to fight the war.
To reach England, the aviators first had to make a dangerous journey across France and hike over the treacherous Pyrenees mountains into Spain. Once they reached Spain, the English could transport the men to Gibraltar—a small British territory on the southern tip of Spain—and then relocate them to England.
Historians estimate that civilians rescued as many as six thousand aviators who were shot down over the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. By 1943, the escape lines had become so good at their work that Allied airmen had a 50 percent chance of making their way back to England.
It’s impossible to know just how many ordinary people risked their lives to help these men. Some provided food, shelter, and clothing. Others created false papers and identities for them, and still others—like Michael, Jacques, and François—took on the dangerous job of leading the men across France and into Spain.
As in the novel, some of the escape lines were infiltrated and destroyed by Nazi spies, but the Resistance groups rebuilt the lines again and again.
Security against the Resistance became more and more ferocious as the war continued, especially after the German army began to suffer losses in North Africa and the Soviet Union. Some historians estimate that for every Allied soldier who made his way back to England, one French, Dutch, or Belgian helper lost his or her life. Men who were caught faced a firing squad. Women were sent to concentration camps, where many died.
These rescuers knew that they were risking their own lives to save strangers. They did it because they believed in the same cause—freedom.
After years of great sacrifice all over the world, the Allies won the war in 1945.
CHILDREN’S ROLES IN THE FRENCH RESISTANCE
Children had to grow up quickly during World War II. The children of France, and those in other occupied countries, were cold and hungry. Many had fathers and brothers who were killed, missing, or prisoners in Germany. Jewish children in Europe faced an even bigger problem. They were rounded up and sent to die in concentration camps.
Anyone who fought back against the Nazis risked prison and death. Still, for people who believed in the cause of freedom, the risk was worth it. Some of those people were children.
Although most of their names are lost to history, one sixteen-year-old boy named Jacques Lusseyran started a resistance group in Paris made up mainly of teenagers. The incredible thing was that Jacques was blind.
Other children got involved in the Resistance through their parents or their older siblings. The Germans didn’t suspect them, so moving around was easier for children than it was for many adults. Teenage girls and young women often pretended to be on innocent walks with their boyfriends when, in fact, they were leading Allied soldiers to safe houses or train stations. Boys often acted as couriers and guides, passing information from one resistance operative to another, spying on the Germans, or leading downed aviators along the escape routes to Spain.
They were ordinary children who did extraordinary things in the face of great danger. In refusing to accept defeat, they kept the flame of resistance alive.
HISTORIC CHARACTERS
Some of the characters in Michael at the Invasion of France, 1943, were real people who played a part in World War II.
Charles de Gaulle fought in the First World War under Marshal Philippe Pétain. He was wounded and captured at the famous Battle of Verdun and tried to escape from German prison camps five times. In the early days of World War II, de Gaulle led a failed attack against the invading Nazi troops before escaping to England. From London, he urged the French people to resist the Nazis and then became the leader of the Free French Forces. After the war, he served as French president from 1958 to 1969.
Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, led the Nazi Party and served as chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Once he won control within Germany, Hitler prepared to take over the rest of Europe. He also blamed all of Germany’s problems on the Jewish people. His leadership led to a world war and to the deaths of nearly six million Jews. When it became obvious that Germany would lose the war, Hitler took his own life on April 30, 1945. Germany surrendered to the Allies a week later.
Henri Philippe Pétain was France’s greatest hero in World War I, for which he was made a marshal of France—an officer of the highest rank. In June 1940, he became the prime minister of France and asked Hitler for an armistice. He modeled his government in the Free Zone after Hitler’s fascist regime and was notorious for collaborating with Germany. Pétain’s government passed anti-Jewish laws and deported Jews to German concentration camps. After the war, he stood trial for treason and was sentenced to death. Charles de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life in prison, where Pétain died in 1951.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second president of the United States, led the nation out of the Great Depression. The American people resisted involvement in the war, and Roosevelt tried to keep the country out of the conflict. But when Japan bombed naval bases at Pearl Harbor, America was forced to fight. The United States declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. Roosevelt partnered with the leaders of Great Britain and the Soviet Union and was a strong commander in chief. He died of a stroke a month before Germany surrendered. Before he died, he cleared the way for peace, including the establishment of the United Nations.
