Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  De Gaulle was then introduced to Rol, who was wearing his distinctly non-regulation uniform and black beret from the Spanish Civil War. Whatever annoyance de Gaulle might have felt about Rol’s involvement in the surrender, he congratulated the FFI leader and shook hands with him.14 De Gaulle even talked to Valrimont, although the two men were both prickly, and the brief exchange was primarily a verbal joust.15 As de Gaulle left, he spoke to a French radio journalist and gave a fair summary of what had happened: ‘The German general commanding the Paris region has surrendered to General Leclerc and the commander of the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur.’16

  *

  Despite the surrender of the German commander, fighting continued around all the remaining German strong-points. Probably the most destructive battle was at the Ecole Militaire, where the 2e DB launched a frontal attack, moving down from the Eiffel Tower in three columns. Despite important damage to the Ecole, the Germans held on. The decisive moment came when a sustained grenade attack on the northern corner of the building enabled the 2e DB infantry, supported by FFI fighters, to pour inside. After some fierce fighting, hundreds of Germans surrendered, leaving fifty dead and many more wounded. Even today, the scars of the battle remain – there are pockmarked walls and huge chunks missing from the masonry around the windows.17

  Other strong-points surrendered only when given the order. Colonel Jay, along with two of von Choltitz’s other senior aides, was driven to the Gare Montparnasse, where he was handed the order for the remaining outposts to surrender. Jay was sent with two 2e DB soldiers, accompanied by a 2e DB tank, to the place de la République where the imposing barracks was protected by two 75 mm cannons, six 37 mm guns, and an armoured car.18 FFI fighters from Madeleine Riffaud’s Saint-Just group, together with two FTP units commanded by 25-year-old medical student Commander Darcourt, had attacked the barracks early in the morning, and fighting had continued sporadically, without any help from the 2e DB.19 Over a dozen résistants, stretcher-bearers and passers-by were killed or fatally wounded in the fighting, as shown by the plaques that can be seen on the walls of the surrounding streets.20 One of the last casualties was 22-year-old Michel Tagrine, who had been wounded at the Bastille on 19 August, and had just been promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Despite his injury, Michel had insisted on returning to the fighting, but was killed by a bullet in the head as the final attack was launched.21 When Colonel Jay arrived, he was given a white tea-towel tied to a stick, and strode out into the square as the bullets whizzed by. Inside the barracks, the local commander and his aides were not impressed by von Choltitz’s order, but eventually had to bow to reality and the threat of complete annihilation. Five hundred German soldiers surrendered.22

  The place de la République was not the only place where the FFI had fought alone. Earlier in the day, Victor Veau had seen dozens of Germans marching down the rue de Miromesnil, guarded by just five FFI men, only one of whom had a gun.23 The FFI also took the barracks at Clignancourt, on the northern edge of the city, and held down the German headquarters in Neuilly, to the west.24 However, although the FFI at Neuilly were able to prevent the Germans from escaping, they were unable to take the two buildings where the enemy were holed up. In the early afternoon, two 2e DB armoured groups arrived, destroying German half-tracks and motorised anti-tank guns, littering the street with twisted metal and smouldering rubber. Eventually, one of von Choltitz’s officers turned up with the order to cease fire, and around 800 German prisoners surrendered. Three men of the 2e DB were killed, along with a number of FFI fighters.25

  FFI actions continued in the suburbs, too. At Joinville-le-Pont, five kilometres south-east of Paris, on the edge of a huge loop in the Marne, a dozen German soldiers turned up from the east with instructions to destroy the bridge over the river. While they were trying to get access to the underground chamber where the explosive charges had supposedly been laid, they were fired upon by local FFI fighters. The Germans called for reinforcements, and scores of soldiers launched a firefight that lasted all afternoon. Eventually, one of von Choltitz’s officers arrived with the cease-fire order and the Germans surrendered. Around a dozen FFI fighters and residents of Joinville had been killed in the operation.26

