The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe Read Online Free PDF

whose role was to prepare for an expected cross-channel Allied attack. By the fall of 1941, the Germans had stationed 15,000–20,000 troops in Calvados alone, and this number had trebled
    by June 1944. This meant that throughout the war, lo- cal inhabitants lived literally side by side with the oc- cupiers. Germans took over hotels, public buildings, and schools for barracks and headquarters and requi- sitioned furnishings, beds, and all manner of domestic equipment; their soldiers were billeted upon the popu- lation, taking up living rooms, barnyards, and stables and displacing local families. German requisitions of food for their troops and forage for their animals hurt the economy, as did military maneuvers through the heavily agricultural countryside. 10

    To the depredations of the foreign troops were added the indignities of France’s own policy of collabora- tion. The Vichy-based government of Marshal Henri- Philippe Pétain pursued an obsequious policy toward the Germans through which, in exchange for integrat- ing France into Hitler’s New Order as a vassal state, the French authorities gained a measure of independence in running internal affairs. But the burden of this pol- icy fell upon the French people. The attitude of Calva- dosiens, who like many of their countrymen had once admired Pétain as a war hero and a man of steadfast patriotism, sharply deteriorated after the June 1942 an- nouncement of “la relève.” This program, initiated by Vichy, sought to secure the release of one French pris- oner of war from German camps in exchange for every
    three French civilian workers that could be delivered to German hands. It was blackmail and was met with stu- pefaction and shame in France. Worse, Calvadosiens quickly learned that the Germans had reneged on their end of the deal: in exchange for six hundred volunteers from the Calvados, the Germans returned only eleven POWs to the department. The relève was only one form of conscription: in addition to labor in Germany, the occupation authorities sought French labor for work on the Atlantic Wall. The Todt Organization, under the direction of Albert Speer, started work in the middle of 1942 on a defensive wall running from Brittany to Hol- land, with particular strength in the Pas-de- Calais, the region considered most likely to be assaulted by the Allies. From October to December 1942, the German headquarters demanded 2,450 workers from Calvados alone to be set to work on building these defensive ram- parts. Workers had to be withdrawn from construction and agricultural sectors. They worked directly under German overseers in deplorable conditions alongside Russian and Polish POWs, living in harsh work camps with little medical care. Combined with workers sent into Germany, Calvados had lost 4,500 workers by the end of December 1942, and an additional 1,679 workers were called up by the Germans in April 1943. The lo- cal skilled workforce was being systematically stripped bare. 11
    In the context of growing German labor demands and an improvement in the fortunes of the Allied war effort in Africa and Italy, the year 1943 was decisive for the growth of the local Resistance: 40 percent of those who would join a Calvados underground network did so in that year. The Resistance was never large in Calvados. No more than 2,000 people were formally associated with Resistance networks by the start of 1944, precisely because the German military presence was so heavy there, and reprisals against civilians were severe and frequent. Yet Resistance networks played an impor- tant role in aiding downed Allied pilots and sheltering young men who were in hiding from forced labor con- scription. Resistance networks also acted as a means of promoting periodic civilian acts of defiance, from tear- ing down of German posters to the scrawling of the “ V ” sign in public places. 12

    As the prospect of an Allied invasion of France neared, the German occupation of Calvados