Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed

by Mortimer Moore, William

  Voila Messieurs! That’s what I wanted to say to you. My language may have surprised you since I departed from day-to-day subjects, but you must see that one does not succeed unless one is obsessed by an ideal. In fact you must be obsessed by your return to the battlefield. From the moment that you set your feet back on the soil of France, be obsessed by the fact that you will not free her just by words and promises. We must make a gigantic effort. It is your duty to make your men understand. Show that you really are officers.34

  The implication for the 2e DB’s officers was clear, “If I’m incapable of evicting les Boches, then I must be a Vichyste!” For those RBFM officers who once revered Admiral Darlan as the father of the modern French Navy, this was a hard pill to swallow. But then Leclerc began handing out the divisional badges; these silvery white metal and blue enamel shields had only just arrived, all numbered on the back. “No. 1 is for Captain Divry who has already departed for France,” Leclerc announced. “No. 2 is for General de Gaulle. No. 3 is for me. No. 4 goes to Lieutenant Girard who has saved me from starving …”

  In single file each officer received his badge from Leclerc, saluting smartly and having it placed in his hand. As for the Normandy campaign they would soon join, they knew little beyond what was reported via the BBC and British newspapers. “While reading the papers,” wrote Girard, “the joy of liberation was put in the shade by the sight of villages in ruins. This evening I saw a picture of a delightful eighteenth-century château with a gracious frontage of balustrades and balconies, columns and central pediment, typical of France. Looking closer, beyond its elegant façade, I noticed the higher windows through which one could see the sky. Please God, don’t let this become the face of France!”35

  27 June 1944

  “HENRIOT IS STAYING AT RUE SOLFERINO TONIGHT,” announced Morlot’s contact. The team assembled; like Morlot himself, they were young, tough and experienced.

  “I will be killed,” Vichy Information Minister Philippe Henriot had told Sacha Guitry mere months before. Yet Henriot remained surprisingly naïve over security, travelling with just one bodyguard, albeit a tough LVF veteran. Henriot spent the day seeing off his son, then serving as a Wehrmacht traffic policeman in Italy. Afterwards, accompanied by his wife and minder, he visited a cinema on the Champs Élysées before returning to the Rue Solferino apartment. “Go and rest,” he told his bodyguard. “I don’t need you any more today.” After drafting another of his infamous speeches, he walked along the cracking parquet floor to a bedroom decorated with butterfly-patterned wallpaper to join his wife. During the early morning they were woken by two telephone calls five minutes apart. Hearing no answer, Madame Henriot became suspicious. They had little protection except the policemen on the nearby Rue de Lille, whose principal task was guarding Abetz’s German Embassy. Henriot reassured his wife.

  Shortly after 5am, three cars took up position at the junction of Rue de Las-Cases and Rue de Bellechasse. Morlot’s résistants* began patrolling the Rue Solferino and Rue de Lille on foot, checking that the police and sentries outside the German Embassy remained where they should be. Annoyingly two policemen were ambling along Rue de Lille near the Rue Solferino turning. One of Morlot’s men, Michel, accosted them. “Résistance,” Michel announced, opening his jacket to reveal two pistols tucked into his trouser top. “Don’t put your hands up, just give me your weapons and follow.” The policemen obeyed while the German Embassy’s sentries, a hundred metres away, remained unaware. These Gardiens later claimed they were confronted by six résistants, while their senior officer insisted that everything happened too quickly for the German Embassy sentries to notice.

  At Rue Solferino’s south junction with the Boulevard Saint-Germain, three policemen stood talking outside the large police station when a Resistance car drew up.

  “Messieurs, a word if you please,” said a résistant.

  The policemen approached unwarily, but were soon bracketed by a second car and facing Sten-wielding résistants who disarmed them. Meanwhile Michel tried the door of 10 Rue Solferino.

  “Who’s there?” asked the concièrge.

  “It’s the Minister’s guard,” replied Michel.

  The door opened.

  “But I’ve never seen you before,” lied the concierge, who clearly recognised Morlot from his reconnaissance visits.

