by Matthew Cobb
. . . the pain and the fear of failure made me perspire profusely, which helped my skin to slip against the iron. After my neck, I got one shoulder through, then my right leg. Squeezing my hips through was sheer agony. The pain was appalling, but I knew that once the head is through the rest of the body will go, while the pain I felt would be nothing compared with what would be in store for me with the Gestapo.786
Amazingly, she not only got through the bars, but also managed to escape the patrols in the surrounding streets, and strolled off, barefoot, to safety. By early August she was in Paris, refusing calls from London to return, but instead collecting information from ALLIANCE members in the capital. To underline Fourcade’s total commitment to the secret world of intelligence, she played absolutely no role in the momentous events that shook the capital in the second half of August.787
Even before the Allied breakthrough on 15 August, the Nazis had begun to evacuate all the key German command centres from Paris.788 On 8 August Charles Braibant noted in his diary:
They’re moving out, it’s for certain . . . This afternoon, I saw lorries in black and green camouflage remove all the paperwork and the office equipment. I watched the spectacle with great pleasure.789
But although the smell of retreat wafted on the summer air, the business of Nazi horror continued as usual. On 15 August, on the orders of the new Nazi commander of the capital, General von Choltitz, 3,000 résistants were assembled on the ‘quai aux bestiaux’ (‘animal platform’) at Pantin railway station, to the east of Paris.790 They were herded into a train, 170 to each cattle-wagon, and deported to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück; 2,080 prisoners were then transferred to the Ellrich camp; only 27 returned. For those who remained in France there was the permanent threat of death. Two days after the train had left Pantin, the mutilated bodies of thirty-five résistants were discovered by a waterfall in the Bois de Boulogne. Hoping to get weapons, they had walked into a Gestapo trap, were shot and then had grenades thrown at them.791
As Nazi rule gradually collapsed, Vichy breathed its last. In a series of cynical and sordid manoeuvres, the leading collaborators attempted to negotiate with the Allies and de Gaulle. Laval came to Paris and tried to inveigle Édouard Herriot, who had been Prime Minister three times before the war, into providing a fig-leaf of respectability to his attempt to save his skin. Herriot would have none of it, and Laval’s plan collapsed. Pétain – still in Vichy – was even more pathetic, as he tried to transmit his powers directly to de Gaulle via a series of intermediaries. There was no response. On 17 August Laval was carted off by his masters as they fled eastwards; Pétain suffered the same fate shortly afterwards.792
The atmosphere in Paris had begun to change a month earlier. On 14 July there were huge illegal demonstrations to celebrate Bastille Day – over 100,000 people marched through the city. Although German soldiers fired in the air to disperse the crowds, the French police stood by and did nothing. The apparatus of Occupation was cracking. The next blow to the Nazis came on 10 August, when railway workers in the Paris region began a strike with openly political aims. As a leaflet put it: ‘To make the Hun retreat: strike. To win our demands: strike. For the complete and definitive liberation of our country: strike.’ Within two days over half the 80,000 railway workers were on strike, and the rail system ground to a halt.793 Then, on 15 August, the Parisian police, furious that their comrades in the Parisian suburbs had been disarmed by the Germans, went on strike. The same policemen who had participated in the round-up of Jews in 1942, who had arrested résistants and handed them over to the Nazis, now decided to act, just in time to save their reputation – and their skins.794
The situation in the capital was growing desperate. There was virtually no gas or electricity, little food, the Métro was closed and now there was no effective police force.795 But although the road to Paris was open, Eisenhower was not interested in liberating the capital. Despite its political and emotional importance to the French, Paris had little military significance. The relatively small German garrison could easily be contained and left to stew in its own juices, like the pockets of Nazi soldiers on the Atlantic coast, holed up in Brest or Saint-Nazaire. Eisenhower’s task was to destroy the Nazi army as quickly and effectively as possible, and liberating Paris would distract from that objective.796 As General Omar Bradley, commander of the US 12th Army Group, put it:
Paris represented nothing more than an inkspot on our maps, to be bypassed as we headed toward the Rhine. Logistically, it could cause untold trouble, for behind its handsome façades there lived four million hungry Frenchmen. The diversion of so much tonnage to Paris would only strain further our already taut lines of supply. Food for the people of Paris meant less gasoline for the front.797
The Allies felt Paris could wait. The Resistance did not agree.
