OVERVIEW - CultureShock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette - page 17

elaborated upon here. In Paris, life on the surface may have
looked 'normal' with restaurants, nightclubs and theatres
functioning (mostly for the occupiers), children playing in the
parks and Parisians still going to church, but the newspapers
were closed down and censorship and curfews established.
Forbidden to own cars, Parisians crowded the métro , except
on weekends when it was closed to them. Clocks were set
to German time. Signs and restaurant menus appeared in
German, and while the Germans lived well, Parisians were
cold and hungry. But in the face of brutal repression and
privations, executions for infractions of Nazi rules and a
roundup and deportation of thousands of Jews by the Vichy
government itself, there was nothing to do but endure, and
clandestinely, to resist.
After D-Day on 6 June 1944 and the breakthrough of the
German lines by the Allies, Paris rose up. Look around as you
walk around Paris today and see the plaques remembering
the brave French individuals who fought in the city's streets
and died for La France. Stop on the corner of rue de Rivoli
and rue Saint-Florentin, as you come out of the métro,
where there are ten such plaques in a row, often covered
by wreaths, and thank those heroes for having defied the
Nazis' tanks right on that busy street. Finally, on 25 August
1944, after heavy fighting in the streets of Paris, General de
Gaulle marched triumphant into the city, ready to take on
the rebuilding of France.
From Then Until Now
It would be nice to say that all has been peaceful in Paris
since then, but that wouldn't be true. For the next 12 years,
the Fourth Republic (1946-1958) focused on rebuilding a
country whose infrastructure had been destroyed by war.
Hardship finally gave way to recovery, riding on the American-
led Marshall Plan, combined with a French economic plan,
and Paris seemed on its way to modernity. But the country's
North African colonies, especially Algeria, wanted their
independence, and a grizzly war (1954-1962) complete with
massacres, torture and finally exodus, brought more than
500,000 colonists into France, especially Paris, where many