  Toting Stens and revolvers, Morlot’s men rushed past. The captured policemen were pushed into the concièrge’s lodging and guarded by five résistants. Michel’s group took control of the building and disabled the switchboard while Morlot and two others went upstairs. Reaching Henriot’s floor, Morlot was surprised that no one was on guard and returned downstairs to ask why. The concièrge insisted the apartment was Henriot’s and explained that Henriot’s bodyguard, Pantalucci, had the night off. Morlot returned upstairs and knocked on Henriot’s door.

  “Who’s there?” Henriot’s replied.

  “Milice, Brigade Spéciale,” said Morlot. “Terrorists want to kidnap Monsieur le Ministre. He must come down so that he can be protected.”

  “Don’t open the door,” shouted Madame Henriot, “They’re assassins!”

  “But how? What do you know?” said Henriot to his wife.

  Morlot slid a Milice ID card under the door and Henriot opened up, to face Morlot’s armed men. In white pyjamas, with his frightened wife in a dressing gown, Henriot looked harmless.

  “You lot!” said Henriot, seeing raincoated résistants pointing Sten guns. “I see.”

  “No harm is intended to you, Madame,” said Morlot. “It isn’t you that we want.”

  Henriot tried to grab the résistants’ Sten guns by the barrel but was pushed back. Morlot ordered, “Fire!” Short bursts of 9mm bullets poured into Henriot, while his wife cowered silently in a corner. Morlot lent over Henriot who still seemed to be breathing. He fired another burst. It was over.36

  The whole incident lasted thirteen minutes, after which the five policemen were released and Morlot’s team scattered into the countryside. Following visits by the 7th Arrondissment’s Commissioner Didier and a doctor, Henriot was confirmed dead by 7am. There was no sensible explanation other than a resistance operation. The five policemen briefly incarcerated by Morlot’s men were exonerated of any professional shortcomings.

  Laval and Pétain were informed first. The rest of France heard when Radio Paris announced, “You await, like every day, the voice of Philippe Henriot. You won’t hear him again. He was assassinated this morning at the Ministry of Information, shot even before the eyes of his wife. This great voice of France, passionate and eloquent, was known to all. It was either loved or dreaded. Without the means to reply to Henriot, they shut him up. Unable to shut his mouth, they closed his eyes.” His death released a geyser of grief across all collabo media, who recognised perhaps that this was their last hurrah. A large affiche appeared showing Henriot’s photograph over the words, “He told the truth and they killed him.”37

  Fernand de Brinon and Joseph Darnand wanted Henriot’s body laid out at the Hôtel de Ville for Parisians to pay their respects. Vetoing this idea, Pierre Taittinger and Victor Constant said there was no precedent. The Milice immediately accused the Municipal Council of Gaullisme. De Brinon and SS chief Karl Oberg protested to Laval, but the Hôtel de Ville remained instransigent. “We prefer to stay out of it,” declared Taittinger and Constant jointly, further upsetting diehard collabos. As a conciliatory offer, Laval suggested a memorial in the middle of the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville; a small thing created by a bespoke mason, which could easily be removed. Taittinger and Constant won this round of their battle to distance themselves from France’s occupiers.38

  While the Hôtel de Ville successfully sidestepped involvement in the Henriot affair, Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard, the Archbishop of Paris, and senior priest of Notre Dame, was not so lucky. “Such contempt for a human being derives from contempt for life,” wrote Suhard in his journal. But four years of Occupation had turned him into a troubled, self-questionin
g man. Mere hours before Henriot’s death, Suhard prayed over the body of Père Cloarec, a Franciscan priest with Resistance connections, shot by the Gestapo. Furthermore, Suhard lacked his two closest advisers, Père Le Sourd and Père d’Ouince, who were on retreat at Conflans, leaving Cardinal Suhard with only Monsignor Beaussart to discuss whether Henriot’s funeral should be held in Notre Dame once the request was made. Beaussart, though not a collabo, inclined towards Vichy.39

