1942
IN AUGUST 1942, HAND-GRENADES were thrown among off-duty Luftwaffe personnel at a Paris sports stadium, leading to more hostage-taking and executions. But this did not stop the FTP. As British weapons became available it fell to men like Henri Rol-Tanguy to distribute pistols and ammunition. He always avoided using adventurous language when talking about this work because security demanded meticulousness over mundane things, and until August 1944 he never met FTP leaders such as Charles Tillon. Such was clandestine life.45
Like all armies, however, the Resistance had to learn from its mistakes. Rol-Tanguy was sufficiently experienced to veto a poster threatening that “for each patriot [shot] six German officers will pay” because it was “unrealistic and uselessly provocative”. But events in the Rue de Buci on 31 May 1942 demonstrated that even civil protests where fatalities were not expected could escalate lethally. A communist activist, Madeleine Marzin, and three FTP heavies barged into a grocer’s shop known to serve German soldiers and began giving jars of preserves and sugar to hard-pressed housewives. Chaos ensued, and when the police arrived the FTP men began firing pistols. Two policemen were killed and several wounded before Marzin and the FTP men were overpowered and arrested. The men were guillotined while Madeleine Marzin was imprisoned in Rennes.46
Rol-Tanguy concluded that such operations required precise planning and must be executed sufficiently quickly that neither the police nor the Germans could react. Another “action” was planned for 1 August on the junction of the Avenue d’Orléans* and the Rue Daguerre in south Montparnasse. Starting at 4pm, communists marched into a shop and began giving food to housewives. Firing began and one policeman and a German were wounded before the housewives dispersed and the FTP withdrew without loss. Both British and Russian radio celebrated this outbreak of lawlessness which demonstrated, if only briefly, that someone other than the Germans ran the streets of Paris. The FTP leadership recognised, however, that things needed to cool down, and Rol-Tanguy was sent to lie low in the Free Zone.47
ANTI-JEWISH LAWS ENACTED during the Occupation’s early months were now enforced, with the French police fulfilling German deportation quotas—usually to certain death in camps like Auschwitz. From January 1941 an SS officer was placed in the Préfecture de Police in Paris. When the Germans advertised for supplementary staff to fulfill the anti-Jewish policy, six thousand responded in the Paris area alone to fill two thousand vacancies.48
The first round-up of Parisian Jews happened in May 1941; almost four thousand were sent via the Gare Austerlitz to fetid Vichy transit camps. But in July 1942 Operation Spring Breeze—called in French la grande rafle (the big round-up)—gathered over thirteen thousand Jews including four thousand children at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, the winter cycling stadium where Parisians watched a favourite French sport.
Although the Paris police arrested fewer Jews than the Germans wanted, over thirteen thousand people were held for five days in a stadium designed for seventeen thousand, whose visit would normally have lasted up to three hours. The six lavatories quickly became blocked. Food and sanitation were desperately inadequate for the incarceration of so many people. Dysentery broke out. Some, sensing the merciless logic of their situation, tried to kill themselves with varying degrees of success, placing extra burdens on overstretched medical staff. Next stop was transit camps like Pithiviers or Beaune La Rolande, or, if their departure to the death camps was sooner, to Drancy, an unfinished modern housing estate outside Paris.
During 1942 alone over forty thousand Jews resident in France, mainly foreign but including many French citizens, were deported via Vichy’s transit system. Only a few lucky ones were released. Henriette Petrocochino, an elderly Dutch Jewess and widow of a Greek diplomat, was arrested but her British relations secured her release via the Red Cross. Returning home to the Boulevard de Beausejour, she found that Wehrmacht officers had used her apartment during her enforced absence; only a radio was missing.49 If she had not been released, all her possessions would have vanished. Her flat contained superb ornaments, such as Sèvres porcelain, and, being the daughter of Dutch artist David Bles, she owned good paintings. Billeting officers in the homes of arrested Jews was a usual phase. Once the German authorities knew their owners would not return, their possessions were processed.
