From The Long War, Correspondence from Occupied France

A Correspondence from Occupied France, 1943-1944

In May 1940, France fell to Nazi Germany in a campaign that lasted just six weeks. What followed were four years of occupation—a time of collaboration and resistance, of small acts of defiance and great acts of courage, of neighbors betraying neighbors and strangers risking everything for each other.

This collection of letters tells the story of three people caught in the machinery of occupied France: Élise Rousseau, a schoolteacher in a small town in the Loire Valley; her brother Antoine, a French prisoner of war held in Germany; and Claire Beaumont, Élise's childhood friend who has joined the Resistance. Their correspondence was dangerous—discovered letters could mean deportation, torture, or death. Yet they wrote anyway, using coded language, dead drops, and trusted couriers to maintain connection across a fractured world.   (Note: "Maman" is French for Mother.)

These letters span from January 1943 to August 1944, from the depths of occupation through to liberation. They chronicle the daily reality of life under Nazi rule, the moral compromises required for survival, and the extraordinary risks taken by ordinary people who refused to accept defeat. The letters reflect the careful language of the time—what could be said, what had to be implied, and what was too dangerous to commit to paper at all.

What makes their story remarkable is not that they were heroes in the traditional sense, but that they were simply people trying to do what they believed was right in impossible circumstances. Their story is one of thousands like it, most of which were never recorded, lost to history along with the people who lived them.