Return and Departure

This chapter examines how World War II affected the fates of Albatross Press's former leaders. Nazi Germany's military maneuvers were quickly redrawing the map of Europe, with important implications for former Albatross leaders such as Max Christian Wegner and Kurt Enoch. While waves of German troops crossed the Belgian border into France, Wegner followed behind with supply trucks for his enormous army division. To return to France was to cross over the lines of memory, reaching back to the time, almost a decade earlier, when he had first moved to Paris to launch his Albatross dream. While Wegner prepared to occupy France, Enoch prepared to defend it. The chapter considers what the Nazi occupation of Paris meant to different people like Wegner, Enoch, and Sylvia Beach.