Indifference, rejection
The Occupation stunned the city's population, causing the people to slide into a state of apathy and confusion. The announcement that the Germans were arriving provoked a wave of suicides. But, although a few Parisians were seduced by the order and beauty--or perhaps the power and "correctness"--of the city's new masters, the vast majority veiled their disapproval—and later their hostility--in silence. Forcing themselves not to see the people they soon labeled "doryphores," [a small and highly prolific beetle and notorious garden pest] (as well as "Fritz," or "Fridolins"), Parisians closeted themselves inside the privacy of their homes, looking for ways of acting clandestinely or, on the contrary, of profiting from the Germans' presence in material ways, as an entire range of behaviors surfaced in forms that varied from the most insignificant to the most extreme.
