The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, Death, and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris

265 Pages·2014·1.94 MB·English

by  Tilar J. Mazzeo

Dedication
FOR EMMANUEL
IL FAUT ÊTRE TRÈS PATIENT. . .
JE TE REGARDERAI DU COIN DE
L’OEIL ET TU NE DIRAS RIEN.
Epigraph
LUXURY STAINS EVERYONE IT TOUCHES.
—Charles Ritz
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Cast of Characters
Prologue: The Hôtel Ritz, the Mirror of Paris
1 - This Switzerland in Paris: June 1940
2 - All the Talk of Paris: June 1, 1898
3 - Dogfight above the Place Vendôme: July 27, 1917
4 - Diamonds as Big as the Ritz: September 1, 1940
5 - The Americans Drifting to Paris: 1944
6 - The French Actress and Her Nazi Lover
7 - The Jewish Bartender and the German Resistance
8 - The American Wife and the Swiss Director
9 - The German General and the Fate of Paris
10 - The Press Corps and the Race to Paris
11 - Ernest Hemingway and the Ritz Liberated
12 - Those Dame Reporters: August 26, 1944
13 - The Last Trains from Paris
14 - Coco’s War and Other Dirty Linen
15 - The Blonde Bombshell and the Nuclear Scientists
16 - From Berlin with Love and Last Battles in Paris: 1945
17 - Waning Powers in Paris: June 1951
18 - The War’s Long Shadow: May 29, 1969
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Photography Credits
Index
About the Author
Also by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Cast of Characters
THE HOTEL STAFF
BLANCHE AUZELLO: Reckless and beautiful American-born, German-Jewish wife
of the director of the Hôtel Ritz. She lived in Paris during the war on a forged
passport and was drawn unwittingly into the secret networks of the resistance.
CLAUDE AUZELLO: Chief director of the Hôtel Ritz, an old French soldier, skilled
at catering to the whims of the rich and famous. Otherwise gravely polite, he was
rash in his contempt for the hotel’s German occupiers. Unbeknownst to his wife,
he was part of a second resistance network run from the kitchens of the Hôtel
Ritz and under close German surveillance.
HANS FRANZ ELMINGER: Officious German-speaking, Swiss-born deputy
manager, delegated with managing day-to-day operations involving the Nazis.
He was the nephew of the Hôtel Ritz president, the baron Hans von Pfyffer.
Studiously neutral to all appearances, in the last summer of the war he and his
wife, LUCIENNE, guarded a dangerous secret.
MARIE-LOUISE, MADAME RITZ: Widow of the hotel’s late founder, César Ritz;
she was a savvy Swiss businesswoman but frequently vain and foolish.
Accompanied everywhere by two Belgian griffons, Madame Ritz despised
BLANCHE AUZELLO, who ardently returned the favor.
CHARLES “CHARLEY” RITZ: Son of MARIE-LOUISE and the hotel’s eponymous
founder, César Ritz; a passionate sportsman, reluctant hotelier, and drinking
buddy of ERNEST HEMINGWAY.
FRANK MEIER: Legendary bartender at the rue Cambon side bar at the Hôtel Ritz,
inventor of some of the most famous classic cocktails of the 1930s; one-quarter
Jewish, Austrian-born, and active in the resistance. The informal post office run
from behind Frank’s bar was known to both French and German intelligence
operatives. His second-in-command and successor was barman GEORGES
SCHEUER.
MONSIEUR SÜSS: The Swiss assistant director of the Ritz who played both sides
against the middle. With Claude Auzello, he worked to circumvent German air
raid regulations and to aid the Allies; with the Germans, he colluded in looting
the cultural patrimony of Paris.
OLIVIER DABESCAT: Waiter, maître d’hôtel, and MARCEL PROUST’S chatty
informer. Stern, precise, cool, and forbidding, he was the final arbiter of social
prestige at the Hôtel Ritz and, in the eyes of those who feared him, one of the
silent powers behind the thrones of Europe.
AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER: One of the Hôtel Ritz’s cofounders and the greatest chef of
the twentieth century, he introduced the modern menu and made it possible for
women to dine in public. The French actress SARAH BERNHARDT was his on-
again, off-again lover and his greatest passion.
THE GERMANS
REICHSMARSCHALL HERMANN GÖRING: The morphine-addicted, flamboyantly
excessive, and often ludicrous German air force general, Hermann Göring spent
much of the war at the Hôtel Ritz pillaging art, running the Nazi war machine,
and desperately trying to avoid the brutal rages of ADOLF HITLER, who blamed
his second-in-command for failing to secure world domination.
COLONEL HANS SPEIDEL: German colonel who occupied various chief-of-staff
positions in occupied Paris. Responsible in the early years of the occupation for
overseeing the daily administration of the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, he was later part of
