From a tactical perspective, the barricades were unlikely to present much of an obstacle to a determined German attack; nevertheless, they served an important military purpose. Barat noted that they provided Parisians, many of whom had never held a gun in their lives, a modicum of protection that was crucially important to sustaining their morale. The men in his FFI cell were desperately anxious to fight—on hearing of the truce they had screamed, “No truce! War to the Death! Now more than ever!” But they had no real experience of fighting and no idea how to combat the materially superior Germans. The barricades gave them a place to assemble and site their few weapons. One barricade in the St. Michel area, for example, had thirty-seven men defending it, but just two rifles and a revolver. Fighting together as a community gave Parisians a strength they would not have had as individuals or pairs. As a result, the barricades took on an importance far out of proportion to their tactical value. Barat wrote that “words cannot express the fever of combat, the intoxication, the enthusiasm” that people felt as they took up an active role in their own liberation.10
When properly located and reinforced, moreover, the barricades could still play a strategic role. FFI leaders knew that the Germans were unlikely to risk losing a precious tank to demolish a barricade that was inexpensive to construct and simple to rebuild. FFI section chiefs carefully determined where to construct the barricades and instructed people how best to defend them in order to achieve the maximum effect. Barat’s area in St. Michel sat along the route between the German tank park in the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Préfecture de Police. It therefore dominated one of the most important streets in the city on these days, the Boulevard St. Michel. Barat was determined to make his neighborhood a bastion of the FFI and a death trap for any Germans who dared to cross.
Barat oversaw the establishment of nine major barricades in St. Michel. The most important, made up of overturned trucks, paving stones, and sandbags, went up just west of the Boulevard St. Michel on the Quai des Grands Augustins. It was more than ten feet high and almost six feet deep, making it undoubtedly one of the strongest barricades in the city. It successfully prevented the movement of German tanks along the Left Bank of the Seine, thus protecting the southern approaches to the Île de la Cité. Other barricades blocked off the Boulevard St. Michel and the Rue St. Jacques at both the river and along the Boulevard St. Germain. Two barricades near the prominent fountain of St. Michel (the protector of Paris) stretched halfway across the boulevard to keep the interior lines of communication around the Rue St. Severin open for the FFI. In this neighborhood, at least, the barricades were not constructed randomly, but according to a plan that made maximum use of their strength.11
Barricades located in less important areas or that were less sturdily constructed still had their own roles to play. The barricades canalized German movements, forcing them to move around the obstacles or engage them directly. When they chose the former, they moved into alleys and side streets, where FFI teams were waiting for them with Molotov cocktails and whatever other weapons they could amass. When they chose the latter, they had to stop, which left them open to attack. In either case, Resistance fighters ambushed them, seized prisoners of war, and, more crucially, captured badly needed German weapons and ammunition. The barricades also presented a new and unwelcome problem for the Germans, who had grown accustomed to open lines of communication.
The Germans, and for that matter the French, often had no idea which streets were open and which were barricaded. The result was a communications headache for the Germans that sowed confusion and fear, placing them in the uncomfortable role of being on the defensive amid a hostile population. The barricades isolated the German strongpoints from one another. German units saw their supplies and reinforcements choked off as the roads literally closed in around them. When the Germans came out of their strongpoints to clear barricades, they found themselves engaged in disorienting street fighting for which they had no training. German attacks rarely succeeded, because the Germans could not survive outside their strongpoints for long before being surrounded. Even when the Germans damaged the barricades, teams of neighborhood volunteers quickly repaired them.