On 19 August the national Resistance leadership (the Conseil National de la Résistance) and the Comité Parisien de Libération (the city-wide liberation committee) both called for an immediate insurrection in the capital, despite the ferocious opposition of one of de Gaulle’s Military Delegates, General Chaban-Delmas.798 De Gaulle’s instructions to his men had been absolutely plain. At the end of July he had sent a telegram to his personal delegate, Alexandre Parodi, instructing him to ensure order and to maintain his authority over the Resistance:
Always speak loud and clear in the name of the State. The numerous acts of our glorious Resistance are the means by which the nation fights for its salvation. The State is above all these manifestations and actions.799
But in the reality of the hot Parisian summer, de Gaulle’s instructions were useless. Chaban-Delmas and Parodi were in danger of being completely overtaken by events. Reluctantly, they decided to rally to the majority position. Despite their fears that the insurrection would lead to a repetition of the Paris Commune (the city-wide revolution of 1871), they placed all their forces under the command of the Communist regional FFI leader, Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy. Rol-Tanguy was in turn under the orders of the Commission Militaire d’Action (COMAC), set up in February to act as the Resistance military leadership, much to the irritation of the Free French.
Early on the morning of 19 August, Rol-Tanguy got on his bike, his saddlebag bulging with copies of the call for insurrection, a makeshift uniform from the Spanish Civil War and a machine gun, and headed for his secret headquarters. As he rode past Notre-Dame, he heard the sound of the ‘Marseillaise’ coming from the Préfecture de Police, facing the cathedral. Unknown to the FFI commander, the striking policemen had seized their headquarters, even before the call for insurrection had been posted on the city walls.800 Later that afternoon the Comités de Libération in the Paris districts occupied town halls, government buildings and collaborationist newspaper offices. Barricades sprouted in the northern and eastern parts of the capital, where the Resistance was strongest, and through which the Nazis would have to pass if they tried to retreat. Few of these barricades would have posed any problem to a German tank, but they enabled the population to participate in the insurrection, and they also exerted a powerful symbolism, recalling the events of past Parisian revolutions.
Simone de Beauvoir remembered that morning:
When I woke up I leaned out of my window. The swastika was still flying over the Sénat, housewives were shopping as usual in the Rue de Seine, and a long queue had formed outside the baker’s shop. Two cyclists rode past shouting, ‘The Préfecture’s fallen!’ At the same moment, a German detachment emerged from the Sénat and marched off towards the Boulevard St-Germain. Before turning the corner of the street the soldiers let loose a volley of machine-gun fire. Passers-by on the Boulevard scattered, taking cover as best they could in doorways. But every door was shut; one man crumpled and fell in the very act of knocking, fists drumming at the panels, while others collapsed along the sidewalk.801
The violence observed by de Beauvoir emphasized that the insurrection would not be straightforward. Although the crack Nazi forces had left Paris, von Choltitz s
till commanded 20,000 troops, plus around 80 tanks and 60 pieces of artillery.802 The Resistance, on the other hand, had only 600 handguns shared among 20,000 résistants and hundreds of thousands of Parisians.803
Despite the lack of weapons, the insurgents soon took one of the key buildings in the city – the Hôtel de Ville. Early in the morning of 20 August a small group led by Léo Hamon entered the office of the Prefect of the Seine and declared: ‘In the name of the Comité Parisien de Libération and the Provisional Government of the Republic, I take possession of the Hôtel de Ville.’ Amazed, the Prefect asked Hamon for his papers. ‘We’ve got out of the habit of that kind of thing,’ was the laconic reply. After a brief verbal exchange in which the Prefect accused the insurgents of ‘acting like children’, the ‘children’ arrested the members of the Paris municipal council to protect them ‘from legitimate popular anger’ and took control of the building.804
