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Copyright © 2013 by Sean B. Carroll

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the

Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of 

Random House, Inc.

Permissions are listed on page 581, which constitutes an extension of this page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carroll, Sean B.

Brave genius : a scientist, a philosopher, and their daring adventures from the

French resistance to the Nobel prize / Sean B. Carroll.—First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

1. France—Intellectual life—20th century. 2. Nobel Prize winners—France—

Biography. 3. Camus, Albert, 1913–1960. 4. Authors, French—20th century—

Biography. 5. Authors, Algerian—20th century—Biography. 6 Monod, Jacques.

7. Molecular biologists—France—Biography. 8. World War, 1939–1945—

Underground movements—France. 9. Politics and culture—France—History—

20th century. I. Title.

D802.F8C3715 2013

572.8092—dc23

[B] 2012050707

ISBN 978-0-307-95233-2

eISBN 978-0-307-95235-6

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Lauren Dong

 Jacket design by Elena Giavaldi

 Jacket photography TK

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Fi Edi i

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chapter 1

CITY OF LIGHT

 An artist . . . has no home in Europe except in Paris.—Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

P aris slipped very quietly into the New Year of 1940.

It was not the resh blanket o snow, though one o the heaviestin ty years, that muted the typically boisterous celebration o Le

Réveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre. Nor was it the unusually cold spell thatplunged Paris and much o France to well below reezing temperaturesthat night.

La Ville-Lumière (the City o Light) was dark and anxious. It hadbeen so or our months.

On September 3, 1939, two days ater Germany’s invasion o Po-land, France and her ally Great Britain had declared war. Blackoutswere imposed across Paris to obscure potential targets rom aerialbombing. The lights o the monuments and museums—the Louvre,the Eiel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe—were extinguished, thestreet lights along the grand boulevards and squares were veiled witha blue paint, as were automobile headlights, bicycle lights, and evenhandheld fashlights. Their blue beams cast an eerie, dim hue over the

snow-covered city.The caés, clubs, cabarets, and restaurants were open on New Year’s

Eve, but their outside lights were o. Their windows and doors werecovered to block the light rom inside. The authorities extended clos-ing time on this special occasion by three hours past the new wartimecurew, to two o’clock in the morning.

For more than two centuries, since the time o Les Lumières (the

Enlightenment), when Voltaire and Diderot rethought civilization overcoee at Le Procope in the Latin Quarter, those caés had drawn

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18 | THE FALL

philosophers and revolutionaries rom all over the world, includingBenjamin Franklin and Thomas Jeerson. For the previous two de-

cades, since the last war with Germany, the caés and clubs o Parishad beckoned a remarkable generation o writers, artists, and musi-cians who made the city the artistic and intellectual center o Europe,i not the world.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Paris literary scene drew the likes o  James Joyce, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Ger-trude Stein, and Samuel Beckett. Ernest Hemingway oten installedhimsel at his avorite caé, La Closerie des Lilas, in its garden o lilac

trees, with notebooks, pencils, and pencil sharpener at hand. He com-posed some o his rst novel, The Sun Also Rises, sitting at its marble-topped tables.

Every orm o art fourished in the Montparnasse area. SalvadorDalí came to Paris rom Spain and was the principal gure o the sur-realists, while Russian-born Marc Chagall was a pioneer o modern-ism. Spanish cubist Pablo Picasso lived and worked at various timesin Montmartre and Montparnasse and then settled on the rue de la

Boétie, not ar rom the Champs-Élysées. The prolic painter was rep-resented by Paul Rosenberg, whose well-known gallery was next doorto Picasso’s studio. Rosenberg would help make Picasso amous, sell-ing his works alongside those by Monet, Degas, Matisse, van Gogh,Renoir, and Cézanne.

The music scene also thrived. Josephine Baker, Cole Porter, Cole-man Hawkins, and Benny Carter came rom the United States. In1934, Belgian-born Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, Parisian vio-

linist Stéphane Grappelli, and three others ormed the sensationalQuintette du Hot Club de France, the most original and infuentialEuropean jazz group o the era. Native legends Edith Pia and MauriceChevalier were immensely popular.

