“Leben wie Gott in Frankreich” (“living like God in France”) was an expression frequently used by German soldiers posted to France during World War II to describe their experience there. This was a prize posting, enjoyed by a surprising number of German troops over the course of the war, as they moved between France on the one hand, and Germany and the eastern front on the other. France was not just an economy and source of labor to be exploited; it also served the Wehrmacht as a staging area—a safe haven for German troops to rest and relax, for training new recruits, and for regrouping Wehrmacht units decimated on the eastern front.

Julia Torrie's book seeks to explore the nature of the German occupation of France from the perspective of the German occupiers, and especially that of the ground-level soldiers who moved in and out of the country. Never numbering more than a few thousand at any one time until the last year of the occupation, many were only in France for a few months, although others—the administrators—were there for much of the duration. The fundamental challenge facing the occupiers was that this be a model occupation that would dispel the World War I image of the German soldier as a barbarian. Instead, the German soldier was to be a civilized and cultural sophisticate, a chivalrous protector of a feminized and infantilized France, who would help a highly cultured, but decadent, superficial, and inefficient France realize her potential within the context of the new German-dominated Europe. This objective quickly clashed with the occupation's reality: ruthless exploitation of the French economy and labor force with as little investment in terms of personnel and effort as possible. In spite of the veneer of civility, this was a very unequal power relationship, and the Germans’ dominance over the French was clear, as Torrie ably demonstrates.

Embracing the fiction that these men were in France as guests and tourists, the ordinary troops were encouraged to partake in all the pleasures on offer through shopping; tourist activities; photography; the rich cultural life of France, especially in Paris; and French cuisine. Unlike plundering, shopping was actively encouraged by the German authorities in both Paris and Berlin, and with the artificially set exchange rate, the soldiers could indulge themselves and their families in ways that they could not in Germany. Enjoying the sights, either on their own, with the aid of officially sanctioned guidebooks, or via Wehrmacht-organized tours, was also officially encouraged. This was a way to reinforce the image of the civilized German as well as to teach them how to behave “correctly” in France, to reinforce a racialized worldview (pseudo-Germanic sites were high on the list of sites to visit), and to reward the men for their hard work and sacrifices on the battlefront. It also reinforced the idea of a civilized and “proper” occupation in which the French were to be treated with respect, thus facilitating the country's exploitation on the cheap. Photography, both amateur (located in both private collections and the photo collection of the Bundesarchiv) and officially produced, reinforced this sense of being a tourist because the photos largely focused on leisure activities. So too did the troops’ enjoyment of French theaters, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and brothels.

This fiction of civility and the reality were never fully reconciled. Indeed, as the occupation progressed, tensions mounted on several levels. After an eighteen-month “honeymoon period” during which relations were reasonably cordial, the invasion of the Soviet Union unleashed a steadily escalating resistance activity, which threw into doubt the fiction that France was a safe haven for R & R and that the French, if not welcomed the Germans, at least tolerated them. This led to increasing tension between Paris and Berlin. The occupation authorities in Paris continued to insist that they needed to maintain moderation in their efforts to suppress resistance in order not to jeopardize French cooperation in France's own exploitation—a position they maintained almost until the last days of the occupation. Although these authorities tried to curtail the ordinary soldiers’ fun by attempting to control their interactions with the French population, the men's enjoyment of what France had to offer them recreationally was never shut down because it served too important a purpose. Berlin, on the other hand, had little patience for this approach and sought a much harsher reprisal policy against resistance activity, setting up a fight that lasted till the last days of the occupation.

As the war in the east turned against Germany and troops from that front were rotated through France, another source of tension arose between the long-term occupiers and the Osttruppen (eastern troops). Both the troops from the eastern front and those from Berlin came to view the long-time occupiers as having gone Westweich or “west-soft.” Having spent too much time in the west, these men were dismissed as unfit for combat, mere hedonists undermining the war effort. The implications of this were two-fold. Berlin sought to eliminate this Etappengeist (spirit of the rear) by shaking up and downsizing the occupation administration in France, with little success. Second, troops from the eastern front, when deployed to France, were shocked by the apparent emasculation of the German soldiers there. Shaped by ideological indoctrination and their experiences in the east, the Osttruppen were determined to avoid falling into the same trap. Indeed, Torrie suggests that their disdain for the long-term occupiers and determination to demonstrate their own strength and masculinity may have pushed them to prove that strength through a number of brutal atrocities. The perceived weakness of the occupiers, then, spurred the Osttruppen's violence.

German Soldiers and the Occupation of France offers a new and thought-provoking perspective on the occupation experience in Europe. It complements effectively the substantial literature focused on the German soldiers’ experience on the eastern front. Julia Torrie convincingly argues that, if one wants to understand the occupations of World War II from the German perspective, it is important to recognize that the occupation of any single country was part of a Europe-wide system and that no particular occupation can be considered in isolation from the other, even when the practice of occupation varied from region to region. Her tracing of the tensions within the fundamental objectives of the occupation of France and their implications sheds new light on both that story and on the German experience during World War II more broadly. For anyone interested in the occupation experience of World War II, from the perspective of either the occupier or the occupied, Torrie's book is a must-read.