OVERVIEW - CultureShock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette - page 16

The Great War
However, World War I, known as the Great War, changed
the face of Paris once again. Paris may have faced sporadic
bombardment, but it was the aftermath of the war that
had the greatest impact on the city. More than 1.5 million
Frenchmen between the ages of 25-45 were killed and
another million maimed during the long war. It was said
that 'a generation was lost'. The birth rate plummeted,
and women went to work in Paris. They also smoked in
public, wore short skirts and were open about their love
affairs (although they didn't get to vote until after World
War II). Skilled workers were desperately needed to rebuild
and modernise the city, but had disappeared. If previous
influxes of workers into the city were from the French
provinces, now Paris opened its doors to foreign immigrants,
and they came by the thousands. Some new arrivals
integrated themselves, but others formed their own ethnic
enclaves within the city confines and beyond. The 'crazy
years' of the 1920s also saw foreign writers and artists
flocking to Montparnasse, the new artistic quartier , and
the entire Left Bank was populated by such lights as Ernest
Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein.
World War I may have ended with the Great Depression
for the Americans, but the arts and high living in Paris still
thrived—until Hitler made the city his own.
World War II
On 16 June 1940, Paris capitulated to Germany and the city
was occupied by the Nazis. In May 1940, the population of
Greater Paris stood at 3.5 million, but a month later it had
diminished by more than half, those with resources to do
so having fled. What was left in Paris, as one can imagine,
were the workers and the poor. A puppet government was
set up in Vichy under the World War I hero Marshall Henri
Philippe Pétain. General Charles de Gaulle left for London,
where he announced a government in exile, calling upon all
'Free French' to resist.
World War II is recent enough that the atrocities committed,
the concentration camps and the deprivations need not be