On 13 August Parisians heard the first sounds of distant gunfire to the west. Within a matter of days, a spontaneous uprising had begun in the city—beyond the control of either de Gaulle’s headquarters in London or the approaching Allies. In command of the Communist forces was a thirty-six-year-old firebrand, “Colonel Rol,” Henri Tanguy, who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Alarmingly he declared that “Paris is worth 200,000 dead.” On the 15th the Communists brought the Paris railway workers out on strike. One strike followed another in lightning succession, effectively paralysing the city. For the first time during the whole period of German occupation the Métro stopped; electricity and gas failed; the cinemas closed—though, bizarrely, the theatres went on performing to the very last moment, by candlelight. Just as in 1871 euphoric young Parisians set to erecting hundreds of barricades throughout the city, though they would hardly be a match for Panzers.
Under constant pressure from Hitler in his East Prussian “Wolf’s Lair” (one of the Führer’s last communications being the famous exhortation “Is Paris burning?”), Choltitz reluctantly but methodically began to prepare the demolition charges in such buildings as the Opéra and the Luxembourg. Trucks laden with naval torpedoes containing twelve tonnes of explosive crossed the city. Helpfully a local Luftwaffe general came to Choltitz offering to destroy the north-eastern end of the city, from Montmartre to the Buttes-Chaumont, in one long night of shuttle-bombing from Le Bourget airfield eight kilometres away. From the far reaches of the Reich a terrifying artillery piece, “Karl,” a giant 600mm mortar, was sent on its way by Hitler to join in the destruction of the city, and the Führer talked of deluging the city with V-1 flying bombs.
On the 19th the police went on strike, allowing the Prefecture on the Ile de la Cité to be taken over by the FFI, who turned it into a fortress. For the first time since 1940, Parisians saw the tricolore flutter above it. For the next five days the Prefecture held out as a focus of resistance as the Germans attacked it with every weapon in their arsenal. From his headquarters across the river in the Marais, de Gaulle’s representative Alexandre Parodi, haunted by the image of a ravaged Warsaw, watched in alarm as Rol unleashed his premature uprising. Urgently he radioed de Gaulle to persuade Eisenhower to send troops to Paris immediately. Finally de Gaulle’s entreaties won. Reluctantly, and with a superb sense of diplomatic imperatives, Eisenhower ordered General Bradley to despatch the French Second Armoured Division, under his subordinate General Leclerc, forthwith for Paris. Bradley was to have a back-up of units of the veteran U.S. Fourth Division following close alongside Leclerc, just in case things went wrong or got out of hand. De Gaulle had meanwhile arrived at the recently liberated Château de Rambouillet, some fifty-five kilometres south-west of Paris. According to an aide, as he awaited Leclerc he took down from the library bookshelves a copy of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, to steady his nerves. To Leclerc he gave the order to move, adding, “Go fast. We cannot have another Commune.”
General Bradley then learned, to his extreme annoyance, that Leclerc was already under way and planning to swing eastwards so as to enter Paris from the south, through the Porte d’Orléans—the route that Napoleon had followed in 1814 at the beginning of the Hundred Days, but contrary to the line of march laid down by Bradley’s headquarters. French history books would henceforth be able to relate how Paris had been liberated by French forces, with a little Allied assistance. Nevertheless, the move on Paris was to prove barely in time. Inside the city Raoul Nordling, an inspired Swedish consul, had in the meantime managed to arrange a ceasefire with Choltitz. Even though it was soon broken, it almost certainly saved the men beleaguered in the Prefecture.
Under the ceasefire the German occupation forces began to pull out, accompanied by truckloads of loot. One officer was even seen trying to tear down the curtains at the Majestic and stuff them into his suitcase, to “make a dress later on.” With them also left the leading collabos, to join Pétain and Laval—scooped up from the luxury of the Matignon—in semi–house arrest at the former Hohenzollern Schloss of Sigmaringen on the Danube. There, miserably, they sat out the remaining eight months of the war, treated with contempt by their Nazi “liberators,” waiting for the Allies and their inevitable fate. With their departure Je Suis Partout was rechristened, by Parisian wits, Je Suis Parti.
