Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  Brunner left Drancy at 16:00. Janine Auscher, who had arrived at the camp at the beginning of the month, recalled what happened next, which explains the bewildering scene that greeted Nordling: ‘Around 16:30, a shout of triumph runs through the camp: Take off your stars!’ The shock is such that many do not want to believe it. They are frightened it’s a trap. Others feverishly rip off the infamous star. Everyone runs into the courtyard, cheering, hugging. Take off your stars!’21

  *

  For four years, Radio Paris had oozed Nazi propaganda; now it fell silent, disappearing from the airwaves without a word of explanation as its principal journalists and producers joined the exodus.22 The offices of Radio Paris were chaotic as typewriters were packed away and compromising documents were burnt. The head of security, extremely drunk, fired his machine gun in the studios. The notorious anti-Semite Charles Lesca, seventy-three years old, collapsed on his luggage, sweating and weeping in despair after being refused refuge in the Spanish embassy. Journalist Pierre Vernier, ‘a bit drunk, and very excited’, according to his colleague Jean Hérold-Paquis, waved a massive Colt revolver and tried to persuade his friend to go and find machine guns and grenades. Captain Haefs, the German controller of Radio Paris, had managed to buy a number of cars to help everyone escape, but they all turned out to be out of commission. Infuriated, Hérold-Paquis returned home and waited until around 03:00, when a car took him and his family to the headquarters of Doriot’s fascist Parti Populaire Français (PPF) on the rue des Pyramides. There the broadcaster made a dramatic entrance with a machine gun at his hip.23 Later, lorries carried off the collaborators and their families, but even that turned into a farce, as shortly before dawn one of the vehicles first crashed into a wall by the Seine and then ran out of petrol.24

  The collaborationist print journalists were also fleeing, but they had done their last work the night before, announcing the closure of their newspapers and saying goodbye to their readers in editorials that reeked of self-pity and self-justification. Georges Suarez, the fascist editor of Aujourd’hui, was typical: ‘I do not deny my ideas, nor do I deny more than four years of common struggle with talented collaborators, devoted employees and workers aware of their duty – at such a time, which is so hard for the editor of a newspaper, their affection is my sole comfort.’25 Such sentimentality was soon dispelled as the collaborationist mouthpieces were shaken out of their complacency, and made to face the possibility that they would soon experience terrible retribution. In the late afternoon, journalist and self-proclaimed fascist Lucien Rebatet collapsed when he realised that he had been left behind: ‘The bastards! I might as well put in a bullet in my head!’26 He scurried round the hotels trying to find somewhere to stay, but was systematically turned away. Now he was convinced that the fascists’ time in power was over.27 Rebatet bumped into another fascist journalist, Dominique Sordet, who seemed stunned: his chauffeur had just made off with the car and all of Sordet’s luggage. ‘Everyone has gone mad,’ muttered Sordet.28 Eventually, Rebatet and his wife managed to get on one of the lorries leaving the PPF headquarters. Most of the other passengers were working-class women members of Doriot’s party, who looked askance at Rebatet’s wife, resplendent in her furs – and on such a hot evening, too.

  As Rebatet was waiting for his ticket out of Paris, word came through of a new poster that had been put up on the walls of the city, signed by Rol, ‘Commander of Greater Paris’: ‘Organise yourselves by buildings and by neighbourhood, stun the Huns to grab their arms, free the Paris region – the cradle of France. Avenge your martyred sons and brothers. Avenge the heroes who have fallen for the independence and freedom of the fatherland. Your action will hasten the end of the war. Have as your slogan: “Everyone get a Hun”. No mercy for assassins, forward together so that FRANCE WILL LIVE.’29 This declaration was probably produced by Communist Party members, without Rol’s knowledge.30 Whatever the case, it certainly had the desired effect on the collaborators, leading Rebatet to wonder: ‘What the fuck are we doing here?’31

  The journalists had fled, the print shops and press offices stood empty. Major Schmidtke, commander of the German Propaganda Section, had ordered Lieutenant Eich of the press office to blow up all the newspaper printworks in the capital. But Schmidtke did not hang about to ensure that his orders were carried out, and when Eich and his colleagues left on 17 August the presses were still intact.32 As a result, over the next few days the men and women who had been producing the underground Resistance newspapers literally walked into the offices left empty by the collaborators and started producing their own publications.33 For these Parisians, the first whiff of freedom was the smell of printers’ ink.

