In another incident, Jewish partisans ambushed a German train. Maurice Bernsohn recalled:
We pounced on them, I tearing a revolver from the belt of a German major (I have that gun to this day) and shouting: “Wir sind Juden! Wir sind Juden!” (“We are Jews!”) They turned quite white. We made them line up, and they were sure we were going to kill them right then and there. But we only made prisoners of them.34
The Maquis obstructed German routes through the Vosges and in the Ardennes. In October, 60,000 FFI Maquis surrounded Wehrmacht units at La Rochelle, Royan, and Verdon. Some 140,000 Maquis were absorbed into the Free French army.35
By fall 1944, with much of France liberated, a new government was in power with de Gaulle giving orders. Of the paramilitary Resistance groups, de Gaulle related in his memoirs, “I induced the government to decree the formal dissolution of the militias,” which passed on October 28. The National Council of the Resistance objected—de Gaulle met with them, but “I could answer only by complete refusal.” It was not the Communists who were vocal: “The most ardent in their protest were those who represented the moderate factions.”36 One can imagine the resentment and sense of mistrust felt by the partisans who fought and died in France while de Gaulle sojourned in London and Algiers.
A French Gun Decree
On October 31, the Council of Ministers decreed that “any force which was not a part of the Army or the police was to be dissolved at once….” But the following measure went much further: “Any armament in the possession of private citizens was to be turned in within a week to the police commissariats or the gendarmerie brigades.”37 Was this a new version of a prohibition on firearm possession by citizens, with a week to turn them in instead of twenty-four hours, and the punishment being something less than the death penalty?
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 so decreed, as the owners would be known.
There were three million hunting guns in France in 1939, according to the Saint-Hubert-Club de France, a hunting association. After the Nazi takeover and occupation in 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.38
That means that only 835,000 of three million hunting guns—less than one-third—were turned in by French citizens threatened with the death penalty for not doing so. That is an incredible testament to the inefficacy of gun control in the most extreme circumstances.
What was the fate of the surrendered hunting guns? In the occupied zone, those in German custody were mostly destroyed, sent to Germany, or loaned or sold to Wehrmacht soldiers for hunting in France. A few, mostly in Vincennes, were abandoned by the Germans as they retreated. In the free zone, most of the arms surrendered to the French authorities were not shipped to Germany. Other than hunting guns, in both zones “war weapons,” pistols, revolvers, and rifled hunting carbines (carabines rayées de chasse) were completely removed or destroyed by the Germans.
When the Germans retreated, of the surrendered arms, all rifled hunting carbines and all of the best shotguns, with rare exceptions, disappeared. In the vicinity of Paris, the château of Vincennes had about 14,000 centerfire guns (fusils à percussion centrale) in poor condition, 7,000 pinfire rifles (vieux fusils à broche), and 4,000 percussion muskets (fusils à piston), mostly unusable. Of these 25,000 guns, about 4,000 had labels with the name and address of the owner.39
While it will never be known how many French citizens surrendered and had their firearms confiscated, far more significant is how many French lost their lives for possession of firearms, how the mere uncertainty of arms not surrendered tied up more German forces, and how private ownership of firearms contributed to the Resistance.
Trials of Those Who Denounced Gun Owners
After the liberation, collaborators were held accountable. Informal justice and revenge were meted out to the worst offenders, who were summarily executed, as well as to those who simply got too close to the Germans, such as the women who were punished by shaving their heads.
One of the most pernicious degradations during the occupation was the practice of denunciations based on greed, revenge, or other base motive. Hélène Berr wrote in her diary that “Mme P. spoke to me about her plans to take revenge on the disgusting cowards who denounce other people and pillage their homes when they are arrested….”40 Many were denounced for hiding firearms.