But no sooner had the insurrection started than it was undermined. In a series of secret meetings, Parodi and Chaban-Delmas emphasized the extremely unfavourable balance of forces, and argued for a ceasefire between the Resistance and the Nazis. It is still not known who thought up this proposal, which was brokered by the Swedish consul in Paris, Raoul Nordling. But the impact on the insurrection was plain: as well as potentially preventing unnecessary bloodshed, the ceasefire broke the rhythm of the movement so feared by the Gaullists and gained time for the arrival of the Allies. Far worse, however, the agreement allowed the Germans to take their troops safely out of the capital. After twenty-four hours of confusion, in which orders and counter-orders were issued – many of them gleefully ignored by the résistants on the ground, who simply wanted to get on with the business of fighting the Germans – the ceasefire was officially broken. In reality, it had never been fully obeyed.805
*
From 21 August the insurrection was commanded by Rol-Tanguy from a vast bunker complex twenty-six metres underneath Place Denfert-Rocherau, built by the government before the war, and which had its own air conditioning, power supply and dormitories. The telephone lines were intact, and there was continual communication between Rol-Tanguy, the Préfecture and the Hôtel de Ville although, unsurprisingly, the chain of command down to the forces fighting in the streets was not always particularly effective. The Resistance newspapers took over the presses of the collaborationist print media, producing hundreds of thousands of copies, bringing many Parisians into contact with the Resistance press for the very first time. There was even a Resistance radio station – Radiodiffusion de la Nation Française. Although on the first day it broadcast only French classical music and the ‘Marseillaise’, it was soon relaying FFI communiqués and broadcasting interviews with leaders of the insurrection.806 In the streets of the capital, ordinary people joined in the fighting. In his diary, Parisian Jean Galtier-Boissière noted with humour:
Urban warfare is less risky and more picturesque than war in the countryside; you can go home to eat, with your rifle; everyone in the district is at their windows, watching and applauding you; the dairy-shop, the fruit-seller and the bistro all offer you free rounds. If only the cinema was there, glory would be complete.807
In fact the cinema was there, in the heart of the insurrection. Film professionals recorded the whole event on celluloid, and as soon as the city was liberated the rushes were rapidly edited into a thirty-minute black-and-white newsreel, La Libération de Paris. This striking film provided the people of Paris – soon followed by the rest of the French and by cinema-goers in Britain and the USA – with a powerful view of the insurrection as it happened. It also fixed iconic scenes in the popular imagination – armed résistants inside the Préfecture, crouching behind smashed windows; a Molotov cocktail attack on a German lorry, its soldiers spilling onto the road, covered in flames; joyous Parisian men, women and even children building barricades, digging up paving stones and chopping down trees.808
Not all the events of the insurrection were so picturesque. On 22 August a German tank shell exploded in the Grand Palais and set fire to the glass-roofed building, which was housing a circus. One of the circus horses, stabled behind the building, was killed; within an hour hungry Parisians had flayed it to the bone, taking the precious meat off to their homes or the black market.809
Despite the scenes of enthusiastic crowds fixed on film, the fighting in Paris was real urban warfare – messy, chaotic and sometimes horrifying. Tortured bodies of résistants were found dumped in the street with their eyes gouged out, the skin stripped from their hands.810 In return, insurgents ignored cries from German soldiers, trapped in their burning vehicles, desperate to be put out of their agony – ‘Let them roast like pigs’ was the reply.811 Soldiers were stabbed with kitchen knives, German snipers and Vichy miliciens were summarily executed in the street. The Communist Party’s distinctly un-internationalist slogan ‘À chacun son boche’ (Everyone get a Hun) was being realized in the most bloody fashion.