  The most determined German resistance came around the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Senate. By the late afternoon, tanks from the 2e DB destroyed the German bunkers, and infantrymen and FFI fighters entered the gardens. The German defences were slowly reduced with the help of a 4th US Infantry bazooka unit, and the tanks in the Jardin were destroyed; a Panzer in front of the Odéon theatre was hit by three shells fired by a 2e DB Sherman. German snipers in the Senate clock tower were dealt with when two tanks fired on the building, demolishing part of the tower. At around 17:30, a German officer was sent into the Senate, accompanied by two French soldiers, carrying von Choltitz’s order to surrender. After discussions that lasted forty minutes, a German officer came out marching ‘like a robot’, waving a white flag, and that was the end. The swastika flag that had flown over the Senate for four years was hauled down and replaced by a French tricolour.27

  The Jardin du Luxembourg was littered with shattered concrete and machines – abandoned or destroyed tanks, lorries and armoured cars.28 The Senate courtyard was a complete mess, full of burnt-out vehicles and the detritus of a defeated army. Inside, it was even worse. A reporter for Défense de la France described the scene:

  Everywhere, in the never-ending linked galleries and salons, in the great Conference Room, in the library, among the trampled maps, the scattered dossiers, the magazines and books ripped apart as though by a tornado, on desks and under furniture, there are dishes full of mouldy food, half-finished glasses of kummel liqueur, broken crockery, ripped clothes, bottles of champagne and yet more bottles of champagne! Throughout the building, an indescribable mess covers the furniture, which is coated with thick dust from the bombardment.29

  As German prisoners filed out of the Senate, three abreast, their hands on their heads, the tanks of the 2e DB returned to their stations. For Gaston Eve and his comrades of the Montmirail, this meant taking up a position on the boulevard Saint-Michel, opposite the Sorbonne. While Gaston was showing a boy and a young woman around his tank, there was a burst of gunfire and he sheltered them with his body. When it was time for the girl to go home, Gaston lent her his helmet. Her name was Odette Lampin, and she returned the helmet the next morning. They were married in October 1945.30

  On the other side of the Seine, Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar powdered her nose, put on some lipstick and a clean dress and rode her bicycle all over the north of the city. As she wrote in her diary that evening: ‘What sudden lightness of being throughout the city; people are singing, running, everyone is in the street, setting up dances at every crossroads – we will dance tonight. There are flags everywhere, made of bits of old cloth, poorly sewn together, hurriedly dyed, tricolours and Allied flags, draping the windows. Banners painted on wallpaper stretch across the streets from one building to another, shining and shaking in the air, dancing in the blue sky.’31 But Jacqueline’s thoughts were never far from her husband, André:

  Why aren’t you here on this unforgettable night, under this beautiful sky, why aren’t you in these streets, on your bicycle, by my side or here on this balcony? . . . I call to you, I call to you again from the depths of my sadness and my joy . . . I call to you from partying Paris, where innocent people will be able to live, where children will be able to grow up, where those who have done no harm will be able to sleep at night, in this extraordinary union which will not last, in the beauty of this evening, which you would have loved so much . . . You who are so far away, I call to you as never before.32

  *

  As the German prisoners streamed out of the hotels on the rue de Rivoli, they felt the full fury of a Parisian population that had lived under the Nazis for four years. In his diary, Walter Dreizner described how people threw water and even a bicycle at the German soldiers, while a man burst from the crowd and thum
ped a soldier to the floor. When they reached the top of the rue de Rivoli, they were hit by a gale of hatred and the soldiers began to fear for their lives:

  A flood of abuse swept over us. These curses came from so many throats that they numbed our ears. They turned into a battle cry: from all sides the masses pressed against us with calls of ‘Hang them!’, ‘Murderers!’, ‘Band of pigs!’, ‘Band of murderers!’, ‘Thieves!’ and ‘Down with the Huns!’ They hit us, pushed us and spat at us. They were completely out of control. Wild beasts had been unleashed upon us and we were their victims, victims who could not defend themselves and were not even allowed to do so. This meant death, a tortuous death. The Parisians were in their element. In the midst of this unbelievable screeching we were pushed, hit and forced to the Palais Royale opposite the Louvre. The tall iron railings around the Palais offered us some protection. We could breathe. I felt as if I were in a cage, but a cage where the beasts were outside, pushing up against the iron bars.33