LECLERC AND DE GAULLE
As fast as the German SS under Choltitz mined buildings, the fifis (nickname of the FFI) cut the wires. A truck full of naval torpedoes on its way to the Palais Bourbon was ambushed and blown up. At long last and just in time, as the defenders were running out of food and ammunition, on 24 August Leclerc’s armour entered Paris. With the U.S. 4th Division was an American major who later recalled “fifteen solid miles of cheering, deliriously happy people waiting to shake your hand, to kiss you, to shower you with food and wine.” The almost hysterical welcome threatened to slow the advance. Meanwhile, inside the Kommandantur in the Meurice, Choltitz had received one more signal from Wehrmacht headquarters with the imperative question “Demolitions started?” He calmly finished his lunch, listened to the church bells outside proclaiming the arrival of the Allies, instructed his orderly to pack his grip for prisoner-of-war camp, and surrendered to Lieutenant Henri Karcher of Leclerc’s division. Miraculously the ever rickety Paris telephone system was still functioning, and Karcher was able to ring his stepfather in Auteuil with the news.
By the end of fighting on 27 August, the battle for Paris had cost Leclerc 71 killed and 225 wounded, though approximately 900 FFI had been killed, as well as some 600 civilian Parisians. German casualties as claimed by the FFI were 11,000 (somewhat larger than the forces actually under Choltitz’s command) with fifty-seven tanks destroyed (compared with the four in fact at the Kommandant’s disposal). That night U.S. war correspondent Ernie Pyle recorded Paris’s explosion of joy as “the loveliest, brightest story of our time.”
The 26th of August was to be Charles de Gaulle’s day: the day he had been waiting for since 18 June 1940—possibly, indeed, the day for which fate had been preparing him since he fell wounded and a captive at Verdun in February 1916, but certainly the greatest of his entire life. After pacing impatiently up and down the great terrace at Rambouillet, he set off for Paris on the 25th, “simultaneously gripped by emotion and filled with serenity.” He met his own son Philippe, then a naval ensign with Leclerc’s division, on his way to the Palais Bourbon with a German major to accept the garrison’s surrender. He expressed disapproval that Colonel Rol’s name should appear on the surrender document, alongside Leclerc’s, then went to “reoccupy” his old office at the Ministry of War in Rue Saint-Dominique. There he found nothing had changed since he and Paul Reynaud had left together on the night of 10 June 1940. At last he reached the Hôtel de Ville, on foot.
To the acute discomfort of the Allied planners, who had intended to keep control over the future French government at least in the short term, de Gaulle had stolen yet another march over them; and, indeed, over Colonel Rol’s Communist cohorts, who had in fact done most of the fighting during Liberation week—albeit without de Gaulle’s endorsement. Nobody in London or Washington had expected to see de Gaulle installed, and functioning, in Paris for some time. Yet there he was, digging in, and—as one senior U.S. diplomat recognized, “Nothing short of force was going to budge him out.” At the Hôtel de Ville de Gaulle told the euphoric members of his entourage, “The enemy is shaken, but he is not beaten … more than ever our national unity is a necessity … War, unity, grandeur—that is my programme.” He then stepped out on to the balcony and made a brief speech to the mass of people who packed the square below. One of his most powerful, it was addressed anthropomorphically to the city at his feet:
Paris! Paris outraged! Paris shattered! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated. Liberated by herself, liberated by her people, in concurrence with the armies of France, with the support and concurrence of the whole of France, of fighting France, the only France, the true France, eterna
l France.
Mention of Allied involvement in these great events was judiciously withheld. The crowd began to chant rhythmically, “De Gaulle! De Gaulle! De Gaulle!” One of the Communists was heard to remark, “We’ve been had.” So, for that matter, had the General’s Allies; and on that day was sealed the bid for independence and Gaullist pre-eminence that would be the source of many headaches in long years to come.
