Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed

by Mortimer Moore, William

  “I’ve been releasing prisoners,” he yelled. “And now terrorists have taken over the Préfecture of Police, there is gunfire under my windows, they kill my soldiers. I have responsibilities. I have orders which I have to obey. I will destroy the Préfecture. I will kill these louts.”

  Nordling watched von Choltitz’s face redden.

  “I could blow up Paris. I have the means and the experience,” said von Choltitz. “After Stalingrad I made a fighting retreat, destroying towns along the way.”

  “If you destroy the Préfecture,” said Nordling, “you will also, at the same time, destroy Notre Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, and many architectural treasures of Paris.”

  “I must protect the security of my troops,” insisted von Choltitz. “Order must be restored. Who are the responsible authorities to whom I can address myself?”

  “There are no other authorities besides the Resistance,” replied Nordling.

  “Never,” said von Choltitz. “I am not having any dealings with such terrorists, those louts and communists.” Von Choltitz remarked to an aide that the Allies should be fighting the Russians.

  Nordling reassured von Choltitz that several senior résistants were “gentlemen”, particularly those sent from Algiers. “You ought to have more respect for them … If you were French, you would be among them.”

  “It’s just a gathering of rubbish,” said von Choltitz irritably. “Now, we’re speaking all the time about the ‘Resistance’ or the ‘French Forces of the Interior’ as if one’s dealing with organised and disciplined troops where there is real authority, and they’re just snipers who incessantly shoot at my soldiers. If this continues I shall have to resort to tougher measures. I have been ordered to defend Paris and to destroy the city before evacuating it.”

  “It is not the rubbish that you’re dealing with,” replied Nordling. “Behind de Gaulle and the Resistance are the French people. France was defeated but she has not submitted. It’s the élite of this country who have raised the flag of revolt. And this revolt is not only against the Germans but against the detested government of Vichy.”

  “But it is not a French civil insurrection. It’s us they’re firing at. Look!” said von Choltitz, gesturing towards the Tuileries gardens. “There are men who take pot-shots at the German sentries on the Rue de Rivoli and, if we retaliate, we risk killing women and children. Is this what you call an insurrection against the Vichy government?”

  Suddenly von Choltitz softened. Looking outside, Nordling understood immediately. Oblivious of the gunfire, a pretty Parisienne was bicycling past the Hôtel Meurice. Nordling observed von Choltitz’s expression as he watched the summer breeze lift her cotton frock revealing shapely legs.

  “Well, we don’t want to shoot anyone like that,” chuckled von Choltitz. Then, changing the subject, he remarked, “Paris is a pretty town.”64

  “Yes,” agreed Nordling.

  Emboldened, Nordling virtually paraphrased Taittinger’s words as he explained the choice von Choltitz faced. Von Choltitz explained the difficulty of allowing attacks on German troops without resorting to reprisals.

  “Why get involved?” asked Nordling. “Don’t hit out. Negotiate!”

  “If only there was a chief on the other side, with whom it was possible to negotiate, one could perhaps find a modus vivendi,” said von Choltitz. “But who can I negotiate with?”

  Nordling assured von Choltitz that there were senior résistants with whom sensible negotiations could be made.65

  THE WATERWORKS ON RUE VICTOR SCHOELCHER were marked down as militarily useful during 1939–1940. Twenty-six metres below ground there was a generator to pump fresh air and provide electric light, and metal staircases and dingy corridors branched off in all directions. One corridor lead to the Place Denfert-Rochereau Metro station from where resistance groups unreachable via the main telephone system could be contacted. Having taken up residence, Rol-Tanguy sent two aides to Montrouge to fetch Cécile. Without being stopped at checkpoints, Cécile Tanguy reached 9 Rue Victor Schoelcher with her typewriter and all Rol-Tanguy’s files.66

  As the Insurrection gathered momentum, Rol-Tanguy’s résistants found other groups, of whom they were utterly unaware, performing different operations nearby. These were usually Colonel Lizé’s people taking over district town halls, banks, factories and print works; essential springboards for re-installing the state.67 Unified command might have prevented the duplication of missions. However, the FTP’s essentially left-leaning nature meant that they could not resist taking over mairies, notably at Montreuil and Bondy, in competition with less ideological rivals. Sometimes the FTP arrived first, sometimes Lizé’s men.68

