Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed

by Mortimer Moore, William

  Fingers were first pointed at Raymond Peuvion in Cell 117 and Jules Aubertin in Cell 127. They were joined by three newly arrested Parisian gangsters, including a police informer. From these men’s “information” the Santé’s directors discovered a plot involving the overpowering of guards, disabling alarms and releasing fellow prisoners—especially “politicals” and those condemned to hard labour. Jean Farge put these men in solitary confinement. But on 14 July the guards discovered a note saying, “Right, boys! It’s tonight!” By late afternoon security was increased.85

  Shortly after 10pm two whistle blasts roused the prisoners on the second and third floors of divisions 9 and 12, who rammed their bedsteads into their outward opening doors. Diverse objects rained down upon the guards. Reacting swiftly, the guards secured a handful of prisoners in central strong rooms while retreating from the affected floors. Alerted by André Baillet, Amedée Bussière, the Paris Prefect of Police, and Edmond Hennequin, Director of the Municipal Police, soon arrived along with sixty Paris policemen and a hundred Gardes de Paris. They were supplemented by the fire brigade and representatives of the main utilities (should it be necessary to cut off supplies), and officials from the Paris drain network; the main prison drain accessed a sizeable manhole on the Boulevard Arago. For good measure the Préfecture also sent a tear gas van which parked outside the Santé.86

  From outside, the Santé was sealed off. Inside, prisoners were on the rampage; getting into the basements, they smashed the telephone and alarm systems. They also wrecked cells, broke door hinges, smashed locks and seized anything that could serve as a weapon or do damage. The perpetrators were mostly Parisian criminals. The “political” prisoners remained in their cells, listening anxiously as the mutineers roamed along steel staircases and corridors. When fires began in the library, infirmary and radio room, many “politicals” feared being burnt alive or dying of smoke asphyxiation. While several “politicals” knew about the “Secret de Polichinelle”, they usually tried to dissuade the mutineers from their crazy initiative.87

  An initial burst of machine-gun fire felled sixteen prisoners, but the police alone were not strong enough to restore order. A company of SS was put on standby. Around midnight, under the command of SS Major Neifeind and Lieutenant Hagon, the SS entered the prison courtyard. Four senior Milice officers also arrived, anxious lest the SS assume a task their own force should perform. Neifeind wanted to suppress the uprising by force immediately. The Milice officers, however, wanted Neifeind to await the arrival of two hundred Miliciens under Jean Bassompierre, a nobly born, right-wing eccentric who won the Iron Cross serving with the LVF in Russia.

  The Prefect of Police, Amedée Bussière, faced a quandary. The SS might go further than the situation required, whereas the French could only suppress this uprising by using the Milice. Using his son to interpret, Bussière told Neifeind that the Santé uprising was a French affair and that he believed the prisoners were “having a blow”, as often happened in France during the summer. He expected they would calm down and the situation would be reviewed at dawn when the matter could be dealt with by the Milice and the police if necessary.

  “But you should chastise them,” protested Neifeind. “You ought to shoot at least four hundred prisoners.”

  “Stay out of this,” replied Max Knipping. “Leave it to our own French authorities to decide what punishments to hand out.”

  “We’ll see in the morning,” Neifeind said sceptically.88

  Dawn was chilly. The smoke from fires in the library and sanatorium had died down. Shortly after 6am Miliciens arrived in the Santé’s courtyard.

  “Anyone who does not return to his cell will be shot,” said Jean Bassompierre through a loudspeaker.

  “Then what?” shouted some of the prisoners.

  Miliciens fired warning shots. The prisoners fell back. Over the next few hours the Santé returned to normality; which was mentioned at Bassompierre’s 1948 trial. “At 6AM Bassompierre took up sensible positions, precisely and energetically, which permitted him to re-establish order within two hours without a single victim; the prisoners were back in their cells and the political detainees were safe. By 10AM, his mission accomplished, Bassompierre left the Santé.”89

  A doctor arrived to write death certificates for the six prisoners killed during the night and tend those who were wounded. But when Dr. Delabre requested the transfer of wounded prisoners to the hospital at Fresnes, SS Major Neifeind blocked their transfer, demanding again that four hundred prisoners should be shot.

