Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed

by Mortimer Moore, William

  Metro workers warned the council that an abandoned line was being used as a German munitions factory. Emissaries protested to Vichy, insisting that if Paris was bombed Germans would be endangered as well as French; an obviously frail argument when German cities were suffering much worse.86 Similar protests were made when German anti-aircraft guns were sited on the esplanade of Les Invalides. After weeks of negotiation, Taittinger got them removed. He found that Germans who had served in Russia were least sympathetic, whereas those stationed in Paris the longest were much kinder.87

  Yet, whatever privations they caused, Allied bomber crews were grudgingly respected by Parisians. When an RAF bomber came down on the Rue St Honoré after desperately attempting to ditch in the Seine, Taittinger described the crew’s deaths as “glorieuse”.88

  Nor did efforts to de-militarise Paris stop with the Municipal Council. Taittinger was also supported by Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard, the Archbishop of Paris. Although, like many Catholic clergymen in occupied Europe, Suhard trod the confused moral line between alleviating suffering while detesting communism, he perfectly understood Taittinger’s aims. So too did senior Protestant pastor Marc Boegner, a friend to many senior collabos.89

  Having done well from the Aryanisation of Jewish property, Taittinger was anxious to build credit with the Gaullist establishment in Algiers by pleading for captured résistants, though Gaullists more often than communists. “Are all your friends like this?” sneered General von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, the Military Governor of Paris, albeit amenable to a champagne magnate’s pleas.90

  Boineburg-Lengsfeld’s immediate superior, General Karl-Heinrich von Stulpnagel, who replaced his cousin General Otto von Stulpnagel as Military Governor of France, was also morally conflicted by the matter of prisoners, whether Jews or résistants. Long aware that Hitler would lead Germany to disaster, Karl-Heinrich von Stulpnagel nevertheless served him competently. During the opening six months of the Russian campaign Stulpnagel’s attitude toward massacring Jews was contradictory, to say the least. Sometimes he facilitated Einsatzgruppen activities, on other occasions he asked their commanders not to shoot Jews in front of his soldiers. Transferred to Paris, Stulpnagel had a good working relationship with SS Chief Karl Oberg, based on former regimental ties. Both detested hostage killings but abetted the Nazis’ Jewish policy. Under Stulpnagel’s auspices the German military HQ in Paris became a hotbed of anti-Nazi resistance. “He is tired though,” Ernst Junger wrote of Stulpnagel. “His face betrays sorrow.”91

  As a Francophile German Ambassador, Otto Abetz became deeply depressed at how the war was going. Four years of helping the Third Reich exploit his wife’s fellow countrymen and endless pleas for prisoners had taken their toll. These negotiations now went both ways. Once de Gaulle controlled French North Africa and political trials of collabos captured after the Axis collapse began, Abetz could not help but reflect on the possible fate of his French friends when they fell into Gaullist hands.92

  SWEDISH CONSUL-GENERAL RAOUL NORDLING had an untroubled conscience. A large, affable, wealthy man, corpulent from good living, whose blue eyes twinkled with sophistication and kindness, Nordling had only briefly worn uniform for national service. His weapons were his open face, his soft pleading voice, his humanity and Sweden’s neutrality.

  Born in 1881 of a Swedish father and French mother, Nordling was twenty-three when appointed Vice-Consul, to act as his father’s deputy. His first experience of wartime diplomacy came in 1914, when Frenchmen anguished over captured relations or with family behind the German lines in eastern France would call at the Rue d’Anjou Consulate. The Nordlings also helped France maintain commercial links with Sweden, preventing Germany from becoming Sweden’s sole trading partner. Raoul Nordling was as much a Parisian mandarin as Taittinger but, cloaked in Swedish neutrality, more doors were open to him.93

  Nordling’s memoirs make fascinating reading. During late 1942 he was approached by the elderly Italian journalist and anti-fascist refugee, Domenico Russo, who wanted to discuss a possible peace treaty negotiated through the Vatican. Many Italians detested Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler, believing they would be occupied once the African war was lost. Once that happened, Russo believed the Papacy would be powerless to mediate, leaving only Sweden’s King Gustav V capable of doing so. Nordling admitted, “I was sceptical but, in a way, I was also seduced.” The fact that Russo had Swiss support lent credibility but, realistically speaking, Nordling knew there was little he could do. Nevertheless, by early 1944 Russo had involved Pierre Laval who, while publicly bullish about Germany’s victory prospects, privately disabused himself that Germany could still win the war. At a large reception at the German Embassy, Laval led Nordling towards a quiet corner.