Young André Calvès, who had come to Paris from Britanny to help his Trotskyist comrades, had joined an FTP brigade, wisely hiding his true political opinions from the FTP’s Communist leaders. Based in the nineteenth arrondissement, Calvès’ unit was at the forefront of some of the fighting, although what went on was not always heroic:
There were Germans in the road. One of them, a young lad, turned the corner. He had his rifle pointing towards the sky and was watching the roofs. Suddenly, he saw me. I could swear he smiled. The situation was quite funny. We were about three metres away from each other. He brought his rifle down. I fired. He fell in the street. We couldn’t even get his weapon as his comrades were behind him.812
Sometimes Calvès and his comrade Jo had the impression they were being used:
The cops brought us a member of the Milice who had just killed two men: ‘Hey, FTP – you can kill this bastard.’ Jo spoke out – ‘You’re always careful, you cops, aren’t you? After all, the Germans might end up back in charge.’ They didn’t reply. We shot the milicien in front of the post office. People applauded. It was understandable, but it was still sad.813
Just up the road from the post office where that incident took place, a deep railway cutting passes through the Buttes-Chaumont park. On 22 August two other members of the nineteenth arrondissement FTP brigade, Madeleine Riffaud and her young sidekick, Max Rainat, got a phone call telling them that there would be a German troop train passing through. They rushed out, armed with what they had to hand – a few grenades and boxes of fireworks and flares. The explosions were loud, colourful and very effective – the résistants were able to immobilize the train and take eighty German prisoners.814
All over the capital, insurgents got weapons where they could. Rifles, handguns and grenades were stripped from fallen German soldiers, while the most successful raids saw résistants making off with Nazi lorries, artillery pieces and even tanks. The lack of weapons remained the biggest problem for the insurgents. Despite the fears of de Gaulle’s representatives, Rol-Tanguy had no intention of seizing power for the Communist Party, or of creating a new Commune. He was well aware of the threat posed by the continued presence of the Nazi forces in the capital, and the need for well-armed military forces to come to the aid of the insurrection. His orders finished with this instruction to all FFI forces in the region: ‘OPEN THE ROAD TO PARIS FOR THE VICTORIOUS ALLIED ARMIES AND WELCOME THEM HERE.’815
To convince the Allies to turn their attention to Paris, both the Resistance and the Free French sent messengers through enemy lines. Chaban-Delmas and Parodi, deeply worried that they would lose the initiative to the Resistance if the insurgents took control before the Allies arrived, were particularly desperate to ensure that aid came quickly. But when the message finally got through, on 22 August, it was due to the bravery of Rol-Tanguy’s right-hand man, Roger Cocteau (‘Gallois’), who finally arrived at General Patton’s headquarters early that morning. Gallois explained the situation in the capital – or at least, the situation as he had left it thirty-six hours
earlier – and emphasized that the low morale of the German garrison made the city ripe for the taking. Finally, he asked the Americans to parachute weapons to help the insurrection and immediately to send their tanks towards the capital. The US commanders refused to do either, but sent Gallois to see General Leclerc, commander of the French 2nd Armoured Division (‘Division Blindée’ – 2nd DB). Following discussions between Eisenhower and General Bradley, it was agreed that Leclerc should immediately move his men towards Paris.816
This was no spur-of-the-moment decision – the 2nd DB (entirely armed with American weapons) had been chosen for this role at the beginning of the year when the Allies began planning for the period after D-Day. Acutely aware of the potential political importance of French soldiers liberating the capital, the Allies cast around for an appropriate formation among the ranks of the Free French. The reasons behind their eventual choice of the Leclerc division are surprising and have only recently come to light. Apart from a series of logistical considerations, the American and the British generals (with the support of de Gaulle) wanted a division that was ‘100 per cent white’, with no soldiers from the French colonies, or one that could be made to be so without reducing its numbers too greatly.817 The Allies and the Free French were not explicitly racist; rather they thought that for the population of Paris to identify with their liberators, the troops involved should all be white (no such segregation was thought necessary for the populations in Provence, who welcomed the Free French armies with their African and Arab soldiers). In the case of the 2nd DB, shearing the division of its colonial troops would have meant removing twenty-five per cent of its total muster. In the end, it appears the 2nd DB was left intact, not only with its African and Arab troops but also with several hundred foreign fighters – above all Spanish Republicans who had fled Franco, as well as Italians, Americans and even anti-fascist Germans.818