Renee Ryan's Blog

The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, lasted 46 days, beginning May 10, 1940, and concluding on June 25, 1940. On June 22, 1940, the French government signed the Franco-German Armistice. This agreement divided France into two zones, one to be under German military occupation, the Occupied Zone, and one to be left to the French in full sovereignty, the Free Zone. This sovereign French government was seated in the resort town of Vichy.

Vichy government officials became close collaborators with the Nazis and worked directly with the Gestapo. In fact, the Vichy government enacted laws that censored the press, prohibited divorce, and made abortion a capital offense.

As part of the Vélodrome d’Hiver raid, the Vichy government arrested and deported 13,000 Jews to camps. 4,000 of these were children that the Gestapo had not demanded be included in the raid.
Less than 3% of the Jews deported by the Vichy government survived.

The Vichy government did not reflect the beliefs of most French citizens. In fact, the Resistance movements against both Vichy and the Nazi occupiers grew rapidly in strength and significance. Matters got so hostile that the six months prior to the Normandy Invasion was a chaotic period of civil war between Resistance fighters and the German Gestapo aided by Vichy militia.

September 3, 1939, mere hours after England declared war on Germany, France followed suit. Nothing happened for eight months. No skirmishes, no bullets flying, no bombs dropped, nothing. They called it the Phoney War.

The French were confident the Germans didn’t stand a chance against their mighty army, which was indeed strong—on paper. Plus, they had the Maginot Line. Named after the minister of war, Andre Maginot, the Maginot Line was basically a series of concrete and barbed wire fortifications on the eastern border. Basically a glorified trench, the barrier was constructed to prevent a direct attack from Germany. But it was technology from WWI and German panzers were formidable.

In the end, the Maginot line inspired a false sense of security and turned out to be strategically ineffective. The Germans simply went around the fortification and invaded through Belgium. France suffered a notoriously quick defeat, falling approximately six weeks after the first German panzers touched French soil.

My upcoming WWII Historical novel The Widows of Champagne (https://amzn.to/3lUTjPk and https://bit.ly/3x1xl2e) is set, obviously, in the champagne region of northern France.

For centuries, countless bloody battles were waged in the area. Champagne’s secret weapon lay beneath the villages and vineyards. Dating all the way back to the Roman Empire, caves, also called crayères, were cut into the chalky limestone for transportation and storage.
After the Romans were thrown out, the hundreds of miles of these caves were used to store food. It wasn’t until 1769 that local vintner Nicolas Ruinart renovated the cavities and tunnels beneath his property to store his champagne. By 1915, nearly all the caves beneath Champagne were retrofitted with level floors. Staircases and elevators were added next.

Sadly, Champagne’s vineyards were heavily bombed during both battles of the Marne, but its cellars remained largely unscathed. Thousands of citizens took refuge in the crayères during the war, alongside the French military, who pinned up canvas curtains to make walls. They created makeshift desks with planks of wood over stacked Champagne bottles. Religious services were regularly conducted beneath ground, and even school was taught. Then the war ended, and the region had 21 years to recover before hostilities started up all over again in 1940.

And so begins the story of The Widows of Champagne...

In an early scene in my current work in progress, my heroine hears opera for the first time on a portable gramophone. She’s so inspired she decides to buy her own machine. Since the scene is set in 1933 London, I had two major obstacles to overcome. Namely, what kind of gramophone would a woman on a limited salary be able to purchase? And, well…where would she purchase said machine? My research uncovered the perfect gramophone company on Oxford Street. HMV (abbr. for His Master’s Voice) was founded in 1921 and is currently celebrating its 100-year anniversary.

As I dug deeper, I discovered the name (HMV) came from iconic 1898 painting by Francis Barraud. You’ll probably recognize the image of Nipper looking into the horn of an Edison Bell gramophone. I’m sure you’ve seen Nipper resplendent in his curious state of awe.

Nipper was a real dog. He was born in 1884 and was the dog of Francis’s brother in Bristol, England. Mark Barraud was a decorator for a London theater and Nipper fit right in with the drama all around him. He actually earned his name while still a puppy for his tendency to greet strangers by biting their legs. His owner died unexpectedly in 1887. After the funeral, Francis took Nipper home with him to Liverpool.

Nipper lived another eight years, dying at the ripe old age of 11 in 1895. Have you seen this image before?

After France surrendered to Germany in June 1940, the Nazis moved quickly, cutting the country in half, with Northern France, the occupied zone, and Southern France, the free zone. The Champagne region was deep within the occupied zone and placed under the charge of a special corps of officers, or what the French called the weinführers, many of whom had direct connections with the wine trade prior to the war.

Originally, the Champenois thought this was a positive turn of events. In fact, one of the producers in Champagne was even quoted as saying after the war, “If you were going to shoved around, it was better to be shoved around by a winemaker than a beer-drinking Nazi lout.”

Unfortunately, this proved untrue. Under strict orders from Berlin, the Champenois were expected to supply nearly 400,000 bottles of champagne a week and at a fraction of its worth. Adding insult to injury, they were only allowed to sell their product to the German army or German-owned businesses. Once again, at a ridiculously low price.