  “We ought to stop this war,” said Laval.

  Surprised at Laval’s frankness, Nordling was evasive.

  “But you know King Gustav, Monsieur le Consul General,” Laval insisted.

  Nordling reminded Laval of the promise he gave the German authorities in 1940 not to involve himself in politics.

  “If I had a free hand, I would broach the matter with [Anthony] Eden and the Americans. I now have better relations with the Anglo-Saxons,” said Laval, in willful denial of the effect of his actions since 1940. “But it would be preferable if such negotiations could be made through Stockholm.”

  Abetz’s deputy, Consul-General Schleier, was listening from a discreet distance.

  “It would be best, Monsieur Nordling,” said Schleier, “that you have a conversation with Ambassador Abetz.”

  A few days later Abetz invited Nordling back to the Rue de Lille. “What sort of man is he [Russo]?” asked Abetz. Nordling explained how Russo was introduced by the Hungarian Consul-General in 1942, distancing himself by explaining that German diplomats knew more about Hungary than a Swede.*

  “There are in Germany various factions who would seize power, and it is not always easy to tell which are important,” said Abetz sternly. “In your place, Monsieur Nordling, I would be prudent. One does not want it said that it is Germany who is seeking peace.”

  Visiting the Swedish legation in Vichy, Nordling discovered more about Laval’s overtures. Much to everyone’s embarrassment, the story reached a London-based Swedish journalist, leading to a small article being released via Reuters. On 20 March Nordling telephoned Abetz to mitigate the damage.

  “We have become objects of interest to the world’s press, Monsieur Nordling,” said Abetz. “They are absolutely furious in Berlin, because it’s Germany who appears to have asked for peace.”

  Later, at the German Embassy, Abetz accused Nordling of indiscretion. Nordling categorically denied this, or that any indiscretion came from Stockholm. A few days later, “during a restrained press conference”, Abetz claimed the Allies were seeking peace, quipping that “the Swedish Consul General has been short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize”.

  “I thought I heard you say recently that you suspected me of putting my candidature forward for a Nobel prize,” replied Nordling. “Wasn’t that linked to these mediation feelers, Monsieur Ambassador?”

  Abetz shrugged, “It’s possible that my tongue is too long.”

  Next, in a priceless indiscretion, one of Abetz’s deputies informed Russo that the German Foreign Ministry might negotiate if Germany was promised a free hand in the Ukraine. Again Abetz was furious, railing that Russo was “a notorious agent in the pay of England”. Russo was arrested for a few days, after which he lay low. Nordling reported personally to Stockholm, but before leaving he visited Abetz, who tried to push Nordling into a corner of his salon.

  “Is there a microphone?” asked Nordling.

  “Certainly not,” said Abetz, who seemed verging on despair. “Himmler has his police and so does Ribbentrop. There’s no security anywhere.”

  Nordling recognised the fear behind this remark.

  “Sweden is the only country in the world through which we could seek a peace,” Abetz remarked solemnly. “I beg you
not to do anything that could close this avenue.”

  But the Nazis would never agree to anything remotely resembling the “unconditional surrender” the Allies had required since Casablanca, and Nordling’s only reward for this affair was that several of Abetz’s staff nicknamed him “the Gentleman of Paris”.94

  MOST PARISIANS WERE OBLIVIOUS of these negotiations, distracting themselves from the Occupation’s greyness as best they could. Some remained in bed whenever possible. Despite reduced electricity supply, cinemas flourished. Eighty-one directors made films during the Occupation; around a quarter were first-time filmmakers.95 Stars like Ginette Leclerc, Arletty, Michele Morgan, Maurice Chevalier and Jean Gabin continued working. Some were subsequently accused of collaboration, but most Frenchmen recognised that entertainment was necessary during hard times.

