First World War
As it is today, Nantes was one of the largest cities in France in 1914. For centuries, it had been one of the country's most important shipping and industrial areas. Since it is in western France, it was not directly affected by the fighting during the First World War, but it was a port of entry for British and later Americans soldiers. And like all French communities, many of its citizens went off to war and did not return. There were about 170,000 people in Nantes at the time; 40,000 of them fought in the war, and about 6,600 were killed, or about 3% of the total population.
Nantes' First World War memorial, the Monument aux morts, was created by Camille Robidas in 1927. The other towns around Nantes also have their own war memorials.
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| The Monument aux morts in Nantes. |
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| Some of the names on the monument. |
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| Jour de l'Armistice ceremony at the monument, November 11, 2011. |
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| First World War memorial in Ancenis |
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| Memorial in Brains |
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| Memorial in Oudon |
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| Memorial plaque in Nantes Cathedral commemorating the British, Canadian, and other British Empire soldiers who died in France. |
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| A bit further away, a memorial for both wars in Bourgueil |
Between the wars
Between the wars, one of Nantes' most famous residents, Aristide Briand, tried to prevent another war from ever occurring. Briand served as Prime Minister of France on several occasions, and was also Minister of Foreign Affairs and other high-ranking positions. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926 for his efforts. In 1927 he helped develop the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which attempted to outlaw war entirely.
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| Statue of Aristide Briand in Place Aristide-Briand |
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| Nantes in 1909 - there are some islands in the Loire, and the Erdre still flows naturally south into the Loire. |
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| Nantes around 1938, with the islands attached to the city, and the Erdre channeled into an underground canal. The old course of the Erdre is in orange. |
At the same time, Briande's plans to prevent future wars failed, and Germany re-armed its military. The construction work on the Erdre was still being finished when the Germans invaded France in May 1940.
Second World War
Nantes was occupied on June 18, 1940, just a few days after Paris. A new government supporting capitulation to the Germans was established at Vichy on June 16. Not everyone wanted to surrender, including Charles de Gaulle, who fled to England on the 17th. On the 18th, as the Germans arrived in Nantes, de Gaulle called on the French to continue fighting, which is sometimes seen as the beginning of the Résistance.
A few days later, the German Feldkommandant Karl Hotz was appointed governor of Nantes and the rest of the Loire-Inférieure département. Hotz was trained as an engineer and had actually lived in Nantes in the 1930s, while working on the projects to cover up the Erdre. For the next four years, Nantes, as well as St. Nazaire further down the Loire, were significant ports in the Germans’ “Fortress Europe.” The Germans took advantage of Nantes’ history as a centre of shipping and industry, while St. Nazaire was a base for the Atlantic U-boat fleet.
Like in the rest of France, life went on for most people, with considerable hardships. The filmmaker Jacques Demy grew up in Nantes during the war, and the football club FC Nantes was founded in 1943. Some people actively collaborated with the Germans, including the municipal government. But the Germans took most of the food, fuel, and other material people needed to live. They also destroyed the small Jewish population in the city. Most of the Jewish inhabitants fled early during the occupation, but about 200 were deported to concentration camps.
Nantes became a target for British and American planes and was bombed several times during the wa. The most destructive bombing raids were September 16 and 23, 1943. The targets were the the docks and industrial areas, but the bombs killed over a thousand people and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings, especially around around the Place Royale and the Basilique St-Nicolas in the downtown area (the centre-ville).