The mass confusion in the streets impacted the Germans much more than it did the FFI. Rol’s fighters could easily move in pairs or small groups through the streets without fear of being intercepted by either the Germans or the police, who were protecting the prefecture and the commissariats. They could also use the corridors of the Métro and the sewer system to move underground, where the Germans could not see them and the barricades did not inhibit them. From his headquarters underneath the Denfert-Rochereau Métro station, Rol could keep in contact with the neighborhoods and even direct reinforcements to threatened areas where necessary. Rol’s staff marked each barricade on a giant map, giving the FFI an enormous intelligence advantage over the Germans. The prefecture, too, acted as a command post. Its fully functioning telephone system helped the FFI to direct reinforcements and supplies to crisis areas.12
The heady atmosphere in Paris transformed it into a new city as residents felt freedom for the first time in years. Rol’s courageous wife, Cécile, recalled these days as the first time she could walk through the streets of Paris without having to look behind to see who was following her. Parisians finally felt safe enough to use the telephones and say in public what had been on their minds throughout the occupation. “One could say out loud that Hitler was a bastard and Pétain an old traitor,” recalled one Parisian with joy. Others were inspired by the sight of the French police patrolling the area around the prefecture in a captured German armored car with the word “POLICE” painted hastily on its sides. “People stared at us stupefied,” the driver of the vehicle later noted. “They couldn’t believe their eyes. Everywhere we went they cheered us and applauded us.” The FFI flew a large tricolor flag over the recently liberated Cherche-Midi prison and stretched another across an adjacent road. A German armored vehicle passing by shot it down, but thirty minutes later a new one took its place. That flag flew throughout the rest of the liberation.13
The Resistance leaders attempted to channel these newfound energies into the ongoing battle raging within the city. One communist proclamation urged Parisians to join the fight, saying that “the hour has come to chase out the invader, the hour has come to once again proclaim the Republic at the Hôtel de Ville, by Parisians themselves. TO ARMS CITIZENS!” The Communist Party also posted notices urging Parisians to disregard the false truce. “Paris wants to fight!” they read. And fight Paris did. All but three of the city’s arrondissements saw action on August 21 and 22.
For the first time, the French had the initiative, and the Resistance groups in the city were not shy about exercising it. FFI members moved through the city, making maximum use of the absence of German Army patrols. They captured buildings of importance, including the telephone exchanges that the entire German Army in France depended upon for communications. They attacked Germans when the military situation was in their favor, and they made dozens of arrests of collaborators, including so-called horizontal collaborators, women who had had affairs with German officials and were often accused of being critical sources of information for the Germans. These women soon became a symbol of the more vengeful side of the liberation and épuration, the purging of French society that followed.14
Without the collaborators and the Paris police acting as their eyes and ears, the Germans were operationally blind and deaf. The FFI could thus move freely and attack almost anytime they wished, weapons permitting. Spreading the fighting to as many areas as he could was part of Rol’s strategy to ease the pressure on the prefecture. FFI bands, despite their lack of arms, tried to pin down Germans in their strongholds, including the Prince Eugène barracks on the Place de la République, the crucial Place d’Italie traffic circle, and the Porte d’Orléans, to keep them from being able to move men and arms to threatened areas. By the morning of August 22, the Germans felt safe moving around the city only when th
ey were in armored cars. The cars offered reasonable protection against small arms, yet were faster and less vulnerable to Molotov cocktails than tanks.15
The momentum of battle quickly swung in the FFI’s favor. They captured the critically important Gare de l’Est, with its rail links to the east, although the nearly adjacent Gare du Nord remained in German hands. These operations also gave the FFI a chance to capture more prisoners of war and weapons stocks. They found many German soldiers willing to surrender; entire German strongpoints and their garrisons frequently threw up their hands after just a few minutes of combat. Isolated from support and in the middle of a vengeful population, they could often do little more. Once in French hands, they often spoke of how sick they were of the war and how worried they were for their families back in Germany. The steady accumulation of these prisoners, 650 of whom the FFI captured between August 19 and 22, allowed Rol to issue a bold proclamation that he would kill every German in FFI hands if the Germans began demolitions inside the city.16
