Professional Documents
Culture Documents
a true story of
terror, espionage, and
one american family’s
heroic resistance in
nazi-o ccupied france
Alex Kershaw
CROWN PUBLISHE RS
NE W YORK
ISBN 978-0-8041-4003-4
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-4004-1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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city of darkness
the fall
chestnuts along the Avenue Foch, where Sumner and his wife and
twelve-year-old son lived in a ground-floor apartment at number 11,
were a wonderful green. Breezes carried the sweet scent of purple
lilacs and lilies of the valley. From a wide terrace adjoining his office
on the fourth floor of the hospital, when Sumner was able to take a
break from surgery, he could see the city’s immense elegance as he
stood for a few minutes relaxing, usually smoking a cigar or more
often a cigarette.
Sumner’s view of Paris, spread out before him, was fabulous, with
the Eiffel Tower clear in the distance a few miles to the southeast. In
the courtyard below, ambulances pulled up all that May, their bells
ringing, returning from the front lines. The impossible was happen-
ing. France was falling. Anyone who could get out of Paris was doing
so. Many of his American colleagues at the hospital, a cornerstone of
the expatriate community since 1910, and his wealthy neighbors on
Avenue Foch, several of them Jews, had already fled.
Sumner had seen the rise of fascism in Europe, the weakness of
European democracies, and the appeasement of Hitler, whom he de-
spised. He had been convinced the previous fall, after war had bro-
ken out, that the United States would join her allies from the last war
to once again put Germany in her place. Hitler would be stopped.
Sumner could not believe that America would stay neutral and let
Europe fall into the abyss once again. But now his worst fears were
being confirmed.
A fortnight earlier Europe had exploded as the Nazis launched a
massive spring offensive in the West. Since May 10, Sumner had read
headlines that grew more ominous by the day. The Wehrmacht had
stormed with seemingly unstoppable force through Belgium, Hol-
land, and northern France. Hitler’s armies were less than a hundred
miles from Paris. The French were in retreat, the nation losing heart,
it seemed, and the unimaginable happening. Indeed, Sumner knew,
it was no longer a question of whether France would be defeated
but when.
Nazi spear thrusting toward Paris. There had been no more mobile
and powerful force in the history of war, and Coster looked on in
awe. The column seemed to stretch forever and moved so fast, the
tanks thundering by at forty miles an hour, bristling with heavy
weapons, the eight-foot-high steel behemoths surely unstoppable.
Armored cars followed, pulling camouflaged antiaircraft guns, their
20mm barrels pointing skyward. One tank rolled toward a bar-
ricade farther down the road and smashed through, making light
work of heavy logs. “Nothing invented by man, you felt with a shock
of despair,” recalled Coster, “could possibly withstand this inhuman
monster which had already flattened half of Europe.”
A German officer ordered Coster to help at a nearby hospital and
bring in wounded from the battlefield. In a field of high grass were
many English dead rotting in the sun, their faces purple and black.
There were a few men whose wounds were already gangrenous, and
they gritted their teeth as they called for help from where they lay
amid dozens of dead cows with huge bloated stomachs. The stench
was nauseating. Three hundred British soldiers had been riddled
with bullets from the Panzers’ machine guns. Fewer than thirty had
survived.
A German approached as Coster helped the wounded. He thought
Coster was a British soldier, mistaking his uniform, and snatched his
gloves away. Coster stupidly tried to grab them back and the German
whipped out his pistol and aimed it at his stomach. Coster pointed
to the band on his arm, showing the symbol for the American Field
Service, a volunteer ambulance unit.
“Amerikanisch,” said Coster.
To Coster’s surprise, the German officer stood to attention, sa-
luted Coster, shook his hand, and then left without another word.
Other German soldiers nearby talked with Coster. They regarded
Americans with bemused contempt, especially President Roosevelt,
a vacillating windbag compared to their glorious, decisive Führer.
One of them said: “We never see any of you on our side.”
There was more good news from the front—for the Germans.
After advancing through southern Belgium, the Germans had
crossed the Meuse River and pierced the French line at Sedan. The
Allies had been forced to retreat toward the port of Dunkirk. Disas-
ter loomed. Nothing, it seemed, could stop the Nazi juggernaut as it
barreled toward Paris.