Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France
Page 3
To be sure, “resistance” is a word with many meanings. There was passive, unarmed resistance, from anti-German graffiti to strikes. In the words of Jacques Sémelin, author of Unarmed Against Hitler: “Most of those who resorted to unarmed resistance did so for lack of better options, that is, because they had no weapons which remained the principal and ultimate means of those who were trying to oppose the German order.”19 Those who carried guns mostly did so defensively to be able to escape if pursued after an act of sabotage or if identified as a member of an illegal group wanted by the Gestapo (Geheim Staatspolizei, secret state police). Only after D-Day did armed confrontation by guerilla organizations become viable, and even then the results could be disastrous.
A Perfect Storm
This book is about a perfect storm of the most extreme form of gun control, in which the risk of facing a firing squad failed to motivate compliance by many French citizens. The failure to comply with the decrees to surrender all arms, made possible by the prewar refusal of many French to register their firearms, was a form of armed resistance that could be passive but had the potential to become active, and did so in many cases. As such, it was a constant source of uncertainty to the occupiers, causing them to devote resources to additional security measures and thereby away from more efficiently pursuing other measures of repression, such as rounding up Jews or conscripting French citizens for forced labor.
There is no reliable data on the number of firearms in France before the Nazi invasion. Handguns and certain rifles were required to be registered (those of possible military use were banned), but hunting guns were not. Registered firearms were more likely to be surrendered when the Germans issued decrees to do so, as the owners would have been known due to the registration records.
There were three million hunting guns in France in 1939, according to the Saint Hubert Club de France, a hunting association. During the Nazi occupation of 1940–44, some 715,000 were surrendered by their owners in the occupied zone. In the zone that was not occupied until 1942, 120,000 hunting guns were turned in to French authorities. The hunting guns not surrendered were, if not lost or stolen, hidden by their owners and in some cases used by the Resistance.20
That means that only 835,000 of three million hunting guns—less than one-third—were turned in by the French threatened with the death penalty for not doing so. While not every French citizen caught with a gun was shot, the very real threat of the firing squad was not enough to induce every gun owner to comply, leading the Germans repeatedly to declare amnesties. Yet many remained incorrigible and let the deadlines pass. That is an incredible testament to the inefficacy of gun control in the most extreme circumstances.
While the brutality of Nazi occupation varied in different countries, with the most vicious in the East, the general policy that all subjects must be disarmed was the same in all. Whether France’s nightmare in this regard in World War II has any lessons for today is for the reader to decide. To be sure, there is no denying that disarming a populace may be a form of repression that will be resisted even under the threat of the death penalty, and that the threat of imprisonment in less troubled times may be an even less effective panacea to rid society of what may be perceived as a retrogressive gun culture. In this context, history may speak louder than rhetoric. If nothing else, it is fitting to remember and pay tribute to the French gun owners who resisted, as well as those who were executed for defying orders to surrender their revolvers and hunting guns, and who thereby contributed in one way or another to the Resistance.
1. See generally Stephen P. Halbrook, Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State” (Oakland, CA: Independent Institute, 2013).
2. See Stephen P. Halbrook, “Congress Interprets the Second Amendment: Declarations by a Co-Equal Branch on the Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” 62 Tennessee Law Review 597 (Spring 1995).
3. James Madison, The Federalist No. 46, quoted in Stephen P. Halbrook, The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008), 182.
4. Stephen P. Halbrook, “Why Can’t We Be Like France? How the Right to Bear Arms Got Left Out of the Declaration of Rights and How Gun Registration Was Decreed Just in Time for the Nazi Occupation,” 34 Fordham Urban Law Journal, no. 5 (October 2012): 1637, 1652–55. This cites extensively from Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860: Recueil Complet des Débats Législatifs & Politiques des Chambres Françaises, Première série (1787 à 1799) (Paris: Librairie Administrative de Paul DuPont, 1867–1879).