Paris’s creative lie was not exclusively the domain o artists. Sci-ence prospered as well. In 1939, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a leading re-searcher on the splitting o the uranium atom, had his laboratory at

the Collège de France in the Latin Quarter. Joliot-Curie, who sharedthe 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his wie, Irène (daughter o 

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CITY OF LIGHT | 19

Nobel laureates Pierre and Marie Curie), recognized the possibility o producing a chain reaction that would liberate massive amounts o 

energy. Joliot-Curie was one o the key scientists Albert Einstein citedin an August 1939 letter to President Roosevelt alerting him to the dis-coveries in physics that could possibly lead to the making o “extremely powerul bombs o a new type.”

Fewer than two miles rom the Collège de France was the crown jewel o French biology and one o the premier research institutionsin the world—the Pasteur Institute. The institute was extending themany rontiers opened or advanced by Louis Pasteur (1822–1895).

The primary catalyst to its ormation was Pasteur’s pioneering eortsin developing vaccines. It was ounded specically to treat rabies. On

 July 6, 1885, a nine- year-old boy named Joseph Meister was brought toPasteur’s laboratory by his desperate mother. A rabid dog had bitten Jo-seph ourteen times. The severe bites would surely be atal, so Pasteurdecided to try to treat Joseph with an experimental rabies vaccine that,up to that point, had only been tested on dogs. Ater thirteen injectionsover the course o eleven days, miraculously the boy survived.

Ater news o Meister’s case spread, several children rom Newark,New Jersey, were sent to Pasteur and also treated successully with thenew vaccine. The resulting acclaim led to an international und-raisingeort to establish an institute, initially under Pasteur’s direction, thatenabled thousands to be treated. Pasteur recruited other scientistswith a similar, almost monastic, devotion to science. They would cometo reer to themselves as “Pastorians.” This tribe o Pasteur’s associatesand protégés led the world in understanding, preventing, and treating

inectious diseases such as diphtheria, malaria, yellow ever, bubonicplague, typhus, and tuberculosis, and garnered our Nobel Prizes inMedicine or Physiology in just the rst ew decades ater the initiationo the Prize. Those whose lives were touched, or saved, by Pasteurelt deep gratitude. Almost ty-ve years ater being the rst persontreated, sixty-three- year-old Joseph Meister was working as a caretakero the Institute.

 When war was declared, the populace was placed immediately on high alert. Gas masks were issued and air-raid sirens sounded

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20 | THE FALL

requently. Thousands o children were moved out o the capital andinto the countryside, as were most o Paris’s most treasured works o 

art. Over the next our months, the Louvre was almost completely emptied. More than two hundred truckloads o paintings and sculp-tures, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, were crated andshipped rom the museum and stored in chateaux or saekeeping.

The threat o war prompted some artists and perormers to leavethe city or France altogether, but not Maurice Chevalier. In late 1939,he recorded “Paris sera toujours Paris” (Paris will always be Paris), a lovesong to his hometown that captured her new look under the blackouts

and was a boost to her deant, resilient spirit:

Par précaution on a beau mettreDes croisillons à nos fenêtresPasser au bleu nos devanturesEt jusqu’aux pneus de nos voituresDésentoiler tous nos muséesChambouler les Champs-Élysées

Emmailloter de terre battueToutes les beautés de nos statuesVoiler le soir les réverbèresPlonger dans le noir la ville

lumière

Paris sera toujours Paris,La plus belle ville du monde,

 Malgré l’obscurité profonde,Son éclat ne pert être assombri

k

 With the experience o World War I, during which France lost 1.4million lives, still resh in their memories, political and military lead-ers and civilians alike had been hoping there would not be another

war. But Hitler’s actions over the previous two years had convincedmany o the likelihood, and some even the necessity, o battle withG N th l t th d l ti th till