  “That’s too many,” replied Knipping.

  “Order can only be restored by violence,” Neifeind insisted.

  Milice officers Bassompierre and Gallet helped Knipping calm Neifeind down.

  “I want to enter cells red with blood,” insisted Neifeind.

  The Milice officers managed to haggle Neifeind’s demands down to a hundred executions. But, mistrusting the French, Neifeind insisted fifty prisoners should be shot immediately or else his men would shoot a hundred before they left. While Knipping took a call from Edmond Hennequin, Bassompierre and Gallet argued with Neifeind. “Couldn’t Major Neifeind content himself with fifty ringleaders of the uprising being shot?” the Frenchmen asked. Neifeind insisted on a hundred executions.90

  How were the victims to be chosen? When the Milice asked prison officer Delpont for names, he refused to give any, professing to be more interested in tidying his office. But the names of a hundred of the revolt’s ringleaders and keenest followers were obtained by Miliciens wandering around the cells. “How many in this cell?”—“Who is the leader?”—“What’s your name?”—Thereby selecting dimwits who fancied themselves leaders.

  “I am glad you’re back,” Bassompierre told Knipping. “We’re going to shoot a hundred mutineers.”

  “Not unless I say so,” said Knipping. “Whose order is this?”

  “Neifeind,” replied Bassompierre. “He told me that he will retract his demand to shoot four hundred on the condition that the Milice executes one hundred.”

  “You don’t carry out German orders,” said Knipping. “You’ll do nothing unless I tell you to.”

  Neifeind had returned to his office on the Rue de Saussaies when Knipping caught up with him to make further protest.

  “I’ve forbidden the shooting of a hundred prisoners,” said Knipping. “Only a court martial can condemn the guilty,” he insisted, displaying scruples he never entertained toward Georges Mandel.

  “Only on two conditions,” said Neifeind. “That the court condemns at least fifty and that they are executed the same day.”

  “The number will be decided by the judges,” insisted Knipping. “I can’t entertain any other viewpoint.”

  “If the court does not condemn fifty,” insisted Neifeind, “I will shoot the balance.”91

  By telephone from Vichy, Darnand gave Knipping the go-ahead to convene a “field court martial” to try fifty common law prisoners with civil offences. Twenty-seven-year-old Milice officer Pierre Gallet presided. Gallet was legally qualified, but service in 1940 followed by early involvement in collabo politics had prevented him from practising. He thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities provided by the Occupation. Through the afternoon Gallet’s “court” handed down twenty-eight death sentences, mostly to working-class youths.* They were taken to the execution site on the Boulevard Saint-Jacques to be presented in batches before a firing squad of reluctant Gardes Mobiles who deliberately missed, obliging their commander to kill the lads with his coup de grace. One lad, aged only twenty, had been arrested four days earlier for a disrespectful utterance towards Vichy; neither a crime nor an act of resistance.92

  AFTER ROGER LANGERON ORDERED THEM TO REMAIN AT THEIR POSTS when Paris fell in 1940, the “fonctionnaires d’autorité par excellence” of the Paris police pursued résistants for four years, often passing those they arrested to the Gestapo and thus a probable death. After the Armistice, maintaining order to benefit both the French population and t
he Germans was one way the French could retain a sense of autonomy. While at first the German authorities had been “correct”, once their demands became more inhumane the consciences of French policemen became increasingly troubled. Most joined the police to uphold the law, and found it galling to round up Jews, or witness men they respected face execution for loving the same freedoms they loved themselves, condemned by the French judiciary’s “special sections”. So the flame of resistance within the Paris police took hold.93

  In 1944 the Paris police comprised 21,067 men, consisting of about two hundred officers, two thousand six hundred sergeants or brigadiers, seventeen thousand ordinary policemen, and an investigative branch of around eleven hundred. This last portion included the Brigades Spéciales, whose role was to hunt résistants. In this struggle the Gestapo was also supported by “police auxiliaries”, numbering about thirty thousand across France; effectively the grudge-informer class which any society would produce under such circumstances. “This Gestapo Française,” wrote Philippe Aziz, “was a splinter in the flesh of France. Without them, the German security forces would have been deaf and dumb. This indigenous Gestapo enabled the Germans to inflict their most murderous and effective blows.”94

  To the communists and FTP, the Paris police were simply continuing Langeron’s 1940 policy, to uncover clandestine communist networks in the Seine area. A “big house” attitude to both communists and the Left had pervaded the senior ranks of the Paris police since the politically turbulent 1930s. In December 1943 Himmler himself remarked, “The French Police is useful to a certain extent in the struggle against Communism. However one cannot be so sure of them against French Nationalists.”95 Communist résistants were more likely to be handed over to the Gestapo than their Gaullist counterparts. During Bussière’s tenure there were over sixteen thousand arrests for anti-German propaganda (i.e. leaflets and affiches) alone. Bussière subsequently wrote, “This audacious and patriotic attitude was the same throughout my time at the Boulevard du Palais.”96

  For many Paris policemen the turning point was the big round-up of Jews during the summer of 1942. Even the dullest soul on the Préfecture’s payroll recognised that without French support the anti-Jewish programme would have been rudderless.97 By 1944 many Gardiens de la Paix in Paris were turning towards the Resistance. Gratifying though this was, Serge Lefranc, a leader within the resistance group Front National de la Police, wrote cynically that out of nearly twenty-two thousand policemen, “At the maximum one could only have counted between six hundred and eight hundred patriots.” The rest, said Lefranc, “were largely attentiste chickens along with a lot of cowards and traitors who had previously arrested a lot of patriots”.98

  During July 1944, collabo Commissioner Rottée wrote, “Until now the presence in the capital of Occupation troops and relatively important Police forces has enforced upon the communists a certain prudence. But they are resolved to unleash an insurrection of considerable scope in the event of the Germans departing or if, on the arrival of the Anglo-Americans, military authority is not imposed immediately.” Irrespective of his trial and execution after the liberation, Lucien Rottée perceptively believed that many ordinary Parisians secretly supported communist resistance groups like the FTP even if they were not communists themselves. He also recognised that, at a suitable opportunity, the Resistance would seize factories, power stations, mairies and the machinery of government.99

  The Occupation deprived the Paris police of its traditonal expressions of pride and patriotism like band music; small wonder that the first resistance organisation to take root at the Préfecture was among band members. From 1943 they produced a secret magazine, La Voix de la France, which they distributed throughout the Paris region. One of them, Georges Prévot, until his arrest, maintained links with London and hid Allied airmen in his home. Another early resistance group within the Paris police was the réseau, founded in October 1940 by Brigadier (Sergeant) Arsène Poncey to forge ration cards and ID documents for French soldiers who evaded capture during la Chute. This group developed into Valmy Armée Volontaire. But Poncey was arrested after a civilian résistant betrayed him to Gestapo interrogators during February 1943. Poncey and his liaison agent Vannier were deported to Mauthausen where both died. Their successor, Edmond Dubent, was arrested in December, but meanwhile Valmy Armée Volontaire evolved into L’Honneur de la Police, which, confounding Lefranc’s cynicism, developed into a remarkable organisation of fifteen hundred men under sub-prefect Yves Bayet, assisted by Brigadier Fournet. By 1944 they were carrying out their own operations; on 13 July they struck a Feldgendarmerie arsenal in Neuilly, acquiring three light machine-guns, thirty-two submachine-guns, seventy-five pistols, a hundred rifles and copious ammunition.100

  The second largest resistance group within the Paris police, numbering around a thousand men, was the Front National de la Police founded by Léon Pierre. Originally called Les bons volontés des Policiers Patriotes, this group was basically Gaullist. In early 1942 they were contacted by Arthur Airaud, a CGT syndicalist and pre-war member of the Communist Party who, with surprising ease persuaded them to become La Front National de la Police. As with many early resistance groups a certain contempt existed towards later joiners, which possibly explains Lefranc’s cynicism towards his fellow policemen. Following Airaud’s arrest Serge Lefranc and Clément Roycourt (codenames Gérard and Rivière respectively) joined the group’s controlling committee. But they had not heard the last of Arthur Airaud; he escaped in time to join resistance operations during August 1944.101

  Thirdly came the movement Police et Patrie, consisting of around two hundred members recruited by Brigadier Charles Lamboley. They specialised in technical resistance, like conveniently timed power-cuts to the Préfecture’s switchboard when arrests were planned, saving Resistance lives. Lamboley’s group was connected to Liberation Nord.102

  By late July 1944 active résistants in the Paris police numbered around 2,700 out of a total force of 21,067 (12.81%). According to French historian Pierre Bourget, “It would certainly be fair and honourable to say that the Resistance recruited mainly among the ordinary policemen and the lower grades than among the senior ranks who controlled their actions and left most policemen under the authority of officers who faithfully carried out the orders of Vichy.” Hence characters like Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca were rare. There were more résistants (36.36%) among officers of the French “Armistice” Army before Torch. It should also be noted that the Paris police co-operated with the Nazis’ Jewish policy virtually to the end; on 30 June they supervised the entrainment of 1,150 Jews (transport No. 76) to Auschwitz and conducted their last round-up of five hundred Jews a month later. Hence, in the weeks that followed, it was a comparatively small proportion of résistants within the Paris police that steered their comrades towards a total strike and open combat against the Germans.103

  19 July 1944

  ANDRÉ GRIBIUS STRUGGLED TO HOLD BACK TEARS when he brought Leclerc the American order to move to England’s south coast.

  “You’re emotional, Gribius,” said Leclerc.104

  Leclerc called senior divisional officers to Dalton Hall.105 Entering the great drawing room, Paul de Langlade “found gathered all the battlegroup commanders, along with chiefs of services and different arms. Shortly after we were all together in the great salon which we were using as an assembly hall, we saw Leclerc enter. Everything in his manner forewarned us to expect an announcement of capital importance. We perceived in him, as he reached the large bureau facing us, an inner joy, mastered, yes, but striking to each of us individually.

  “The room went silent and we listened, almost in shock, to his strong, clear voice. The division had to be ready to move to the English ports by the 20th, not even forty-eight hours, and our embarkation for France should follow after a brief delay. Precise orders were given to us that same evening.”106

  Leclerc gave each officer a prepared Order of the Day to read to his men.

  The divisi
on is in the final stage of its journey on foreign soil; our next stage will be France. The long awaited hour will strike at last.

  Tomorrow we will be entering the battle alongside our allies, and we will have the honour of being among the first units of the French Army fighting on the national soil. Equally we will be the first to offer the hand of help to the heroic forces of the Resistance.

  We owe this honour to General de Gaulle and his government.

  To liberate the national soil, accepting that this may require the supreme sacrifice, is our first aim.

  To restore France’s greatness, that is our second aim.

  To lead us in this second task, the heaviest and most difficult, one man commands our trust and that of all Frenchmen, the man who, for four years, despite everything, has held high the honour of France, General de Gaulle.

  It is around him that all Frenchmen should unite.

  The symbol of this reunion will, for us, be the insignia of the division. This insignia, we will wear tomorrow, to liberate the Patrie, and after the victory, to remake France.107

  Leclerc advised his officers not to read it to their men, but to see that they saw it. Christian Girard watched logistics expert Colonel Adolph Vézinet receive his copy, glowing with joy. Leclerc wanted to unite the division behind a single aim, despite previous conflicts between original Gaullists and former Pétainists. “I said some bad things,” Leclerc admitted to Girard, smiling sincerely.108

  The US high command tightened its grip around the 2e DB. “It was an extraordinary sensation of being stripped of any rights one had,” wrote Langlade. “Like being a cog wheel, taking its place in the assembly of an engine. It’s admirable but practically speaking intolerable to the French temperament!”109