> It is interesting that, despite being so awful, the Nazis let people write these last letters. One should be more precise here. France wasn’t occupied by th

> It is interesting that, despite being so awful, the Nazis let people write these last letters. One should be more precise here. France wasn’t occupied by the SS, but by the German Army, with many officers/Generals being from old aristocratic stock and its old ideals of knightly warrior ethos. For example in 1944 the military commander of France himself was part of the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler and coup angainst the NSDAP (for which he was of course executed). It is not that the Wehrmacht or common soldiers didn’t do war crimes, and of course there was a command chain to Berlin and Hitler, but a German officer in Paris had a way different outlook on life (drinking good wine, having an affair with a Mademoiselle, going to the theatres, enjoying life at the Seine, waiting that the Americans come so the war can finally be over) than a Waffen-SS brutalist murdering his way through the eastern front. Side note: The communists were totally confused by the Hitler-Stalin pact. Wiki: > the French Communist Party had long denounced Nazism and Fascism, but after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on August 23rd 1939, had to reverse direction. The editors of the Communist Party newspaper, L'Humanité, which had been closed down by the French government, asked the Germans for permission to resume publishing, and it was granted. The Party also asked that workers resume work in the armaments factories, which were now producing for the Germans.