The courts of justice tried many for such denunciations. A municipal employee was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor because he denounced a young man to the Gestapo for hiding revolvers in his cellar. A wife denounced her seventy-five-year-old husband to the Gestapo, but the rifle found was so old that he was released; the man forgave his wife.41
A man was sentenced to forced labor for life for denouncing a neighbor for listening to the English radio, after which a rifle was found, leading to his execution. The death penalty was given to a landlord who denounced a tenant to the Gestapo for possession of a pistol, who was executed.42 A worker was condemned to death for denouncing coworkers to the Gestapo for possession of some automatic pistols, leading to one worker being executed by the Germans.43 A man was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment for denouncing his neighbors for possessing firearms.44
A woman got ten years of hard labor for denouncing her boss, an industrialist. A man got twenty years of hard labor for denouncing a neighbor for possession of military firearms. Another man got fifteen years’ hard labor for denouncing a firearm owner.45 A woman was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for denouncing her ex-husband to the German military authority for possession of firearms.46
A particularly revolting case concerned a woman who in December 1940 denounced her husband and son to the Germans for possessing firearms. The husband was imprisoned for nine months and the son for three months. Two years later, the husband was turned over to the Gestapo by a rural guard who the FFI resistance group shot during the liberation. Condemned the second time as a recidivist, the husband was sent to a deportation camp where he died. The wife informer was sentenced to just ten months’ imprisonment.47
Accounting for Gun Owners Who Were Executed or Deported
Marcel Demnet, born in 1921 in Vierzon-Forges (Cher), was employed in the town hall from 1934 to 1979. After the war, he took charge of assisting both military and civilian victims of the war, and published a compilation about members of the Resistance and the victims of Nazi barbarism in the department of Cher.48 He would become president of the Fédération Nationale des Déportés et Enternés, Résistants et Patriotes (National Federation of Deportees and Externs, Resistants, and Patriots, or FNDIRP).49
In response to my questionnaire, Demnet provided a document entitled “Civilian Arrests During the Occupation in the Department of Cher for Possession of Arms (June 20, 1940–September 4, 1944).”50 The following shows some of the listings, beginning with the name of the town in italics and then the person arrested:
Bourges. Camille Vincent, arrested July 24, 1942, possession of hunting gun, died in deportation (S.A.R.).51
Chassy. Georges Pitrau, arrested July 24, 1942, possession of hunting gun, deported in October 1942 to Inzert, Diez, and Breslau, died in deportation April 21, 1943.
Gracay. Chalandre, woodworker, arrested in November 1942 for keeping and hiding abandoned weapons from the debacle of June 1940 (S.A.R.)
Gron. Raymond Blondeau, possession of a revolver, arrested June 16, 1944, would have been executed the same day.
Lignieres. Raymond Mahiet, arrested at the demarcation line at Cher in possession of a weapon where he would have died (S.A.R.)
Vie
rzon. Stanislaw Szymanski, arrested October 27, 1942, possession of a revolver and a cane gun (S.A.R.)
Vierzon. Marcel Mass, notorious poacher (I knew him well), arrested November 22, 1940, confined at the Bourges Jail, freed January 29, 1941. Conviction: Possession of hunting gun and hunting without authorization (and for reason!). If my memory is correct, he was arrested by the gendarmes of Vierzon for poaching and would have been judged by French Justice (it was not the first). He therefore did not need to be sent to the Germans.
Ivoy-le-Pre. Edouard Habert, arrested September 23, 1943, for hiding parachuted arms. Deported to Buchenwald, Dora, and Bergen-Belsen.
Calculating how many French were executed, deported, or imprisoned for all offenses, from possession of a firearm and spreading anti-German propaganda to listening to the BBC and sabotage, would be a difficult if not impossible task. De Gaulle wrote, “With the co-operation of a considerable number of officials and a mass of informers, 60,000 persons had been executed and more than 200,000 deported of whom a bare 50,000 survived. Further, 35,000 men and women had been condemned by the Vichy tribunals….”52 The numbers killed, whether as Maquis, Jews, or as noncombatants who were massacred for whatever reason, were exceedingly higher.