Other German strongpoints, like the École Militaire and the Palais du Luxembourg, both well protected by tanks and concrete blockhouses, were too heavily defended for the FFI to assault with their small arms. Luxembourg’s defenders, about three hundred dedicated SS troops, warned that they would blow up the palace with ten tons of explosives stored underneath before they would surrender, sending a shiver of fright throughout the neighborhood. Police soon began evacuations of all buildings within about three hundred yards of the palace, which included the homes of two expatriate American women of letters: Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Company, who lived near the Place de l’Odéon, and the collaborationist and scholar of Shakespeare Clara Longworth de Chambrun, who had used her links to Pierre Laval (her son had married his daughter) to keep the American Library of Paris open through 1944. Despite their almost completely opposite politics, both women were directly threatened by the increasingly tense situation in their neighborhood.17
Some key places fell to the Resistance without a shot being fired in their defense. The Gaullist representative Alexandre Parodi, perhaps motivated by the fear that the FFI was growing too powerful, ordered the seizure of the Hôtel Matignon, the seventeenth-century mansion that serves as the official residence of the French prime minister. Parodi dispatched a young dedicated Gaullist named Yvon Morandat and his fiancée, Claire Walborn, to do the job. Parodi had told him not to risk a confrontation with the Matignon’s security detail, whose allegiances were unknown. If there should be opposition, Parodi advised him, he should leave the area at once. “If there is opposition,” Morandat boldly replied, “I’ll leave in a coffin.” In his excitement, Morandat had set off before checking a map, heading instinctively to the Avenue Matignon on the wrong bank of the Seine. He and Walborn, who rode on the handlebars of his bicycle, were reduced to asking the only person on the streets, an elderly Frenchman walking his dog, for directions to the prime minister’s residence.
After reversing direction through nearly deserted streets, they found the Hôtel Matignon, just steps away from the apartment on the Rue de Bellechasse where the Resistance leaders had met three long days earlier. With little more than his courage to protect him, Morandat talked his way past the Matignon’s security guards and to the commander of the well-armed one-hundred-man bodyguard unit that had protected Pierre Laval until just a few days before. Walking up to the commander of the guard with his, and Claire Walborn’s, FFI armbands clearly visible, he said, “I have come to occupy these premises in the name of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.” To his astonishment, the commander announced his own pro-Republican politics, called the guard to attention, and said, “At your orders.”18
A few hours later, Parodi hosted a meeting of the shadow Gaullist government in the office of the prime minister, with Walborn assuming the role of recording secretary. A French government, with a complete cabinet, was back in business, even as the German Army still controlled many key points across the city. The meeting focused mainly on the food crisis, unemployment, and the need to establish order once the Germans left. The ministers made no critical decisions, but the mere fact that the meeting happened at all sent a powerful message across Paris, especially after the left-leaning press voiced its tentative support. This support was crucial because the new French government, although provisional, was dominated by men loyal to de Gaulle, who vitally needed the support of the French Left to lend legitimacy to their efforts. Other leftist elements in Paris, notably the FFI, were still far from endorsing the Gaullist government. The FFI may have controlled the streets, but the Gaullists controlled both the police and the new mechanisms of government represented by the cabinet now openly meeting in the Hôtel Matignon. The FFI leadership knew about the meeting but did nothing to disrupt it, an indication that they were focused on defeating the Germans, not seizing power by means of a coup.19
Still, the Resistance could only do so much without weapons. Despite their success, the leaders of both the Gaullists and the FFI knew that the Germans would recover from their surprise and initial setbacks. When they did, they would be looking for revenge, and they would have at their disposal heavy weapons, including airplanes. Unlike Parisians, moreover, German soldiers were unlikely to care how many civilians were caught in the crossfire or how much of the city they devastated. The FFI would need material help from the Allies, and fast, or the Germans would have the chance to strike back with ferocity. Both the FFI and the Gaullists made every effort to make their desperate situation known to the Americans and to de Gaulle. Using radio transmitters, they sent out updates on the military situation in the capital. But they had no way of knowing if the Allies were monitoring the frequencies they were using. Rol, in particular, used the transmissions to beg for arms drops to keep the uprising going.