5. J. M. Roberts, ed., French Revolution Documents (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 1:152.
6. “Tout citoyen a le droit d’avoir chez lui des armes, et de s’en servir, soit pour la défense commune, soit pour sa propre défense, contre toute agression illégale qui mettrait en péril la vie, les membres, ou la liberté d’un ou plusieurs citoyens.” Assemblée nationale, séance du mardi 18 août, Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, n° 42, 18 août 1789, p. 351.
7. Assemblée nationale, séance du mardi 18 août, Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, n° 42, 18 août 1789, 351. Available at http://ex.libris.free.fr/mirab170789.html.
8. French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Art. 2 (1789).
9. Property Requisition Act, Pub. L. 274, 55 U.S. Statutes 742 (1941). See Halbrook, “Congress Interprets the Second Amendment,” 618–31.
10. 87 Cong. Rec., 77th Cong., 1st Sess., 6778 (Aug. 5, 1941) (statement of Rep. Edwin Arthur Hall).
11. “The Nazi Deadline,” American Rifleman, February 1942, 7.
12. “An American Diplomat in Vichy France” (1986), adst.org/2013/07/an-american-diplomat-in-vichy-france/.
13. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) argued that “sportsmen fear firearms registration. We have here the same situation we saw in small degree in Nazi Germany.” Federal Firearms Legislation: Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., 478 (1968). Senator Joseph Tydings (D-MD) disputed “that registration or licensing of guns has some connection with the Nazi takeover in Germany” (478–79).
14. Federal Firearms Legislation, Senate Committee (1968), 482–83. See also 487–89.
15. 18 United States Code §§ 922(t)(2), 926(a).
16. Greg Ridgeway, Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, 2013), http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/PDF-News/nij-gun-policy-memo.pdf (accessed October 25, 2017).
17. “German Weapon Registry to Take Effect in 2013,” Deutsche Welle, December 18, 2012, www.dw.de/german-weapon-registry-to-take-effect-in-2013/a-16461910 (accessed October 25, 2017).
18. “Prominent Rabbi Calls on Europe to Allow Jews to Carry Guns,” www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/189932#.VLas7Xtlbm6 (accessed October 25, 2017).
19. Jacques Sémelin, Unarmed Against Hitler: Civilian Resistance in Europe, 1939–1943, trans. Suzan Husserl-Kapit (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 2.
20. Le Saint-Hubert, n°1, janvier–février 1945, 1.
1
Crisis in the Third Republic
FRANCE IN THE mid-1930s experienced conflict between political factions and the collapse of governments. The most volatile disturbances rocked Paris on February 6, 1934, in which police and the Mobile Guard (garde mobile)—helmeted horsemen wielding pistols and sabers—opened fire on civilians, killing eighteen, while one policeman was killed.1 Among other repressive measures, clamping down on civilian gun ownership appeared to politicians to be a remedy.
This was the era of the Third Republic, born at the defeat of France in the Franco-German War in 1871, and now nearing its death throes, finalized by its subsequent defeat by Nazi Germany in 1940. The 1932 elections brought the Cartel des Gauches (Leftist Coalition) government to power. The Great Depression struck France hard in 1933, and the resulting lower wages and unemployment sparked violent strikes and political unrest. The French Commu
nist Party (Parti Communiste Français, or PCF) welcomed the opportunity for insurrection.
A scheme involving false bonds in large amounts by a swindler named Alexandre Stavisky, who had connections in high places and who died mysteriously after the scandal broke, led to allegations of corruption and the replacement of the prime minister by Édouard Daladier, the leader of the Radical-Socialists, on January 27, 1934. Action français and other rightist groups prepared to take to the streets.