  Not every journalist experienced the liberation in quite so romantic a fashion, however. Jean Dutourd, twenty-four years old, was in charge of an armed group that took over the offices of France-Soir: ‘It is impossible to recall the rest of what happened that day. I can only remember the amazing drinking session that took place. It was one of the rare times in my life when I was completely drunk. I drank white wine, red wine, sparkling wine and Byrrh cassis in alarming quantities. I got so drunk that I collapsed onto the floor of my large office and slept on my back for 10 hours. When I woke up I discovered that someone had stolen my pistol.’34

  *

  Paris began to drift into a strange world where the population could be certain of nothing. There was a massive battle to the west, but no one knew how it was progressing. A desperate, retreating German Army was apparently heading towards the capital, hounded by the forces of liberation, but it was impossible to know if and when it would arrive. The Vichy propaganda machine had fallen silent, while the BBC could not be heard because of a lack of electricity. And even when power was occasionally and briefly restored, there was no reliable news about the state of the battle, as the BBC had stopped giving information on the Allies’ progress, apparently for security reasons. Some people were lucky enough to be in the know: Cazaux heard from the Resistance that Paris would not be liberated for several days, and that the first Allied soldiers to enter the city would be from the Leclerc Division.35 Not everyone who heard this thought it was true: in a discussion with Victor Veau, Pasteur Vallery-Radot expressed his fears that the Americans would arrive first, with neither the Free French nor the Parisian population playing any role in the liberation of the city.36 Veau retorted that it did not matter, as long as liberation came. PVR, more politically aware and more astute, did not agree.37

  On the streets, the signs of change were unmistakable. The anti-aircraft guns that had been stationed on the roofs around the Jardin du Luxembourg were lowered into the street, their crews all packed up and ready to leave.38 Either the Germans thought that the Allies would not be bombarding Paris, or they needed the guns elsewhere. Von Choltitz inspected the strong-points that had been built at key sites around the city, together with one of his staff officers, Herbert Eckelmann. The soldiers who manned these positions did not impress Eckelmann – he described them as ‘dear old daddies’.39 By the evening virtually the whole of the German administration had left the city. All that remained were those soldiers who were to defend the capital.40

  The sight of the German mass evacuation inevitably drew spectators: Paul Tuffrau went with his family to watch. In his diary he described the scene at the southern edge of the Jardin du Luxembourg:

  The green cars follow each other in groups of five or six, at short intervals, sometimes driving alongside each other, or going past each other. They are carrying anything and everything, above all non-military material: in one lorry there are two cows, a sheep and a goat; in another a mechanical reaper and yet another bits of agricultural machinery. There are ambulances, family cars, troop transporters full to the gunnels, grey Luftwaffe uniforms or grey-green Wehrmacht uniforms, and then more lorries carrying car tyres, with motorcyclists zooming past.41

  In general, the parting Germans took this attention in good spirit. After all, they were escaping. One German soldier jeered
at gawping passers-by: ‘What are you looking at? Haven’t you seen enough of us over the last four years?’42

  Andrzej Bobkowski observed a German convoy of lorries and tanks stationed near Trocadero. The soldiers were unshaven, dirty and ragged; some of them were sleeping under the trees, others just sat with vacant expressions. Down by the river, some German light tanks came to a halt, and oil-smeared soldiers clambered out. As Bobkowski wrote in his diary: ‘The crowd looked at them in silence. Down by the water’s edge, it was like the Côte d’Azur – Parisians were bathing in the Seine . . . I could hear the girls screaming with pleasure, shouting, laughing. And as always, there’s a forest of fishing rods and a crowd of anglers. It’s an amazing scene, quite idyllic.’43

