1Shortly before being executed for having collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War German occupation in France, the French writer Robert Brasillach famously wrote that "Frenchmen given to reflection, during these years, will have more or less slept with Germany — not without quarrels—and the memory of it will remain sweet for them" (Brasillach in Amouroux, IX, 243). If the Germans represented an erotic vision for Brasillach, to many Germans, France, and especially Paris, was equally if not more so an erotic fantasy. The erotic activities and images took many forms, ranging from romantic liaisons between occupation soldiers and Frenchwomen, visits by German soldiers to nightclubs that offered sexualized images if not the actual experience in Montmartre and elsewhere, and prostitution, carefully monitored and regulated by the German authorities. All will be discussed in this essay with the goal of drawing a preliminary picture of the erotic imaginaries, together with their connections to tourism, as the Occupation soldiers read guidebooks directing them to the various nightclubs, located brothels approved by the military authorities, and wandered the streets of Paris encountering local women, both streetwalkers and others, in a wide variety of places and contexts. The sexualized tourism of the Occupation soldiers reflected asymmetries of power between occupiers and occupied and, at times, within the German military hierarchy itself. Tourism, erotics, and power were all interlinked.

3The curiosity and imaginary in tourism does not cease in wartime, even if conditions change and tourism in the conventional sense is restricted. Soldiers in foreign lands look around, see, and absorb surrounding sites that may often be alien to them. Too often, the history of tourism in the 20th century is depicted as stopping in 1939 only to resume again after 1945. In recent years, books edited by Chris Ryan in 2007 and Richard Butler and Wantanee Suntikul in 2013 have begun to address aspects of war tourism but neither collection addresses World War II France and most of the contributions focus on wartime heritage or memory tourism more than tourism during war itself (Ryan, 2007 and Butler and Suntikul, 2013). Marc Chesnel and Josette Mesplier-Pinet have addressed linkages between war and tourism in France but again the literature focuses more on memory tourism to wartime sites than tourism during a war (Chesnel, 2001 and Mesplier-Pinet, 2009). In Germany, Henning Meyer and Wiebke Kolbe have also written about sites of wartime memory or battlefield tourism in regard to France (Meyer 2006 and Kolbe 2009). Tourism, however, continued and in some ways intensified during the war, as I have argued elsewhere, embracing among other elements erotics and the imaginaries as can be seen in occupied France (Gordon 1996 and 1998).Young German soldiers touring in organized groups and on their own in occupied France became conditioned to see tourism as a leisure activity, contributing to the expectations and imaginaries that underlay the tourism take off in Germany and elsewhere after the war (Spode, 2003). Their actions and their imaginaries, revealing distinct imbalances in their power relationships with the local French population, nonetheless reflected perceptions of Paris and France formed by the tourist images of the late 19th and early 20th century that helped form their culture as they grew up. Some of these prewar imaginaries evoked the erotic. In 1859, for example, Paris was described as the modern Babylon, where vice won out over virtue and infamy and crime bred in a fertile ground (Ponson du Terr., Rocambole, 1859, II, p. 22; in Trésor, 930).

4In 1940, these images of Paris as a center of vice would blend into the experiences of the thousands of German occupation soldiers. As Maren Röger and Emmanuel Debruyne pointed out, citing historian Dagmar Herzog, “mobilization disrupted the traditional social structures that enclosed sexual life and confronted millions with the possibility of new sexual experiences” (Herzog, 2011, 5-6 cited in Röger and Debruyne, 2016, 689). These imaginaries, of course, include the entire range of erotic fantasies and images tied to tourism and were clearly evident among the German occupation personnel who toured France during the Second World War. Although many have studied the linkage of erotics and tourism, the relationships of both to war have received less attention. In an article on tourism and prostitution in the postwar Third World published in 1983, Nelson N. H. Graburn suggested the connection to war and military occupation in stating:

5Thus, young, uneducated, poor women of Third World countries are forced, trapped, or willingly enter into various forms of prostitution, particularly in those areas which cater to the apparently wealthy foreigners such as tourists and military “R & R” (rest and recreation) posts (Graburn, 1983, 438).

6Not surprisingly, tourism and its imaginaries also have an erotic or sexual component, which reflects power relationships whether in physically mobile or "armchair" and now internet tourism. People focus on their conceptions of the beautiful or the interesting, framed, and at times manipulated as Theodor Adorno maintains, in their cultural contexts of time and place. As Adorno suggested, these must be understood in terms of power relationships (Adorno, 2001, 189). Such power imbalances may be extreme in times of war, evidenced for example in the organized tours of occupied France provided to the victorious German soldiers by Nazi authorities after their victory of 1940. It was no accident that one of the victorious Hitler’s first actions after defeating France in June 1940 was to tour Paris, ostentatiously expressing the altered power relationships of the time.

