De Gaulle had not intended to come to the Hôtel de Ville or make any public pronouncements. He had no speech to read. But the moment required his words and, by most accounts, he gave the best speech of his life:Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France!
Since the enemy which held Paris has capitulated into our hands, France returns to Paris, to her home. She returns bloody, but quite resolute. She returns there enlightened by the immense lesson, but more certain than ever of her duties and of her rights.
I speak of her duties first, and I will sum them all up by saying that for now it is a matter of the duties of war. The enemy is staggering, but he is not beaten yet. He remains on our soil.
It will not even be enough that we have, with the help of our dear and admirable Allies, chased him from our home for us to consider ourselves satisfied after what has happened. We want to enter his territory as is fitting, as victors.
This is why the French vanguard has entered Paris with guns blazing. This is why the great French army from Italy has landed in the south and is advancing rapidly up the Rhône valley. This is why our brave and dear forces of the interior are going to arm themselves with modern weapons. It is for this revenge, this vengeance and justice, that we will keep fighting until the last day, until the day of total and complete victory.
This duty of war, all the men who are here and all those who hear us in France know that it demands national unity. We, who have lived the greatest hours of our history, we have nothing else to wish than to show ourselves, up to the end, worthy of France. Vive la France!31
It was a stirring speech, and some of its words live on, inscribed on the statue of de Gaulle that now sits on the Champs Élysées near the Grand Palais, which, as de Gaulle spoke, was still smoking. Even when speaking extemporaneously, de Gaulle had been careful. He did not mention the communists or the Resistance by name and only referred to the FFI obliquely. These omissions were deliberate, as de Gaulle wanted to underscore the point that political authority derived only from the provisional government and not from organizations outside the structure of the state. De Gaulle was, in effect, disconnecting the Paris Resistance from the formal authority structure of France, although, if they noticed this maneuvering, the members of the Resistance seemed not to mind. They shouted, “Vive de Gaulle!” and “Vive la France!” with as much emotion as anyone. Franc Tireur went as far as to claim that chanting “Vive de Gaulle” was also a chant in favor of “the heroes of the Resistance and of the martyrs of the Gestapo and Vichy.”32
One of de Gaulle’s biographers called the speech a “blend of strength, diversity, and ruthlessness.” Above all, it was a call for order and unity at a time when France was desperately in need of both. At dinner after the speech, de Gaulle and Leclerc discussed the possibility of a Commune on the model of 1871 arising anew in Paris. Given the uncertain political situation and the tenuous food supply, it may well have been a reasonable worry. To prevent it, de Gaulle planned to use the Paris police, if necessary, to force the members of the FFI to disarm or join the regular French Army. An armed FFI, de Gaulle feared, was a threat to the stability of postwar France. In his eyes, the FFI could no longer be permitted to have a military presence of its own.33
Most Parisians had their eyes not on political problems but on enjoying their new freedom. Ecstatic celebrations lasted well into the night. They were carried around the world by radio, inspiring celebrations on every continent. Paris, which a correspondent for Life magazine called “the second capital of every nation,” was free once again. “Whenever the City of Light changes hands,” the magazine noted, “Western civilization shifts its political balance. So it has been for seven centuries; so it was in 1940; so it was [today].” Now that Paris was free, the correspondent thought that people could finally begin to hope that a “decent postwar world” might atone for the sufferings of the past five years.34
Members of the Deuxième Division Blindée did not have to look far to find men wanting to share their wine or women willing to feed them, wash their clothes, and offer them beds for the night. As Suzanne Massu, a female member of the FFI, noted, “Many Parisian women were too charitable to let our lads spend their first night in the capital alone.” The adolescent Gilles Perrault heard the sounds of “hundreds of men and women” in the division’s encampments in the Tuileries that night, and Ernie Pyle, looking over a city he described as a “champagne dream,” told a fellow correspondent, “Any G.I. who doesn’t get laid tonight is a sissy.” An entire generation of Parisians met their future spouses during the celebrations. The postwar baby boom had begun.35
At the end of this historic day, two eloquent writers tried to find words to describe the meaning of it all. Albert Camus, in an article for Combat entitled “The Night of Truth,” told his fellow Parisians, “Those who never despaired of themselves or their country can find tonight under this sky their recompense.” To Camus and so many others, this day was to signal the start of a new France, more just and more noble than the prewar France. Andrzej Bobkowski, the expatriate Pole who had lived in Paris for most of the war, was thrilled that his new city had avoided the tragic fate of his native Warsaw and that the Americans were, at long last, bringing food and medicine into Paris. “Everything passed exactly as I imagined it in my dreams. The Germans have not blown up anything. As if through a fog, I can see an endless line of new trucks bringing soldiers in green uniforms.” This overwhelming scene was marred only by the number of ambulances moving through the city to care for the wounded. As both men knew, Paris was free, but not yet completely out of danger.36
Up to this point, de Gaulle had been a relatively minor player in the military events surrounding the liberation of Paris, but he was about to become its greatest beneficiary. As dawn broke on the morning of August 26, celebrants began nursing their hangovers—but snipers were still shooting from their rooftops. Paris’s first full day of freedom would be marred by continued bloodshed but also crowned by one of the most dramatic and inspirational events in its long history. The sun rose warm and bright over Paris that morning, and de Gaulle was planning the finishing touches on the most theatrical and symbolic act of his career.
