Difficult days were still ahead for Paris, a reality underscored by a German air raid on the city the night of August 26 that killed 213 people, wounded 914 more, and damaged 597 buildings just hours after the end of the victory parade; the Germans were not finished killing Parisians just yet. Food and health remained important concerns as well. American medical officials who came into the city found that more than half of Parisian children had rickets caused by malnutrition, and serious illnesses were up 67 percent from the prewar years. Infant mortality was twice what it had been in 1939, and even among the children who had survived, delayed growth and anemia were endemic. Among adults, the problems were hardly less severe. The French Army turned away half of the 200,000 members of the FFI who attempted to volunteer, mostly because of malnutrition-related health problems.48
There were also funerals to plan and heroes to mourn. Even before the liberation was complete, Parisians had begun to mark in chalk and paint the locations where Frenchmen had died to liberate their capital. Small makeshift shrines telling passersby to incline their heads or remove their hats in honor of a Frenchman who had died on the spot were sometimes replaced by the permanent markers that are still visible across Paris. Some of the most poignant appear near the Préfecture de Police and on the northeast corner of the Place de la Concorde. They are better reminders of the cost of the liberation than the official figures of 1,482 members of the FFI and 581 French civilians killed. Additionally, 3,467 members of the FFI and 2,012 civilians were wounded in action. The official figures also list 2,887 Germans killed, 4,911 wounded, and 4,312 taken prisoner.49
The liberation had brought together Parisians of all stripes. Many hoped that this atmosphere of camaraderie might produce a long-lasting sense of unity within France. The events of August held out the possibility that France might escape its violent and contentious political past. Charles Braibant, for example, rejoiced in the idea of France “being restored to the first-rank of nations” and working with the world community “to bring our dreams of peace to life.” Raymond Dronne knew better. He later recalled his feelings during that memorable and historic week: “Parisians believed that once liberated, all their problems would just disappear. . . . I knew that they failed to understand that when a country is ruined and brought to its knees, it takes years of work—hard work—to put it back together. And this, in their joy, Parisians failed to understand.” The physical trauma to the city was plain to see, but the psychological and cultural effects of the occupation were less visible. Paris was free, even if France was not, but its problems were not behind it.50
CONCLUSION
THE LIBERATION OF PARIS, JOYOUS AS IT WAS, DID NOT END the war for France or for the Allies. Many Parisians, however, found the prospect of final victory over the Axis almost anticlimactic next to the drama that had surrounded the liberation of their city. Simone de Beauvoir, for example, noted that “we had not awaited [V-E Day], as we had the Liberation, in a fever of anxiety.” Although the German Army remained far from defeated after the liberation of Paris, many observers confidently predicted that the end of the war would come in 1944. Charles de Gaulle and most other senior French leaders wanted France to play a determining role in the final Allied victory, both to atone for France’s collapse in 1940 and to assure France a prominent voice in the postwar world. To fulfill this wish, however, de Gaulle needed a rapidly expanded French Army. This foreign policy goal was consistent with his domestic goal of disarming the FFI and neutralizing the threat to his authority posed by ununiformed and undisciplined bands of armed young men, many of whom held political views diametrically opposed to his own.1
Thus de Gaulle summarily ordered the dissolution of the FFI and the communist Comité Parisien de la Libération on August 28. His disdain for the FFI was obvious for all to see. Daniel Mayer, a socialist veteran of the FFI, watched as de Gaulle talked to some wounded résistants in the days immediately following the liberation. He was dismayed to witness a conversation between de Gaulle and one particularly well-respected wounded FFI veteran. De Gaulle asked the man what he had done before the war. When he answered that he had been a law professor, de Gaulle curtly replied, “Good. You can now go back to your post.” Mayer thought de Gaulle’s dismissal of the FFI and its role in the liberation was “not very charitable.” It was, however, entirely consistent with de Gaulle’s political plans.2
Despite the fears of the middle and upper classes, the FFI accepted its dissolution peacefully, if with some sadness at the lack of official recognition of its central role in the liberation of Paris. Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont noted morosely that so few FFI leaders were invited to join the provisional government that their initials might well stand for “Forces Françaises Inemployées” (Unemployable French Forces). Still, the men of the FFI were not finished serving France. More than 11,000 former members of the FFI enlisted in the French Army after August 1944, indicating that the group’s true goal all along had indeed been to liberate France, not to incite a revolution in the streets. As Kriegel-Valrimont recalled of the FFI’s relationship with the Gaullists and other moderate opposition groups, “yes, there were points of disagreement, but no one was under any illusions: in the face of treason, collaboration, and a betrayal of the nation, we were all on the same side.”3
Rol himself helped to organize a battalion of dedicated FFI members that joined the French Army as part of the 151st Infantry Regiment. The regiment had the honor of leading the Second Infantry Division’s parade celebrating V-E Day. As a legacy of their experience together during the liberation, the battalion, which Rol commanded, used handshakes instead of salutes and had an unusually high level of camaraderie. Its adherence to the French Army structure indicated its willingness to work within the system, as Rol’s own career also showed. In June 1945, Rol received the Croix de la Libération from de Gaulle himself. The award, which de Gaulle created in 1940, is the second highest honor France can bestow. Rol later commanded the French occupation garrison in the German city of Coblenz, at the conclusion of which he received the Legion of Honor award.4
Rol’s continued leadership in the French Army was typical of most of the core members of the FFI. But thousands of men claiming FFI status were undoubtedly the latecomers to the Resistance and were known derisively as the RMA (Résistants du Mois d’Août, or Resisters of the Month of August) or, even more derisively, Les Sep-tembristes. Some had joined the FFI late but in all sincerity to help in the liberation, but others had signed up at the last minute in an attempt to cover up their collaboration with the Vichy regime or the Germans, a practice known in Paris as “buying a traitor’s insurance policy.” Soon virtually all Frenchmen were claiming membership in the FFI, and with secrecy having been so central a feature of the Resistance, it was difficult to gainsay anyone’s claims.
