• Culture How to be a good cop in Nazi-occupied Paris

A criminal investigation is always complex. If you add to this the circumstances, such as that your country has been invaded by a foreign power, that you are still at war and that your government is collaborationist, any difficulty in seeking the truth multiplies exponentially. However, the adventures of French police detective Eddie Giral, created by writer Chris Lloyd, not only tell us a mystery but are a historically well-documented portrait of the occupation of Paris by the Nazis during World War II.

The first thing that strikes you is that imposing martial law and curfew in a military occupation is not synonymous with domination. "As much as a city is controlled by an occupier, there is always going to be a clandestine element, which can take any form. It may be Parisians resisting or people who take advantage of the situation to defraud and deceive the occupiers or their French compatriots. In this clandestine world there can also be people who only try to get ahead but try, in some way, to make the occupation more bearable, "says Lloyd in conversation with this media.

In his novels appear the protagonists of this "clandestine world" around Giralt an unclassifiable detective who "has always moved between two worlds, that of the police and the courts, and that of criminals and gangsters, so he has long known that he must use both sides to achieve his own objectives. " However, the German occupation completely changes the landscape so that "the need to use both sides and pit them against each other becomes even more necessary, not only for justice to be done, but for Eddie's own survival. You will have to become an expert in knowing who to play with, how and when," says the author.

The Nazis are a fundamental part of Lloyd's novels, not only for being "at the top of the food chain: they have the power to decide on the life or death of anyone below" but also for moving on all levels, even the underground. There are "officers who use, to corrupt everything in their path, abusive laws and regulations created to suit them or of foot soldiers who want to live big in Paris or make money from their new position of power."

Book cover

It is in this environment that Giralt survives by applying his "high sense of duty" or "whatever form of justice is possible in such an aberrant system. The Nazis, both themselves and through the French police, are the ones who enforce the law (most of which has been created by them), but it is up to someone like Eddie to try to ensure that justice is done and that he and those around him can get out of this horrendous experience as well as justice. Somehow, he manages to stay unscathed."

That is Giralt's commitment "while everything around him is corrupted" so he performs "his detective work satisfactorily according to his criteria" which often leads him "to come into conflict with the occupant and his objectives. To get away with it, Eddie will have to make tough decisions and find a way to carry them out without endangering himself or those around him."

A new adventure

'Requiem for Paris' (Main of the Books) is the new novel by Chris Lloyd starring Giralt after 'The forgotten', the debut of the French detective with origins in Northern Catalonia and that drags a terrible trauma since the First World War. As in the previous book is set in Paris in 1940 and while the city adapts to the Nazi occupation, Giral "struggles to reconcile his work as a policeman under a regime in which he cannot believe."

As they adapt, ghosts from the past appear, such as an old friend and an old love, who will ask for the help of Giralt whose fragile "moral compass" will be questioned again. Lloyd returns to introduce us to a ruthless detective but vulnerable because of the scars he carries: "Now that Eddie knows that there are people in his life who need his support, his self-destructive tendencies and his nihilism about his own safety have had to subside. He must control his false suicidal rituals, for now that there are people who care about him, these rituals no longer have a place in the behavior he must adopt."

However, this vulnerability is a path to redemption when he realizes that, "to survive the occupation, he is going to have to become much more ruthless and resort to a more dangerous version of himself that he hoped he had left behind. That worries him a lot and will cause conflicts inside his own mind and with the very people he is supposed to protect," explains the author.

Passionate about World War II and occupied France, Lloyd's novels have a solid historical setting in which the episodes that actually occurred are mixed with the plot. Thus, in this volume we will know the massacre of the 'bois d'Eraine' in which several French officers died for trying to defend the soldiers of African origin after being captured by the Germans and who were never seen again since their graves have not been found. Unlike the metropolitan French prisoners of war, the African and Arab soldiers taken prisoner were not sent to Germany, but kept in camps in France: the frontstalags.

