"I Heard the Sound of Planes"

By Genevra Willey

Now 83, Willey was living with her husband Jim, an Army captain, ten miles from Pearl Harbor.

It was a quiet morning, and we were lying in bed, talking about what the day would bring. Suddenly I heard the sound of planes, and I said, "Those aren't our planes." Jim called his base and asked if he should come down. They said no.

The sound got louder, and he called back. "Get the hell down here," they told him. By then there was no doubt we were being attacked. They were machine-gunning the road -- dirt splashing all over. A bomb dropped about 600 yds. from our house. I went out on the back porch, and the planes were swooping so low I could see the pilots inside.

The next day friends moved in with us. Their house had been riddled with machine-gun fire. We blacked out the house and had seven kids sleeping on cots in the living room.

"The Soldiers Behaved Well"

By Arletty

Born in 1898, Arletty was France's most famous actress when war broke out. With such other French artists as Maurice Chevalier, Jean Marais and Sacha Guitry, she performed through the Nazi Occupation. After Paris was liberated, she was imprisoned for consorting with a German officer.

The Occupation was really very peaceful. The soldiers behaved well. After a while, we ceased to notice them. The poor people suffered terribly, but we artists always found ways to buy coal or wood. As for food, we didn't eat a lot because we were all looking after our figures. Makeup was hard to come by, as were silk stockings. We used to wear Pan-Cake makeup on our legs, so it would seem as if we were wearing stockings. As an artist, I was committed only to my art, so it made sense for me to work. But people were jealous of my success and were only too glad to arrest me for a love affair that was none of their business.

A "Very Polite" Hitler

By Edda Mussolini Ciano

Ciano, 78, is the eldest daughter of Mussolini, who had her husband Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italy's wartime Foreign Minister, executed for treason in January 1944. Her Rome flat is decorated with plaques bearing the likeness of her father, who was shot dead by partisans in 1945.

I was at a hotel in Turin when it was first bombed (by the British) in June 1940. We all went downstairs to take shelter in the cellars. Beniamino Gigli (a famous operatic tenor) was there with his family, and so was Gianni Agnelli (now Fiat's chairman). Gigli was terrified of the bombs and exclaimed, "Oh, my God, I'm going to lose my voice!"

I didn't see the Fuhrer as the caricature he has since been made out to be. He was very polite and had a soft spot for me. I maintain that it was not the Fuhrer who wanted things to happen the way they did.

Life in the Resistance

By Jacques Chaban-Delmas

Premier of France from 1969 to 1972, Chaban-Delmas, now 74, headed a spy network in Paris for the Resistance, filching economic secrets. He was the only leader to stay in France throughout the war.

Most men in the field worked an average of 40 days before they were arrested, but I managed to keep going for 3 1/2 years. I must have changed addresses at least 20 times, and I changed my name so often I would momentarily forget which alias I was using. I would drop my information in "mailboxes" around Paris manned by the Resistance. It could be a restaurant, even a rock near a tree -- the places kept changing from week to week to keep ahead of the Germans.

"It Was Incredibly Macabre"

By Otto Von Habsburg

The son of Karl, Austria's last Emperor (1916-19), Habsburg is now 76.

The evening the government fled Paris, former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Hugh Gibson invited us to a dinner at the Ritz with Clare Boothe Luce and a collaborator of Polish General Vladislav Sikorski. It was incredibly macabre: the city was two-thirds surrounded by German troops, the sky was lit up with artillery fire, and there, at the Ritz, everything was as it had always been: waiters in tails, the food, the wine. The proprietor asked us to sign his guest book. Years later, I learned from Field Marshal Rommel's chief of staff that he and Rommel were the next ones to sign, a few days later.

We left Paris the next day for Bordeaux, where we arranged for Portuguese visas for as many Austrians as we could. By that time I was on a list of 49 persons the Nazis had asked the French to hand over. When we arrived at the Spanish frontier, it was closed on order of the Germans. I thought this was the end. But a customs official gave me a sign to follow him, led me behind the customs shed and said, "I know exactly who you are. Have you heard that resistance will continue? A certain General de Gaulle has called on us to continue. I shall leave for England tonight, and I could not care less how many of you I let pass." And so we reached Spain.

The Unsated Ogre

By Jean Lacouture

The French historian and De Gaulle biographer, now 68, thought that after swallowing Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Nazis would stop.

People thought the ogre had eaten and would be sated. Sooner or later there would be some sort of American mediation, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles would come to Europe and say, Be reasonable, stop. "The white Marne," they called it (an allusion to the World War I battle) -- a battle that would shed no blood.

When I got to Bordeaux (after the Germans had attacked and were nearing Paris), my parents had heard De Gaulle's June 18 broadcast and were already Gaullists. I had just been through this cataclysm -- a debacle, the country slipping away -- and I thought, This guy is crazy. I was for an armistice. What else could we do?

My greatest shock during the Occupation was the day I encountered an old lady I knew in Bordeaux. I didn't know she was Jewish, and I saw her walking down the street, feigning not to recognize me and trying to hide the yellow star sewn to her coat. I was filled with absolute shame. And I knew we were living in a terrible world.

"Treated Like Pariahs"

By Elisabeth De Miribel

Now 74, De Miribel was an aide to General Charles de Gaulle in London when he led the Free French forces.

When I first arrived in London, there were 800 Frenchmen. After France capitulated to Germany six months later, there were 20. Most returned to join the Vichy government since they knew the English were going to fight. Those who were about to return to France treated us like pariahs. They would cross the street to avoid running into us. They thought we were fools. I received a letter from my father prohibiting me from using my name in the service of the "Judeo-Communist-Gaullist conspiracy." He was very Petainist until the Germans marched into Paris; then he joined the Resistance.

". . . It Was Awful"

By Robert Merle

Merle, 81, was a French army interpreter for the British forces when captured at Dunkirk. He is the author of the novel Weekend at Dunkirk.

The British sent all kinds of boats. Big ones, little ones, paddle steamers, yachts, everything. It was gorgeous weather, hot and beautiful. Guys were lying on the dunes, shirts off, watching the combat between the British and German fighters. When they'd see a German fighter go down, they'd applaud.

The most extraordinary thing was that the Germans did not machine-gun the thousands of men on the beach. The Stukas did attack the boats, and I remember one in particular, a paddleboat that had been bombed and caught fire. There were maybe 100 to 200 men grouped in the back of the boat because the front was in flames. But the wind kept whipping the fire back on them, and the men were crying. It was a kind of moan, but a collective moan, an inhuman moan. I tried to drag a man out of the water and up onto the beach, but there was an obstacle. It was half a human body. The head and shoulders were gone, the torso cut right away . . . Ah, it was awful.

Living with the Blitz

By Brenda Scott

The wife of a London physician, Scott was 17 and living with her family on the city's outskirts during the blitz.

My father had an air-raid shelter built in the garden. It was very claustrophobic, like a small ship's cabin with four bunks. We had some books, some torches, emergency rations and some sort of electrical supply. We slept in siren suits, which were like jump suits; mine was air-force blue, and my mother's was burgundy.

You could always hear the Germans coming because their planes had such a distinctive engine noise. It wasn't so bad if I could be outside and see, but it was this feeling of being almost in a tomb. The awful thing was not to be doing anything. But we all knitted things for the armed forces, and so we would take our knitting out to the shelter.