Even i one puts or precaution

Latticework on our windows

Blue on our storeronts

And up to the tires o our cars

Removes the paintings rom our

museums

Turns the Champs-Élysées upsidedown

Swaths the beauty o our statues in clay 

 Veils the streetlamps in the evening

Plunges the city o light into darkness

Paris will always be Paris,

The most beautiul city in the world,

Despite the proound darkness,Her luster cannot be dimmed

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CITY OF LIGHT | 21

some glimmer o hope that an all-out confict could be averted. Indeed,France and Britain had retreated rom the very brink o clashing with

Germany just one year earlier, in September 1938.The path toward war began with Hitler fouting the terms o the1918 armistice by rebuilding Germany’s armed orces, and then ex-panding the Reich’s territory through a series o military threats andpolitical maneuvers. The Führer’s moves were guided by his perceptiono the will, or lack thereo, o France and Britain to oppose him. Heassumed that both nations wanted to avoid another bloody confict atalmost any price, even i that meant ceding the control o much o cen-

tral and eastern Europe to Germany. Hitler tested the Allies’ resolveat every turn.

In March 1938, Austria was intimidated by the specter o an armedinvasion and manipulated politically into accepting annexation by Ger-many. France and Britain made no signicant objections or gestures.Encouraged by his swit, bloodless takeover, and the Allies’ reticence,Hitler then set his sights on Czechoslovakia, which would push all o Europe to the brink.

Hitler’s aims were to absorb the Sudetenland and to conquer whatremained o Czechoslovakia. How to do so without arousing France,which was bound by treaty to come to Czechoslovakia’s aid i it wereattacked, and Britain, which was committed to aid France i she wereattacked, was a tricky proposition. But Hitler assumed that neitherFrance nor Britain would risk a European war over Czechoslovakia, sohe plotted a takeover.

Ater months o military, political, and diplomatic maneuvering,

the situation reached a crisis in September 1938. With Hitler threat-ening an invasion o Czechoslovakia that would trigger their obliga-tions, Britain and France sought some resolution that would appeaseHitler and relieve them o their respective commitments. The balanceo considerations was delicate. On the one hand, Britain and Francecould not appear too reluctant or war, or the Führer would take thatas a sign o weakness to be exploited. On the other hand, they couldnot take too aggressive a stance, as that might provoke the belliger-ent dictator into a war that might escalate quickly, with unknowable

Th l th tt h it t t

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22 | THE FALL

an ally that, i broken, would undermine the reliability o all com-mitments and the security o the Continent. And nally, there was

public opinion, which shited unpredictably as events unolded. Gov-ernments that ignored this last variable did so at great risk to theirlongevity.

Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, initiated ace-to-ace negotiations with Hitler on September 15, 1938. It soon becameclear to Chamberlain that the price o peace would be Czechoslovakia,or at least the Sudetenland. France’s premier, Édouard Daladier, sup-ported Chamberlain’s eorts to avoid war. Chamberlain and Daladier

pressured the Czech leadership to concede to Hitler’s demands or theSudetenland in order to keep the peace. The Czechs rejected the de-mands. France then upped the pressure by asserting that in rejectingtheir proposal, Czechoslovakia assumed responsibility or military ac-tion by Germany, and inormed the Czech government that Francewould now not act i Germany invaded. The Czech government wascornered and had no choice but to bow to the demands; it could notresist Germany on its own.

Chamberlain brought the Czech concession back to Hitler on Sep-tember 22. Although only a week had passed, Hitler now rejectedthe Czechs’ capitulation as insucient and increased his demands,which included the immediate military occupation o the Sudetenland.Chamberlain was surprised and exasperated at the Führer’s change inposture and returned to London crestallen. His cabinet rejected Hit-ler’s new demands, as did the French and the Czechs.

In the meantime, the Czechs mobilized their armed orces and the

French ollowed suit. The white posters plastered all over France onthe morning o September 24 announced the immediate call-up o nearly a million men. French armed divisions were moved to the bor-der with Germany.

To the general populations o all countries involved, war now ap-peared inevitable and imminent.

