the anti-German storyline is historically inaccurate

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My impression is that Collette is of Jewish decent and that her parents were deported and killed. She only survived because she was taken in by neighbors. Though there are a few things I don’t get. If she was French how did she come to survive the war in Berlin? Or were her parents German Jews and she was later adopted by a French family? I hope at some point they give us more of her past.

BTW faith had nothing to do with the Holocaust – it was all about exterminating Jewish bloodlines. In Russia there was a village of Jews who’s ancestors had converted to Christianity an the inhabitants didn't even think of themselves as Jews anymoe and the Nazis still rounded them all up for execution while another village with Russians who had converted to Judaism was left alone.

It is also a little known fact that the last regular units to defend Berlin in April and May of 1945 were Waffen SS units of French volunteers of the 33 SS Charlemagne and Danish, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, French, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss and British volunteers of the 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland.

Most of your post is a gross oversimplification. You can't estimate how bad it was (for the whole of the population and much less for a single family) based on the number of dead or the number of members of the resistance. By the numbers, France might have weathered the storm a bit easier, mostly because it collapsed quickly and the Nazis quickly expanded their control mechanisms to control the bulk of the population (which had been so successful for over a decade in Germany and the whole Vichy state actually acted as a calming mirage) to the point that it was nearly impossible to even think about resisting (when France fell, Germany seemed unstoppable and likely to conquer all of continental Europe in a manner of months). And maybe the Nazis didn't regard the bulk of the French population in such a low esteem as other races (so they didn't kill them so readily), but that doesn't mean that they didn't use an iron hand or that single families didn't experience catastrophic loss.

It is the differences between "Total War" and a "Police Action". When France capitulated, it was pretty much destroyed: its army and political structure were non-existent. Any form of organized or large scale resistance was not possible and people had to feed themselves, attempting to keep their new overlords happy lest they would decide to starve them. There was no heavy equipment or any considerable number of weapons to arm yourself, France was defeated, and it would have taken years (generation) for an grass root resistance to build up support to rise up against such a powerful invader. Eventually, the same happened to Germany and Japan: they were so utterly destroyed (bombed back to the stone age), that most post defeat resistance was less than pointless and most of the population complied.

With modern wars, or at least in such an unbalanced campaigns as Iraq, the capitulation comes long before the psychological defeat. At the end of WWII, most everybody (on both sides) was way past the point of caring about who won and most countries were in such a state of destruction that all the could do was rebuild to feed their children and themselves. No one was going to try and resist (especially because the US didn't attempt to annex them), and even if they would, it would take generations (what happened with the USSR and Eastern Europe). Today, Japan and Germany are allies of the same countries that defeated them.

Comparing to modern day suicide bomber terrorists is a complete disconnect. Technology allows small numbers of zealots to inflict far more damage that was possible (specially because they plan on dying as a strategy, not a cost that should be avoided when possible). Also, while many of the Nazis' actions were ideologically motivated, most day to day activities had to consider practical matters (ie, the Nazis using "subhumans" as labor rather than just killing them off, or having to come up with efficient ways to kill - ie "The Final Solution"), while the modern day extremist have no practical considerations (ie, to them, the "only good infidel is a dead one").

As I recall, Adolph Hitler said something to the effect that it wasn't hard to hold France. Although the efforts of the French Resistance was relatively small, it could be very intense. A large percentage of Resistance fighters were leftists. More than a few were dedicated Marxists. Remember, the Nazis believed that they were making war on Communism and the Jews. Many Jews took refuge in France and managed to survive the occupation.

The Germans did commit atrocities in France. They tortured resistance fighters and summarily excecuted groups of people in villages. It wasn't pretty.

Unfortunatly, the war in Europe ended before the Manhattan Project completed its work on the Atom Bomb. It was always intended for use on Germany. The Germans richly deserved a nuclear holocaust. The Third Reich should have ended in a mushroom cloud.

Echoecho69 wrote:
"France under the occupation of Germany was in no way as bad as episode 3
intends to depict it as."

First of all, after France capitulated in 1940, the Germans did not occupy all
of France. Vichy France (led by Philippe Petain) became the French state in
name and was somewhat independent, though deeply collaborationist, in practice.
So many French people did not have to live immediately under German military
occupation. As for the French people who did live under German military
occupation, their experiences varied greatly. Some French people found that
they could lead almost normal lives under a relatively mild German occupation,
but other French people were ruthlessly oppressed. There was some variation
among the German occupation authorities in their treatment of French people.

I don't understand why one should assume that Colette's experience must have
been typical for all French people under German occupation. There was not
a sole narrative of German occupation that was true for all French people.

Echoecho69 wrote:
"Girls all over France were flirting with German officers and soldiers."

More than a few Frenchwomen became intimate (whether on account of love,
money, or mutual needs) with German soldiers, and these Frenchwomen were
humiliated and punished after the war for their "horizontal collaboration".
The German occupation authorities also established official brothels (with
French prostitutes) for German soldiers. In general, German soldiers were
well-disciplined in their conduct toward Frenchwomen, and German soldiers
were usually harshly punished if convicted of rape. Some people claim that
a Frenchwoman in some regions was less likely to have been raped by a German
soldier under the occupation than by an American soldier during the liberation.
(Already tending to perceive Frenchwomen as available, some American soldiers
expected Frenchwomen to show their gratitude through sexual favours on demand.)

Echoecho69 wrote:
"The occupation was largely peaceful."

Broadly speaking, most French people adopted an attitude of passive
resignation toward the German occupation; only a small minority were active
in the French resistance before the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944.
Once it became clear enough, however, that the Allies were going to prevail
soon over the Germans, many more Frenchmen joined the resistance so as to
emerge on the winning side. General Eisenhower's declaration that the French
resistance was worth fifteen Allied divisions should be construed more as a
political statement than as an assessment of the Maquis's fighting value.
When, as at Vercors, the Maquis stood up in an open fight against the Germans,
the Maquis usually got the worst of it.

Echoecho69 wrote:
"The British in 1940 killed 1300 French sailors, called Operation Catapult."

Yes, many French people deeply resented the Royal Navy's attack on the French
fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. For a long time, many French people regarded Charles
de Gaulle as a British puppet and and a traitor to the lawful French state,
which was led by Petain. To some extent, Vichy France's military was ready
to fight and did fight against the British. (A Frenchwoman once told me that
she regarded France's most lasting historical enemy as England, not Germany.)

France did suffer considerably, of course, under the German occupation 1940-44.
It's true, however, that many French people had less unhappy experiences than
Colette had, and thus they would have less unfavourable views of the Germans.
But "Pan Am" was not obliged to show what these other French people experienced.
After the war, of course, most French people sought to play down the extent of
their collaboration or even friendship, if any, with the Germans, and sometimes
to play up the extent of their self-described heroic resistance to the Germans.

Research the Vel D'Hiv. Overview, it was an indoor cycling place that no longer stands. In July 1942, the French police under the orders of the Gestapo rounded thousands of Jews and locked them in this building for days. No clean facilities, no privacy, no respect.

My father in law tells the following story: a cop came the day before and said to hide someplace else in a non Jewish neighborhood. The cops came and took the family, deported them and they were killed in a camp. My FIL comes home and sees he is alone, NO Family.

He joined the French Resistance...We have pictures of him with a gun doing whatever is needed to free is country.

Farewell,and may the blessing of Elves and Men and all Free Folk go with you.

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