  For some of the Germans, evacuation felt cruel: Walter Bargatzky, the army lawyer who had been involved in the 20 July plot but had managed to escape punishment, said goodbye to his wife Camilla, a secretary in the military administration who was being evacuated. The pair had met less than three weeks earlier, and had hurriedly married in the American Cathedral on the avenue Georges V.44 They might never meet again. Friedrich von Teuchert, another of the junior officers at the heart of the Paris side of the 20 July plot, recalled his departure from the Hôtel Majestic in improbably lyrical terms: ‘We were to be packed up and out by three in the afternoon. Then came a surprise. I went to the mess. White linen and silver were on the table. The French staff ordered us a farewell meal. There were six or seven servants, and not one behaved as if we were anything except habitual guests. They said they’d hoped we’d be back. That made a lasting impression.’45

  If true, von Teuchert’s experience was unusual to say the least. Not only were most Parisians overjoyed to see the back of the Germans, in the vast majority of cases the way the occupiers left had none of the gentility apparently seen in the Hôtel Majestic. Opposite the Gestapo headquarters on the rue des Saussaies, Suzanne Chocarne saw the evacuation descend into chaos as the morning progressed and the heat was slowly stoked. Parked vehicles were sprawled everywhere, crammed with cases of champagne and wine, bags of sugar, bulging files and even sheep. Once the Gestapo officers had left, the building was left open for anyone to pillage. First in were Wehrmacht soldiers, followed by a wary crowd that soon grew in courage and began streaming out carrying bottles, boxes and radios and even rolling barrels down the narrow street. Then the German soldiers realised there was money to be made and they began selling stuff from the back of a lorry – silk stockings, sugar, chickens – anything they could get their hands on.46 Journalist Edmond Dubois recorded the population’s reaction: ‘How the atmosphere has changed in a matter of hours. Earlier on, there was terror; now the whole neighbourhood is jubilant, stunned by this spontaneous generation of plenty. The champagne corks pop, glasses are filled, drink is poured down throats . . . Housewives go home with an unexpected bonus for their next meagre meal. At 16:00, calm returns, and the doors of the building are shut.’47

  The beginning of the German evacuation cheered the hearts of the Resistance. In his diary, Léo Hamon described his amazement when his secretary told him the news over lunch: ‘it all seems so astounding and has such massive implications for us, but we don’t have the perspective required to be able to rejoice.’48 Outside the capital it was the same story: a hurried, massive withdrawal of non-essential forces that looked increasingly like an uncoordinated retreat. Throughout the day, the Luftwaffe evacuated their air base at Villacoublay, six kilometres to the south-west of Paris. Most of the aeroplanes based there had been destroyed by repeated bombing raids on the aerodrome and by dogfights with the overwhelmingly superior Allied air forces. During the day the surviving air crew and their remaining Focke-Wulf fighters flew off to Beauvais to the north, where they were joined the next day by the ground team. The last German plane left Villacoublay at 20:20; soon afterwards the remaining ground crew blew up the aerodrome buildings and set fire to the fuel dumps before they too made for Beauvais. Clouds of smoke, coloured red and orange by the flames, billowed up into the sky. Parisians noted the glow in the south; not knowing the cause, they feared the worst.49 The Luftwaffe occupied Villacoublay in June 1940, when it was hastily evacuated by the fleeing French air force.50 After four years, the wheel of history had eventually turned. The Germans now had no air bases to the west of Paris; the defence of the capital relied virtually entirely on the dispersed, exhausted and retreating ground forces, and the collection of German soldiers in the city itself.

  A brief report from regional FFI intelligence described the German military situation in the Paris region with remarkable accuracy – not only did the report correctly identify the location of the tanks from the Panzer Lehr Division that had moved into the north-east suburbs the day before, but above all it contained a measured conclusion that was guaranteed to warm the hearts of the Resistance: ‘General impression: the Germans are not thinking of defending Paris so much as protecting the retreat of their troops from Normandy.’51

  *

  At midday, shortly after SS General Oberg left von Choltitz, Pierre Taittinger, the chairman of the Paris council, was summoned to see the new German master of Paris.52 Taittinger took with him Bussière, the Prefect of Police, and Bouffet, the Prefect of the Seine. The meeting got off to a worrying start, as von Choltitz fleshed out the threat he had made two days earlier – ‘All means, including the most harsh, that can repress disorder, will be utilised . . . Everything will be done to maintain order and to pitilessly repress disorder,’ he had said.53 The German general jabbed a fat finger at a map of Paris and explained that although he did not want the city to become a battlefield, if any of his troops were fired upon he would immediately destroy the area where the shot was fired, killing all the inhabitants.