8A brief look at more recent sexual tourism in the Third World offers some insights into the power imbalances that also existed in occupied France. As the writers of the MIT team in Paris noted in 2002, the inequalities involved in sex tourism, that Graburn also referenced, mirrored those in wealth and power between rich and poor countries around the world. Colonization, they argued, had reinforced the pre-existing power imbalances. Such imbalances helped create similar instances of sexual tourism in the wealthier cities of the West as well. While sexual tourism in the Patpong Quarter in Bangkok or the coastal resort city of Pattaya in Thailand were the objects of considerable criticism, little was being said about Pigalle and the “petites femmes de Paris” [literally “the little women of Paris, more generally with an erotic connotation], often very young, from Eastern Europe, and more inclined to offer sexual favors to visiting tourists (Équipe MIT, 2005, 35-36). The power imbalances mentioned by the MIT team also existed in wartime as the German experience tourism in occupied Paris suggests. While many in occupied France suffered deprivations, one group stood out as privileged, namely the German occupation personnel for whom France became a prized billet, a place for rest and relaxation, and, for many, where they might exercise the tourism imaginaries that had developed over the preceding generations in Germany as elsewhere. This imbalance was not new. In their study of German policies toward prostitution in the lands they occupied during both world wars of the 20th century, Röger and Debruyne noted that France had already acquired a sexualized imagery by the time of the First World War. In both wars, they argued, German policies toward prostitution in Paris were based on their images of France “the homeland of sexual licentiousness and pornography” (Röger and Debruyne, 2016, 694). This imbalance affected gender relations far beyond those of prostitution. Philippe Burrin notes that while some prominent Frenchwomen, such as the film actress Arletty and the perfume magnate Coco Chanel had liaisons with Germans stationed in Paris, most of the Frenchwomen who had such affairs were “maids, laundresses, waitresses, nurses, or office workers…surrounded by soldiers and officers, some of whom allowed themselves to be tempted or seduced” (Burrin, 1996, 206).Frenchwomen who came into contact with German soldiers during and after 1940 were often in subordinate positions, working in cafés or hotels visited by Germans. In her journal documenting her life in occupied Paris, Simone de Beauvoir described a crowd of “tarty” girls gathered around Germans in the cafés (Beauvoir, 1970, 154, cited in Smith, 2010).The German valuation of the Mark at 20 francs, in contrast to 12 prior to the war, made French goods and French prostitutes relatively inexpensive for German personnel there, adding to the imbalance in the relationships of power in France (Buisson, 2008, 97).

10Germans arriving in France in 1940 were therefore primed to perceive the country as a backward but delightful counter-model to their own modernity. Their 1940 victory had confirmed German superiority in the minds of many, but France’s charms, the erotic included, remained, and tourism was a key to enjoying them (Torrie, 2011, 316). As Robert Gildea writes, "Many [German soldiers] came to France as sexual and gastronomic tourists as much as soldiers.” Especially after the opening of the Russian front, "France seemed like a dream," and many wished to "Leben wie Gott in Frankreich" [live like God in France] (Gildea, 2004, 48). Historian Henri Amouroux noted that Germans enjoyed Paris during

“the first sixteen months of the Occupation, before the entrance of the United States into the war, well before Stalingrad, when it was not foolish to believe that the German army would be able to keep all of Europe in obedience indefinitely” (Amouroux, III, 1978, 14).

11Erotic imaginaries of German soldiers in occupied France are difficult to trace, however, as they refer to private thoughts often not recorded and available to the historian. However, the Second World War account of Ernst Jünger offers some clues. Stationed in Paris during the Occupation, Jünger kept a journal, later published, that mentions the many ways in which German military personnel might meet local French women. A German officer wounded and decorated during World War I, he had become famous because of his memoir, In Stahlgewittern [Storm of Steel], first published in 1920. As a captain in the German army during the Second World War, he was stationed in Paris where he socialized with many of France’s prominent literary and artistic figures. Shortly after arriving in Paris after the German victory in 1940, he began exploring the city’s tourist sites that included the Hôtel de Ville, the Nôtre-Dame cathedral, the quays along the Seine, the route from the Boulevard des Capuchines to the Opéra, the Pont Neuf, the Pont des Arts, and Sacré Cœur, in addition to his discovery of the Brasserie La Lorraine on the Place des Ternes (Mitchell, 2011, 20).