  Sometimes, the Germans fought back. As the prisoners filed out of the Hôtel Crillon, the headmaster of the boys’ school on the nearby rue Cambon observed the chaotic scene: ‘I arrived at the Concorde just as they were bringing the German flag out of the Navy Ministry, and were hoisting the French flag. Hundreds of German officers and soldiers were coming out of the Crillon, being screamed at by the crowd. They jostled each other to get into the lorry quickly. Sitting next to the driver there was a German officer who was white with anger; when the lorry started off he thumped one of the women in the crowd.’34 The Germans were stunned by their capture. In Montparnasse station, Captain Gallois saw what he felt to be one of the most striking signs of the German defeat: ‘40 high-ranking German officers, covered with medals and ribbons, were gathered together on a main-line platform. There were no seats, so they sat on the platform like a string of onions, their feet touching the rails; every now and again one of them would get up and walk to the water fountain to drink from a soldier’s beaker.’35 Writer Léon Werth, who had recently arrived in Paris, saw the captured soldiers of the Senate garrison sitting down in tightly packed rows, dejected. Their plight prevented Werth from truly rejoicing: ‘The humiliation of these men makes me suffer. It is necessary, it is according to the principles of justice. I approve of it, it satisfies me, it calms me and yet I cannot rejoice in it. Is this feeling so complicated, so difficult to understand? When I tell people this, they say, “But you are forgetting what they have done, the killings, the torture . . .” I forget nothing. But a man who is humiliated, his humiliation is in me.’36 German soldiers who managed to escape from the collapse of the garrison reported their treatment by Parisians to their comrades in the surrounding region, reinforcing the atmosphere of threat created by the insurgent population. Dr Herrmann of the Panzer Lehr Division wrote in his diary: ‘The German prisoners were abused, spat upon, flogged and treated as they were in 1918, perhaps even worse.’37

  And there was worse. Lieutenant von Arnim was in the line of soldiers marching up the rue de Rivoli, their hands held high. He later recalled:

  There was screaming, threats, fists were shaken. The accompanying guards found it difficult to protect us – and themselves. Over and again one of us was knocked down by someone in the crowd and was trampled upon. Just in front of me on the march was a friend of mine, Dr Kayser von Hagen, a highly educated and sensitive Francophile. Suddenly a shirt-sleeved, bearded giant of a man leapt out of the crowd, put a gun to Dr Kayser von Hagen’s head and pulled the trigger. I stumbled over his fallen body, hauled myself up and staggered on.38

  *

  Even before the guns fell silent, the political manoeuvring had begun. A few days earlier, Parodi had invited the CNR to be present at the Préfecture to welcome General de Gaulle when he eventually arrived in Paris. CNR President Bidault turned down the invitation – he felt that de Gaulle should come to the Resistance, not the other way round, and that the Republic should be declared from the Hôtel de Ville, as in the revolutions of the nineteenth century, and as Parodi had agreed a week earlier.39 Bidault’s intransigence led to an impasse. Both sides realised the historic significance of the moment they were about to live through, and both sides were determined to shape events to produce the outcome they desired. Only one side could win.

  Once he was in the city, de Gaulle made his intentions clear. After leaving the Gare Montparnasse and briefly embracing his son, who was fighting with the 2e DB, he headed for the Ministry of War on the rue Saint Dominique, which had been his office until June 1940. This appeared very humble – after all, his only official position was that of Minister of War. However, behind this false modesty lay a clear-eyed political project. De Gaulle’s view was that Pétain, Vichy and everything that went with them were a mere aberration. France – the Republic – had continued to exist, in London, in the shape of the Free French. The occupation was nothing more than a four-year interlude, and now things could return to normal. There would be no declaration of the Republic, and most certainly no revolution.