It would be difficult to provide even a rough estimate of the number of people arrested, imprisoned, executed, or deported specifically for firearm possession. Wehrmacht districts regularly reported statistics in their Lagebericht on the numbers of people arrested for firearm offenses. The reports are voluminous but incomplete. Newspapers published the names of some people executed for firearm possession by order of the military commander, but not every case.
Statistical reports on and identification of gun violators and other offenders were greatly reduced when the SS took over security functions and as a result of Nacht und Nebel, under which people disappeared without explanation. The Vichy police would have kept their own records of gun arrestees, although the extent to which records thereon survived is unclear. Suffice it to say that large numbers of French citizens were arrested and punished by imprisonment, execution, or deportation for gun possession.
The Fate of the Vichy Collaborators
This story would not be complete without relating the fate of the Vichy collaborators who made it all possible. As the Allies and the Resistance were pushing the Germans back during the summer of 1944, Pierre Laval hatched a plan to try and convince the Germans to allow the National Assembly to reconvene and to restore full powers to Pétain. Laval may have fantasized that the Americans would prefer an interim government of his own rather than of de Gaulle. Laval went to Paris just days before the battle there began in order to negotiate with the Germans, who instead took him into custody and transported him, along with Pétain who had been fetched from Vichy, to the more secure city of Belfort.53
The Germans wanted to maintain their puppet government, but at this point neither Laval nor Pétain wished to continue playing the game. Ultra-collaborationist Fernand de Brinon stepped forward to propose a new government with himself at its head. With the Allies advancing, the French entourage was transferred to Germany where they remained until the Nazi regime collapsed in April 1945. Pétain then returned to France, de Brinon surrendered to the Americans, and Laval fled to Spain, which after a brief sojourn delivered him to the Americans, who passed him on to the French.54
In the trials that followed of members of the Vichy government for their crimes during the occupation, Pétain was sentenced to life imprisonment—it would not do to execute an old senile World War I hero who had been beloved by many. De Brinon was condemned to death and shot.55 Laval received the same fate, but a few more details are in order.
Whether out of arrogance or delusion, Laval thought that he could persuade the jury that he protected France as best anyone could. He wrote a testament to justify his every act to save France from a worse fate.56 But as Albert Lebrun, the Third Republic’s last president, testified in Laval’s trial, “It would have been better for France … that the country be administered directly by a Gauleiter [Nazi administrative official] than by a French government, which was not going to have any power any longer except in appearance and whose essential role would consist, in sum, in guaranteeing all the decisions of the occupation authorities.”57
Given that general perception, it was no wonder that only a show trial would ensue, as Laval’s guilt and sentence had already been decided before it began.58 Given the mood of many French based on Laval’s crimes, he was lucky not to have simply been shot and hung upside down in public like Mussolini. The judicial formalities having been met, on October 15, 1945, Laval was tied to a stake in a courtyard at the Fresnes prison, south of Paris—where his Nazi partners had previously imprisoned and tortured countless French—and shot.59
1. Michel, Shadow War, 290.
2. Cobb, The Resistance, 245–46.
3. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 258.
4. Meyer, Die deutsche Besatzung, Chapter 8. See also Lieb, Konventioneller Krieg oder NSWeltanschauungskrieg?, 368–69.
5. Otto Weidinger, Comrades to the End, quoted in www.oradour.info/ruined/chapter6.htm.
6. Michael Williams, In a Ruined State: The Full Story of Oradour-sur-Glane 10th June 1944 (2011), www.oradour.info/ruined/chapter7.htm.
7. Williams, In a Ruined State, www.oradour.info/ruined/chapter5.htm; Meyer, Die deutsche Besatzung, 166.
8. Cobb, The Resistance, 250–53; Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 258.
9. Cobb, The Resistance, 251–53.
10. Lieb, Vercors 1944, 91.
11. Telegram dated August 7, 1944, in Peterson, From Hitler’s Doorstep, 357.
12. BA/MA RH 34/342, Standortkommandantur Limoges, Standortbefehle Nr. 59–88, Februar – August 1944.
13. “Comment armer les milices,” En avant, organe régional des jeunesses communistes du Nord, août 1944.