Dissolving the FFI was part of de Gaulle’s plan to form a loyal and functioning French government as quickly as he could. He saw potential threats from both the Right and the Left and moved quickly to parry them. On August 30, he suspended the political rights of all members of Parliament who had voted to grant power to Pétain in 1940, thus minimizing the chance of collaborationists resuming their offices until officials of the new government investigated and adjudicated each case. On September 9, with German troops still in possession of much of eastern France, de Gaulle assembled a new provisional government with himself at the head. He established twenty-one ministries, only one of which (the Ministry for Air) went to a communist. Four more ministries went to socialists, two to the center-right Radical Party, and the rest to reliable Gaullists. By that time, both de Gaulle and the Americans believed that the danger of a communist coup had passed.5
With an overwhelming majority in France’s new government, the support of the U.S. Army, and a loyal Paris police force, de Gaulle had the effective control over the levers of government that he had long wanted. His most important asset, however, was his personal prestige, which the liberation had raised to a level not seen in France since Napoleon
, if even then. American officer Pleas Rogers went to hear de Gaulle speak in mid-September, by which time the ecstasy over the liberation had begun to ebb. Still, the crowd gave de Gaulle an ovation so overwhelming that he could not speak over it. His aides could only calm the crowd and give de Gaulle a chance to speak by playing La Marseillaise.6
De Gaulle owed some of his power, ironically enough, to the willingness of the FFI to cooperate with him. Their acquiescence to his rule put de Gaulle in a position of tremendous strength in relation to the Americans, who still withheld official recognition until a nationwide election could be held. With the fears of a communist coup fading, the Americans, who had plenty of other problems to face, began to show less concern over the postwar status of France. De Gaulle could thus fully resist their plans for an occupation of France or parts of the French Empire. He could demonstrate that an effective—if still only provisional—French government representative of the French people was in place. As a result, France emerged from the war more independent of its alliance partners than even de Gaulle might have dared to dream. On August 27, the day after de Gaulle’s victory parade, news reached Paris confirming France’s new position alongside the Allies. At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, the Washington, D.C., gathering that eventually gave rise to the United Nations, representatives from the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union had determined that France was to be one of the five great powers of the postwar world, an important symbol to Frenchmen looking forward to their nation’s future.7
In large part because of the unity that followed the liberation, France had been spared the horrors of civil war, such as the one between communists and republicans that broke out in Greece in 1946. This accomplishment must not be taken lightly, as hatreds and mutual suspicions certainly existed in sufficient quantity to spark such a war. De Gaulle’s firm hand and the willingness of the FFI to cooperate with the new government rather than confronting it go a long way toward explaining how France managed to face the remainder of the war with a degree of unity that would certainly have astonished anyone looking forward from the perspective of 1939 or even 1943. Many on the French Right have argued that the communists did not rise only because Stalin, unwilling to confront the United States over France, did not order a revolution. That conclusion, however, is unduly harsh; the spirit of reconciliation was strong enough to overcome a great deal of internecine animosity, at least temporarily. De Gaulle even granted an amnesty to French Communist Party leader Maurice Thorez, who returned to Paris in November 1944 from Moscow, where he had spent the war years after deserting from the French Army in 1939.
Despite these gestures of reconciliation, there remained the issue of the épuration, or purging. Few doubted that the Resistance would take some measure of vengeance on the collaborators, but no one knew how many people they would target or how violent the épuration would become before the forces of order could contain it. Also at issue was the tricky question of how to define collaboration. Eventually these questions would be taken up by official government boards of inquiry, but many Parisians were unwilling to wait or to put their faith in a government that had not yet been elected by the French people. The French government eventually investigated 900,000 people and meted out a wide variety of punishments, including 6,760 death sentences, almost 6,000 of which were eventually commuted.