  However, once Vichy decided that Henriot merited a state funeral, Suhard was always going to have difficulty preventing it from happening in Notre Dame. French state funerals always happened there. But where Cardinal Suhard made his mistake, certainly in de Gaulle’s eyes, was by maintaining the principal that a priest should officiate in his own church. Sadly Suhard made this decision before Père le Sourd could persuade him that such a contentious service should be performed by Notre Dame’s Archdeacon, Monsignor Brot. Yet, there remained certain matters over which Suhard refused to be manipulated. When Laval asked him to condemn Henriot’s assassins in his address, Suhard refused. Next, making the mistake of pricking a moderately willing horse, Dr. Klassen, a German Embassy official, told Suhard intimidatingly, “We won’t control your discourse before or after, but you must speak!” One does not use words like “control” to a cardinal-archbishop; Suhard abruptly terminated the interview. Thereafter he did the absolute minimum, leaving Monsignor Brot to welcome Henriot’s body into Notre Dame, only performing the absolution of Henriot’s sins himself; just as he would do for a criminal. Next, while the service continued, Suhard silently returned to the Sacristy, disrobed and left Notre Dame by the side door. The collabo press denounced his silence. But for de Gaulle, Suhard had not gone nearly far enough.40

  2 July 1944

  FOR THE AMERICANS TO SET ASIDE AMGOT while remaining the Allies’ bankers required that de Gaulle do some things the way they wanted. French liaison officers with passable English were belatedly allocated to British and American divisions in Normandy. The fact that the GPRF in Algiers was hardly a “government” as London or Washington understood the word, was deftly circumvented by de Gaulle’s ambassador in Washington, the charming Henri Hoppenot. Thirdly, there arose a political consideration; the US Constitution has no mechanism for self-suspension during wartime. Roosevelt needed to seek re-election the following November to secure a fourth presidential term and finish the war. The Democratic vote came from ordinary Americans; those least likely to favour their president supporting a self-appointed military dictator.41

  In this regard de Gaulle could have helped himself more. A simple declaration that his role was an emergency one and that free elections would be held when practically possible might have sufficed. But de Gaulle rejected the notion that “France” should explain herself to other nations irrespective of her faiblesse since 1940, even if France required their blood and treasure to liberate herself. Hence President Roosevelt regarded de Gaulle as “a fool”, prophesying that he “would become a very little figure” in the fullness of time.42

  There was also a feeling among the American press that while American boys gave their lives for French freedom, de Gaulle haggled over the finer points of Gallic dignity. When the billions of US dollars financing French military resurrection—the sight of the battered French battleship Richelieu being towed under Manhattan Bridge on her way to be refitted was a memorable spectacle—were added to the balance, it was high time the French Mahommed visited the American mountain. “I should look upon this journey as a tribute paid by France at war to the President himself, as well as to the American people and the American armies which have made and which are making such efforts and such sacrifices for the liberation of Europe and Asia,” de Gaulle wrote to Hoppenot.43

  During the thirty-hour flight de Gaulle spoke at length with French journalist Hervé Alphand. Like Roosevelt, Alphand worried that de Gaulle might appoint himself dictator, given that his family were once typical Action Française readers. “The General was clear sighted,” wrote Alphand. “He did not want to have anything to do with that France based on Maurras’ ideas, xenophobic and closed in upon itself. Not at all, he wished above all to restore France to its place, to provide the French with the mystique of reconstruction and unite them without tyrannising over them.”44

  It was a warm summer’s day in Washington, but the American greeting—merely a seventeen-gun salute rather than twenty-one guns—was clearly designed to remind de Gaulle that he was not France’s head of state.45 De Gaulle gave an elegant, short speech in English. “I am happy to be on American soil to meet President Roosevelt,” he began. “I salute and pay tribute to all those American men and women who at home are relentlessly working for the war and, also, those brave American boys, sailors, soldiers and airmen who abroad are fighting our common enemies. The whole French people is thinking of you and salutes you Americans, our friends.”46

  Welcomed to the White House, de Gaulle bowed, in the words of Jean Lacouture, “like a well-bred albatross”. “Si content de vous voir”—”So pleased to see you,” said Roosevelt, offering a wizened hand from his wheelchair.47 Roosevelt’s staff tactfully refrained from questioning de Gaulle’s legitimacy. After three long conversations, de Gaulle decided that Roosevelt was a class act; “a patrician”, he told Gaston Palewski.48 But for all that, Roosevelt entered politics as a Democrat and de Gaulle’s hauteur would always arouse the contrarian in him even though he called de Gaulle a “friend” on the portrait photograph he signed for him. Privately, however, Roosevelt remained dismissive of de Gaulle, calling him “President of some French committee or other”, when not simply calling him “an egotist”.49