  As FFI attacks multiplied, so did their arsenals. Attacks on Wehrmacht depots and service garages often furnished small arms and usable vehicles. Lorries retreating from the front might break down, as at Levallois where the FFI attacked two lorries, killing their crews and seizing four MG42s, twelve Schmeisser submachine-guns and two hundred and fifty rifles along with abundant ammunition. Another useful haul came when two Wehrmacht lorries collided at the junction of Boulevard Victor-Hugo and Boulevard Jean-Jaures, revealing nine MG42s, fifteen Schmeisser submachine-guns and eight Mauser rifles. Nor did French armaments production cease after 1940, though its sole customer became Germany. The Hotchkiss factory was seized, providing machine-guns and hand-grenades.69

  Despite German troops remaining in Paris, General de Gaulle’s new order arrived at their ministries. André Mutter installed himself at the colonial ministry’s Rue Oudinot premises. At the Ministry of Justice on the Place Vendôme the newly appointed under-secretary, Marcel Willard, arrived with his new staff, astride bicycles, to prepare l’épuration (the purge). They were welcomed by a résistant already in situ who left the door ajar at the arranged moment. Former collabo staff discreetly disappeared, except one who was locked up. Armed with pistols and a Sten, Willard’s team secured the building under the noses of German officers still residing at the adjacent Ritz.70

  With the Gendarmerie of La Tour-Maubourg secured by General Hary, the previous evening, Parodi sent the capable young Felix Gaillard to take possession of government buildings along the Rue de Grenelle, whose Garde garrisons expected him. As Pierre Laval knew well, the Matignon’s staff and garrison had quietly turned Gaulliste even while serving him. Felix Gaillard bicycled up to the main gate, immediately finding himself facing the building’s “chief of interior services”.

  “We are waiting for General de Gaulle,” he told Gaillard.

  Gaillard wandered the magisterial building which, for a few hours, he controlled. Entering the cabinet room where, three days before, Laval received Abetz and Nordling, Gaillard sat behind the desk. The captain of the guard arrived; a big fellow wearing shiny black kneeboots.

  “Monsieur le Ministre,” said the captain. “We are waiting to place ourselves under General de Gaulle. What are your orders?”

  After telling him to send reinforcements to the Préfecture, Gaillard took a bicycle ride around other nearby government buildings, coming under fire from the Palais Bourbon’s south facade as he passed Les Invalides.71

  THE TAKEOVER OF GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS was only partially successful. In the 1st and 20th Arrondissements the Germans chased the FFI away from the mairies and re-established control. Then there was Neuilly-sur-Seine. Always an upmarket, placid northwestern banlieue, housing numerous Vichystes and collabos, the Germans expected to recover Neuilly fairly easily. The nearest FFI group avoided attacking Neuilly’s mairie because a thousand German soldiers were barracked nearby. Instead a motley group around sixty strong, led by a greying factory worker called André Caillette, breezed in and took over. As soon as local FFI leader, de Laage, heard of Caillette’s move he telephoned Colonel Lizé, who advised him to stay out of it.

  Predictably a lorry of German soldiers arrived whose officer stood with his hands on his hips and yelled, “Surrender and come out!”

  “Surrender yourselves,” replie
d Caillette from a first floor window. “We are the army of the liberation.”

  The German officer then unholstered his pistol, immediately provoking return fire which killed him instantly along with several of his men.

  Morale among Caillette’s band briefly soared. But then a German armoured car and six tanks arrived. At this point Max Roger, Neuilly’s Vichy mayor, intervened, promising Caillette’s men that their lives would be spared if they surrendered. They refused, so the tanks opened fire and German infantry assaulted the building. Predictably the résistants were soon prisoners lined up in the mairie’s courtyard with their hands on their heads.

  When a FFI tried to escape, he was quickly gunned down. Once again Max Roger intervened, insisting to the senior German officer that several prisoners were merely state functionaries involved with the Red Cross and civil defence who never shot at the German garrison.

  “They don’t have any papers,” said a German soldier guarding the captives.