TIME LINE
World War II lasted for almost six years and involved thirty-eight countries on five continents. The time line below outlines some of the key events of the war in Europe.
1938
MarchNazi Germany announces its Anschluss, or union, with Austria. German troops march into Vienna.
1939
March 15Germany, which had annexed the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia the year before, seizes the rest of the country.
September 1The Nazis invade Poland from the west with a new type of warfare—a blitzkrieg, or lightning war.
September 3France and Great Britain declare war on Germany.
September 5The United States declares that it will remain neutral.
September 17The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east.
September 27Poland surrenders. Germany and the Soviet Union agree to divide the country between them.
1940
April 9Nazi troops invade Denmark and Norway.
May 10The Nazi blitzkrieg sweeps across the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. German troops enter France.
May 15The Netherlands surrenders to the Nazis.
May 24The Battle of Dunkirk begins. British and Fre
nch forces appear to be cut off, but over the next nine days more than three hundred thousand soldiers manage to avoid capture by the Nazis in a famous evacuation using fishing boats, yachts, lifeboats, and anything else that could float.
May 28Belgium surrenders to the Nazis.
June 3German bombs fall on Paris’s airports.
June 13The French government, desperate to protect the art, architecture, and history in Paris from German bombs and tanks, announces that Paris is an “open city,” which means they will not defend it.
June 14German soldiers march into Paris at dawn. By midmorning, huge German flags fly from every public building.
June 16Marshal Pétain becomes the new French prime minister. The next day he announces that he has asked Hitler for an armistice.
June 18From the BBC radio station in London, General Charles de Gaulle asks the French people to resist the Nazis.
June 22The armistice agreement between France and Germany is formally signed in the same clearing in the Compiègne Forest where Germany surrendered at the end of World War I. The agreement cuts France in two. Germany occupies the north and the entire Atlantic coast. This is called the Occupied Zone. The south, led by Pétain’s new fascist government, is called the Free Zone.
June 23Pétain’s government charges General de Gaulle with treason and sentences him to death.
September 17The French people are ordered to line up for ration cards, which are issued according to age. Food and other goods are harder and harder to buy.
September 27Germany signs a pact with Italy and Japan.
1941
April 6The Nazis invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
April 17Yugoslavia surrenders to the Nazis.
April 17Greece surrenders to the Nazis.
June 22Germany invades its former ally the Soviet Union.
July 12Great Britain and the Soviet Union form a military alliance against Germany.
August 31Radios belonging to Jews in the Occupied Zone are confiscated. Soon they will lose their bicycles and their telephones too.
December 7The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
December 8The United States, Great Britain, and Canada declare war on Japan.
December 11Hitler declares war on the United States.
1942
May 29All Jews in France ages six and up are ordered to wear yellow stars on their clothing, embroidered with the word juif, or Jew.
July 16French policeman round up thirteen thousand Jewish refugees in Paris for transport to concentration camps.
November 8U.S. and British forces land in North Africa.
November 11Germans invade the Free Zone in the South of France, taking control of the entire country.
1943
February 2German generals surrender to the Soviets at Stalingrad. It is the first major defeat of Hitler’s army.
February 16All French men between the ages of twenty and thirty-four are ordered to go to Germany to work for the war effort. Many of them slip quietly away to join the Resistance instead.
May 12The United States and Great Britain achieve a major victory over Germany in North Africa.
July 9British and American forces begin the invasion of Italy.
September 8Italy surrenders to the Allies.
October 13The new Italian government declares war on Germany.
1944
June 6D-Day. Just after midnight, Allied paratroopers land in Normandy. At dawn, German lookouts spot Allied ships off the coast of Normandy while planes thunder overhead. The invasion of France begins.
August 17Most of the Nazi soldiers in Paris retreat in what Parisians call “The Flight of the Fritzes.”
August 20Hitler sends an order to destroy Paris, but Paris’s German commander refuses to burn the city.
August 25French and American soldiers march into Paris. The German commander surrenders.
August 26General Charles de Gaulle leads a victory march down the Champs-Élysées.
