Review: Love Transcends in The Last Hours in Paris

The Last Hours in Paris book by Ruth Druart

‘To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.’
Victor Hugo

Around 200,000 children were born between 1941 and 1945 as a result of liaisons between French women and occupying German troops.

This phenomenon is the starting point for Ruth Druart’s second novel – The Last Hours In Paris, set during the Nazi occupation of France. German translator Sebastian falls in love with Élise, a young Parisian woman who has been trying to help Jewish orphans escape deportation. Here Druart asks questions not often considered in WW2 literature. How far were the occupying Germans victims themselves? What were their attitudes towards the locals? And what was the fate of the women who ‘liaised’ with them?

Women of the Wild Purge

As the title suggests, the novel is set around the liberation of Paris at the end of the war. During this time there was a wave of executions of suspected collaborators known as the ‘wild purge’. Anyone suspected to be working for the Germans was called a ‘collabo’, and there was a more specific term for women who had romantic or sexual relations with them – ‘femme tondue’ who engaged in ‘horizontal collaboration’. The punishment for this was public head shaving and often a jail sentence. This was immortalised in the infamous ‘Shaved Woman of Chartres’ photo, showing one of these women carrying a baby while surrounded by a mob.

Shaved woman collaborator — *A woman being shaved by civilians to publicly mark her as a collaborator*

Although it’s not mentioned in the novel, one of the most high profile of these women was fashion designer Coco Chanel. As German tanks entered Paris she sought refuge in the luxury Hotel Ritz, which was also headquarters of the German military. It was there she fell in love with Nazi officer Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, who reported directly to Goebbels. Unlike most women, Chanel avoided criminal charges by fleeing to Switzerland at the time of the liberation.

Love Transcends

While The Last Hours in Paris is firstly a heart-rending love story, Druart has thoroughly researched the period, vividly bringing this era of German occupation to life. She was inspired by the real life story of her great uncle Wolfgang, who came from Eastern Germany, and was required to join the Hitler Youth at 15. He met her great aunt Dorothy after coming to England as a prisoner of war.

With war once again breaking out in Europe, The Last Hours in Paris is a reminder that there are no winners whichever side may call itself the victor. While so many war stories are reductive and black and white, this novel reminds us that real life is rarely so simple.

Chillingly, the last question suggested for reading groups is ‘Genocide still happens today in parts of the world. Do you think it could ever happen again in Europe?’