14. The most thorough account is in Peter Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945, 3rd ed. (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1996).
15. Marie-Louise Osmont, The Normandy Diary of Marie-Louise Osmont, 1940–1944, trans. George L. Newman (New York: Random House, 1994), 100.
16. For a fascinating account by one of the conspirators, see Wilhelm von Schramm, Conspiracy Among Generals, trans. R.T. Clark (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956); see also Laub, After the Fall, 282–86.
17. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), 107–8; de Beauvoir, Prime of Life, 715; Cobb, The Resistance, 259–60.
18. La Libération de Paris. Available at https://archive.org/download/LaLiberationdeParis1944/LaLiberationdeParis1944.mp4.
19. Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 204.
20. Christine Levisse-Touzé, Paris libéré, Paris Retrouvé (Paris: Gallimard Découvertes, 1994), 3; “Le Journal de la Libération de la France,” L’Événement du Jeudi, August 18–24, 1994, 21, 25, 30; Venner, Armes de la Résistance, 156; Cobb, The Resistance, 264.
21. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 269 (entry dated August 19, 1944).
22. Cobb, The Resistance, 261.
23. de Gaulle, War Memoirs, 633.
24. de Beauvoir, Prime of Life, 717–18.
25. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 270–71.
26. Cobb, The Resistance, 265–67. See Lieb, Konventioneller Krieg oder NS-Weltanschauungskrieg?, 480.
27. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 271–72 (entry dated August 28, 1944).
28. de Gaulle, War Memoirs, 647.
29. Laub, After the Fall, 287; Mitchell, Nazi Paris, 149.
30. Is Paris Burning? and Paris brûle-t-il? directed by René Clément (Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1966). The script was based on Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965).
31. Cobb, The Resistance, 270.
32. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 272.
33. “Rafle du Cafe de l’Eglise aux Forges,”
document attached to letter from Marcel Demnet to author, November 13, 2002.
34. Latour, Jewish Resistance, 49.
35. Michel, Shadow War, 344.
36. de Gaulle, War Memoirs, 712.
37. de Gaulle, War Memoirs, 712.
38. Le Saint-Hubert, n°1, janvier–février 1945, 1.
39. Le Saint-Hubert, n°2, mars–avril 1945, 9.
40. Berr, Journal, 242 (entry dated January 13, 1944).
41. André Halimi, La Délation Sous L’Occupation (Paris: Éditions Alain Moreau, 1983), 252–53.
42. Halimi, La Délation, 257–58.
43. Halimi, La Délation, 260.
44. Halimi, La Délation, 264.
45. Halimi, La Délation, 279–80.
46. Halimi, La Délation, 297.
47. Halimi, La Délation, 289.
48. Marcel Demnet, Livre-mémorial des résistants, patriotes et civils vierzonnais raflés, victimes de la barbarie nazie, “morts pour la France” 1942–1945 (Vierzon: la Gaucherie, 2005).
49. “Déportés politiques à Auschwitz, le convoy du 6 juillet 1942,” politique-auschwitz.blogspot.com/2010/12/lanoue-moise-lucien-alexis.html.
50. “Civils Arrêtés dans le Departement du Cher pour Detention D’Armes sous l’Occupation (20 juin 1940 – 4 septembre 1944),” document attached to letter to author from Marcel Demnet, November 13, 2002.
51. Unknown abbreviation.
52. de Gaulle, War Memoirs, 789.
53. Warner, Pierre Laval, 400–404.
54. Warner, Pierre Laval, 404–7.
55. Henry Rousso, Les années noires: Vivre sous l’Occupation (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 123–24.
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