  “Your men have taken them,” said one of the FFI disingenuously.

  “Well,” said the head German officer, pretending to be taken in. “They had better have their papers tomorrow.”

  Several FFI were allowed to leave. As they left, a youth approached Roger’s assistant saying, “Monsieur, I was never with the Red Cross …”

  “Shut up and get out of here, you little fool,” he replied.

  Only twenty of Caillette’s men were taken to Mont Valérien. One man captured with a pistol was shot that afternoon, but the rest were later exchanged for German prisoners.72

  AT ALEXANDRE DE SAINT-PHALLE’S HOUSE, Roland Pré took stock of the Insurrection’s first day. There were undoubtedly successes, but Resistance casualties seemed high, as often happens when civilians fight trained soldiers. Alexandre Parodi was visited at his Avenue Lowendal HQ by Colonel Jean Arnould (aka Ollivier), chief of the réseau Jade Amicol. Arnould let rip furiously, “You’ve gone off far too soon. You’re at the mercy of the Germans. Many of their divisions must still make a fighting retreat to cross the Seine in Paris or in the Paris area. You have nothing to fight them with. The Americans certainly won’t arrive before next Wednesday and between now and then you could be annihilated. I have sent a message to speed up their advance.”

  But the Insurrection had started and could not easily be stopped. Leo Hamon informed Parodi about Neuilly amid reports that ammunition was running low at the Préfecture. Predictably Jacques Chaban-Delmas said that starting an insurrection under such conditions was utter foolishness since the Allies were not planning to enter Paris but preparing a long envelopment instead. They should have waited for General Koenig’s orders.

  “I take full responsibility for this and everything else,” said Parodi gravely. “If a catastrophe is the result, I will have the rest of my life to regret it. In the meantime, there are measures to be taken.”

  Chaban’s advice, supported by Paul Ély, was that the disparity of forces left little chance for the Paris FFI to fight a successful battle from fixed strongpoints. If enemy pressure around strongholds like the Préfecture became too strong they would have to be abandoned. But now that Henri Rol-Tanguy commanded the Paris FFI, such orders could not be given without his consent. What if he refused? General Dassault, a career air force officer who acted as technical adviser to the FTP, could perhaps influence Rol-Tanguy; Dassault reached Avenue Lowendal by late afternoon. After consulting Parodi, Dassault agreed that the FFI should adopt hit-and-run attacks. The buildings already taken should be held as long as possible, only given up when local commanders could hold out no longer. Parodi and Dassault returned to the room where the Delegation was gathered.

  “There is nothing else to do but evacuate the Préfecture,” said Parodi.

  “The FTP are under your orders,” said Leo Hamon glancing at Dassault. “Are you authorising (us) to say that this is your decision?”

  “Yes,” said Dassault, undertaking to confer with Rol-Tanguy as soon as he could.

  In the meantime Parodi sent out urgent messages that all résistants holding public buildings must do so as discreetly and unprovocatively as possible. The orders to evacuate the Préfecture were given by telephone as coming from Hamon, Pré, Ribière and Parodi—and addressed to Lamboley, Pisani, Pierre and Fournet.

  “The situation is bad. You must not let yourselves be massacred. You must leave.”

  But retreating is sometimes the most dangerous military undertaking. How were they meant to leave the Préfecture? Someone suggested they jump from windows onto the river bank which could be padded with mattresses brought from the Rue Séguier. But there is no sheer drop onto river banks beneath the Préfecture’s walls, and the idea that German troops would allow résistants to position mattresses and benignly watch their foes escape was plainly ridiculous.

  “It is practically impossible,” came the Préfecture’s reply. “If we leave we will lose most of our people. It is also morally impossible. We’re here and it’s best to stay here.”

  The situation inside the Préfecture was grave. As afternoon became evening the Comité de Libération de la Police ordered their men only to fire in self-defence to conserve ammunition. South of the Seine, German troops hosed the Boulevard Saint-Germain with machine-gun fire, causing serious casualties among non-combatants. Only an hour earlier, after beating off an attack on the Préfecture from the Pont Saint-Michel, Edgard Pisani anxiously telephoned his young family.

