ARTICLE: After the Defeat: Amiens, 1940

A while ago, I did a piece on the Somme, but turned away from the traditional First World War fodder in favour of talking about 1940.

You can see that piece here:

ARTICLE: Somme, 1940

Today, I wanted to return to the area, but after the initial shock of the fall of France and the massive exodus that saw 25% of French people flee their homes to escape the oncoming Germans.

I’ve been combing French newspapers, lovingly digitised by the Bnf, and so this story comes via an edition of Le Progrès de la Somme, from the end of July 1940. At the end of June, one Monsieur Chatelain returned to Amiens following the Armistice. He went to the newspaper offices, decided they were solid enough to work from, and soon he was joined by one of the editors returning home: Monsieur Marcel Roberrini. They began keeping notes: ‘a vital document for the history of our city.’ Hey weren’t wrong. Their account is a banger for anyone wanting to immerse themselves in what the aftermath of such devastation felt like. This is the first set they produced to account for what happened after the French defeat, minus some of the particularly fine administrative detail:

‘What a sad and painful sight greeted the people of Amiens returning to their city, the people of Picardy returning to their villages! Not one believed, not one had dared to believe, the extent of the disaster. Such destruction! So many rumours circulated throughout France about the ruins of Amiens.

From the Chartres area, a civilian, who was coming from there, had told us that not a single house remained standing.

Not one, sir!

And the Cathedral?

You can still see it a little!

Another had seen the Cathedral flown over on Sunday morning—it was 19th May—by 40 planes that had annihilated it! Fortunately, we were all the more determined not to believe this claim because we had seen—up close—the Cathedral intact the following morning...

These events are, however, excusable. Didn’t everyone, in the course of their arduous wanderings through the city, make a point of gathering information and informing others, each convinced of the truth of what they were saying?

The reality is right there before our eyes. Atrocious, agonising for the future, but there is something comforting in the attitude of all those returning, of those who have lost everything: no vain lamentations. What good is whining and despairing? Everything has to be rebuilt. But “we got out alive, and life can’t be replaced.”

Simple words, words of the French.

Yes, life goes on, and with it hope, the certainty of seeing better days again through hard work.

Let’s leave the people of Amiens to their sorrowful thoughts and see how things unfolded in the devastated city from the very first days of July:

(Archives départementales de la Somme)

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