12On 1 May 1941, three weeks after having been assigned to Paris, Jünger recorded meeting Renée, whom he described as a shop girl in a department store. He wrote: "Paris offers meetings like that with one barely having to seek them; one realizes that the city was founded on the altar of Venus." Jünger took her to dinner and then to the movies. "There I touched her breast," he wrote. "A burning glacier, a hillside in spring which hides in their thousands the seeds of life, perhaps also white anemones." Then, in front of the Opéra, they went their separate ways, "no doubt never to see each other again” (Jünger, 2008, II, 213-214 cited in Riding, 2010, 93). Jünger’s diary is discreet regarding what may have happened next and it also tells of other encounters with women in Paris. As Allan Mitchell mentions in his book devoted to Jünger’s Paris years: “It is certain only that Jünger was visibly warming to the task of occupation” (Mitchell, 2011, 21 and 22-24). Jünger’s subsequent liaisons included affairs with a dressmaker, a woman doctor, and eventually with Florence Gould, the daughter-in-law of the American railway magnate Jay Gould, and then living in occupied Paris where her home became a gathering place for German and pro-German artists and literati (Burrin, 1996, 205).

13August von Kageneck, a German soldier aged eighteen, arrived in Brie, France shortly after the June invasion, and had the opportunity to visit several sites in the country. He later recalled that most of the German soldiers were the sons of farmers and had never left their villages prior to the war. They had learned about France in school but had never visited there. One infantryman, from Hamburg, who entered Paris by bicycle, wrote that he had never seen so beautiful a city. To many, the Métro was a new and wonderful discovery as few German cities possessed underground railways. Others climbed the Eiffel Tower and carved the names of their wives into its beams, perhaps another variation of erotics linked to tourism. The Hamburg soldier wrote "we were shown a series of things that we knew only in our wildest imaginations." He also found his way to a brothel and noted "Ah, soldiers. They always find a brothel more readily than a church” (Kageneck, 2012, 70-71).

“This behavior of German soldiers is fully counter to all expressions of national dignity. It contradicts as well the order given by the Führer himself that Paris should not become an Etappenstadt [underlining in original] (Leutnant Müller, 1940).

17Historian Michèle Cointet points out that a combination of Nazi legislation against nightclubs in Berlin as decadent and Vichy’s moralistic anti-alcohol and anti-homosexual policies elsewhere in France highlighted the Parisian clubs as all the more attractive to German personnel and their French allies. L’Étincelle, a club in Montmartre, advertised the "prettiest models" in its show and a transvestite performed in a show at the Folies Bergère in 1943.

18The Lido and Bal Tabarin, among others, offered sexy shows and luxurious food. Following years of economic depression and mobilization for war, it was hard for the nightclub owners in Paris to turn away the new German visitors who constituted a suddenly prosperous clientele (Cointet, 2012, 58).

19For many Germans the attractions of Paris offered more than erotic tourism imageries. As Alan Riding points out, the sight of half-naked women dancing in the reopened nightclubs during the summer of 1940 and thereafter for many soldiers "was the best reason for going out at night." The German-language Pariser Zeitung, which began publishing in January 1941, offered tips on where to go, suggesting that the Tabarin offered the most erotic show (Riding, 2010, 92).For those who could afford pricier entertainment than establishments listed in the Pariser Zeitung and the Deutsche Wegleiter there was Pariser Nächte [Paris Nights], a guide for officers (Buisson, 2008, 264-265).

20In addition to the unequal power relationships between Germans and French, erotic tourism also reflected imbalances within the German occupation forces, specifically between officers and ordinary soldiers, and also inequalities among the local French population, namely between the French pro-German collaborators who were favored and the rest of the population. The city’s best known brothels were Le One Two Two, at 122 rue de Provence on the Right Bank, and Sphinx on the Left Bank, both beyond the price range of the ordinary soldiers. Officers used separate brothels in contrast to the lower ranking German soldiers (Adler, 1999, 51).These brothels attracted a mixed crowd of German officers, French collaborators, clandestine resistance agents, black market operators, and artists of all kinds, including women. Ordinary German soldiers, Riding notes, “could choose among a score of less upmarket brothels where Wehrmacht doctors monitored the health of the prostitutes” (Riding, 2010, 92-93).

21Continuing reminders about discipline throughout the occupation years suggest that both officers and ordinary soldiers persisted in acting inappropriately in the capital (Kommandant von Gross-Paris, 1941; Kommandant von Gross-Paris, 1942; Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich; Mitchell, 2010, 14-15).Sex tourism thus became an issue early in the Occupation and the German authorities focused on preventing the spread of disease but also on security issues, and the fears of miscegenation that might run counter to Nazi racial ideology (Röger and Debruyne, 2016, 700).