There are moving examples of faithful servants hiding family treasures from grasping Nazi hands, like Baron de Rothschild’s superb butler, Félix Pacaut, sealing off part of the cellar in their Avenue de Marigny mansion.50 But German pillage of Jewish assets was highly organised. Installing itself at the Musée de Jeu de Paume shortly after la Chute, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), an ad hoc organisation within the SS, was charged with the confiscation of Jewish art collections. When she realised what her beloved Jeu de Paume would be used for, the unassuming yet tough curator Rose Valland asked Jacques Jaujard, the director of the Louvre, what she should do. Jaujard told her to remain at her post “coute que coute”, and keep him informed. Barred to the public throughout the Occupation under the ERR, the Jeu de Paume became a clearinghouse for art theft, as old masters, Impressionists and modern work by men like Matisse, Braque and Picasso were shipped to Germany. From the Occupation’s first winter Rose Valland inventoried as much as she could in the brief, descriptive language of auction house catalogues. After Operation Spring Breeze the pace in Rose’s carnets intensifies.51
PERHAPS PIERRE LAVAL ADVISED FRENCH OFFICIALS to make collaboration over the Jewish question as ineffective as possible. But his biographer Fred Kupferman emphasises that during 1942 Laval swapped one rabidly anti-Semitic commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Xavier Vallat, for the more sinister Darquier de Pellepoix, at Otto Abetz’s behest.52 Besides, on the first anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, Laval declared publicly, “Germany is fighting Communism. Great battles are taking place in the east, from Petsamo to the Caucasus. I wish for a German victory, for without it, Bolshevism will take over everywhere in Europe.” Pétain was furious.53
Since Nazi Germany’s conquests reached their zenith during mid-1942, at no other time did it make more sense for Vichy France to knuckle under. As Leclerc’s men in Chad prepared to join forces with the British Eighth Army’s autumn offensive, they faced unprecedented hostility from their compatriots in Vichy-controlled Niger, whereas during 1940–1941 this area saw tacit co-operation between the two Frances. Leclerc’s men blamed this on Laval.
De Gaulle was experiencing the worst phase in Free French history since Dakar. During the spring of 1942 the British cut him out of the operation to seize Madagascar, France’s island colony in the Indian Ocean.* If Laval had joined France into a full alliance with Germany, de Gaulle’s position in London would have become farcical and his men merely volunteers of conscience.
When, on 8 November 1942, the British and Americans landed in French North Africa in Operation Torch, they faced stiff resistance from the Vichy French. De Gaulle’s then ADC, Captain Pierre Billotte, was warned by General Sir Hastings Ismay three hours before the operation began.54 Contemplating the enormity of what was happening but deciding against disturbing de Gaulle with news of the latest high-handed behaviour by les Anglo-Saxons, Billotte spent the night at his desk drafting speeches before waking the Free French leader at 7am. De Gaulle stood speechless in his dressing gown while Billotte spoke.
“Eh, bien,” said the Constable. “I hope the Vichy people throw them back in the sea. You don’t get into France par effraction—‘by breaking and entering’!”55
But the Allies required complete control of North Africa’s shoreline. It was too important to forewarn anyone by first “asking nicely”. The Vichy French fought for three days, until it was clear the Anglo-American forces meant serious business. Despite suffering three thousand casualties, the Armée d’Afrique and the French Navy went over to the Allies. The French Navy lost most in terms of men and equipment resisting Torch. The Armée d’Afrique and the French Air Force found that, compared to American equipment, all
the tanks and aircraft that Marshal Weygand spirited to French North Africa, away from the prying eyes of the Armistice Commission, were obsolete.
PARISIAN REACTION TO “TORCH” was mixed. Right-wingers like Jacques Doriot and Joseph Darnand were appalled, but many Frenchmen were thrilled that the Americans were involved at last. Liberation looked to be a serious possibility.
In Vichy the German Consul, Krug von Nidda, handed Prime Minister Laval a letter from Hitler offering France an immediate alliance “durch dick und dunn”—”through thick and thin”. But Pétain refused. Recognising the danger, Hitler ordered his troops to invade southern France. Vichy’s modest army was ordered not to resist. One divisional commander, the same General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny recommended by de Gaulle to defend Paris in 1940, made a token resistance to satisfy French honour, and was arrested for his pains. Thereafter he decided that de Gaulle was more deserving of his allegiance.