The pot boiled over just days later, after Daladier dismissed the right-leaning Police Prefect Jean Chiappe from office. On February 6, some 4,500 members of the Croix de Feu (Cross of Fire) marched in front of the Ministry of the Interior, proceeding from the Madeleine to the Arc de Triomphe, when the Mobile Guard assaulted them at the Place Beauvau.2 Self-described as a patriotic veterans’ organization, Croix de Feu included anti-Communists, far-rightists, and French-style fascists.3
Demonstrators rushed onto the bridge of the Concorde to storm the passage that led to the Chamber of Deputies. Soldiers shot machine guns over their heads into the air, but one bullet found its mark in the head of a woman.4 One account described riots by Communists leaving twelve dead and hundreds wounded,5 while the police prefecture said ten demonstrators were killed and up to 700 were injured.6 It was later estimated that 1,664 were injured, mostly by use of stones, broken glass, sticks, and hand weapons.7
The Croix de Feu did not carry arms. Private possession of firearms was highly regulated, and military arms were banned to civilians, but the group hoped to obtain them from like-minded military commanders if needed to meet a Communist threat.8
The Daladier government was accused of provoking a civil war by shooting demonstrators, while Minister of Justice Eugène Penancier announced an investigation into the plot against national security, incitation to murder, assault and battery, and arson. The Croix de Feu placed posters all over Paris asserting that “[a] government controlled by the red flag attempts to enslave you…. Sectarian dictatorship is trying to establish itself here.”9
The next day, February 7, a delegation of veterans petitioned the president of the Republic, complaining that they marched unarmed and peacefully, but were attacked without provocation with sabers and revolvers by the Mobile Guard on the order of the minister of the interior and of the police chief. They demanded a new government.10 Daladier resigned at 1:00 p.m. that same day. Communists demonstrated that day and the next, provoking riots that resulted in injuries to both police and demonstrators.11 A run on every gun shop in Paris sold out firearm inventories.12
Pierre Laval acted as head of a group made up of members of parliament and Parisian municipal councilors in a visit to President Albert Lebrun urging the appointment of ex-president Gaston Doumergue. Doumergue formed the National Union government of rightists and Radical-Socialists. (The Radical-Socialists were moderate leftists, but the far left saw them as a bourgeois party that was neither radical nor socialist.) Laval was appointed minister of colonies, and Philippe Pétain was appointed minister of war.13 Pétain and Laval would later head Vichy France, the puppet government of Nazi Germany.
Pétain, known as the Lion of Verdun for halting the German advance there in 1916, was a national hero. After the Great War, his urgent proposals to enhance military service and to build strong air and tank forces came to naught. He would try again as minister of war, but the Great Depression, now in full swing, frustrated his plans. By contrast, Laval was a professional politician who had been a socialist during the war and was now what might be described as an independent opportunist. His drift from left to right as a populist would be politically expedient as he served in various legislative and ministerial roles.
Prohibiting the Carrying and Sale of Arms
On February 7, invoking an 1834 law, the government decreed a ban on the carrying of pistols and revolvers of all models, calibers, and sizes, together with edged and blunt weapons.14 On February 8, the new Police Prefect Adrien Bonnefoy-Sibour issued this proclamation: “The sale of arms and ammunition is prohibited in Paris and in the Seine department.”15 The proclamation began by reciting as authority a litany of firearm restrictions dating from 1790 through 1885, including decrees as far back as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era.16 Asserting a need to prevent private individuals from obtaining arms, it proclaimed:
Article One. — The sale of arms and ammunition of any kind shall be prohibited from this day on, and until further notice, in Paris and in the Seine department.
Article Two. — The gunsmiths shall be closed, and the arms and ammunition shall be kept in a locked place, and shall not be accessible to the public.
Article Three. — Arms and ammunition shall be removed from the existing gunsmith department in department stores, bazaars and cutlery shops, etc.
Article Four. — The Superintendent of the City Police, the colonel head of the Republican Guard, the colonel head of the Gendarmerie of the Seine, and the officers placed under their command are in charge of carrying out this order.