A French Resistance sympathizer, a doctor named Robert Monod, understood the problem and thought he knew a way to get in touch with the Allies. He conceived a daring plan to get across the lines and plead with the Americans for help. Monod had admired the courage behind the uprising, but on the 20th he had written, “We have to prepare for a German offensive. Tomorrow the battle will doubtless resume and be much more violent. . . . Left to themselves, what can the insurgents do without cannons, without tanks, without trained men against a large German garrison well protected in fortified strong points and possessing ultra-modern weapons?” Monod, like many other résistants, believed that the truce was a German ruse designed to buy time to redeploy and reinforce in preparation for a major attack. He also thought that asking the Allies to drop weapons into the city would only prolong a battle that the Resistance was certain to lose without outside help. What Paris needed was not American rifles dropped from the sky, but American tanks. It was the only way, he thought, to prevent a massive bloodbath on the streets of Paris.20
Monod wrote down the outlines of his plan in the form of a letter to Rol and gave the letter to an FFI contact, asking him to find the FFI leader and deliver it to him. The message proposed the dispatch of a mission to Allied lines to inform the Americans about the desperate situation inside Paris. It noted that he, Monod, was perhaps the only man in the city who could make such a mission succeed, but he needed help. By late afternoon on the 20th, however, Monod still had no reply from Rol and no way of knowing if his messenger had even made it to see the FFI commander. He decided it was worth the risk to make a few phone calls to FFI contacts, always using code names, to convince Rol to support his daring plan. Finally, at 6:00 p.m., an FFI agent showed up at Monod’s apartment with Rol’s chief of staff, Major Roger Cocteau, code-named Gallois, and the news that Rol had agreed to the courageous scheme that Monod had outlined in his message. And Gallois was going to accompany him on the mission.
Monod could not believe his eyes. Gallois was perfect for the plan he had in mind. He and Monod were good friends (Monod had suspected, but did not know for sure, that Gallois was a senior leader in the FFI), and Gallois spoke fluent English. But Gallois’s
instructions showed that Rol was still thinking in terms different from those of Monod. Rol wanted the mission to urge the Americans to drop arms and supplies into the city at this critical moment. With the barricades proving their effectiveness, Rol concluded, the Americans could now drop weapons (and maybe even paratroopers) into areas fully under the control of the FFI. With those weapons, the FFI would have a fighting chance to liberate the city on their own and prevent a massive German retaliation. Gallois also told Monod that Rol no longer had faith that the Americans or the Free French Army tanks could get to Paris in time to help. Parisians, he thought, needed to liberate their city themselves.
Monod disagreed with Rol’s interpretation of the situation, but he immediately accepted Gallois’s help. Monod had planned the trip carefully. In his capacity as a surgeon and a local health inspector, he had access to gasoline and a pass that could get them through German lines. He also knew Red Cross doctors close to the front line near St. Cyr and Versailles who had worked with the U.S. Army’s medical staff to treat wounded civilians on both sides of the line. Those contacts might prove useful in finding intermediaries with whom they could talk, should they be able to get across the lines safely. The two men developed a cover story that they were going to a sanitarium near Saint Nom la Bretèche, a small village about twenty miles northwest of Versailles and close to the front lines. Monod had been there before to help care for sick children, thus his return to the sanitarium would not strike the Germans as unusual. Gallois would disguise himself as a male nurse. If they could get past the German checkpoints and find their way safely to the sanitarium, Monod thought, they might be able to make contact with the Americans nearby.
They left at 5:00 the next morning, moving slowly toward the front lines. They had to leave Paris by the southern Porte d’Orléans, then turn west to go past checkpoints and around roads and bridges damaged by recent air raids. Along the way, Monod attempted to convince Gallois not to ask the Americans for weapons but to urge them to change their plans and send a division or more to the city at once. Only a strong Allied presence, the doctor argued, could save Paris from a catastrophic battle. They passed through the checkpoint at St. Cyr, then found themselves in an area empty of Germans as they approached the front lines. Instead of continuing northwest to the sanitarium, the doctor turned due west down the D11 highway toward the town of Neauphle le Château, home to a friend of Monod’s and, coincidentally, home to Gallois’s grandmother. The two men thus knew the region well and hoped that it might provide more direct access to the Americans.
The Blood of Free Men Page 22