December 16In a last desperate attempt to turn the tide of the war, Hitler’s forces attack Allied troops in the Ardennes forest in Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge begins.
1945
January 25The Battle of the Bulge ends with an Allied victory.
April 30Adolf Hitler commits suicide.
May 7Germany surrenders.
May 8V-E, or Victory in Europe, Day. The German army officially surrenders in Berlin.
GLOSSARY
Allied Powers or Allies: The name given to the countries that opposed Germany and the other Axis Powers. In World War II, those countries included Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
armistice: An agreement by opposing sides in a war to stop fighting. A truce.
arrondissement: Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements, or neighborhoods.
aviator: A pilot, copilot, or anyone else with a job to do on an airplane, including gunners and bombardiers.
Axis Powers and Axis: Germany and the countries that fought against the Allied Powers in World War II, including Japan and Italy.
blitzkrieg: A sudden military campaign intended to bring about a fast victory. Lightning war.
boche: An insulting French word for Germans, especially German soldiers. Its origin is unclear, but it may be a shortened version of alboche, a combination of the French words for German (allemand) and blockhead (caboche).
ça va: A French phrase that is both a question and an answer. It means both “How’s it going?” and “It’s going fine.”
collaborator: A person who worked with or helped the Nazis. The slang word for a collaborator was collabo.
concierge: The caretaker of an apartment building or a hotel.
curfew: A rule that demanded people stay indoors, usually at night.
democracy: Government by the people.
extinguish: To destroy or put something out, especially a fire.
fascism: A government that insists on obedience to one all-powerful leader.
goose step: A type of military marching in which the legs are not bent at the knee.
gendarme: The French word for policeman.
Great War: World War I.
Kommandantur: The German word for commander’s office.
Luftwaffe: The German air force.
métro: The Paris subway system, or underground train.
munitions: Military weapons and ammunition.
Nazi: A member of the Nazi (National Socialist German Workers) political party, which was led by Adolf Hitler.
newsreel: A short film about current events that was shown before the feature film in a movie theater.
nom de guerre: A secret code name used during wartime.
occupation: The capture and control of an area or country by a military force.
propaganda: Misleading information used to support a cause or point of view.
refugee: Someone who has been forced to leave his country to escape war or mistreatment.
résistant (male) or résistante (female): The French word for someone who worked in the Resistance, a person who struggled against the Nazis.
sabot: A wooden shoe, or clog.
sabotage: To destroy or damage something.
swastika: The symbol of the German Nazi Party.
Third Reich: The popular name for Germany while it was governed by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.
verboten: The German word for forbidden.
FURTHER READING
Want to learn more about the World War II?
Here are some great nonfiction sources.
DK Eyewitness: World War II by Simon Adams, published by DK Children, 2007. Photographs, illustrations, documents, and
maps tell the story of the people, places, and events of the Second World War.
The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won by Stephen E. Ambrose, published by Atheneum, 2001. Photos, maps, and personal stories outline America’s involvement in World War II.
Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, published by Scholastic Nonfiction, 2005. Have you ever wondered about what it was like to live in Germany under Hitler? This book tells the story from the viewpoint of kids and teens who were there.
In Defiance of Hitler: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry by Carla Killough McClafferty, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Varian Fry, an American journalist, helped more than two thousand refugees escape from Nazi-occupied France.
You Wouldn’t Want to Be a World War II Pilot!: Air Battles You Might Not Survive by Ian Graham, illustrated by David Antram, published by Franklin Watts, 2009.
Acknowledgments
First I have to thank two authors I’ve never met: Peter Eisner, who wrote The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II, and Sheri Green Ottis, author of Silent Heroes: Downed Airmen and the French Underground. Their books provided me with research and real-life stories I could never have duplicated on my own. Any mistakes or inaccuracies in Michael’s story are, of course, my own.
Deepest thanks go to the members of my writing group, Josanne LaValley and Kekla Magoon, for their close readings and especially for their warnings when I let the story lag. And, of course, to the friends who let me name my fictional American aviators (even the unlikable ones!) after their husbands.
As always, I want to thank the editorial and design teams at Dial for their careful attention, especially Andrew Harwell and Rosanne Lauer.