The Allies' triumphant march into Paris in 1944 was met with cheering crowds of liberated Parisians. After the cheering stopped, American deserters and their French cohorts violently exploited the city with the ruthless efficiency of the Chicago mobs of the 1920s. Well organized, and heavily armed, these GIs-turned-gangsters made huge profits on Paris' thriving black market with their unlimited supplies of cigarettes, gasoline and other commodities.
Along with this illicit enterprise came rape, murder, robbery, prostitution and epidemic venereal disease. American military justice worked at controlling the crime wave--handling nearly 8,000 criminal investigations in the year after liberation--but only the end of the war in 1945 put a stop to it. This book details the exploits of these “liberators” and identifies both French and American offenders.
Author(s): Kenneth D. Alford
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: Jefferson
Cover
Ackknowledgments
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The German Capture of Paris
2. D-Day, June 6, 1944
3. The 29th Machine Records Unit
4. The Hangings
5. The Liberation of Paris
6. Paris, City of Lights
7. The Officer’s Formal Mess
8. The Mess and Billeting Office of the Hotel Astra
9. The Black Market
10. Paris Detention Barracks
11. The Vincennes Gang
12. The Channel Islands Crash
13. The Voltaire Gang
14. The Lola Murder
15. The 2nd Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment
16. The Million-Dollar Battalion
17. The Arrest of Men of the Million-Dollar Battalion
18. The Cigarette Trials
19. A Review of the Trials
20. The Execution of Private Slovik
21. Postwar Paris
22. Martinez’s Early Years
23. Martinez Returns to Germany
24. Springtime in Paris
25. Murder in La Place Pigalle
26. The Trials
27. Mannheim Prison: Maximum Security
28. The Inevitable End
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