The next day, Saturday, 26 August, de Gaulle, wearing as always his uniform and képi of a simple brigadier-general, recognizable above all the crowds, his only decorations the Cross of Lorraine and the red-and-blue badge of the Free French, made his historic and solemn promenade down the Champs-Elysées. It had all the appearance of spontaneity, yet must have lain in de Gaulle’s mind for many months. It began with his placing a wreath of red gladioli at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Etoile. He relit the eternal flame, the first Frenchman to perform this sacred rite in freedom since 1940, then began the walk down the avenue which had been laid out by previous French rulers for just such an occasion. All the way down to the Concorde, rooftops and windows were crowded with cheering thousands, in a day of perfect sunshine.
The lofty, haughty, unsmiling figure dominated all around him. Behind him came the other Gaullist political notables who would resume trading under the flag of the Fourth Republic, and Generals Koenig, Juin and Leclerc, who had led the Free French on the long route march from Africa and defeat. Behind came a mêlée of those who only so recently had been fighting to liberate Paris. It was an uneven mass; de Gaulle had specifically wanted to avoid anything resembling a formal military parade. Lining the streets were the battle-worn troops of Leclerc’s division. This in itself was yet another source of antagonism with the American High Command, for Leclerc had been ordered to rejoin the march towards Germany, but de Gaulle had countermanded the order with the cool response: “I loaned you Leclerc … I can perfectly well borrow him back for a few moments.” Pointedly none of the American troops of the U.S. 4th Divison was invited to participate. Their time would come—but not for a few days.
De Gaulle’s walk down the Champs-Elysées was a remarkably courageous, if not foolhardy, undertaking. Between him and Choltitz’s withdrawing forces were only one U.S. regiment and a combat team of Leclerc’s division. Heavy fighting continued in the northern districts through the 27th; the city had not yet been cleared of enemy snipers, and there were many trigger-happy members of the FFI still at large. But this extraordinary man, on this extraordinary day, “believed in the fortune of France”—as he had never ceased to do. As the procession debouched into the Concorde, the first shots rang out. Many of the crowd threw themselves down for cover, but de Gaulle walked straight on. An American sergeant, who admitted hiding behind his jeep and later “felt ashamed,” watched him keep on moving, standing “very straight, standing tall for his country.”
Towards 4:30 in the afternoon, the entourage reached Notre-Dame for a Te Deum. Once more mysterious shots rang out, their provenance still a mystery to this day (though de Gaulle himself firmly blamed the Communists). Malcolm Muggeridge, then a British intelligence officer who had reached Paris late the previous night, witnessed the scene:
The effect was fantastic. The huge congregation who had all been standing suddenly fell flat on their faces … There was a single exception; one solitary figure, like a lonely giant. It was, of course, de Gaulle. Thenceforth, that was how I always saw him—towering and alone; the rest, prostrate.
The shooting confirmed de Gaulle in his intention to disarm the FFI and bring it under military discipline as soon as possible, and to assume “the legitimate power” himself.
After 26 August 1944, remarked an American journalist with only slight exaggeration, “De Gaulle had France in the palm of his hand.” With hindsight a historian today might also say that it was just as well. By his prompt intervention that month de Gaulle probably saved France from the murderous revolution that overtook Greece on liberation later that same year. He certainly forestalled a Communist takeover in Paris.
That night, as Paris indulged herself in an orgy of celebration, and priests (generally unheeded) distributed cautionary tracts to young Parisiennes—“in the gaiety of the Liberation do not throw away your innocence. Think of your future family”—Hitler carried out one last act of futile vengeance. The commander of Luftflotte 3, who had earlier offered his services to Choltitz, launched from Le Bourget a valedictory raid of 150 planes on the east of the city. It was the heaviest air-raid Paris experienced during the entire war. Because of the celebrations, not a single anti-aircraft gun responded. Nearly a thousand Parisians were wounded, 214 killed, and the Halles aux Vins largely destroyed. It was a bitter reminder, amid all the rejoicing, that the war still continued. As de Gaulle watched the bombing from his old 1940 office in the Ministry of War, almost echoing Clemenceau in 1919, he sighed to an aide, “Eh bien, there you see—the war goes on. The hardest days are ahead. Our work has just begun.”
TWENTY
* * *
“I Was France”
One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 different kinds of cheese.