At Toulon, France’s Mediterranean naval base west of the Riviera, Admiral Jean de Laborde—who, with eighty vessels, controlled much of the French Navy—dithered catastrophically. Admiral Auphan’s orders to either keep the Germans outside the naval base or scuttle the ships did not help. The third option was the open sea. But the paintings of naval battles with les Anglais in Toulon’s museum spoke louder to Laborde’s Anglophobic soul than General Blaskowitz’s panzer divisions devouring the Midi’s main roads. When Laborde realised he had neither the means to protect Toulon’s naval base from tanks, nor time to make steam and put to sea, he gave the shameful order, “Sabordez la flotte! ”—“Scuttle the fleet!” With tear-filled eyes his loyal matelots primed explosives and opened scuttling cocks, consigning superb ships to the shallow bed of the inner Rade.* Their heart-breaking task completed, the matelots marched through Toulon town shouting, “Have them! Have them!” to Blaskowitz’s panzer crews.56
In Paris, among several poignant indications of national despair, that great toyshop, Au Nain Bleu, set the Tricolore at half-mast on model battleships in their window. After losing both French North Africa and the fleet, Vichy was naked. Pétain’s wiser aides advised winding up his relationship with Germany and flying to French North Africa. He refused this option too.
Admiral Darlan, who was in French North Africa to visit his sick son at the time of Operation Torch, negotiated the ceasefire with US General Mark Clark, much to Allied relief. But his weathercock politics had angered too many Frenchmen, and a group of Gaullist résistants, helped by the British, drew straws for who would kill him. In an incident pregnant with controversy, Darlan was gunned down by a royalist résistant called Bonnier de la Chapelle, who was subsequently executed by firing squad on Boxing Day 1942.57
Old-fashioned imperialists living in the Haussmanien apartment blocks of central Paris recognised that Torch presaged Germany’s defeat. Those who had over-committed to fascism and collaboration now had nowhere to go, becoming die-hards. Allied air attacks on railways and industrial complexes around Paris ensured the hostility of this minority to both les Anglo-Saxons and de Gaulle. For pie-eyed gentleman writer Alphonse de Châteaubriant, owner of the collabo newspaper La Gerbe, and Joseph Darnand, head of the re-organised fascist militia, the Milice, Allied bombing provided a pretext for Nazi-style rallies at venues like the Vélodrome d’Hiver where, glistening with sweat, Jacques Doriot harangued the collabo right.58
1943
AS MONTGOMERY PUSHED THE AFRIKA KORPS westwards along the North African littoral following his victory at El Alamein, the time had come for Leclerc’s long awaited link-up with the British Eighth Army. Through Christmas 1942 his ragtag force drove northwards. Although Leclerc’s men needed British material assistance, they were determined to maintain a sense of French independence. Advancing through southern Libya, rolling up outposts of Italy’s empire, the Free French installed new governors and raised the Tricolore. By late January 1943, when Leclerc presented himself to Montgomery outside Tripoli, his force controlled two-thirds of Libya, which remained a French mandate until the 1950s.
With de Gaulle’s permission, Leclerc now joined Montgomery; his men were issued British battledress and their equipment was beefed up with anti-tank guns and armoured cars. La Colonne Leclerc now became the British Eighth Army’s ‘Force L’ entrusted with guarding their inland flank, a role they performed admirably. Following the final Axis collapse in May, a handful of Force L’s least battered trucks tacked themselves onto the tail end of Eighth Army for the Tunis victory parade. Everyone cheered.
For Frenchmen, Leclerc’s African achievements made him a greater hero than Lawrence of Arabia. Meanwhile, General de Gaulle was establishing his political ascendancy over the man the Americans wanted to replace him, General Henri Giraud. It seems strange that President Roosevelt chose Giraud as an alternative French leader. But he was handsome and undoubtedly brave so his name went in the hat as soon as he escaped from Schloss Koenigstein.59
De Gaulle had not endeared himself to Churchill and Roosevelt. As his role grew, so too did his sense of self-importance. In 1947, his eyes sparkling with irony, de Gaulle told Claude Guy, “Once he realised that I really was France, he [Churchill] fought me!”60 But it was not really like that. Churchill was a public school educated aristocrat; Roosevelt and de Gaulle were their countries’ equivalents. But Churchill and Roosevelt were their countries’ elected chief executives which de Gaulle was not. De Gaulle’s vainglorious notion that he was France provoked Churchill into saying, “He thinks he’s Joan of Arc, we’re looking for some bishops to burn him.” Typical British schoolboy humour that Roosevelt would have winked at. There was also the problem that the Free French were widely regarded by the Armée d’Afrique and the French Navy as traitors, making a rapprochement more difficult. Roosevelt wanted as many French servicemen supporting the Allied war effort as possible, thereby saving American lives. The US government was happy to re-equip French forces provided they were united.