  De Gaulle rarely made matters easy for his friends and supporters. Over the previous tumultuous weeks, Parodi had done his utmost to carry out de Gaulle’s instructions and to ensure that the Resistance did nothing that would block the General’s pathway to power. Parodi was loyal to the point of self-abnegation, and had operated without support or instructions for most of the insurrection. Now, at the crucial moment, he had no idea of de Gaulle’s whereabouts. When he did eventually track the General down to the Ministry of War, Parodi was given the brush-off – ‘We will arrange an audience for you’, said an aide over the telephone. Parodi had to insist quite forcefully before he was finally allowed to meet the man to whom he had devoted the last four years of his life. For a first meeting, it was not auspicious. The atmosphere was tense, as Parodi argued that de Gaulle had to go to the Préfecture and the Hôtel de Ville to meet with the men and women who had risked their lives to liberate the city.40 Eventually, de Gaulle bowed to political necessity and acceded to Parodi’s wishes. But before he left the building, the Free French leader told Parodi and Luizet that he would hold a triumphal march through Paris the next day. Significantly, this was not discussed with any representatives of the Resistance. What was to be de Gaulle’s apotheosis was decided by him alone, without any reference to the people who had enabled him to take power.

  At 19:00 de Gaulle got into an open-top ministerial car and was driven to the Préfecture, with Parodi seated at his right hand. They were accompanied by police motorcycle outriders and a Resistance film crew who captured the vehicle slaloming through the gaps in the barricades to cries of joy from startled résistants.41 At the Préfecture de Gaulle was welcomed with a fanfare from the police band, and was presented with bouquets by two young women.42 After quickly saluting Luizet’s staff, de Gaulle walked the short distance over the river to the Hôtel de Ville.43

  *

  Radio journalist Pierre Crénesse had spent the whole day at the Hôtel de Ville, waiting for de Gaulle to arrive. He had interviewed anyone he could get hold of – infantrymen, tank drivers and, that classic journalistic last resort, other journalists. But his patience paid off and he was there, ready with his microphone, when de Gaulle finally strode up the great staircase inside the building. Crénesse got his scoop and provided a running commentary on the event, broadcasting the historic moments to the city and the world.44

  Inside a chandelier-lit salon, de Gaulle was greeted with enthusiasm by the crowd – for virtually everyone there it was the first time they had set eyes on their leader.45 The walls of the room had been splintered by gunfire, there were holes in the windows and bullets had starred the mirrors. The air was already stifling from the late afternoon August heat and the packed crowd; when the spotlights were turned on for the newsreel cameras, the temperature rose even more. In this hot, buzzing atmosphere, Georges Maranne, the communist President of the CPL, read a speech in which he welcomed de Gaulle and generously put the General at the centre of the amazing events
that everyone had just lived through, even at the price of historical accuracy: ‘On 19 August you ordered a national insurrection. Paris obeyed, magnificently. It was liberated by the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur and by its whole population. But it owes that liberation to you. And it thanks you for it.’46

  In reply, de Gaulle led the crowd in a rousing verse of the ‘Marseillaise’, and then Georges Bidault spoke, in the name of the CNR. This was the first time that de Gaulle and Bidault had met, and it was not a good start.47 Like Maranne, Bidault praised de Gaulle: ‘Today, the uniformed Resistance and the non-uniformed Resistance are united around the man who, from Day One, said “No” . . . Like the General, the French people have never surrendered. For four years they fought with empty hands. Today they are triumphant.’ But Bidault then went on to pay a moving tribute to his comrades who had been tortured, and to those who had died in battle or in prison. He singled out ‘the first president of the Conseil National, our leader, our friend who has disappeared, Max, whose real name we cannot pronounce because there is still the hope that we will see him again. On this day of triumph, I evoke his memory with pride and tenderness.’48 ‘Max’ – Jean Moulin – had in fact been killed by the Nazis nearly fifteen months earlier.