Marseille and the Americans—A Wartime Story
If you try to understand the essence of a place or a city, it will plunge you into history—what happened here, who were here, what were the consequences, how is it now?
In Marseille, France, in my work as a local guide with groups of foreign travellers, I often get questions about World War II. Most people know something about the particular situation of the «Vichy-France»—the un-occupied «Free zone» in Southern France and French Algeria 1940-42. Some know about the «other» D-Day—the military operation «Dragoon» or «Anvil» (the Allied invasion on the Mediterranean Coast, August 15th, 1944). But few have heard about the importance of two Americans in wartime Marseille: the journalist Varian Fry and the diplomat Hiram Bingham IV.
Marseille was liberated August 28th 1944, but the port had been heavily damaged by the German army and allied bombings. The city had a strategically important situation with a port capacity facilitating the landing of Allied reinforcing divisions, offering a large discharge capacity that could support an entire army group, and connecting the port to the Ruhr Valley was a series of roads, rail linkages, and canals. The American Army and Navy engineers began clearing the port and repairing facilities, and from September 8, 1944, until January 25, 1945, the port discharged over two million tons of materials and employed over 11,000 workers. The southern route became a significant source of supplies to help the Allied advance into Germany, and providing about one third of the total Allied requirement.
Approximately 20 km (12 miles) from Marseille, an American military camp, «The Delta Base Section», was built with a capacity of 100.000 men, to receive American soldiers in transit. The last group of soldiers left Marseille for the USA in January 1946.
The documentary Marseille & Les Américains, Pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, about the American military and cultural presence in the city in 1944-46, was released on June 2020. It has been produced on the initiative of the General Consulat in Marseille, Simon Hankinson, French film producer Matthieu Verdeil, and history professor Robert Mencherini. The idea behind the documentary is to tell the story about daily and cultural life of people in Marseille and the importance of the military and civilian presence of Americans, told through people who were children or young adults during that particular time. These people still remember vividly about surviving in a city where food was scarce, where part of the city was bombed, about meeting an American soldier and learning how to play baseball, other stories are about the many marriages between American soldiers and French women. Many still remember the joy of American movies and music, which they were able to watch and listen to after the Liberation.
The documentary in four parts (about 15-20 minutes each) is produced especially for students of junior and senior high school, with unique images from archives, blended with the personal testimonies, on the sites where history took place—a history lesson that students can link to their actual life in Marseille. The two first parts are about Marseille during the war, the resistance and the liberation, whereas the two following parts tell about the years when the Americans had a military base in Provence, close to the city, and how the American presence has left several human and cultural traces.
Among the many stories in this documentary is the fascinating story of the journalist Varian Fry, a Harvard graduate and political journalist, working as a foreign correspondent for an American journal. He had visited Berlin in 1935 and personally witnessed Nazi abuse against Jews.
After his arrival in Marseille in 1940 on a personal mission to help members of the intellectual elite of Europe to escape, he created a rescue and relief network. With the support of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the American heiress Mary Jayne Gold and others, the «Emergency Rescue Commitee», a non-govermental organisation, helped over 2000 anti-nazi and Jewish refugees, and their families, who were endagered by the Nazis, including Hannah Arendt, Andre Breton, Heninrich Mann, March Chagall, Max Ernst and many others.
Varian Fry walking in Marseille
Image | Courtesy of Annette Fry, US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Hiram Bingham IV c. 1980
Image | Kaltj, Wikimedia Commons
Mary Jane Gold
Image | Varian Fry Institute
Varian Fry, who is sometimes referred to as the «American Oskar Schindler», was honored in 1994 as «Righteous among the Nations», an honorific given by the Yad Vashem organisation in Israel, to non-Jews risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. He was the first of five Americans to receive such a title. In 2000, the small square in front of the American consulate in Marseille was re-named for Varian Fry in recognition of his heroic efforts.
In 1945, Fry published the story about his time in France, under the title «Surrender on Demand», (a later edition was published in 1997). A brilliant biography was written in 2000 by Andy Marino, «A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry».
In order to maintain good relations with the Vichy France government, the US State Department actively discouraged diplomats in France during WWII from helping refugees. But an American diplomat posted at the US consulate in Marseille 1940-41, Hiram Bingham IV, helped Fry in the rescue actions. He assisted with falsifying passports, issuing visas and travel papers, facilitating the escape of the refugees, and even hiding them in his own home. Thereby Bingham violated both French law and U.S. Policy.
The posthumous discovery of Bingham's activities were found by his family in his personal documents in the 1980s and 1990s, and he was honored by the American Foreign Service Association with a special award for «constructive dissent and risk taking» in 2002.
The history of WWII is not forgotten and is still visible. If you've been in France in August, you might have seen how history is kept alive in the many commemorations, the historical reenactments, and the monuments. But we still need documentaries like «Marseille & Les Americains».
Whether you speak English or French, both versions are available for free on Vimeo:
Marseille and the Americans
Marseille and the Americans—Part 1
Marseille and the Americans— Part 2
Marseille and the Americans—Part 3
Marseille and the Americans—Part 4
Further reading:
Anna Seghers: «Transit» (English translation 1944) – a novel set in 1942, about Marseille and the chaos of a town full of people desperate to escape the Nazis, the story draws on the German author Seghers' own experience in wartime Marseille.
Mary Jayne Gold: «Crossroads Marseilles, 1940» (published 1980) – An autobiographical telling of Gold’s wartime experiences in helping the Emergency Rescue Committee.
