: 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
: Some figures, like Bordeaux merchant Louis Eschenauer, were convicted and imprisoned after the war for doing extensive business with the enemy. Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Ba...
: Nazi officials like Hermann Göring were particularly active in acquiring prestigious collections. After the war, French soldiers famously reclaimed a massive cache of stolen wine from Hitler’s "Eagle's Nest" mountain retreat. Ingenious Acts of Resistance : Beyond protecting bottles, some vignerons used their
: 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. After the war, French soldiers famously reclaimed a
: Many producers built fake walls to conceal their most precious bottles or buried them underground. The owners of Paris's famed La Tour d'Argent restaurant, for instance, rushed to build a wall to hide 20,000 bottles before the Germans arrived.
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
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.