Why Hitler let Parisian tennis play on during the War
Nazis’ Tournoi de France is an event no one wants to remember, writes Simon Briggs
The jasmine will be flowering at Roland Garros this week, but there is no one there to see it. The French Open, which should have started tomorrow, has been postponed until midseptember at the earliest. The courts will stand silent throughout the Parisian summer, for the first time since 1940.
It is an odd date, 1940. This summer’s Wimbledon cancellation broke a run of 74 straight events, stretching back to 1946. But while London ducked for cover amid the Blitz, Parisian tennis continued throughout the German occupation. It was only during that first year, which would otherwise have delivered the 45th French Open, that the clay of Roland Garros went unmarked.
German tanks rolled into Paris on June 14, 1940 – a day originally intended to be the first Friday of the tournament. As thousands of people trudged out of the city, carrying their belongings on their shoulders, forehands and backhands were the last things on their mind.
Still, within less than a year a circuit had resumed. Contemporary photographs show glamorous players in their whites, performing in front of some surprisingly packed galleries. The names themselves have a thrilling sound: Suzanne Pannetier, Georges Zarifi, Robert Ramillon. What a way for locals to escape their grim reality – and perhaps to dream of better days gone by. Only two decades earlier, Suzanne Lenglen and her flapper dresses had made the 16th Arrondissement feel like the centre of the world.
Why, we might ask, did the Germans allow such high jinks to continue? The answer is that Hitler had no interest in trashing Paris (at least, not until Allied forces approached the city in 1944.) He preferred to use it as an oversized model village – a way of projecting the Nazis’ self-image as benevolent sophisticates. Films, theatre and cabaret continued almost unaffected. Horses soon returned to the Longchamp racecourse. Only football, with its dangerous sense of tribalism, was suppressed.
By August 1941, the nets were back in place at Roland Garros, for the first of five editions of the Tournoi de France. These events have never been recognised by the French
Tennis Federation, nor by the International Tennis Federation. Too much shame and guilt still collects around the occupation.
But they attracted players from across borders (the women’s champions included Luxembourg’s Alice Weiwers and Switzerland’s Lolette Payot) and delivered a high standard of competition.
For all the prejudice that surrounds France in this period, the two men’s champions of the Tournoi – Bernard Destremau in 1941 and 1942, Yvon Petra for the three events that followed – can hardly be described as cowards or collaborators. They had both been wounded while serving in the military. In Petra’s case, he spent two years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, where he suffered a serious knee injury during a series of forced marches. At one point, he was thought to be in danger of amputation due to gangrene. It was only his tennis celebrity – he had already won the French Open doubles with Destremau – that saved him. A surgeon travelled from Berlin to operate, and thus saved his sporting life.
A humble and warmhearted character, Petra is still spoken of with great affection at Wimbledon. It was there, in 1946, that he made the most of his reprieve by defeating Australia’s Geoff Brown in the final. He also remains the answer to at least three challenging pub-quiz questions.
Petra is still the last Frenchman to lift the Challenge Cup. He is the equal-tallest man to do so (alongside 1996 champion Richard Krajicek), at 6ft 5in. Finally, he was the last man to win while wearing long trousers. Which, coincidentally, had the advantage of covering his scarred knee.
Petra died in 1984. Were he still with us, one suspects that he would rather be remembered for his lone singles win at Wimbledon than his three at Roland Garros. Even after 75 years, the Tournoi de France remains an event that tennis would prefer to forget.