Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure Review

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Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure ReviewThis is not a book about wine--it's actually a non-fiction historical thriller with wine as the prize. All you need to know about wine is what most people know: Wine is part of the French soul. It is not merely a drink or a product. It is more important than all the perfumes and fashions and cheeses put together. Even those funny cars the French make that look like vacuum cleaners. Nothing in American cultural life has similar status.
At the outset of World War II France suffered the shame and disgrace not of defeat but of total collapse. She had the world's largest army--one that gave the Germans pause, in fact-- and yet somehow was under the Nazi jackboot in about six weeks. Naturally, the Nazis set about to systematically loot the country.
Here I'd like to ask a question I've not seen asked before: the Nazis took it as written that they and their culture were absolutely superior to everyone else in the world. Why then their unbridled need to steal the cultural riches of all the nations they conquered? Some booty was sold to finance the war, but most of the cultural treasures--France's wines and artworks, for example--were stolen merely out of greed and jealousy.
When it came to looting France's wines, the Nazis were well-organized. They appointed experts called weinfuhrers to organize the theft, much of which was conducted under a charade of legality: The Nazis overvalued the mark, devalued the franc, closed all other export markets, told the producers what their prices would be and ordered them to sell the wine. Here Don and Petie Kladstrups unveil the amazingly inbred world of wine, in which everbody of importance seems to be related to, married to or employed by someone else of equal importance. As the authors show, this meant the weinfuhrers were sometimes as loyal to France as to Germany.
The winemakers resisted as often as they could and perpetrated many frauds on the Nazis. They saved a fair amount of their greatest wines and sold the Wehrmacht as much plonk as they could get away with. The Kladstrups tell how--and in doing so they have rescued a small but important piece of history. The New Europe leans toward institutional forgetfulness today--and so does France herself. Memories of collaboration intrude all too easily, and these are followed by nettlesome ambiguities and doubts. Ratting on your neighbor was collaboration, but so was trading with the Nazis--even when you had no choice. Marshal Petain, head of the Vichy government was condemned at war's end and DeGaulle hailed as a hero--but surely it was easier to be heroic in London?
There are a couple of minor factual errors and a couple of anecdotes that aren't credible, but most of this complicated but absorbing tale rings true. Some scenes the Kladstrups re-create are slyly amusing, a few are comic and many--the best of themn--are intensely moving. These were proud people, remember, whose faces were ground into the dirt by brutish conquerors every day. For five years they struggled desperately to save their lives and their families, their self-respect and their hope for a future.
It's a hell of a story.Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure Overview

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