22Within a month of their arrival in Paris, German officials determined that local French brothels lacked proper hygiene and were insufficiently supervised by the governing authorities. Selected brothels in larger cities and under medical supervision were made available to German military personnel with access to them forbidden to French civilians, other than the prostitutes themselves. Germans were forbidden to frequent brothels apart from than those especially designated for them. The prostitutes were to be checked by local doctors under the supervision of German hygiene officials and signs were to be posted outside brothels indicating that they were either restricted to German soldiers or forbidden to them. Jewish and other "alien race" prostitutes were not allowed to serve German personnel. Prostitutes were to be examined twice weekly by medical personnel and those deemed healthy were issued numbered inspection cards which they were to present to their clients. Collaboration with mayors and other French civilian personnel was deemed essential in this matter (Schreiber, 1940 and Der General quartier meister Müller, 1940).

23As Röger and Debruyne point out, such French-German collaboration was rendered easier because of sentiments that were

“also rooted in a mutually shared and inherently gendered culture. These gendered ideologies and biases were not only imposed by the German occupying authorities but also by the local functional elites of civil servants, policemen and physicians who in the First World War, and with varying intensity in the Second World War, cooperated actively, but not without ambivalence, in the area of prostitution control” (Röger and Debruyne, 2016, 704).

24General Walther von Brauchitsch, in charge of the German military in France during the summer of 1940, ordered that the troops, especially those who were married, be taught “self-discipline” (Brauchitsch, 1940).Control of nightclubs also became politicized during the Occupation. Not surprisingly, resentments grew among the local population. In one incident, in which German officers were frolicking with the women of a brothel, the officers decided to start up a nearby pickup truck. In the truck, however, was a concealed delayed action bomb. It exploded killing three of the women and two of the officers. "Heldentod" [hero’s death], recounted sarcastically a friend of the diarist and anti-German Jean Guéhenno (Guéhenno, 1947, 251).German soldiers also frequented gay bars. Alan Riding writes that "numerous gay bars in occupied Paris were popular with German soldiers," despite official prohibition of homosexuality. Robert Hugues-Lambert, an actor, was arrested in Le Sans-Soucis, a gay bar, and ultimately died in a German concentration camp(Riding, 2010, 202).

25In a larger sense, erotics assumed many forms in occupied France. Addressing World War II France, in his book 1940-1945 Années érotiques, Patrick Buisson highlights a sense of emasculation felt among the French following their defeat in 1940. France, to some, had become soft and effeminate in contrast to the masculine and more robust societies represented by Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. With the birthrate stalled in the late Third Republic, people from a variety of political backgrounds had criticized what they saw as a loss of virility in France (Buisson, 2008, 45-46).On 20 June 1940, shortly after being named Premier, Marshal Pétain blamed the French defeat on "too few children" and began to promote a higher birthrate among the French as part of what would become Vichy’s National Revolution. The arrival of the German soldiers, who frequently were seen shirtless, and the Nazi cult of the masculine body drew similar comments from a variety of people in France (Buisson, 2008, 83-84).

27The departure of the Germans in August 1944 also had its erotic moments. Visiting the Sacré Cœur Cathedral terrace for a final nostalgic look at occupied Paris, Jünger wrote on 8 August that “cities are women, tender only to the victor” (Jünger, II, 1965, 337). With the departure of the Germans following the Liberation some two weeks later, the sense of emasculation in France played a role in the treatment of women accused of having had sexual relations with them. Fabrice Virgili has shown that some 20,000 women, many falsely accused, had their hair shorn or worse by crowds, sometimes protected by the authorities in newly liberated France (Virgili, 2004). Writing about gender and prostitution during the Occupation, Adler addressed the attacks on women accused of having had sexual relations with Germans in noting that

“prostitution became a metaphor for this uncertain status of national identity. Central to the depiction of the prostitute and to the waves of violence against the collaboratrices was an idea of the type of woman who could prostitute herself and, by implication, her country, to a German” (Adler, 1999, 48).

28Many of the erotic touristic imaginaries of the German soldiers and others in France during the Occupation years were shared by their Allied successors following the 1944 Liberation. The arrival of large numbers of American soldiers during the second half of 1944 produced sexual tensions reminiscent of the recently ended German occupation. The mayor of Le Havre, for example, complained of "scenes contrary to decency" in the streets of his city and asked the American authorities to establish brothels outside town. There was also a racial dimension as African American soldiers received very different treatment than did whites from the American military authorities. They seem also to have been subjected to more severe complaints by the French as well (Schuessler, 2013).Reviewing Ian Buruma’s book on the year 1945, Charles Simic noted that five times more women were hospitalized in Paris for sexually transmitted, or venereal, diseases in 1945 than in 1939. “Allied soldiers,” he wrote, “were greeted by young girls and some older women the way the Beatles, as Buruma says, were treated twenty years later when they first became popular” (Simic, 2013).