In November 1939, it had already been two months since France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. The conflict is not yet global but on the Lorraine front, the lines are starting to be seriously damaged. At the same time, on November 8, a “Théâtre aux Armées”, sponsored by the Ministry of Defense, stayed for the first time in its history in Thionville, a stone’s throw from the theater of operations. Joséphine Baker, Maurice Chevalier, Joël Bridge and Nita Raya were thus the hosts of the town. They gave two performances to which the soldiers of the units stationed in the Thionville garrison had been graciously invited. As the newspaper l’Écho de Thionville relates, in its edition of November 10, 1939, “Josephine Baker, the frail bird of the islands, brought back to life all those beautiful songs to which she owed her fame in the past. “The journalist will evoke” a strange atmosphere in the room, made of joy and melancholy at the same time: a spectacle born of war, as there can only be in times of great peril, when, shoulder to shoulder , the French stand up to defend their country. Shoulder to shoulder in the lines and at the outposts, shoulder to shoulder in the works of the Maginot Line, shoulder to shoulder in the back, without distinction of opinions or social situation. […] And among the artists who had come to entertain, for a few too brief moments, those of the 1939 war, the feeling of having a gesture so grand and so beautiful, that, despite their habit on the stage, emotion gripped them strongly. when confronting this public in uniform. “
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Information Agent
“The frail bird of the islands” will subsequently join the Resistance, using its connections to be invited as often as possible to cocktails given in embassies in order to collect information on enemy troops. She thus succeeded in obtaining, during receptions given in the embassies of Italy and Portugal, valuable information on the movements of German troops and Mussolini’s intentions at the start of the war. Acts that will earn him his entry into the Pantheon next November, where rest, among others, Simone Veil and Jean Moulin, the founder of the National Council of the Resistance. This means that she will be there in very good company.
For the record, that same November 8, 1939, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an attack in a Munich brewery. The fate of humanity could have been irreparably changed. And all this barbarism, avoided.
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