5
The Underground War Begins 11:32 Nia: Miles, I keep thinking about what it must have been like for ordinary Parisians once the Germans actually occupied the city. I mean, you wake up one morning and there are Nazi flags on all the government buildings, German soldiers on every corner. How do you even process that?
11:48 Miles: It's almost impossible to imagine, isn't it? And here's what's fascinating—the German occupation of Paris was deliberately designed to seem as "normal" as possible, at least initially. The Germans wanted to show that their New Order could be civilized and efficient. So they kept the cafés open, the theaters running, even the fashion shows continued. But underneath this veneer of normalcy, the restrictions were immediate and humiliating.
12:13 Nia: What kind of restrictions are we talking about?
12:15 Miles: Picture this: a curfew from 9 PM to 5 AM, so the City of Light literally went dark every night. All the clocks in France were reset to German time. Street signs were put up in German. And the rationing—oh, the rationing was brutal. By September 1940, you needed ration cards for food, tobacco, coal, clothing, everything. Parisians were allocated specific amounts of bread, meat, and other basics, but the promised products often never appeared in the shops.
12:45 Nia: So you'd wait in line for hours and then find out there was nothing to buy?
1:31 Miles: Exactly. And this is where you start to see the seeds of resistance. Because when people are standing in bread lines for hours, when they're cold because there's no coal for heating, when they see German soldiers eating well in requisitioned restaurants while French children are malnourished—that builds resentment. The first act of resistance actually happened pretty quickly, on November 11th, 1940.
13:11 Nia: What happened then?
13:12 Miles: It was the anniversary of the end of World War I, traditionally a day of patriotic remembrance in France. The German authorities banned any commemorations and made it a regular school day. But Parisian students had other ideas. They circulated leaflets calling for a boycott of classes and organized a gathering at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe—which you'll probably visit, Nia.
13:32 Nia: I definitely will! So what happened when they gathered?
13:36 Miles: It started peacefully—about 20,000 students laid wreaths and flowers. But by evening, it became more provocative. Students were chanting "Vive la France" and "Vive l'Angleterre," carrying flowers arranged in the shape of the Cross of Lorraine—de Gaulle's symbol. The German soldiers responded with fixed bayonets and fired shots in the air. They arrested 123 students, who were beaten and forced to stand in the rain all night at prisons like La Santé and Fresnes.
14:04 Nia: These were just students—teenagers, probably.
1:31 Miles: Exactly. And that's what makes this story so powerful. The resistance didn't start with trained soldiers or professional spies. It started with ordinary people—students, shopkeepers, teachers—who decided they couldn't just accept the occupation passively. One of the most poignant early cases was Jacques Bonsergent, a 28-year-old engineer who got into a scuffle with German soldiers after a wedding. His friends escaped, but he was arrested and refused to give their names. The Germans executed him by firing squad on December 23rd, 1940—the first civilian executed for resistance.
14:43 Nia: And now there's a metro station named after him, right?
14:46 Miles: Right there in the 10th arrondissement. When you're riding the Paris metro, you'll see that station name and know you're honoring someone who chose death over collaboration. But the organized resistance really began with an unlikely group—scholars at the Musée de l'Homme, the anthropology museum.
15:02 Nia: Scholars? That's not who you'd expect to start an underground movement.
15:06 Miles: Led by Boris Vildé, a Russian-born anthropologist, they used the museum's mimeograph machine to publish a four-page newspaper called "Résistance"—which actually gave the movement its name. Their first issue proclaimed: "We are independent, simply French, chosen for the action we wish to carry out. We have only one ambition, one passion, one desire: to recreate France, pure and free."
15:30 Nia: What happened to them?
15:32 Miles: They weren't experienced conspirators, so they were discovered and arrested pretty quickly. Vildé and six other leaders were executed by firing squad at Fort Mont Valérien in February 1942. But their example inspired others, and by 1943 and 1944, the resistance had grown into a significant force that would help liberate Paris from within.