Daladier conerred with Chamberlain in London, who decided

to attempt one last diplomatic eort to dissuade Hitler. Britain andFrance made an about-ace rom their previous abandonment o the

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CITY OF LIGHT | 23

Czechs a week earlier and inormed Hitler on September 27 that they would stand by Czechoslovakia i Germany attacked.

Hitler was apoplectic. He replied by vowing to destroy Czechoslova-kia and to be at war with France and Britain within a week.But, aware that the Czechs and French were mobilizing, that their

combined armies were double that o the German orces, and that Brit-ain was also readying or battle, Hitler shortly reconsidered. He wroteto Chamberlain that he was now prepared to “give a ormal guaranteeor the remainder o Czechoslovakia.”

Chamberlain seized on the reopening o dialogue. While the citi-

zens o each country braced or war, with many feeing the cities viatrac-choked roads, a last-ditch campaign unolded. Chamberlainproposed a conerence to Hitler, and asked Italian prime ministerBenito Mussolini to do the same. Mussolini complied; Hitler agreedand proceeded to invite Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini to asummit o the our powers in Munich (the Czechs were not invited).

At the news o the invitation, Britain’s war-anxious House o Com-mons erupted with cheers. Paris was equally relieved and hopeul. The

heads o state went to Munich determined to secure the peace—theprice o which was Czechoslovakia, which was to be partitioned alonglines that would satisy the Führer. The our powers promptly signedthe accords on September 30. The Czechs were let with no option; astheir ocial communiqué stated, they had been “abandoned.”

Chamberlain and Daladier were greeted at home by cheeringthrongs. Daladier addressed the nation: “I return with the prooundconviction that this accord is indispensable to the peace o Europe.

 We achieved it thanks to a spirit o mutual concessions and a closecollaboration.”

The Paris newspapers gushed with praise and relie. Former pre-mier Léon Blum said in Le Populaire: “There is not a woman or manin France who would reuse MM. Neville Chamberlain and ÉdouardDaladier their just tribute o gratitude. War is spared us. The calamity recedes. Lie can become natural again. One can resume one’s work and sleep again. One can enjoy the beauty o an autumn sun.”

Privately, however, Daladier had learned the lessons o dealing with

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24 | THE FALL

Herr Hitler. “We can never deal with Germany except with orce,” hetold two o his generals just days ater the Munich pact.

 When Daladier became premier, he maintained his positionas minister o war and national deense. Shortly ater the Munichpact, he committed 40 billion rancs, nearly 85 percent o France’stax revenue or 1939, to rearmament, as well as an additional 2.5 bil-lion rancs in a secret deal to acquire one thousand aircrat rom theUnited States.

Daladier’s mistrust o Hitler was validated in March 1939 whenthe Führer, mocking the assurances given in Munich just six months

earlier, engineered a ull Nazi takeover o what remained o Czechoslo- vakia. Britain and France could merely protest what was an overnightait accompli. Poland was then surrounded on three sides by the Reich,and surely would be its next quarry.

Daladier told his cabinet: “There is nothing more to do than pre-pare or war.” In order to increase the standing army, he increasedthe length o service or military reservists. With respect to uturespending, he insisted to a cabinet committee, “We should not devote

a single dollar o our reserves to nonmilitary purposes. It is indeednecessary to go urther: the dollars and gold o which we disposeshould be devoted entirely to the purchase o airplanes in the UnitedStates . . . With that sum, we will be able to create a powerul airfeet, thanks to which we will crush the Ruhr [an industrial cen-ter in Germany] under a deluge o re, which will lead Germany tocapitulate . . . it is the only means o nishing the war. I do not seeanother.”