Operation Valkyrie, the doomed summer plot to assassinate ADOLF HITLER.
CARL-HEINRICH VON STÜLPNAGEL: Military commander of occupied Paris; with
his cousin LIEUTENANT COLONEL CAESAR VON HOFACKER, central players in the
failed Operation Valkyrie.
CAESAR VON HOFACKER: With his cousin CARL-HEINRICH VON STÜLPNAGEL, one
of the architects in Paris of the failed Operation Valkyrie.
HANS GÜNTHER VON DINCKLAGE: Charming, forty-something German diplomat,
best known for his success with the ladies and his scandalous wartime liaison
with fashion designer COCO CHANEL. Resident playboy spy of the Hôtel Ritz, he
was a man of uncertain loyalties.
HANS-JÜRGEN SOEHRING: German Luftwaffe officer and wartime lover of the
famous French film star ARLETTY.
DIETRICH VON CHOLTITZ: In charge of Paris during the last days of the
occupation, the German general who defied ADOLF HITLER and refused to burn
Paris—perhaps not entirely out of altruism.
WILHELM CANARIS: Head of the German intelligence offices at the Abwehr in
Paris, he played a dark game of counterintelligence as a British double agent
until his discovery and arrest in the winter of 1944.
ARNO BREKER: “Hitler’s Michelangelo” and a card-carrying member of the Nazi
Party, he hobnobbed in the Paris art world during the 1920s and 1930s,
becoming friends with JEAN COCTEAU and PABLO PICASSO, for whom his wife,
Demetra, modeled. In 1942, he returned to occupied Paris for a celebrated art
exhibit during the season that became the high-water mark of collaboration.
THE POLITICIANS
GENERAL CHARLES DE GAULLE: Cantankerous, patriotic leader of the Free French
government-in-exile, whose views of the liberation of Paris were increasingly at
odds with the military strategies of the Allies in that last summer of 1944.
WINSTON CHURCHILL: Eloquent and posh wartime prime minister of Great
Britain and frequent Hôtel Ritz denizen, he knew COCO CHANEL from summers
on the French Riviera. Increasingly exasperated with the obstreperous CHARLES
DE GAULLE, WINSTON CHURCHILL would have much preferred GEORGES MANDEL
in the French leadership and didn’t mind saying so in the last days of the
occupation.
GEORGES MANDEL: Sartorially challenged Jewish-born journalist and former
French minister, he was a long-term resident of the Hôtel Ritz and persuaded
MARIE-LOUISE RITZ at the fall of France to keep the hotel’s doors open. Arrested
early in the war and incarcerated as a prisoner by the Germans, his execution
sealed the fate of his ancient archrival.
PIERRE LAVAL: Chain-smoking chief minister of the French government
established at Vichy during the Nazi period; a brutal pragmatist and arch-
collaborator, often found at the Hôtel Ritz. He amassed great personal power and
was responsible for the deportation of Jewish children from France but claimed
he was only a “trustee in bankruptcy.”
PAUL MORAND: French diplomat and writer, friend of COCO CHANEL, JEAN
COCTEAU, and MARCEL PROUST, he was the PRINCESS SOUTZO’s secret lover and
later husband; under her influence, he took the side of Vichy France during the
occupation.
THE AMERICAN WAR PERSONNEL AND CORRESPONDENTS
ROBERT CAPA: Courageous, charismatic, and dangerously handsome Hungarian-
born American war photographer, he quarreled bitterly with ERNEST HEMINGWAY
in the days before the liberation of Paris. INGRID BERGMAN’s lover, he was part
of the complicated tangle of loyalties and betrayals that ended ERNEST
HEMINGWAY’s third marriage.
MARTHA GELLHORN: American war correspondent and ERNEST HEMINGWAY’s
third wife, she was vivacious, witty, fiercely independent, and the unknowing
target of MARLENE DIETRICH’s devious sexual jealousy.
LEE MILLER: Famously beautiful American photographer and war correspondent
for Vogue, friend of PABLO PICASSO; like American journalist HELEN
KIRKPATRICK, she reported on the liberation of Paris.
MARY WELSH: A perky and cute American “dame” journalist with a penchant for
frank talk and for going braless under tight sweaters. She had a wartime affair
with ERNEST HEMINGWAY at the Hôtel Ritz and went on to become the fourth
wife of the famous writer. Cozy with MARLENE DIETRICH but scorned by ROBERT
CAPA, she, too, reported firsthand on the liberation of Paris.
HENRY WOODRUM: Shot down during a daytime air raid over Paris in the weeks
before the liberation, the American pilot was the only man known to have
“walked out” of the occupied capital. Hunted by the Gestapo, he had French
citizens to thank for his unprecedented survival.
FRED WARDENBURG: Career executive at Du Pont in chemical manufacturing, he
was called upon in the days after the liberation to become the scientific James
Bond of his generation—and to join the undercover wing of the Manhattan
Project in Paris in the race to prevent the Germans from developing nuclear
weapons.