And so began a large resistance movement that included switching labels, filling bottles with water, hiding the most valuable blends behind fake walls, and other dangerous acts of sabotage. My upcoming release, The Widows of Champagne, opens with one of these fearless acts. Interested in seeing how I portrayed these heroic acts. The book is up for preorder now.
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While researching The Widows of Champagne (https://amzn.to/3lUTjPk I discovered that champagne making is a complicated business that requires two fermentations. After the initial “blending” of several base wines, the first fermentation occurs. The full champagne bottles are then brought to the chalk cellars, or rather caves that were cut deep into the limestone centuries ago, and placed on a riddling rack, known as a pupitre, with the necks angled downward.

Each bottle is then rotated daily, by 1/8th of a turn in each direction so that the lees collect in the neck of the bottle. As the angle of tile increases, the forces of gravity draw the sediment into the neck. Eventually that sediment will be removed and only a clear wine is left. This process is known as “riddling” or “remuage” and can last anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months.

Remuage is still done manually in some Champagne Houses. A good ‘remueur’ (bottle turner) can handle roughly 40,000 bottles a day.

On Memorial Day, I wrote a post honoring some of the amazing women who changed the course of WWII. Women like Nancy Wake, named the “White Mouse." She spent the war smuggling soldiers and downed pilots out of France. When captured, and interrogated for days, she never gave up a single secret.

Or Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the Russian sniper so adept at her craft that the Germans addressed her personally over the loudspeaker in an attempt to lure her to their side with the promise of becoming an officer within their ranks.

Or Jacqueline Cochran, the pilot. Virginia Hall, the American spy. Ruby Bradley, the surgical nurse. Susan Travers, the fearless soldier for the Free French.
And, of course, one of my favorites, the brilliant Hedy Lemarr. This Hollywood actress coined “the most beautiful woman in Europe," developed a way to manipulate radio frequencies that prevented the enemy from jamming our torpedoes. Her cutting edge technology led to the development of modern day Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Thank you to these ladies, and all the unsung heroes like you, whose names may have been kept from the pages of our history books but without whom we would not have won the war against tyranny.

THE WIDOWS OF CHAMPAGNE https://amzn.to/3lUTjPk is set in Champagne, France during WWII. The history of champagne can be traced to a Benedictine monk, born Pierre Pérignon. You probably know him as Dom Pérignon. In 1668, after taking his pledge of celibacy, he transferred to the Abbey of Hautvillers near the town of Épernay in the Champagne region of France. He served as cellar master for the Abbey until his death in 1715.

Dom Périgonon was known for his skill at blending different wine vintages to bring out the best of their flavors. His technique still used today.

He is famous for the iconic champagne slogan that has been associated with champagne ever since. The story goes that when Dom Pérignon first created his delicious bubbly champagne, he called out to his fellow monks, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!”

The distinct pop of a champagne cork is another invention of Dom Pérignon. Originally, champagne bottles had been closed with wood, which did not always fit. The use of cork ensured that the tiny bubbles in the champagne would be preserved.

He also made changes to the shape of champagne bottles, choosing thicker glass to prevent costly and dangerous explosions caused by a build-up of gases within the bottle. These gases are what create the bubbles.

Let’s raise a glass in honor of my favorite Benedictine monk, Dom Pérignon. Cheers!

THE WIDOWS OF CHAMPAGNE is set in Champagne, France during WWII. The history of champagne can be traced to a Benedictine monk, born Pierre Pérignon. You probably know him as Dom Pérignon. In 1668, after taking his pledge of celibacy, he transferred to the Abbey of Hautvillers near the town of Épernay in the Champagne region of France. He served as cellar master for the Abbey until his death in 1715.

Dom Périgonon was known for his skill at blending different wine vintages to bring out the best of their flavors. His technique still used today.

He is famous for the iconic champagne slogan that has been associated with champagne ever since. The story goes that when Dom Pérignon first created his delicious bubbly champagne, he called out to his fellow monks, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!”

The distinct pop of a champagne cork is another invention of Dom Pérignon. Originally, champagne bottles had been closed with wood, which did not always fit. The use of cork ensured that the tiny bubbles in the champagne would be preserved.

He also made changes to the shape of champagne bottles, choosing thicker glass to prevent costly and dangerous explosions caused by a build-up of gases within the bottle. These gases are what create the bubbles.

Let’s raise a glass in honor of my favorite Benedictine monk, Dom Pérignon. Cheers!

I'm deep in research mode for my next WWII story and want to share what I've uncovered about an annual music festival in Salzburg, Austria. One of my three heroines is an Austrian opera singer who chooses to remain in her beloved homeland after Hitler annexes her country. She's based on a real woman who used her fame and notoriety to rescue dozens of Jews from persecution and death. (More on her in another post). Today, let's talk about how she was able to move around so freely during Nazi occupation.

Enter Adolf Hitler's love of opera and his annual trip to Salzburg for the Salzburg Music Festival. If you've seen the Sound of Music, then you know all about this popular summer event. The Salzburg Music Festival is where the von Trapp family performed their disappearing act from the Felsenreitschule Theatre in 1938. The theatre still stands and is still the home of some amazing music year round, as well as during the annual festival.

Sadly, 1938 was the same year Hitler annexed Austria and, as the movie accurately depicts, when the Festival became an official propaganda tool for the Nazis.