The time or appeasement had passed. The military leadership pre-pared war plans. By July 1939, Gen. Maxime Weygand claimed that,due to the rearmament initiatives, France had the best-equipped army in the world and that there was no doubt o victory. The general’s con-dence was bolstered by the acts that the French Army, which hadreached more than 2.4 million men by late August 1939, was compa-rable in size to the German Army, and that the French held an advan-

tage in the number and quality o tanks. With the additional security o the heavy ortications o the Maginot Line, which ran the length th F h G b d th F h l d hi l b li d

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CITY OF LIGHT | 25

that it would be olly or Germany to attack, but i they did so, togetherwith the help o France’s Allies (mainly Britain), Germany would be

deeated, as in the previous war.Public opinion had also shited as Hitler’s territorial thirst appearedever more insatiable. France and Britain had commitments to aid Po-land i it was attacked, and by late August Poland was clearly in Hitler’sgun sights. This time, however, last-minute diplomatic heroics similarto those during the Czech crisis o the previous year ailed. Hitler gavethe order to attack, and on the morning o September 1, the Weh-rmacht and Lutwae began to pummel Poland.

Daladier ordered a general mobilization on September 2. While split along many political and ideological lines beore Septem-

ber, the diverse press quickly adopted the same themes. L’Intransigeant said, “War has been imposed on France and she has no other choicebut to ght; France and her Allies are ghting a Nazi-created religiono hatred, brutality, and lies.”

In Le Populaire, ormer prime minister Léon Blum wrote, “TheNazis have compelled the most peaceul o nations to go to war or the

deense o her liberty, existence, and honor.”Across the political spectrum, rom Socialists to conservatives, the

war was unwanted but had become a necessity. It was to be a “justwar,” according to the Catholic daily La Croix, to decapitate “the mod-ern Attila,” a “struggle between civilization and barbarity.”

I the last war was to be any guide, this spirit and unity were goingto be essential or the struggle ahead.

The French military leaders, however, did nothing to save Poland in

the rst crucial moments o the war. Ater a week’s delay, they nally launched an invasion o the German Saarland. The oensive was givenenthusiastic coverage in the press, one newspaper calling it a “brilliantattack.” But in reality, the Army moved just ve miles into Germany,into territory where villages had already been evacuated.

Despite overwhelming superiority on the western ront—withsome eighty-ve well-armed French divisions acing thirty-our largely 

reserve German divisions—the French did not attack and thus didnot draw away any o the pressure rom Poland, and neither did they th t it l G P l d bl d i i ht d With

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26 | THE FALL

Poland annihilated, the French command secretly ordered a retreatrom the Saarland at the end o the month.

But Germany took no signicant action against France, either.Days, then weeks, passed. Troops worked and even played in ull sightand range o each other across the ront. The military communiquéspublished on the ront pages o the Paris newspapers became progres-sively shorter and repetitive: “Night calm on the entire ront” or “Noth-ing to report” or “Routine patrols” were standard entries.

The war acquired new names. At rst it was la guerre d’attente (thewar o waiting). In England, it was dubbed the “Bore War,” then the

“Phoney War.” Soon, a new moniker was oered by Henri Lémery inParis-Soir —“la drôle de guerre” —the unny war.

k

By the New  Year, our months had passed, and still nothing had hap-pened. The long pause nourished hope that perhaps with urther pa-tience, resolve, and diplomacy, calamity might again be avoided, as ithad been so narrowly in 1938.

There were many soldiers on leave in Paris restaurants, cabarets,and theaters that cold night o La Saint-Sylvestre. Neither they, northe citizens who toasted the New Year with them, could know that thePhoney War was then hal over, that there would be our more monthso waiting. Nor could they imagine that this would be the last suchcelebration in a ree Paris or a very long time.

The last verse o Chevalier’s song played on radios and phonographsthat night:

 Même quand au loin le canon gronde

Sa tenue est encore plus jolie . . .Paris sera toujours Paris!

On peut limiter ses dépenses,Sa distinction son élégance

Even when the cannon is roaring in

the distance

Her dress is even prettier

Paris will always be Paris

One can limit what she spends

Her distinction, her elegance

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CITY OF LIGHT | 27

 N’en ont alors que plus de prixParis sera toujours Paris!

as Parisians pondered what the New Year would bring. Le Figaroassured that: “Throughout this night, on each foor, deep in everyone’sheart, the same burning hope arose: ‘that 1940 will be the year o 

 victory.’ ”

Are only all the more priceless

Paris will always be Paris

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