Although two thousand German soldiers remained unaccounted for and German bombers remained near the city at Le Bourget airfield, de Gaulle was planning a massive victory parade to confirm the freedom of Paris and his role as France’s leader. Some, including most of the Americans on Eisenhower’s staff, thought the parade was too big a risk, given the continuing German presence in the area, but de Gaulle insisted that the risks were worth the potential reward. By the end of the day, he had become, for a time at least, more closely connected to his people than any other leader in the world.
On this day, de Gaulle offered something to everyone in Paris. To members of the FFI he may have seemed a rival and a link to the prewar conservative order that had caused the collapse of 1940, but he also had with him the army that protected them from a German counterattack and the link to the Americans who could guarantee food and coal. To members of the middle class, he represented order and protection from the working-class mobs they still feared. Indeed, leaders of the FFI caustically noted that many of the people in the crowd at the Hôtel de Ville who were welcoming de Gaulle had also been there in April to give Pétain a warm welcome. There was more truth to the comparison than de Gaulle may have liked. Despite their differences, both men stood for the stability and order that the city’s bourgeoisie craved. To Parisians across the political spectrum, de Gaulle represented the possibility of a rebirth of France in all of its grandeur, real and imagined. He was the man of the June 18, 1940, radio broadcast from London; he was France’s first résistant. De Gaulle himself must surely have known that, given the political history of France, this honeymoon w
ould not last long. “The iron was hot,” he later noted. “I struck.”37
As he had the day before, de Gaulle carefully controlled and orchestrated every move of the victory parade. He ordered Leclerc to prepare the Deuxième Division Blindée to march down the Champs Élysées with him as an honor guard, giving Leclerc the treat of disobeying Gerow’s orders that the division move out of Paris and rejoin his corps. “You are not to take orders coming from other sources. . . . The troops under your command will not take part in the parade either this afternoon or at any other time except on orders signed by me personally,” Gerow had written that morning. Three times Gerow gave the orders for Leclerc to leave the city, and three times Leclerc disobeyed him. The division, Leclerc emphasized, now belonged to France and took its orders only from the head of its provisional government. Gerow, predictably enough, was livid, but Eisenhower was more understanding, writing, “We shouldn’t blame them for being a bit hysterical.”38
At 3:00 p.m., while some elements of the French and American armies were still engaged in rooting out snipers and stubborn pockets of German forces who refused to observe the ceasefire, de Gaulle appeared at the Arc de Triomphe. Amid the wild enthusiasm of one of the largest crowds in Paris’s history, he placed a garland of flowers shaped like the Cross of Lorraine (symbol of both his Free France movement and of the FFI) at the tomb of the unknown soldier that sits beneath the Arc. Then he relit the tomb’s eternal flame, which the Germans had extinguished in 1940. As de Gaulle turned to the crowd, a band started to play La Marseillaise. Thousands of Frenchmen lining both sides of the Champs Élysées and sitting in its many windows sang their national anthem with one teary voice. For the first time in public in four years, de Gaulle’s face showed a smile.39
Then, at 3:18 p.m., de Gaulle began to march down the most famous street in Europe leading a massive procession. Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont and Rol began the parade with General Alphonse Juin, one of the heroes of the Free French campaign in Italy. Juin was confused and uncomfortable next to these strange ununiformed soldiers, but the sight of senior army officers and FFI leaders together sent a message of unity to the city. In keeping with de Gaulle’s plans for disbanding the Resistance, however, the regular army dominated the proceedings, with Pierre-Marie Koenig and Leclerc marching closest to de Gaulle and underscoring the central role that the army had played and would play in the future of France. Politicians stayed one rank back. Once, when Georges Bidault, the man who had grabbed de Gaulle’s belt at the Hôtel de Ville, made the mistake of trying to march closer to the front, de Gaulle calmly said, “Monsieur, step back please.” De Gaulle also chastised another French official for smoking during the parade. Nothing, it seemed, would happen without de Gaulle’s careful orchestration.40
But de Gaulle could not control everything. The first sign of trouble came as the procession approached a jam-packed Place de la Concorde. Once the scene of the beheading of Louis XVI, it was, in 1944 as now, a place of immense symbolism for France and its history. On this day it was full of Parisians in their best clothes. The windows surrounding the plaza were decked out with the flags of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR. Evidence of recent fighting there belied the English translation that some American reporters used for it, the “Place of Peace.” So, too, did the reception de Gaulle received there. As he stepped onto the historic square, shots rang out, sending onlookers and even the combat veterans of the Deuxième Division Blindée scurrying for cover. De Gaulle, however, did not break his stride. As Parisians dusted themselves off and came to their feet, they watched in astonishment as he calmly walked through the square and got into a car that was waiting to take him to Notre Dame for a Te Deum, a hymn of praise. Pascale Moisson, who was on the Place de la Concorde that day, looked up after taking cover to see de Gaulle for the first time. His face, Moisson recalled, “inspired confidence and compassion at the same time. It was the face of a hero.”41
Once he was on the Île de la Cité, de Gaulle stepped out of his car and walked toward Notre Dame. Thousands of Parisians moved toward him to touch him and greet him, presenting a security challenge to the police outside the cathedral. Then, as de Gaulle approached a group of young men and women from the Resistance, shots rang out from the towers of Notre Dame. Bursts of machine-gun fire sent the crowd scurrying for any cover they could find, and a panic ensued as police began to return fire.