On February 9, the Communists demonstrated again, clashing with the police. Allegedly armed provocations prompted armed reaction by the police, and blood flowed again in the streets of Paris.17 Citizens wishing to obtain arms to protect themselves still could not do so ten days later, when pleas were made to allow the reopening of the gunsmith shops.18
Former President Daladier denied any government order to shoot during the February 6 disorders, and the Chamber of Deputies named a commission of inquiry to find those responsible.19 The Croix de Feu and others wrote to Council President Doumergue that they had peacefully demonstrated and did not carry weapons, as the police prefect admitted. They considered themselves patriotic workers who were not to be confused with looters, robbers, and enemies of the nation.20
Seizing Arms from Alleged “Communists”
A bill to ban associations whose leaders advised their members to violate the law by carrying arms or committing other crimes was introduced in mid-March. Existing penalties for manufacture or sale of illegal arms under an 1834 law were revised to impose incarceration of ten months to two years and a fine of 500 to 5,000 francs if the arms were carried in a group or at a public meeting.21
On March 28, Paris newspapers blared with sensational reports of arms seizures. L’Echo de Paris carried this headline: “Searches Lead to Weapons Caches in Paris and Suburbs: Arms Owner, Husband of a Communist Teacher Is Arrested.”22 Rumors had spread about arms caches for extremist groups, and the commission of inquiry of the February 6 events invited the government to take the necessary police measures. Police Prefect Roger Langeron instructed the Renseignements Généraux Department (the RG, or Police Political Security Branch) to conduct searches for arms.
State Prosecutor Gornien brought an indictment under the 1834 law, which made it unlawful to manufacture, sell, or even possess a “war weapon” or ammunition therefor. A communiqué from the justice minister announced an investigation about arms caches and possession of war weapons. Four judges led searches beginning at 7:00 a.m. on March 28. Further, the justice and interior ministers submitted a regulatory decree to the Council further restricting arms sales.
One search warrant was executed by Judge Roussel, along with Police Superintendent Pradier, at the home of a Mr. Léopold Dancart, an apartment at 25, rue Godillot in St-Ouen. The dining room was an immense aviary where hens, finches, and other birds were feeding and flying from one piece of furniture to another. The search revealed about fifty military rifles, shotguns and Lebel carbines, Mauser rifles, German parabellum pistols, Brownings and other automatic arms and cartridges hidden under the bed and in the armoires.
Mr. Dancart declared himself to be a nonpolitical collector with no intent to harm anyone. He added that he did not even vote and had never been to an electoral meeting. As he spoke, his wife walked in, criticizing her husband for his hobby, which put her job at risk. She was a schoolteacher supposedly affiliated with the French Communist Party.
Danca
rt, who was born in 1879, had previously been convicted for an illegal arms cache. On this occasion, he was interrogated by Police Superintendent Pradier, who arrested him under a warrant issued by Judge Saussier. In searches elsewhere, police confiscated clubs, sword canes, bayonets, and cartridges. Some war weapons were confiscated at the homes of people who otherwise were licensed to sell arms.23
L’Homme Libre published an editorial lauding the searches for caches of arms in private homes, which had increased since February 6.24 The regime was based on freedom and majority rule, the editorial argued, and should avoid dictatorship based on force, as had occurred in neighboring states. Regrettably, gunsmiths allegedly made a gold mine in sales the day after February 6. Ignoring that law-abiding people may have been arming for defense, the editorial continued that extremists, whether from left or right, would be able to prepare for civil war. It praised the judicial proceedings and the introduction of a decree to the Council of State severely limiting the sale and possession of arms.
Le Figaro published the same communique by the justice department prefaced with this commentary: “Finally the government takes care of the war weapon caches set up by Communist organizations!”25 It provided more details on the raid at the home of Léopold Dancart, described as a former mechanic and race-car driver who now was a flea market vendor. “Mr. Dancart has a small hobby, which is collecting weapons, can you imagine! For this reason, the police searched his home yesterday, and confiscated 48 rifles and shotguns, 86 revolvers and pistols, a few clubs and daggers, and about a thousand cartridges.”