Donald Kladstrup's Epic Tale of French Wine and War: The Nazis' Battle for France's Greatest Treasure

Hello You: Littered with the workd 'loot', this book reeks of someone's attempts at discrediting the German government that ruled most of Europe from 1933 until 1945. Unfortunately, a critical reading even of this book highlights the basic facts that, as far as wine was concerned, the Germans paid for what they took, at a time when French wine merchants could not sell their product to British or Americans, their previous best customers.
Faux-patriotism sticks its nose in from time to time, but otherwise this addendum to the art story of the WWII is dull. Band of Brothers gives a better idea of the real looters of Europe, although as they never occupied the South-West, they never discovered, or uncorked, the great cellars of Burgundy and Bordeaux.

United Kingdom on Jul 07, 2023

Judith H Poole: Arrived as promised in excellent condition

United States on Feb 26, 2023

H. Atkinson: If you want to understand why french wine will always be classed as the best then read this book. In the time of greatest adversity it shows how the saving of french wine was a people's hope

United Kingdom on Dec 26, 2021

Thengling: This was the hardcover version. I had borrowed a paperback version before. Nice upgrade.

Canada on Sep 05, 2021

Hewitt Brian: I live in Bordeaux so it was a personal interest story, otherwise probably not a wide audience. Easy to read and explains the many complications of trying to survive in a country occupied by another countries army.

United Kingdom on Jul 19, 2019

Jill Clardy: I read "Wine and War" shortly after returning from a 3-week trip to France during which we became much more knowledgeable about French wines and their place in France's culture and history and raison d'etre. Remnants of WWII still prevail, particularly in the historical center of the many small villages that we visited. Two aspects of France's rich history emerge repeatedly in the national conscience - the Revolution and the Occupation.

The book covers the elaborate schemes enacted by the French to protect their valuable cellars, their vineyards and their wine-making operations from the looting, gluttonous Germans. Germany actually established "Weinfuhrers" whose sole responsibility was to organize the sourcing, purchasing and shipment of wines from France to Germany. The French winemakers learned to seal off sections of their cellars to avoid detection, to sell the Germans only their inferior wines, to make new wines look like old wines by dusting the bottles, and many other techniques.

A huge cache of fine wines was repatriated from Eagle's Nest at the end of the war in a bizarre and intricate wartime evacuation. Cases of wine were strapped onto stretchers and...

United States on Jun 05, 2015

Pat of York: This is a well written & unexpected history of WW2. Many viewers of the film "the monuments men" will find it a very welcome extension of the account extension of the efforts to save Frances's treasures from destruction by Hitler & his miniions. It is also a revealing story of the high value the French did & do put on wine & the awful experiences ordinary French people suffered.

United Kingdom on Apr 09, 2014

Matt S.: I came to this book as a WWII buff and as someone who appreciates wine. Actually, I am more of a beer drinker than a wine drinker. I was struck throughout this book by the reverence the French growers had for wine and the poetic heights they reached in describing their beloved wine. This contrasted with their contempt for the Nazis as beer-drinking louts. I meditated on the distinction between wine as a drink supposedly of the cultured and refined versus beer as a drink of the boorish lower class. Is this wine snobbery? Or is it simply a reflection of the fact that generally beer is less costly to produce and therefore a working man's drink? But in France, even the working man drinks wine. Is it a matter of regional differences, as in Germany, where both wine and beer are produced? Or is there something intrinsically superior to wine as a civilizing influence, as the French seem to believe? That was the tantalizing question as I read this book, and I made sure to drink a bottle of French wine (Macon-Villages) as I read it. I can't say that I reached a definitive conclusion--more research is undoubtedly necessary, but I can say that this is an excellent book and a great historical...

United States on Oct 29, 2013

EconGuy: In Wine and War, Don and Petie Kladstrup focus on the French wine industry's response to German occupation. The authors believe that wine defines France. They use an example of a speech given by the president of the French Winegrowers Association, which said, "[wine] contributed to the French race by giving them wit, gaiety and good taste, qualities which set it profoundly apart from people who drink a lot of beer" (10). The thesis of the book is about how people in the wine industry survived during German occupation (11). It is also about the importance of French wine as a commodity.

The wine industry did not recover after WWI. There were bitter harvests because several of the vineyards were used as battlefields. There were craters left in the ground from explosives, which altered the nutrients in the soil (18). The demand also decreased because of the Great Depression, which caused some wine growers to go bankrupt from low sales and labor shortages. In Burgundy, production fell by 40% and nearly half of the vineyards went uncultivated (19). The wine industry only started to improve slightly when World War II began because of the increase in demand of French wine from the...

United States on Mar 13, 2009