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| The 18th-century fountain in Place Royale was damaged by bombs. The fountain and the surrounding buildings were damaged or destroyed, and rebuilt to match the original architecture. |
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| Plaque commemorating the 1943 bombings on Rue du Calvaire, near Place Royale. This plaque is on a Zara store in a shopping area, close to other modern stores such as H&M, a Monoprix supermarket, etc. |
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| Statue of the World War II general Philippe Leclerc du Hautecloque, in Square Amiral- Halgan across from the Hôtel de ville. This park is built on land that was bombed during the war. |
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| The modern Hôtel-Dieu hospital - the original one on the same site was destroyed in September 1943. |
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| Galeries Lafayette in Nantes, also rebuilt to match the original building. (Photo by Avishai Teicher from Wikimedia Commons) |
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| Tour Bretagne, Nantes' only skyscraper, built over a site previously destroyed by bombs |
The Résistance
While it was a German stronghold and a target for Allied bombing, Nantes was also a centre of the Résistance during the war. Two members of the Résistance, Michel Dabat and Christian de Mondragon, planted a French flag on top of the cathedral on November 11, 1940, the same day that an anti-German demonstration was held in Paris. This was the first Rememberance Day (or Jour de l’Armistice in France) after the occupation, reminding the Germans that they had been defeated once before. |
| Nantes Cathedral |
On October 20, 1941, Nantes' Nazi governor Hotz was assassinated. His assassins, Gilbert Brustlein, Marcel Bourdarias, and Spartaco Giusco weren’t from Nantes, but had been sent from Paris by the military wing of the French communist party. They weren’t sent to assassinate any German in particular, but happened to come across Hotz outside of the cathedral. Hotz was shot twice and died at the scene. All three assassins escaped: Bourdarias and Giusco were eventually arrested and executed in April 1942, but Brustlein, the only one to actually shoot Hotz, lived until 2009.
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| Sign marking the spot where Hotz was assassinated, 1 rue Albert, across from the cathedral. |
Le Bèle
The Nazis responded quickly. Two days later, October 22, they executed numerous prisoners from Nantes and elsewhere in western France, mostly former soldiers and communists. These prisoners are remembered as the “50 Hostages”, the Cinquante Otages, although probably only 48 were killed, and only 16 of them were executed in Nantes itself. The prisoners in Nantes were executed at the Le Bèle shooting range at an old military base, near the modern Beaujoire stadium where FC Nantes plays. Dozens of other prisoners were also shot there by the Nazis between 1940 and 1944.
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| Monument des Fusillés at the Le Bèle shooting range, by Jules Paressant (1991). |
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| Monument des Fusillés |
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| Plaque commemorating all the prisoners executed by the Nazis at Le Bèle between 1941 and 1944. |
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| Sculpture by René Guy Cadou commemorating all the prisoners executed at Le Bèle. |
Cours des 50 Otages
The Cours des 50 Otages, one of the main roads in the centre-ville, is also named after the executed prisoners. This is the road that follows the old course of the Erdre River, the same road that Karl Hotz helped build in the 1930s. At the north end of the Cours, at Place du Pont-Morand, there is another monument to the 50 Otages, created in 1952. This is an important public space in Nantes, close to city hall and regional and departmental government offices, and is often the site of public demonstrations and marches.
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| The Monument aux 50 Otages (Jean Mazuet, 1952), with flowers for the 73rd anniversary of the executions in October 2014. |
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| Some of the names of the 50 Otages inscribed on the monument. |
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| The Monument aux 50 Otages after a rare snowfall in February 2012, with the frozen Erdre in the background. |
Companion of the Liberation
On November 11, 1941, Charles de Gaulle named the entire city a “Companion of the Liberation.” By the end of the war there were four other Companion cities: Grenoble, Paris, Vassieux-en-Vercors, and Île-de-Sein.
The Americans liberated Nantes on August 12, 1944. They were welcomed, for the most part, although the citizens were reluctant to celebrate while so much of the city was still in ruins from the bombings less than one year earlier. Meanwhile in St. Nazaire, a British raid on the port in 1942 had failed to destroy the U-boat docks, and the town remained under German occupation until May 1945, after the rest of France had been liberated and even after Germany itself had surrendered.
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| Statue of Charles de Gaulle at Place des Cinq villes Compagnons de la Libération, across from the Monument aux 50 Otages. |
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| Charles de Gaulle, decorated for a demonstration at Place du Pont- Morand in 2012. |