CHARLES DE GAULLE, 1951
THE EPURATION
After all the humiliations, sorrow, dangers and deprivations of the Occupation, the three days of 24 to 26 August had provided Paris with an enormous catharsis. It would be pleasant to end the story of the Liberation on that heroic note, but its shadowy side now presented itself. In some ways what the French did to themselves after the Occupation was almost as painful as what the Germans had done to them during it. Even before the last Germans had left the city, the épuration began—in which vengeance was inextricably mixed with justice. The first victims, understandably, were the German troops themselves, often lynched or stood up against a wall and shot when they emerged from their strongholds with hands raised. Then came the collabos—or the alleged collabos. The épuration took place all over France, but it was particularly far-reaching in Paris insofar as this was where collaboration had been most extensive and most visible. What especially struck Allied eyewitnesses was the ferocity with which women, the collabos horizontales, were treated. The shaving of heads, seen all over France, was perhaps the least indignity. Jean Cocteau records being shocked by the sight of one woman, “completely naked,” on the Avenue de la Grande Armée: “they tore at her, they pushed her, they pulled her, they spat in her face. Her head had been shaven. She was covered in bruises and carried around her neck a placard: ‘I had my husband shot.’ ”
Parisians prominent in the public eye such as writers, journalists, actors and artists were among the first to be affected, while industrialists who had worked for the Germans strangely seemed to escape. Cocteau’s “partner,” Jean Marais, swiftly seized the option of joining the army on 2 September, returning to take the lead in 1946 in Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête. Cocteau remained, but was given a rough time. As early as 23 August Sacha Guitry was hustled out of his posh abode on the Champ-de-Mars by a posse of fifis, still in his yellow-flowered pyjamas and wearing a panama hat. He was taken to Drancy, which had been cleared of its surviving Jewish deportees, now transformed into a sifting centre for collabos. There he ran into his former wife, which entitled him to quip that “One’s mishaps never come singly!” The Vél d’Hiv, likewise of evil recent memory, had become a reception centre for all suspects arrested. One inmate recorded how, at Drancy, some 4,000 people were herded together for several days:
at the mercy of forty FFI. These were commanded by a young chief of twenty-two, himself liberated from Drancy and animated with the single spirit of retaliation …
Numerous women have been violated. Many internees were woken up at night and beaten until blood flowed.
Many were held without charge or documentation. Finally in September de Gaulle himself intervened, appointing an inspector of prisons and internment camps, and gradually punishing excesses.
Nevertheless, the épuration continued. The d
read word délation once again played its role as neighbour denounced neighbour, often merely to settle scores. All crimes and evils were, of course, heaped on the head of Vichy and the old Marshal, currently awaiting his fate in Sigmaringen. The beautiful Arletty, who had just made Les Enfants du paradis, deprived of her Luftwaffe lover and suite in the Ritz, was arrested in September, and grisly rumours ran through the city that her breasts had been cut off; almost certainly her head was shaven. But what was held against her was not so much that she had slept with a German senior officer as that she had dined with him at the Ritz when other Parisians went hungry. Occasionally the accused hit back with spirit, one horizontale declaring unashamedly, “Mon cul est international, mais mon coeur est toujours français!” The mother of one seventeen-year-old complained, “Why ever cut off her hair for it? … She’s just as willing to go to bed with the Americans!”
When in 1945 the surviving deportees began to trickle back from German concentration camps—via the Hôtel Lutetia, which had so recently been the headquarters of the Abwehr—their appalling condition aroused another acute wave of anti-German and anti-collabo feelings. After the showing of newsfilms of the horrors of liberated Belsen, two jails were stormed and collaborators taken out and lynched. The trials of the grands collabos ground on through 1945 and 1946. Brasillach was shot; among the few leading writers who refused to sign a plea for clemency on his behalf were Sartre and de Beauvoir. In vain the noble Camus, who had taken up arms with the Resistance, begged for “justice without hatred.” “National indignity” (dégradation nationale) was a newly coined crime for which many thousands of collabos were imprisoned. Sentenced to life imprisonment, the rabid right-winger Charles Maurras insisted, “C’est la revanche de Dreyfus!”
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