  Just as French directors produced films whose subject-matter marginalised the war, so did the Germans. UFA Studio’s Baron Munchausen, starring Hans Albers, provided pure fun and fantasy of which the Hungarian Korda brothers, then working in England, would have been proud. With Venetian gondola scenes, topless black women and wonderful special effects, it opened in February 1944 at the Champs Élysées’ Normandie Cinema to such crowds that the Paris police had to intervene.96

  Sacha Guitry worked throughout the war. The German authorities approved his film Ceux de chez nous, which innocuously celebrated French artists of sculpture, literature, theatre and painting including Rodin, Monet, Degas, Anatole France, Edmond Rostand and Sarah Bernhardt, to whose house his father Lucien took him as a child instead of church.97 During this period Guitry finished another marriage and pleaded for various Jews including his friend, Henri Bergson. Wantonly denounced by bottle-blond actress Françoise Rosay, who was stranded in French North Africa after Torch and where, among other trivialities, she tried flirting with General Leclerc,98 Guitry would have trouble at the liberation simply because his Théatre Madeleine was popular among German officers.

  Shortages meant that Parisians arrived at theatres and cinemas by bicycle. Plentiful French forestry meant wood was used far more than usual; charcoal-powered gazogene converted engines on cars, wooden-soled shoes became commonplace, and clogs reappeared. Even with paper rationing, French publishing produced more titles during the Occupation than Great Britain and America combined. Moral compromises and endless permutations of the double jeu—double game—were inevitable and limitless. Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit opened at the Vieux Colombier Theatre that summer. Sartre’s words also filled Resistance pamphlets. But collabo writers like Châteaubriant, Céline, Maurras and Drieu la Rochelle would have much to fear when the liberation came, as would critics whose articles supported Nazi values, such as Robert Brasillach. Once a bright young man writing for Action Française, Brasillach switched to the new Je suis partout which disintegrated into a collabo rag after 1940. Notably, however, Brasillach recognised the bizarre avoidance of contemporary events in French drama, though Anouilh’s Becket was full of allusions.

  Of those writers who retained their pre-war beliefs, bean-pole tall, satirical journalist and Great War veteran Jean Galtier-Boissière closed down his journal Crapouillot (slang for “trench mortar”) rather than submit to collabo censorship, eking out a slender living selling secondhand books in the university area instead. Jean Guehenno felt similarly and became a teacher.99

  Colette, the famous author of libidinous semi-autobiographical novels, was in her late sixties when the Occupation began. Surprisingly, she wrote for collabo publications including Châteaubriant’s La Gerbe. Meanwhile, she hid her third husband, the Jewish jeweller turned writer Maurice Goudeket, in her Palais Royal apartment. Seventeen years her junior, Goudeket was captured in 1940. He escaped back to Paris only to be placed under protective house arrest by his wife. Since she nicknamed him “Mr. Goodcock” his incarceration may have had reasons beyond his safety.100

  SO WHEN PABLO PICASSO LED the beautiful young art student Françoise Gilot up into the forêt* above his atelier and said, “There’s one thing I’d like very much, and that is if you would stay there, beginning right now, up in the forêt; just disappear completely so that no one would ever know you were there. I’d bring you food twice a day. You could work up there in tranquillity, and I’d have a secret in my life that no one could take away from me,” it seems less weird than it might today.101 Considering that Gilot had recently been chucked by the young man she hoped would deflower her, quarrelled with her father over wanting to become a painter, and was living with her kindly grandmother while teaching rich children to ride in the Bois de Boulogne to make ends meet, Picasso’s offer, irrespective of his age, was inevitably attractive.

  Being blacklisted as “degenerate” and banned from exhibiting only increased Picasso’s cachet. After Céline called him a “Jew”, Picasso recognised some caution was necessary but mainly continued as before. If he had run-ins with the authorities he complained as high as he could. Besides, he had Hitler’s favourite sculptor Arno Breker to protect him. Picasso displayed moments of moral cowardice, like when he refused to sign a petition for the release of Max Jacob in February 1944, and moments of bravery as well.102 Early in their relationship Picasso introduced Françoise to André Malraux, whose books she admired. After Malraux left, Picasso said, “I hope you appreciate the gift I made you, letting you talk to Malraux. After all no one should have seen him here. It’s too dangerous. He just slipped in from the maquis.”