Politically General Giraud was no match for de Gaulle. Whereas Giraud delayed dismantling Vichy’s North African punishment camps, de Gaulle closed them instead. Giraud also had insurmountable authority problems with those who had followed de Gaulle since June 1940 who now claimed a moral ascendancy over their formerly Vichyite compatriots. During the 1930s Leclerc regarded Giraud as a soldier’s soldier. But in 1943 Leclerc tersely advised Giraud to emulate General Catroux who, while outranking de Gaulle, recognised de Gaulle’s political pre-eminence and consented to serve under him. Giraud’s riposte was that Gaullists were too pure, unrealistically disregarding the shades of grey required to negotiate with Germany after 1940. He even accused Leclerc of wanting to erect a guillotine in every village square; Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie made impassioned demands for the heads of collabos (he was filmed doing it) but Leclerc never did.
The antagonism between Leclerc and Giraud finally boiled over at a dinner given by Montgomery in early April. Sitting around a U-shaped dining table, using Leclerc’s ADC Christian Girard as an interpreter, Giraud regaled Montgomery with the story of his escape from Schloss Koenigstein and subsequent negotiations with the Germans after he returned to Vichy. For these proud Gaullistes de la première heure, the sight of a French general describing his imprisonment and Vichy’s compromised shenanigans to a British general looking radiant with victory was profoundly embarrassing. “Meanwhile,” Leclerc interjected irritably, “we have been here fighting these last three years!”61
“I cannot understand him, the little Hauteclocque. Why should he be like this?” asked Giraud afterwards. “After all, it was I who gave him his Légion d’Honneur in Morocco!”62
General Giraud’s greatest service to French interests was negotiating the American re-armament programme. During 13–24 January 1943, under what became known as the Anfa agreement, the Americans undertook to provide the French with sufficient equipment for three armoured divisions, nine motorised infantry divisions, and a thousand aircraft of which two hundred and fifty were modern fighters, as many again were bombers,
and the rest much-needed transport aircraft. The Americans were less forthcoming over re-arming the French Navy. Important vessels like the battleship Richelieu and the cruiser Georges Leygues were reconditioned, but French naval tonnage would not resume 1939 levels for quite some time. Surplus French matelots were absorbed into the French Army by creating regiments of Fusiliers Marins, or marines. Small arms and replacement uniforms were also provided, meaning that, but for French insignia, French personnel appeared indistinguishable from their American allies.63 Liberty ships delivered new equipment to French North Africa through 1943, the first convoy’s arrival being watched from the Moroccan coast by Giraud himself.
THE ATMOSPHERE BETWEEN GAULLISTS and the larger Armée d’Afrique remained fractious. For Leclerc, the fight-back began with de Gaulle’s Appel of 18 June 1940. General Giraud, however, insisted that French recovery began when he negotiated the Anfa agreement, challenging Gaullist orthodoxy by discounting the achievements of Generals Koenig and Leclerc. The controversy over whether de Gaulle was right all along or whether following Pétain was the correct path caused fistfights in the bars of Casablanca and Algiers. Christian Girard remarked in his diary that Giraud was creating “a basket of crabs”.
To reduce tension, the original Free French brigades were ordered to leave French North Africa for Sabratha in northwest Libya. At first Leclerc refused to go, but General Sir Brian Horrocks threatened to cut off his supplies unless he complied. This, however, did not end the problems between the two Frances. Young men escaping from France via Spain to join the Allies in French North Africa came for de Gaulle, hoping to join Free French units. There were also numerous incidents of soldiers already serving with the Armée d’Afrique who simply transferred themselves to Leclerc. While not quite desertion, this practice became known as “spontanément muté”—”spontaneous self-transferral”. Their behaviour mirrored the sea-change across French North Africa, where thirty months of loyalty to Pétain were swept away by de Gaulle.
Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed Page 5