The Best of Enemies: Meyer and Schirlitz: Saving La Rochelle September 1994-May 1945

After the Allied D-Day landings in June 1944, Paris was liberated in late August, and the rest of France was freed in the following weeks. However, two pockets of German occupation in Royan and La Rochelle, both cities along the Atlantic coast, remained occupied for several months more.

Blocking access to Bordeaux, the city of Royan would end in martyrdom under a carpet of Allied bombs on January 5, 1945. But the fortress of La Rochelle, with its port, submarine base, and German garrison of 14,000 soldiers guarding the historic city and its 30,000 civilians, would later be delivered intact to Allied forces by its occupier.

By what perilous negotiations were two enemy officers able to avoid disaster in the besieged city? Two men of honor, French Commander Hubert Meyer and German Admiral Ernst Schirlitz, strove to see beyond the war toward reconciliation and the reconstruction of Europe.

Olivier Lebleu has lived in La Rochelle since 2002, after an initial career in audiovisual production in Paris. A writer, he has published around fifteen books, both historical and fictional, and he regularly runs writing workshops. He has also translated some fifteen English works, mainly nonfiction, and taught translation at the University of La Rochelle. A playwright, actor, and singer, he sometimes acts in his own plays and has created a few musical shows, in which he performs alone or accompanied.

The late Robert Kalbach (1936-2016) was a lecturer in the Department of English in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Poitiers. In 1977, he served as Deputy Mayor of La Rochelle, responsible for cultural affairs and international relations. In 1982, he was a cultural advisor to the French embassy in Austria. He fulfilled the same functions in Berlin from 1988 to 1992. He spent the last years of his life lecturing and writing historical novels and essays, especially on the Cathars and freemasonry.

Leonor Adriana Rosado-Bonewitz was born in Mexico and educated in England, Canada, and the United Sta-tes, where she resides. She majored in French with a minor in Spanish and has worked in the field of translation for over forty-five years. Prior to founding her own translation and cross-cultural communications company, she worked for the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC.