Several British dignitaries attended, including Dalton Hall’s owner, Lord Hotham. But when asked why few Americans were present, Girard had no answer. Patton, by then earmarked to command the soon to be activated US Third Army, had higher priorities, while corps commander General Gilbert Cook sent his ADC, Captain Garretson. “Your officers told me a lot,” Garretson told Girard. “They think they will not be used. They are wrong. They will be used and perhaps a great deal more than they think. We only want one thing, to be behind you when you return to Paris. You will be the first to go in, we promise.”62
Afterwards Girard wandered into Dalton Hall’s great drawing room where Jacques de Guillebon sat silently, staring out over the sunken rose garden towards the big lawn. Two years earlier Girard had asked Guillebon for a role befitting his diplomat’s training. But when Guillebon recommended him to be Leclerc’s ADC, Girard protested. “Don’t be stupid,” said Guillebon. Now Leclerc was rarely without the well-mannered Girard.
“I have complete trust in this division,” said Guillebon quietly. They were on the last leg of a journey that began in French Equatorial Africa four years earlier.63
7 July 1944
HENRIOT’S ASSASSINATION WAS QUICKLY FOLLOWED by a second blow to the collabo community. On 30 June Colonel Magnien, who commanded a regiment of French phalangists against the Allies during the Tunisian campaign, was sentenced to death in Algiers. Collabos, especially the Milice, wanted blood. After Henriot’s funeral, Abetz advised Laval that several pre-war French politicians, including Georges Mandel, could be returned to Vichy authority to act as hostages in case other collabos or Vichy servants were executed. Talented and experienced, through the 1930s Mandel had held several government posts. He was also unapologetically Jewish, informing friend and foe alike, “Remember, I’m a Jew.” His scholarly demeanour aside, Mandel combatively opposed appeasing the Nazis during 1937–1939. When France fell in 1940, surveying defeated French faces for those with some fight left in them, General Sir Edward Spears saw not only de Gaulle but also Mandel. But Mandel felt that London needed a soldier, not a politician. When, on 16 June 1940, Spears pressed Mandel to leave France, Mandel replied, “You’re only worried for me because I am a Jew. It is precisely because I am a Jew that I will not leave with you tomorrow. People will think I am just saving myself; that I gave in to panic. In three days’ time I might consider it.”64 Mandel subsequently fled with other politicians to French North Africa aboard the Masilia. Next came his arrest and repatriation for a Vichy show trial at Riom; then four years in Buchenwald where his health stood up surprisingly well.65
Abetz first suggested using pre-war French politicians as hostages after Pucheu’s execution.66 When, at Henriot’s wake, Abetz said Mandel could be executed as a reprisal,* Laval replied, “That’s not the sort of present to give me.” Laval subsequently warned Algiers of the danger to Georges Mandel if they executed Colonel Magnien but, once Magnien was dead, Paris Milice chief Max Knipping began negotiating Mandel’s return to France.
Arriving in Paris on 4 July, Mandel was first held at SD safehouse 3 bis Square du Bois de Boulogne. In the meantime Knipping’s Miliciens decided that, to make Mandel’s execution appear a wholly French affair, he should go to his death from a French prison, the Santé.67
Director of Prisons André Baillet* protested at having such an “important man” foisted on a penitentiary used for the capital’s common criminals. Arriving around 2pm on 7 July, Mandel protested on similar grounds and refused to take part in the induction process or give fingerprints, believing such proceedings infra dignitatem. When Mandel asked if his old Parisian doctor and dentist might visit him, Baillet told him such requests needed higher authorisation.
“Thank you for your good offices,” Mandel told Baillet, before remarking realistically, “While I remain within your walls, I doubt that anyone will kill me. But I don’t think they will leave me very long under your protection.”
Mandel only stayed three hours at the Santé. Bertrand Favreau, Mandel’s biographer, writes that Baillet telephoned the prison’s senior governor confirming Mandel’s arrival, expecting him to be transferred to the Milice’s Château des Brosses prison near Vichy.68
Around 5pm three cars left the Milice’s Rue le Peletier HQ. The lead car, a Citroen 11CV traction, was driven by Milicien Jean Mansuy. With five criminal convictions behind him, Mansuy embraced the Milice’s blend of camaraderie and cruelty gleefully. Beside Mansuy sat the equally nasty Pierre Boéro. In the back sat Georges Néroni, a barman at La Potinière, a popular collabo nightclub. The second, more powerful Citroen was driven by Paul Fréchoux, head of Vichy security in northern France. He was accompanied by SS Obersturmführer Dr. Schmidt wearing civilian clothing, and two Miliciens. In the third car came Max Knipping with his driver. With empty roads they quickly reached the Santé.69
With few illusions over the fate awaiting him, Mandel was unsurprised when Baillet revisited his cell. “It is nothing to die,” Mandel told Baillet. “But what is sad is to die before seeing the liberation of our country and the restoration of the Republic.”
“Received the here named Mandel Jeraboam at 5pm Paris, 7 July,” wrote Knipping in the ledger. Then, as a sick joke, he wrote underneath, “‘Liberated’, 7 July. Max Knipping.”
After placing Mandel in Mansuy’s Citroen, the three-car convoy left the Santé. Knipping returned to Rue le Peletier while the other two cars exited Paris via the Porte d’Italie.70
During the journey Mandel tried to relax by engaging Néroni in conversation about Buchenwald, his family and his relief at being back in France. Neroni also remembered Mandel saying, “I will make you see that a Frenchman knows how to die.” Perhaps, like many intelligent hostages, Mandel hoped to create some kind of rapport with these Miliciens. Reaching the Forest of Fontainebleau, they turned towards Nemours at the Obelisk. A little further on, Mansuy turned along a B road and halted, claiming the Citroen had broken down.
Boéro got out of the car and fiddled with the engine for a few moments before saying it might take a while to fix and they should stretch their legs. Saying nothing, Mandel got out. Néroni told him they were near Mont Morillon. Then, totally without warning, Mansuy unceremoniously fired a burst into Georges Mandel’s back from a submachine-gun. Mandel fell backwards, shaking convulsively. Mansuy fired again, into Mandel’s neck and temple, finally killing him. The second Citroen carrying Fréchoux and SS Dr. Schmidt now arrived.
“You are mad,” Boéro told Mansuy.
“Both sides were in agreement,” said Mansuy. “It isn’t you who’s in command.”
“I had orders,” said Fréchoux, taking charge. “Put Mandel back in the car and take him to the morgue at Versailles.”71
The cover-up began; they would blame a Resistance ambush. Mansuy fired a few bullets into his Citroen, perforating the roof and trunk, carefully avoiding essential working parts. The Versailles Intendant de Police, Anquetin, a known collabo, co-operatively allowed Mandel’s body into the morgue. The death certificate claimed the cars were ambushed not at Fontainebleau but Rambouillet. Unfortunately for the murderers, Intendant Anquetin was not particularly influential. His subordinate, police commissioner Brimborgne, noticing that Mansuy’s Citroen was only shot through the roof and trunk, rejected the Milice story.72
While Fréchoux and SS Dr. Schmidt reported their mission’s successful completion to Max Knipping and SS Colonel Knochen, Versailles’ forensic surgeon, Doctor Paul, began his autopsy. Leaning over his dissection table, Paul recognised Mandel from 1930s newspaper photographs, and immediately telephoned Mandel’s pre-war secretary, Joseph Besselère, who informed Mandel’s family and friends.73
The following morning Joseph Darnand telephoned Laval with news of Mandel’s death. Believing Mandel was still in Germany but remembering Abetz’s extraordinary offer, Laval questioned Darnand. Visibly shaken, nervously smoking a cigarette, Laval arrived at Vichy’s Hôtel du Parc at 9am. “They’ve killed Mandel,” he told his cabine
t secretaries. Almost weeping, Laval explained how, although he sometimes disagreed with Mandel, they had respected each other and Mandel never deserved such a fate. Laval telephoned de Brinon in Paris who, at that very moment, had Max Knipping in his office explaining his version of what happened.
“The SS in Paris are very pleased with the death of Mandel,” Brinon told Laval. “They think it will have a very good effect. Their only regret is that Mandel was not formally executed by the French government.”
“Then I protest with utmost indignation,” said Laval.
Would Brinon and Abetz now have former Premier Leon Blum returned to France to face a similar fate? Laval persuaded Abetz that such murders could only further complicate the situation in France.74 Towards the end of the afternoon, Laval screamed angrily at Jean Tracou and Charles Rochat, “I’ve had enough. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t cover up these horrors any longer!”75
AFTER HIS THREE-WEEK COURSE at Ribbesford Hall, Philippe de Gaulle headed for Yorkshire, to join the Régiment Blindée des Fusiliers Marins. With his Tank Destroyers lined up in the undulating fields of Tatton Park, Capitaine de Vaisseau Raymond Maggiar, wearing British battledress with the shoulder flash “France”, gave Philippe a glacial welcome.
“It’s less than forty-eight hours since we were warned of your arrival,” said Maggiar coldly. “We were not asked how we felt about it. In fact, we don’t need you, we don’t know what to do with you and we’re already at full strength.”
His first dinner among Maggiar’s officers was unfriendly; resentments among “Darlan’s boys” clearly ran deep. Afterwards Christian Chavane de Dalmassy, three years Philippe’s senior, was more welcoming. But Dalmassy was rare. Most of Philippe’s fellow officers had fought the British or Americans until Torch. Some had been imprisoned with Germans. But, opening up to Philippe, several admitted that both their sense of duty and their superb modern ships were wasted by Vichy. Now, wearing US uniform with French naval insignia, they just wanted to liberate la Patrie.76
The RBFM comprised around six hundred men, mostly sailors, a smattering of north-African soldiers to bring them up to strength, and traditional French naval officers. Their main asset was their technical professionalism. Compared to ships, Tank Destroyers were easier to manage. Based on a Sherman chassis, the M10 Tank Destroyer was armed with a three-inch gun which was both heavier and more powerful than an ordinary mid-war Sherman. To maintain the vehicle’s speed, the gun was mounted in a lighter, open turret. When introduced to the M10 Tank Destroyer in Morocco, French sailors augmented its basic gun sight with naval range finders, giving them a useful edge during training competitions in England and afterwards in action. After witnessing the RBFM’s gunnery skills, General Patton said they were among the best he had seen.
The RBFM were the last of the 2e DB’s regiments to receive their colours. At the ceremony Leclerc was angered that an older petty officer, Renou, wore the red lanyard earnt by their predecessors at Dixmude in 1914, until Captain Maggiar told him that Renou actually fought at Dixmude. When his old friend, Jean Fanneau de la Horie, reminded him how well the RBFM were doing in training, Leclerc stopped treating them as “Darlan’s Boys”.
EVEN MORE FASCINATED BY FRENCH SOLDIERS than Americans, local women congregated around the 2e DB’s Yorkshire encampments offering “free love”. Over lunch in Dalton Hall’s dining room, Leclerc, whose asceticism was, according to Christian Girard, “effectivement terrible”, complained about this to Colonel Bernard. “Mon Général,” said Père Fouquet, one of the chaplains, “leave Bernard to get on with his work, no one’s going to change anything.”77
More seriously, Leclerc had a major disagreement with battlegroup commander Colonel Michel Malaguti. Malaguti had been severely affected by seeing his tank regiment destroyed by the Germans in 1940 but learnt much from the defeat, becoming a firm advocate of massed tanks operating like massed cavalry. Yet, between 1940 and 1944, further tactical developments occurred both in Russia and North Africa. Just as the notion of tanks supporting infantry was superseded, so too was the idea of massed tank attacks. American thinking now favoured fast-moving battlegroups, three to an armoured division; with tanks supported by motorised infantry and artillery to deliver the punch. An American army corps usually consisted of two infantry divisions and an armoured division. If a corps faced a big operation it might need two armoured divisions.
The French rearmament programme was conceived on the basis that France’s new divisions conform to the American tactical model. Everything Leclerc’s men did in their training was measured and marked according to this framework. Therefore, when Malaguti’s criticisms reached a climax, Leclerc found himself in a delicate position. But for Leclerc’s achievements in Africa, the popular Michel Malaguti would have been senior, so Leclerc had to consider very carefully how to handle him. Dreading the prospect of trying to liberate Paris at the head of a divided unit, Leclerc visited London, where he bought a shotgun for his eldest son in Holland & Holland. Returning to Yorkshire, Leclerc finally recognised that there was no room in the 2e DB for both himself and Malaguti. General Koenig pleaded with Leclerc for mercy, but Malaguti had written letters demonstrating his jealousy of Leclerc; he had to go.78
So, merely days before the 2e DB landed in France as “the political division”, Leclerc lacked a third battlegroup commander. He appointed Warabiot, formerly of the 12e Chasseurs d’Afrique, which had already provided several divisional staff officers. But during July resentments between original Free French and formerly Vichy controlled regiments still rattled around, and Malaguti did not help. Replacing him with ex-Vichyste Warabiot as head of a battlegroup whose tank regiment was the Gaullist 501e RCC was unwelcome.