  “I told him I did not know whether I was grateful or not,” she later wrote.103

  Picasso could have emigrated in 1940, like other anti-fascist Spaniards. Instead inertia overwhelmed him, keeping him in Paris mixing with bohemians, several of whom were résistants. Throughout the Occupation, Guernica, his great abstract protest at the bombing of a defenceless Basque town, remained in his atelier where several Germans saw it. When one asked, “Did you do this?” Picasso replied superbly, “No. You did!” Picasso embellished this anecdote with each retelling until the German became Otto Abetz himself.104

  Though in many ways an appalling man, Abetz loved art. Following Hitler’s directive of 30 June 1940, Abetz confiscated fifteen of the most important Jewish private art collections in Paris.105 He then took what he wanted; his apartment at the German Embassy contained seven Picassos, fourteen Braques and four by Fernand Léger.106 Yet, of the paintings passing through the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg’s Jeu de Paume showroom, several Picassos were inventoried as “prévu pour la destruction”—to be destroyed—for “degeneracy”.107

  AFTER FRANCO’S VICTORY IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, many Spanish Republicans crossed the Pyrenees into France to be interned in fetid camps dotted around la France profonde. Many were absorbed into French society while others emigrated to French North Africa, only to find themselves badly caught out in 1940 when the colony came under Vichy rule. Men of military age were offered service in the Foreign Legion, but usually refused the invitation to join Vichy’s portion of that famous corps. Around thirty thousand Spanish Republican refuseniks were incarcerated in sadistic prison camps, such as Hadjerat M’Guil, and sent to work on the Mediterranean-Niger railway in grim conditions. When de Gaulle closed these camps in 1943, their worst commandants were sentenced to the firing squad with the words, “You have disgraced France.”108

  After such treatment one might imagine that fighting for France was the last thing these Spaniards would do. But for de Gaulle, they did. The Corps Franc d’Afrique was formed from miscellaneous Frenchmen, Spaniards, Jews and other oddballs, becoming an effective unit which performed well during the Tunisian campaign. Afterwards they were absorbed into the Regiment de Marche du Tchad, Leclerc’s motorised infantry regiment, to bring it up to strength after transfering its African personnel. “A toff like me commanding a bunch of reds!” sighed Leclerc when he heard what he had received.109

  EVEN WITH EISENHOWER’S GOODWILL, de Gaulle still lacked President Roosevelt’s support; Roosevelt disliked the idea of unelected generals
assuming power. Churchill shared these misgivings and was dismayed by the show trials of collabos in French North Africa, particularly that of Pierre Pucheu, calling the Algiers government, “De Gaulle and his vindictive crowd”.110 A senior collabo who tried to change sides, Pucheu was initially protected by General Giraud, but Gaullists demanded Pucheu’s arrest. The trial descended into farce: insubstantial evidence, judges falling asleep, and then, after the charges were redrafted on the hoof, a predictable death sentence.

  Even Leclerc’s officers became concerned over what kind of France they were fighting for. “The trial of Pucheu has made a deplorable impression,” wrote Christian Girard. “It’s not so much the verdict that has given rise to reproaches, but that the conduct of the trial appears to be a parody of justice. Little proof in the form of documents or facts, almost nothing but a few witness declarations. If circumstances require, as I suspect, the condemnation of Pucheu, it would be better to do it in a way that does not give rise to such an outcry.”111

  Disregarding pleas for clemency, de Gaulle spent a sleepless night before confirming Pucheu’s death sentence, saying, “I owe this to France.”112 While CFLN Commissioner Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie thought sparing Pucheu would be a slap in the face to the Resistance, Churchill’s ambassador to the Algiers government, Alfred Duff-Cooper, was appalled. “Pucheu was shot this morning. He met his death apparently with great courage, shaking hands with the firing squad and giving the order to fire himself. I am very glad that they allowed him to do this and did not bind him.”113

  Nevertheless, despite the foreseeable ugliness of French liberation politics, senior COSSAC* planner General Morgan deemed it essential that the D-Day landings had CFLN support. Eisenhower preferred to wait and see what local conditions made practicable, but British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden protested that only a uniform decision would avoid chaos. The only alternative to dealing with the CFLN was negotiating with Vichy, which as René Massigli pointed out, would not do.114