  The visit certainly had its moments. At tea time Roosevelt remarked to his chief of staff Admiral Leahy that Vichy water would have suited him better.50 For his part, de Gaulle certainly tried. His staff did their homework on Roosevelt, noting his naval interests. De Gaulle gave Roosevelt a beautiful working model of a submarine created in Bizerta’s naval arsenal, which Roosevelt subsequently gave to his grandson. When Eleanor Roosevelt protested at him giving away de Gaulle’s gift, the president replied, “He is not a foreign head of state, he is merely the head of a committee.” 51

  When Roosevelt remarked that over-frequent French elections made it difficult for him to remember the name of France’s president, de Gaulle recognised that he was being put in his place. “For the moment you are here,” said Roosevelt archly, “and you have seen the consideration with which my country has welcomed you. But will you still be in the same place at the end of this tragedy?”52 Afterwards de Gaulle wrote magnanimously of America’s leaders: Morgenthau was “a friend to our cause”, General Marshal was “a bold organiser”, Admiral King was “fervent and imaginative”, and Admiral Leahy, who was slowness itself in recognising the extent of Vichy’s grovelling to Germany, was “taken aback by events that defied his conformism, astonished at seeing me there but making the best of it”. Unconvinced by Roosevelt’s famous urbanity, de Gaulle wrote that the president’s “idealism clothed the will for power”.53 Privately Roosevelt wrote that de Gaulle “is very touchy where the honour of France is concerned, but I think he is essentially selfish”.54 Raoul Aglion, a Free French representative in Washington, described the visit as “devoid of trust on both sides”.55

  Despite Roosevelt’s groundless fears that de Gaulle wanted to become another military dictator, he had to acknowledge de Gaulle’s usefulness in rallying Frenchmen to the Allied cause.56 Henry Stimson advised Roosevelt to recognise de Gaulle’s provisional government. Cleaving to his lifelong democratic beliefs, Roosevelt felt unable to do this. The most he could concede was to grant the GPRF “temporary de facto authority for the civil administration of France”, which effectively ended the AMGOT row.57

  De Gaulle learnt of this victory once he returned across the Atlantic. Interestingly Churchill and Eden greeted the news more cynically; Roosevelt’s antipathy to de Gaulle created the problem in the first place. Should he be thanke
d for lifting his own impediment?58

  3 July 1944

  SINCE DE GAULLE WAS STILL IN WASHINGTON, it fell to the hero of Bir Hakeim and head of the FFI, General Marie-Pierre Koenig, to review the 2e DB’s big parade before embarking for France. His Piper Cub landed on Dalton Hall’s front drive later than expected, allowing the grassy parkland more drying time after the morning’s rain. Nor had Koenig finished dressing; he passed his medal bar to Christian Girard, to pin onto his British battle-dress tunic.

  “The parade was splendid,” wrote Girard. “The regiments were impeccably arranged around the parkland’s great lawn, bordered by magnificent trees. They could be told apart by their head-dress; the black berets of the tanks, the red caps of the Spahis, sky blue of the Chasseurs, navy blue with red piping of the RMT, navy blue with white piping of the cuirassiers. The whole ensemble had a character of striking elegance. Before standards held horizontal on their staffs, Koenig—more martial than ever, his profile tight and erect—addressed the men with brevity, appropriateness and clarity.”59

  As regimental colours were presented to the 2e DB’s senior chaplain, Père Houchet, to be blessed, Girard could not help smiling, watching Houchet’s characteristic small paces. Afterwards Houchet replaced his head-dress, turned smartly to the left and walked away. “It’s the liturgical about-turn,” Houchet told Girard afterwards. Although certainly not parade-ground soldiers, Girard wrote that the 2e DB “had a stiff pride which projected itself towards the guests in an almost tangible manner. Watching the march past by the Spahis, the tanks, and the Régiment de Marche du Tchad certainly brought a lump to my throat.”60

  Though deeply upset when Leclerc’s black soldiers tranfered to other units, Jacques Massu smiled to see a few left in the artillery and support units. A fifth of his 2/RMT were North Africans; hardly black, but definitely not white.61

  A superb buffet à la Française was laid before visiting dignitaries, some of whom, like medical corps General Sicé, had followed Free France since 1940. “Friends of the Free French” who paid for the 2e DB’s regimental colours to be made by the same firms that serve the British Army also attended, along with the kind local lord who gave the wine.