Paris Under the Nazis: Happy Days?
The photographs from the early 1940s show Paris as sunny, airy, bursting with color. Its inhabitants appear carefree, content and refreshingly unaware of their proclivity for looking très chic. It's all very much at odds with the prevailing image of the French capital suffering and smoldering under the yoke of its Nazi occupiers. Indeed, that very dissonance has made the current photo exhibit
"Parisians Under the Occupation" one of the city's most controversial cultural events of late. Was life in Nazi-controlled Paris really as idyllic as these pictures suggest?....