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The Nazis argued that it was to prevent the spread of tropical diseases as well as the "racial contamination" of German women. In these prison camps the conditions of confinement were much harsher and the mortality rate higher. The novel also narrates how some criminals "became extremely powerful during the occupation" and in particular Henri Lafont who "achieved extraordinary power thanks, at first, to the Abwehr" and even his gang was known as the Carlingue or the French Gestapo since he collaborated closely with the Germans.

"Ultimately, the criminals were at the mercy of the Nazis. If the criminals took the slightest step in the wrong direction, the Nazis punished them immediately. The same happened with the corrupt police, who, in many cases, then maintained their power for their usefulness to the occupiers. When the Nazis stopped perceiving this value, the police came to consider themselves much less useful, and ceased to have protection that could have sheltered them so far, "says the author who details that Giralt must deal with both these criminals and the Nazis who "have the last word regarding their destiny."

'The pilot's salt'

Another of the authentic elements introduced in the novel is pervitin, "the miracle drug of Nazi Germany, which was sold without a prescription and delivered to the Wehrmacht in the form of pills." It was also known as "pilot's salt" and its effect was to allow soldiers to stay awake for days, be active for long periods without rest, and endure pain and hunger. Millions of them were distributed to German soldiers during the Battle of France and the invasion, as well as the Ardennes offensive, were made possible by their use.

Despite this, the authorities found that the drug posed numerous health problems such as heart failure, psychosis and addiction, so it was regulated from 1941 but continued to be used. It is also narrated that among the first works that was represented in Paris when the theaters opened in the autumn of 1940 was 'Fidelio', the only opera by Beethoven that narrates how political prisoners win over oppression. "It was a strange choice and must have felt like a kick in the teeth for Parisians, if it was chosen by the occupiers, or as an intelligent and mischievous mockery of the Nazis, if it was a French decision to stage it," says the author who recalls that after the end of the war "it became the first opera to be performed in Berlin."

The novel also talks about the particularity of some Parisians of the time to travel the city with two fishing rods to show their support for De Gaulle and the resistance. "The occupant reportedly never understood its meaning, which is strangely gratifying," Lloyd adds.

The 'Catalanness' of Giral

One of the main virtues of the detective created by Lloyd is that he knows how to win over people, whether they are Nazi officers, criminals, members of the resistance or Parisians who adapt to German soldiers. "I think it must be because it looks authentic. He goes with leaden feet and says what he thinks. In reality, he will surely have to be much more cunning if he wants to survive the occupation. Ultimately, he tries to be a good man in dire times and will always strive to protect the vulnerable, a quality that people recognize him."

For its creator the detective earns the respect of everyone, either of other policemen for being "very conscientious"; "the toughest gangsters, common criminals and people in the less privileged areas of Paris know they can talk to him" and the Germans seeing him as "a much more cultured and knowledgeable man than their prejudices expect of him." "Perhaps, these deep veins, unpredictable and hidden, intertwined in his character are what make people pay more attention to him and be surprised. Sometimes they have to work hard to break through the protective layers that Eddie has thrown on himself, but they certainly see something in him that makes the effort worthwhile," says Lloyd.

The author of the book

But the origins in Northern Catalonia plan in its way of being. "There are traits in Eddie that could be attributed to his Catalan origin, but he is also very marked by his experiences in the First World War. In its nature, in short, many elements are mixed that are difficult to individualize. He is a rather reserved and distrustful character, unable to open up easily: this could be interpreted as a Catalan trait, but possibly it is also his past that has made him isolate himself from people, "says Lloyd who adds that he also has "a great sense of loyalty and morality (although he often goes astray). But, even when he opens up to others, he has a hard time letting these feelings surface fully. In many ways, he has the 'seny' without the 'rauxa.'"

The author knows well the Catalan character since after graduating in Hispanic and French Studies, he got on a bus in Cardiff and headed to Catalonia, where he lived for more than twenty years. He has also lived in Grenoble, where he researched the French Resistance movement, in the Basque Country and in Madrid, where he taught English and worked in a publishing house specializing in textbooks and as a travel writer. He currently lives in South Wales and is a translator and novelist.

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