  Thereafter, the discussion became slightly less tense when von Choltitz made it abundantly clear that his main priority was the safety of his men, not holding the city. He seemed to concede that he would not destroy fuel sources within Paris, nor carry out the order to destroy the bridges over the Seine; he even gave Bussière his direct telephone number so the two men could talk in the event of any unforeseen crisis. Before the meeting ended, von Choltitz took his guests onto the sunlit balcony of the Hôtel Meurice, overlooking the rue de Rivoli and beyond it the Jardin des Tuileries, where children were playing. A slight breeze was blowing. As they left, the interpreter heard von Choltitz say in a quiet voice, ‘It would be a real pity if such a city were to be destroyed.’54 The Frenchmen hoped this was a promise, but it could equally have been a threat.

  *

  The strike wave that had begun a week earlier with the railway workers spread to the postal service as all the post offices closed.55 Pastor Marc Boegner noted laconically in his diary: ‘Postal workers on strike, no letters.’56 The imprisoned railway workers were released, so Pierre Patin and his colleagues stopped breaking the rail strike on the suburban network – there were now no trains at all. At the same time, Patin was given a Resistance armband carrying the title of the Resistance group he had joined weeks earlier without even knowing its name – ‘Ceux de la Libération – Vengeance’.57 Elsewhere in the city, workers in vital sectors, including those in water distribution and the funeral parlours, went on strike. Whether the Free French wanted it or not, it was beginning to look as if Paris was gripped by a general strike.

  In the south Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses, 72-year-old Paul Léautaud was not happy with what was happening. He was particularly incensed by the police strike, as he wrote in his diary: ‘All these policemen should be arrested, locked up and the leaders sacked without any compensation or pension. It wouldn’t do any harm if a few dozen were executed. These people aren’t citizens. They chose their profession, and they should carry it out irrespective of their political opinions.’58

  Both the Comité Parisien de la Libération and the Bureau (executive committee) of the Conseil National de la Résistance met to discuss the situation. At the meeting of the CPL, which took place that morning a
t Ivry in the presence of Colonel Rol, there were only two items on the agenda – drafting a resolution calling for an insurrection, and fixing a date for the uprising.59 There was a dispute over the date, which ran along familiar lines – there were those who wanted to take action immediately, and those who wanted to wait at all costs. Communist trade union leader André Tollet was in favour of immediately calling the Parisian population to take up arms (the question of where those arms would come from was not discussed).60 In reply, Léo Hamon, backed by the socialist trade unionist Roger Deniau, won the day by arguing that before making any decision they needed to be clearer about the military situation, and the CNR had to be consulted.61

  At the CNR Bureau meeting, which took place in the afternoon, the conservative Resistance leaders could sense the situation was slipping out of their control. The meeting began with the all too familiar confrontation – Parodi yet again raised the danger of reprisals and argued for restraint, while the Communist Party representative, Villon, thought it was necessary to act immediately. But the chairman of the CNR, Georges Bidault, raised a third, alarming possibility. It was impossible to stop the existing strikes, he argued, and if the CNR did not wholeheartedly back the movement, then popular support for the CNR and the Resistance organisations might begin to ebb away.62 In his diary, Léo Hamon put his finger on the problem: the communists had caught the conservative sections of the Resistance in a double bind. The communists were pushing for the official structures of the Resistance to call an insurrection and at the same time they were using their influence in the working class to build that insurrection through strikes.63 If the CNR opposed the strikes, communist influence would probably increase, as the communists would be seen as the sole voice in favour of action. The Bureau therefore agreed unanimously to extend the strike wave, as a way of building de Gaulle’s ‘national insurrection’.64