The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, Death, and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris
Tilar J. Mazzeo
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0061791040
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Set against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of World War II, The Hôtel on Place Vendôme is the captivating history of Paris’s world-famous Hôtel Ritz—a breathtaking tale of glamour, opulence, and celebrity; dangerous liaisons, espionage, and resistance—from Tilar J. Manzeo, the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot and The Secret of Chanel No. 5
When France fell to the Germans in June 1940, the legendary Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme—an icon of Paris frequented by film stars and celebrity writers, American heiresses and risqué flappers, playboys, and princes—was the only luxury hotel of its kind allowed in the occupied city by order of Adolf Hitler.
Tilar J. Mazzeo traces the history of this cultural landmark from its opening in fin de siècle Paris. At its center, The Hotel on Place Vendôme is an extraordinary chronicle of life at the Ritz during wartime, when the Hôtel was simultaneously headquarters to the highest-ranking German officers, such as Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, and home to exclusive patrons, including Coco Chanel. Mazzeo takes us into the grand palace’s suites, bars, dining rooms, and wine cellars, revealing a hotbed of illicit affairs and deadly intrigue, as well as stunning acts of defiance and treachery.
Rich in detail, illustrated with black-and-white photos, The Hotel on Place Vendôme is a remarkable look at this extraordinary crucible where the future of post-war France—and all of post-war Europe—was transformed.
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Reopening of, in 2014, 237–38 remodeled, in 1979, 236 rue Cambon side, 17, 19, 33 spies in, 78, 108 staff of, xiii–xiv, 11, 20 Swiss ownership of, 10, 13–14, 33–34, 105 109, 196 war crimes tribunals and, 212–13 Windsors and, 218–25 Winston Churchill visits, 9–10 Hôtel Ritz bar (rue Cambon side), 88 Ernest Hemingway liberates, 137, 143, 145–47, 198–201 espionage and resistance at, 94–95, 102, 108 Marlene Dietrich at, 210–11 nuclear scientists at, 198, 201–2 pre–World War II, 68–69.
Marcel went on, “I have no choice of opinions on this subject,” having an Israelite mother. The last week of May 1898, those simmering tensions intensified in elite Paris. On May 23, the week before the opening of the Hôtel Ritz, Zola—whose first conviction for libel had been overturned on appeal—went on trial for a second time in a courtroom in Versailles, just outside Paris. Marcel, in a second act of defiance, went with coffee and sandwiches every morning to hear the evidence in the public.
“Whoever tries it is a chump.” It was a hopeful edict. Hemingway wasn’t in much of a state just then to write anything. The idea of the others busily filing press stories rankled. After dinner, an unthinking waiter “slapped a Vichy tax on the bill.” The waiter hadn’t quite comprehended that the liberation of Paris meant that no one had to follow all those repressive old wartime orders. The result was a jubilant general insurrection at the dining room table: “Straightaway we arose as one man and.
The French franc were crippling an economic recovery. Butter on the black market was ten dollars a pound, well beyond the reach of most in the city. The trials at Nuremberg would last until 1946 and unfold the extent of the horrors of which Martha Gellhorn had witnessed a small fraction. Eventually, two of the old Hôtel Ritz regulars, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hermann Göring, received death sentences in Germany. In Paris, justice—or justice of a sort—came faster. While the French celebrated.
Http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2007/06/whiter_days_ahe.html. 204 “were for conspicuous bravery in riding”: Thomas, “Wardenburg,” A8. He was made Member of the Order of the British Empire and awarded the Medal of Freedom from the United States, the nation’s highest civilian honor. 16: From Berlin with Love and Last Battles in Paris 207 Fewer than two thousand: Webster, “Vichy Policy on Jewish Deportation.” 208 A typhus epidemic: Moorehead, Martha Gellhorn, 282. 208.