14 July 1944
AS SHORTAGES CAUSED BY THE BREAKDOWN of the transport system closed ninety percent of food outlets, forcing up prices, the Parisian working class felt as desperate as they had in 1789 and took to the streets. On 7 July, the Comité Parisien de la Libération considered a mass evacuation, then decided that was impractical. Instead they advocated protests supported by violence and sabotage, though some, including the Socialist Daniel Mayer, thought this would merely provoke costly reprisals when France needed her manpower for the final liberation battle.79
Hundreds protested in working class banlieues, raising the banned Tricolore and singing the Marseillaise, while others reiterated revolutionary calls of “Bread! Bread!” There were demonstrations around the Étoile and the Latin Quarter. Brandishing anything coloured red, white and blue, the protesters provoked no larger German reaction than a few shots in the air and some arrests. The Paris police, the Gardiens de la Paix, began demonstrating their pro-liberation sentiments, singing the Marseillaise and warning the crowds of approaching German security troops or Milice. The only French Police unit to support the Occupiers were the Brigades Spéciales, special anti-resistance groups, whose pro-Vichy members had most to lose when liberation came. In Belleville they shot trade union leader Yves Toudic.80
In Choisy-Le-Roi, demonstrators gathered around the statue of Rouget de Lisle, composer of the Marseillaise. Unwisely the résistants leading the demonstration sported a captured German MG42 machine-gun on their car, provoking German soldiers into opening fire and arresting several workers. From this point the gathering descended into chaos as demonstrators fled through private houses and gardens. Over the next few days there would be frantic negotiations to get the arrested workers released.81
THE SANTÉ PRISON WAS BURSTING AT THE SEAMS. Of 4,634 prisoners held during July 1944, 2,510 were men held for ordinary crimes, 404 were “politicals”, while the remaining 1,720 were remanded prisoners either awaiting trial or appeal, altogether crowding four prisoners into each of its 1,072 cells. Of the Santé’s 207 guards, around twenty-eight were on duty at any given time; twenty-two inside the prison and another six in ancillary areas. The prison arsenal contained merely ten revolvers and twenty rifles, all old, and a little ammunition. The outer security picket, eightee
n members of the Garde de Paris, had more modern weapons. On Bastille Day 1944 they were reinforced.82
After D-Day several talauds (convicts) developed unrealistic hopes that, if they could escape and reach the Allied lines, they could start their lives afresh. Every new arrival, every visiting lawyer, every visitor bringing news from Normandy raised these hopes, and talk of breaking out became more frequent. Experienced convicts knew such thoughts were pie in the sky. Nevertheless, among a few conspirators, the plan became known as the “Secret de Polichinelle”—“the Secret of Punchinello”, or “Punch’s Secret”—after the ubiquitous puppet character.
Resistance prisoners inside the Santé felt particularly vulnerable. In the spring a Milice squad visited the prison, held a drumhead trial of several Resistance prisoners, and shot them outside. Henriot’s assassination and the retaliation murders of Georges Mandel and Jean Zay increased these fears. On 20 June the Regional Director of Penitentiaries, Roger Poirier, reported the boiling atmosphere in Parisian prisons. In the meantime the Santé’s governor, Jean Farge, merely mentioned isolated incidents consistent with the atmosphere in Paris generally. “I can’t envisage anything that could make one think there would be trouble in the near future.” As a precaution he ordered extra watchfulness over the prisoners during the evening when conversation in and between the cells was at its height.83
The situation was further inflamed when Marcel Bucard, head of the Françiste party, one of several extreme right parties originating in the 1930s, linked to the Milice, was imprisoned at the Santé after a shoot-out with police when he and two others were looting the apartment of a deported Jewish family. Following a car chase, Bucard shot two policemen dead; crimes which normally merited the death penalty. Laval insisted that Bucard* face the law’s process. Desperate to re-ingratiate himself, Bucard strove to avoid the guillotine by playing the snitch.84
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