As he had at the Place de la Concorde, de Gaulle kept his pace, calmly walking into the cathedral. A reporter from the Parisian daily Le Figaro was right next to him and dove for cover. He looked up to see de Gaulle walking steadily toward the doors of Notre Dame: “Not a muscle moved on his face. He was perfectly calm. The Parisian crowd watched in stunned amazement,” he later wrote. The BBC’s Robert Reid was close by as well, struggling to stand back up as the crowd overwhelmed him. The general walked “straight ahead without hesitation” showing not the least fear, he said into his microphone. “It was the most extraordinary example of courage that I’ve ever seen.”42
The shooting, however, continued inside the cathedral, seemingly coming from the towers and behind the pipe organ. Reid watched as a priest took children in his arms and carried them to safety. FFI members, policemen, and soldiers returned fire as the cathedral echoed with the sound of gunfire. Helen Kirkpatrick, a reporter from the Chicago Daily News who was standing next to Koenig, feared that “a great massacre was bound to take place.” But she watched in awe as she noticed the “coolness, imperturbability, and apparent unconcern” of the senior officers present. Men fell wounded, and “there was a smell of cordite throughout the cathedral” from all the shooting, but the Te Deum continued, with de Gaulle leading the ceremony. He and the senior officers of the French military then turned and coolly walked out of the cathedral, even as “there were blinding flashes . . . [and] pieces of stone ricocheting around the place.”43
No one then or now knows exactly who did the shooting. Kirkpatrick watched as four men in grey were escorted out of the cathedral. She assumed that they were Milice members trying to assassinate de Gaulle, but Reid thought that they “looked obviously German.” Kirkpatrick also heard that a German sniper had been arrested for the shooting on the Place de la Concorde. De Gaulle himself discounted the theory that the shooters were trying to kill him. He blamed the shootings on too many guns and too much emotion among the youth in the city. All the more reason, he concluded, to get the weapons off the streets and the FFI under regular army discipline as quickly as possible. Harold Lyon, the American T Force commander, agreed, noting that FFI members “were racing around . . . waving firearms and firing at anything, in or on a building, that moved.”44
Whatever caused the shooting, the incidents, and de Gaulle’s cool response to them, put an end to any doubts about whose city Paris was. De Gaulle’s poise and bravery only contributed to the ovation he received, helping to confirm him as the unquestioned master of Paris. The lawyer Emmanuel Blanc recalled that the general received “the hurrahs of an entire city drunk with happiness.” He had also fulfilled the pledge he had made to Paris in 1940 that “one day, I promise you, our unified forces . . . in common with our Allies, will return freedom to the world and grandeur to the nation.” De Gaulle, for four years just a voice on the radio promising liberation, was now a living, breathing representation not of France’s humiliating past but the glorious future it might still have. Paraphrasing La Marseillaise, Pascale Moisson concluded that it was thanks to de Gaulle that “ce jour de gloire est arrivé” (the day of glory has arrived ).45
One last episode highlighted the nature of the new Paris and the new France. Two days after the French victory parade, on August 28, Gerow proposed a ceremony to hand official control of Paris from the Americans to the French. Koenig refused, arguing that the French had had control since August 25 and could not therefore accept the Americans giving the French something that was rightfully theirs. The Americans settled for their own parade through the city the next day, which re
sidents cheered and celebrated. Parisians would not forget the Americans’ critical contributions to the liberation of the city or their role in keeping it fed in the months that followed.46
The Americans may not have been native sons, but they appeared to Simone de Beauvoir as “freedom incarnate.” Strong, smiling, and “so sure of themselves,” they brought with them an optimism about the future that Parisians themselves had long since lost. They also brought food and other badly needed supplies, turning Paris into a city of American cigarettes, instant coffee, and Spam, all of which were welcome. Eisenhower had already decided to make Paris a major American rest and recreation site, in large part to ensure a flow of American money into the destitute city. “We treated them as Allies and friends,” Brigadier General Pleas Rogers, a senior American supply officer, said of the Parisians. “I think you can say sincerely that we were made very welcome.”47
The Blood of Free Men Page 29