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easier if I spent my holidays in Fontainebleau. We thought Alain had typhoid, but luckily the doctor has just told us that it was only a stomach infection. Yvette is coming home from Rochefort tomorrow.
    22 August 1940
Dear diary, it is almost a whole year since I started writing in this little booklet. We are no longer at war. We have been defeated. As a nation we are worthless.
    Germany is planning her invasion of England, but we are still waitingfor it to happen. They may not have reached London, but they are bombing the whole of England and the British are bombing the German towns. There are thousands of civilians being killed. War is just so awful. What a wonderful day it will be when the people of the world can get on together. Meanwhile, communication between the Free Zone and the Occupied Zone has been cut.
    As for life in Paris, we have to queue for everything. It is absolutely awful. We queue for butter, milk, coffee, cheese, meat, if we can find it, and oil.
    23 August 1940
I now have a little blue diary. I love anything blue.
    Life is so sad. It is impossible for a young French girl to be carefree and happy because the Germans are occupying most of my country. Maybe it does not upset everyone in the same way, but for me to walk around Paris, my home town, to see Germans travelling around in cars and admiring the sights, is heart-breaking. I do understand the government’s position in allowing them to march in, not wanting Paris to be bombed and destroyed, but it is very hard. In Paris the occupying forces are behaving themselves, but in the country we hear they are despicable and looting whatever they can find. I am living in the hope that the British will get them and it will not be too soon. Even the German soldiers have had enough. They are always at war and their victory has been too quick. *
    24 August 1940
I am now working in the north-eastern part of the building. It is awful. I work with the most dreadful group of people. I have decided to ask the Head of Police to find me another job, that is if I am not made to return to the Tourist Department. I am now in the Passport Department.
    30 August 1940
Madame Chantebout and I spend most of our time going between cooperatives and Police Headquarters. In the morning we went to the rue Lagrange looking for lard and butter and in the afternoon we went to the rue Chanoinesse to see what we could find. Yesterday I found some chocolate and noodles.
    31 August 1940
The night before going on holiday I had to go to Monsieur Blanc, the Acting Head of Police, for my ID card. He told me to write it out myself. I did think this was rather odd. He told me to bring it back for him to sign and he just signed it without checking or even looking at it.
    For the next couple of months, Andrée did not write anything in her diary. She began again on 11 November, including in one volume the brief line: ‘Bagarre à l’Étoile’ (fighting at L’Étoile). That is her only written reference to the student protests – she was presumably aware of the dangers of incriminating herself by including details, should her diaries ever be found by the authorities.
    11 November 1940
I am now working for Monsieur Pouillet on the first floor of the building. Here we organise and keep up-to-date information on the foreigners living in Paris. It has to be carefully kept in files and easily accessible to the Germans.

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    * Andrée was aware of the Battle of Britain currently taking place and, like many of her compatriots, hoped that the RAF would win. Working at Police Headquarters, she may have heard some of the Germans talking about the war. Her entry here may refer to the cynical position adopted by some that the Germans felt they had won too quickly, and would have preferred a more challenging fight. Not all Wehrmacht soldiers were Nazis, of course, and many may not have wanted to wage war in the first place.

6
A First Rebellion
    T o understand why a