On 13 June 1940 on the eve of the German troops’ arrival, a mere four men stood watch over a now unrecognisable Versailles. On 25 August 1939, along with the rest of the country’s museums, the Palace closed its doors to the public and dispatched some of its works to the Château de Brissac and Château de Chambord. Its “passive defence” plan was under-way. By the end of the 1930s, conflict seemed inevitable and the Palace of Versailles arranged for its treasures to be covertly evacuated to a series of secret depot sites.
From 1933 on, the Palace’s deputy curator, Charles Mauricheau-Beaupré, drew up a first plan for evacuating Versailles’ collections. If the Germans succeeded in pushing through to Versailles, would they make the Palace pay for its past?Įpisode 1: “May Louis XIV keep watch over Versailles”īy the 1930s, France’s museums were readying themselves for the possibility of a new war.
As the 1930s drew to a close, tensions were mounting in Europe as the threat of a new war loomed ever larger over the continent. A French monument at the heart of European turmoilĪ symbol of the Franco-German rivalry that began brewing in the 19th century, the Palace of Versailles was witness to the dawning of the German Empire in 1871, and fuelled Adolf Hitler’s thirst for revenge following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
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