  “Things are going badly,” he told his wife. “We will probably never return.”

  Requests for reinforcements went out at 3.15pm, 5.20pm and 8pm. In response Colonel Lizé sent twenty men armed with machine-guns to create a diversion, but they could not get inside. The résistants’ pessimism was founded on their belief that, even without artillery, von Choltitz could easily retake the Préfecture with two companies of infantry and a troop of tanks.73

  ALTHOUGH VON CHOLTITZ seemed willing to negotiate, accumulating reports of FFI attacks forced him to act against the Resistance. But the weakness of his garrison meant that tough orders had to be qualified by advising his men to avoid fruitless gun battles.74 About the late afternoon on 19 August, Sonderführer Robert Wallraf wrote, “Little by little the situation became uncomfortable. The main network of central buildings, our ‘strongpoints’, was not seriously defended and an attack by the Resistance could have, supposing it was made with some guts, every chance of success, given the small numbers, desperate for reinforcement, of our defenders. We placed lookouts everywhere to warn us of the slightest thing.”75 Both sides were weak and feared the options available to their adversary.

  “One could hear machine-guns not far away,” wrote the Resistance’s Dr. Victor Veau. “There was an atmosphere of revolution; sometimes ghostly silences during which any conversation could be heard, then dogs barking and whistles.”76

  Émil Bender first told Nordling that German forces were preparing a serious attack on the Préfecture. But at around 7pm, Nordling’s nephew, Édouard Fiévet, took a call from the Préfecture claiming that the Germans were preparing a larger assault than before, that the police would be unable to defend themselves successfully, and someone should arrange some kind of ceasefire. There is considerable controversy over who made this plea for quarter from the Prefecture, but made it was.

  In 1949 André Bussière, one of Amédée Bussière’s sons, said his father called the Swedish Consulate, while Édouard Fiévet believed it was possibly Edgard Pisani’s voice. In 1989 Henri Rol-Tanguy said he knew who it was but could not say, nor did he inform his biographer, Roger Bourderon.77 Whoever it was, Nordling heard words like “The situation is very serious. Do something!” So Nordling asked Émil Bender to visit the Meurice and inform General von Choltitz that the Préfecture wanted a truce, reiterating that fighting around the Préfecture risked collateral damage to heritage sites like Notre Dame. Furthermore, if this opportunity was missed it might become impossible to control the Insurrection or arrange a truce again. Nordling then telephone
d the Préfecture to ask Resistance leaders if they would agree to a ceasefire if it could be negotiated.78

  Blackouts and barricades made it impossible to cross Paris by car. There were eventually around six hundred barricades whose locations, once charted, bore an unsurprising resemblance to the “poor maps” drawn up in the late nineteenth century to identify localities vulnerable to TB.79 Without electricity Paris felt even darker. Sporadic gunfire occurred whenever German and FFI patrols came across each other. By keeping to roads patrolled by the Wehrmacht, Émil Bender reached the Hôtel Meurice.80

  Nordling periodically telephoned the Préfecture to update them on the negotiations’ progress. On one occasion Charles Luizet himself answered and held up the telephone receiver for Nordling to hear the gunfire outside.81

  The first draft of an agreement with von Choltitz was available by 8pm. In the first paragraph the German garrison undertook to recognise the new French authorities installed by de Gaulle’s provisional government. Second, von Choltitz agreed to negotiate with these authorities provided that all shooting at German soldiers ceased forthwith, in return for which the German garrison would agree not to fire upon buildings controlled by nominees of de Gaulle’s provisional goverment. All reprisals against the French would cease and no hostages would be shot. But none of this would work unless each side could control its men. To this end von Choltitz allowed the French thirty-five minutes between 9.05 and 9.40pm to prove they could put a ceasefire order into effect. If that was successful the ceasefire would begin at 10pm.82

  Nordling telephoned these terms to the Préfecture at around 8.30pm. Edgard Pisani took the call. At first Pisani insisted that the truce should only apply to the vicinity of the Préfecture, which was not enough for von Choltitz. More telephone calls were exchanged and Luizet’s men ceased firing shortly after 9pm. Satisfied that the résistants could be controlled, von Choltitz extended the truce until 6am the following morning.