Word: monaco
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Like a bull walrus on a rock, old Louis II, Prince of Monaco, basked contentedly in the Mediterranean sun. At 75, Europe's No. 1 amateur ichthyologist and ruler of its smallest principality (370 acres, 1,761 Monégasques) might well feel that in history's game of chance, luck had been with him. Of all the Continent's occupied countries, Monaco was perhaps the least scarred...
When France fell, Francophile Prince Louis had proclaimed: Monaco must be "an oasis." Eventually the Germans came to Monaco too-at first in mufti to relax in the Prince's fabelhaft (fabulous) Casino and to goggle earnestly at his fabelhaft aquarium. Before they left, they had stripped the great gambling Casino in Monte Carlo of its copper dome, placed ack-ack batteries in the Tir aux Pigeons (one of Europe's famed shooting grounds), sowed mines in the sun-drenched beach. Even now Prince Louis could hear the lethal crump! crump! as Allied engineers exploded the mines...
Gone Was the Glamor. But the roulette wheels were still spinning. Monaco had remained an oasis of pleasurable chance in Europe's desert of desperate chances. The wheels were spinning now. True, for U.S. soldiers redeploying from the Riviera, Monte Carlo was out of bounds. True, there were no Britons, Germans, Russians, Italians or Latin Americans, no glittering titles, no lavish profligates. Gambling's heroic days were gone: the days when the Princess Suvarov (descendant of Russia's famed general) assaulted the bank at Monte Carlo for a solid month and left it with a daily deficit...
...came at last to Monte Carlo. In the little Principality of Monaco, 370 acres of neutrality clamped to the underbelly of Fortress Europe, the Germans tightened the screws. Madrid reported that 5,000 resident aliens, thousands of casual visitors, were sent packing. Monaco, which contains famed, gay Monte Carlo, was left in the hands of the Germans and 1,500 native Monegasques...
...roulette was desolating. People played only 10-and 20-franc notes. The baccarat game . . . closed for lack of a banker. The barman at the Casino sold his last Henry Clay cigars for 1,000 francs. A few weeks ago they were 10,000 francs. Nobody wanted to buy whiskey. . . . Monaco is a desert...