Almost immediately after the Germans left, however, the first phase of the épuration, called the épuration sauvage, began. Involving as many as 9,000 summary executions across France, the épuration sauvage was controversial from the start. To those on the Left it represented a necessary cleansing of France’s demons by the heroes of the Resistance. To those on the Right and in the center, such as the expatriate Briton Sisley Huddleston, it was more akin to a wave of crime by “bands of men answerable to no one, their connection with the Resistance often dubious and of recent date,” and reminiscent of the Great Terror of the French Revolution or even the Nazis themselves. To de Gaulle, it was a direct challenge to the authority of the state he was trying to establish and therefore needed to be stopped.8
But too much emotion flowed through Paris in the heady days following the liberation to contain the pent-up feelings of vengeance that had simmered for four long and horrifying years. Bands of armed men roamed the streets looking for collaborators and taking the law into their own hands. Despite their Croix de Lorraine brassards, most such men had only tenuous connections to the FFI, whose most dedicated men had joined the army. These groups arrested more than 10,000 Parisians and sent them to the same Vel d’Hiv sports arena and prisons at Drancy and Fresnes that had recently held thousands of Jews. When, for example, they could not find collaborationist Robert Brasillach, they arrested his parents and held them until Brasillach turned himself in. The collaborationist actress Mary Marquet arrived at her cell at Drancy to find bits of yellow cloth on the floor. Only after staring at them for a while did she realize what they were: the remnants of Jewish stars that prisoners had torn off their clothing with their bare hands as they were rescued.9
These prisoners were, in one sense, lucky, as they avoided summary execution. Some fully expected to be killed. Parisian newspapers printed the names and addresses of collaborationists; one Parisian saw the lists and thought they looked like a prewar society column. Some prisoners arrived at their jail cells to find mobs shouting for them to be shot. The communist newspaper L’Humanité insisted that Drancy and Fresnes were too good for the most notorious collaborationists; Pierre Taittinger went instead to the horrid medieval dungeon on the Quai de l’Horloge. Upon his arrival, his jailer called out to the crowd, “You are about to see a gang of collaborators, agents of the Boche, traitors!” The members of the crowd, wearing hammer and sickle armbands, yelled out for the prisoners to be executed. Most prisoners, including Taittinger, were eventually released by the government, but others languished in terrible conditions; some were executed with only the thinnest semblance of a fair trial. Within a few weeks, even many of the épuration sauvage’s most ardent supporters came to be appalled at its excessive violence, ex-tralegality, and frequent targeting of people for personal instead of political purposes.10
The most symbolic acts of the épuration sauvage involved the phenomenon known as la tonte, the shaving of the heads of women known to have had affairs with Germans. Some of these women were accused of passing on critical intelligence to their German lovers, while many more were guilty of inappropriate romantic dalliances with the occupiers. As the French actress Arletty famously noted when confronted with her public affairs with German officers, “My heart is French but my ass is international.” Most Parisians were reasonably tolerant of discreet affairs by unmarried women who had fallen in love with relatively harmless German noncombat troops, or of women who had used their liaisons to survive. But in the intensely emotional days after the liberation, few Parisians were in a mood to forgive those, like Arletty and Coco Chanel, who had lived conspicuous lives of extreme luxury at the hands of the occupiers in exchange for sex; both women lived extravagantly in the Ritz Hotel with their German lovers “while the rest of France went hungry.” In the end, women like Chanel and Arletty, with money and connections, avoided the public spectacle of the shearing, and within a few years their indiscretions had been forgiven or forgotten. Less wealthy women had no such resources to protect them from the mobs.11
The affairs involved questions of the loyalty of French women, the symbolic emasculation of French men, and the ease with which many Frenchmen and women had worked with their occupiers. They also posed social questions, given that an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 enfants de Boche (“children of the Hun”) were either born or about to be born, almost all of them out of wedlock. Especially difficult questions arose when French deportees or prisoners of war returned emaciated and sickly from German camps to find that their wives or sweethearts had given birth to babies fathered by Germans.
Many French women, most often those accused of not only having affairs with Germans b
ut also denouncing fellow Frenchmen, became the subject of especially public humiliations. Thousands of women had their heads shaved, sometimes with a swastika-shaped patch of hair left behind. American colonel Brenton Wallace witnessed the shavings of several French women in a Parisian square. He left this account:One at a time, the women were brought forward to the edge of an open veranda on the second floor of a building, so that all could see them. An old, gray-haired woman called something to the crowd for each woman exhibited—probably naming her and telling what she had done in consorting with the enemy. And as she finished, the crowd yelled and booed.
Then the girl would be thrust into a chair and held while hair clippers went quickly about her head, shearing her down to the scalp. Then she was hauled up and again exhibited to the crowd, her head white and nearly bald. . . . All this delighted the crowd, which roared its laughter, mingled with loud boos.12
Other women carried signs through the streets indicating specific crimes, like the woman who marched with a placard reading, “A Fait Fusilé Mon Mari” (Had my husband executed). Such women were paraded through the streets while men and women spat at them and tore at their clothes. Pascale Moisson watched as a crowd gathered around a group of women with shaved heads in the working-class district north of the Gare du Nord. The police refused to protect them, leading Moisson to fear that the women would be lynched as voices in the crowd called out, “Shaving them is not enough! They can wear wigs and no one will be any the wiser. We must mark them permanently, on their faces!” Not everyone in Paris was so vindictive, however. Rol was among those who were appalled by the shavings. He ordered posters put up in Paris denouncing the practice and urged FFI members still in Paris to put a stop to it.13
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