: The Reich dispatched official German wine merchants, known as weinführers , to every major wine region (such as Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne) to coordinate the massive collection and resale of fine vintages at a profit.
: Winemakers sometimes mislabeled their worst wines as "Grand Cru" to fool German buyers, while others joined the active Resistance to attack trains transporting wine back to Germany.
: Beyond protecting bottles, some vignerons used their vast cellar networks to hide Jewish refugees and smuggle members of the Resistance across the Demarcation Line inside wine barrels. The Moral Complexity: Collaboration Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Ba...
In the 2001 bestseller , authors Don and Petie Kladstrup explore a little-known front of World War II: the fight to protect France's vineyards and cellars from German plunder. The Systematic Plunder of French Wine
: The collaborationist government sometimes acted to keep France's vineyards in French hands, even preventing the Nazis from seizing Jewish-owned estates like Châteaux Mouton-Rothschild and Lafite-Rothschild to preserve the nation's economic interests. Key Perspectives and Regions Covered : The Reich dispatched official German wine merchants,
For the French, protecting their wine was about defending the very "spirit of France". Winemakers employed various daring and creative tactics to thwart the occupiers:
Immediately after the fall of Paris in 1940, the Nazi leadership began a widespread campaign to pillage French wine, which they viewed as one of the country's most valuable national assets. The Moral Complexity: Collaboration In the 2001 bestseller
The book also addresses the sensitive reality of collaboration during the occupation.