1. “For a woman”: Charles-Roux: Chanel, p. 265. This phrase is translated “cannot betray one’s senses.”

2. “The airplane has proved”: Will Brownell and Richard N. Billings, So Close to Greatness: A Biography of William C. Bullitt, p. 255.

3. “The streets are utterly deserted”: William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, pp. 412–13.

4. Chanel’s trip from Paris: Four million refugees were on the roads of France in June 1940. Vaughan, FDR’s 12 Apostles, p. 28.

5. “No American after tonight”: “Foreign News,” Time, June 17, 1940, p. 32.

6. “The best the French could hope for”: “Foreign News,” Time, July 1, 1940, p. 25.

7. After Chanel and Larcher crossed the river Garonne: Gabrielle Palasse Labrunie, interview with author, Yermenonville, France, April 27, 2009.

8. Just after noon on June 17: Ousby, Occupation, p. 63; Montagnon, La France dans la guerre de 39–45, p. 179.

9. Chanel was aghast: Labrunie used Chanel’s word for “betrayal”: “trahison.” Labrunie interview, April 27, 2009.

10. “the shipwreck of France”: Ousby, Occupation, p. 63.

11. “This guy is breaking”: Montagnon, La France dans la guerre de 39–45, p. 187.

12. For many French men and women: In six weeks in May and June 1940, the French army had suffered 120,000 wounded and 120,000 killed or dead of their wounds. The Germans had suffered 45,000 dead; the Belgians 7,500; the Dutch 2,900; the British 6,800. Montagnon, La France dans la guerre de 39–45, p. 207.

13. “The Germans weren’t all gangsters”: Marcel Haedrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets, p. 144.

14. “scorn, anger, hate”: Shirer, Berlin Diary, p. 422.

15. Soon, the Nazis forced Pétain: Ibid., pp. 79–81.

16. “Statute on Jews”: Thomas Wieder, “Découverte du projet de ‘statut des juifs,’ ” Le Monde, October 5, 2010, p. 10.

17. If Vichy was now: Labrunie interview, May 19, 2009.

18. News from André: Katharina and the girls learned that André could have escaped the Maginot Line before capture. His four-man unit had been sharing one bicycle. When it was André’s turn to have the bicycle, he could have easily fled. Instead, he let his comrade use the bike to flee hours before the line surrendered. On arriving home, the man wrote to Mme Palasse, telling of André’s deed and his probable capture by the Germans.

19. A friend of Chanel’s: André-Louis Dubois, À travers trois Républiques, pp. 56–60.

20. At Vichy: Haedrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets, p. 143.

21. The Paris Chanel returned to: Allan Mitchell, Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940–1944, pp. 13–14.

22. “Thanks to the artificial exchange rate”: Frederic Spotts, The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation, p. 33.

23. Formally correct: For descriptions of the German invaders in Paris, 1940, see photos and text, David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, pp. 3–29.

24. On a crisp fall morning: Francine du Plessix Gray, Them, p. 218.

25. Dincklage was back: CHADAT 7NN 2973. The British National Archives, Kew, and the National Archives in France contain BCRA (General de Gaulle’s intelligence service) documents about Dincklage as an Abwehr agent in France.

26. At age fifty-seven, Chanel: Labrunie interview, May 18, 2009.

27. “On orders from Berlin”: CARAN AJ/40/871, “Seizure of the Ritz.” See Claude Roulet, Ritz: A Story That Outshines the Legend, p. 107. Dincklage’s intervention allowing Chanel to stay at the Ritz is confirmed in a Time magazine article of June 1998. Edmond Charles-Roux, in L’Irrégulière, and author Alex Madsen offer separate versions of how Chanel returned to the Ritz in August 1940. Writer Pierre Galante avoids the subject.

28. In fact, only certain non-Germans: Ibid. “Instruction About Hôtel Ritz” issued by Der Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich command order, Paris, February 2, 1941.

29. Everyone entering or leaving: See CARAN AJ/40/871, “Instruction about Hôtel Ritz” issued by Der Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich command order, Paris, February 2, 1941. For distinguished Nazi guests, see Roulet, Ritz: A Story That Outshines the Legend, pp. 108–9.

30. For those allowed entry: Roulet, Ritz: A Story That Outshines the Legend, p. 111.

31. “In times like these”: Henri Amouroux, La Vie des Français sous l’Occupation, p. 141.

32. Chanel believed: Haedrich, Coco Chanel, p. 136.

33. Chanel “was seen everywhere”: Galante, Mademoiselle Chanel, p. 181.

34. “I never saw the Germans”: Haedrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets, p. 136.

35. Dincklage dined often: CARAN F/7/15327. Folder 209 “FEIHL.”

36. The Serts and their friends: APP DB 540.

37. Chanel preferred hosting: Gabrielle Palasse Labrunie to author in Yermenonville, France, June 9, 2009.

38. Nazi collaborator Fern Bedaux: SSF document. Fern Bedaux used the French term “une intoxiquée.”

39. “the exterminating angel”: Morand, The Allure of Chanel, p. 10.

40. He and his “pro-German” wife: Madsen, A Woman of Her Own, p. 242.

41. But for a truly amusing evening: Barbara Lambauer, “Francophile contre vents et marée? Otto Abetz et les Français, 1930–1958,” Bulletin du Centre de Recherche Français de Jérusalem 18 (2007): 159. The Rothschild furniture referred to belonged to Baron Élie Robert—who was a prisoner of the Nazis in Germany during the war.

42. “Coco Chanel … indulged”: Ousby, Occupation, p. 112.

43. “That’s the way you overthrow”: Ibid., p. 84.

44. Josée raved: In her memoirs about her father, Josée talks often of Chanel. See Yves Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille, pp. 213, 215, 313.

45. “in a blacked-out Paris”: Pourcher, Pierre Laval vu par sa fille, pp. 213–14; my translation.

46. The American Hospital at Neuilly: Keating in an unpublished paper, 1981, found in Hal Vaughan, Doctor to the Resistance, pp. 44, 46–48.

47. Even the French staple: Donald and Petie Kladstrup, Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure, pp. 112–16.