When an ambulance arrived to collect the injured and dying, a white-clad nurse waved a Red Cross flag while saying curtly “You will not kill,” rather than the more plaintive “Don’t shoot.” Momentarily the shooting ceased while the injured were gathered up. But when a German lorry passed a few hundred metres away, firing recommenced, sending the ambulance driver diving for cover. The nurse waved her Red Cross flag and continued. After delivering these casualties to the Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu they returned within moments. Taittinger saw around a dozen people wantonly gunned down, all French.108
WHILE STÉPHANE’S MEN INVESTED THE HÔTEL DE VILLE, Alexandre Parodi held a meeting of senior resistants on Avenue de Lowendal. In the first place Roland Pré brought them up to date regarding Nordling’s truce, which, they acknowledged, had saved the Préfecture. They subsequently agreed to send representatives to Nordling’s consulate, including Roland Pré, Alexandre de Saint Phalle and Leo Hamon, who came across from the Hôtel de Ville.109
They reached Nordling later than expected and went straight into a long, detailed discussion of the truce’s minutiae.
“May I introduce two German officers,” said Nordling. “Austrians in fact.” Both Bobby Bender and Erich von Posch-Pastor were present along with Swiss Consul René Naville.
“I can’t see the point,” replied Leo Hamon.
“Regarding the capabilities of the German Army,” said Nordling, looking at Hamon, “you can discuss all that with them.”110
Nordling explained that von Choltitz had no wish to fight in Paris unless absolutely forced to. On the other hand Nordling understood the Resistance’s desire to actively eject the Germans. He believed, however, that, if the Resistance continued down this path, there would be terrible damage to Paris and dreadful loss of life.
Leo Hamon responded that Parisians had taken up arms, not to make truces, but to give France her capital city, liberated by her own people. But Hamon recognised that the Resistance was not strong enough to withstand determined German retaliation, either at the Préfecture nor the Hôtel de Ville. The number of armed résistants in Paris remained puny. Whatever their standpoint, everyone present accepted that Nordling had gained time and agreed for his truce to be prolonged.
“Are there any Communists among you?” asked Nordling.
Raising his hand, Roger Besse admitted to representing the Union of Syndicates on the Comité Parisien de Libération. He was entrusted with a message for the Resistance at the Préfecture that contained the following text: “Due to undertakings made by the German Command not to attack public buildings occupied by French forces, and to treat all French prisoners in accordance with the laws of war, the Provisional Government of the French Republic and the Conseil National de la Résistance order you to cease fire against the occupying forces until the total evacuation of Paris. The greatest calm is recommended to the population and they are requested to stay indoors.”
The Conseil National de la Résistance accepted this wording, while General von Choltitz—on reading the document later that morning—disliked the insinuation that the Wehrmacht was collapsing and thought that clauses concerning résistants’ conduct should be altered to: “The population is requested to control itself, not to create incidents nor to walk in the streets.” Nordling later wrote, “I never had the impression that the Resistance wished to avoid an armed conflict with the occupiers. I thought that they only desired to delay hostilities until a more propitious moment suited them. When I remarked to these gentlemen that, practically speaking, they had already achieved an important victory over the Germans by forcing the garrison commander of Paris to recognise de facto the Resistance as an authority with which they could enter negotiations, it seemed that, all the same, they accepted my point of view.”111
Immediately afterwards Parodi visited 41 Rue de Bellechasse to meet the Conseil National de la Résistance, including Georges Bidault, and explain the truce. Jacques Chaban-Delmas supported it, insisting that their wisest choice was to await the Allies. But the counter-argument, that the Resistance needed to show they could fight, was deeply rooted. COMAC’s Pierre Villon and André Tollet regarded negotiation as treasonous in itself, insisting that hostilities must be resumed and more barricades erected. When the vote was held, however, to Villon and Tollet’s disgust, the motion was carried in favour of Nordling’s truce. Georges Bidault maintained that the truce helped preserve Paris.112 Shortly afterwards Chaban-Delmas, Leo Hamon and Roland Pré visited Nordling saying that the CNR approved the text and wanted it published as soon as possible “in all the quartiers of Paris”.113
Von Choltitz’s reservations mirrored those of Villon and Tollet. While he recognised the truce’s practical benefit for his garrison, it involved negotiations with the enemy when Nazi thinking towards irregular forces was uncompromising. If the agreement was broadcast by radio, it could embarrass him and endanger his family. To secure French discretion, he offered to release Wehrmacht food reserves from cold storage.114
AT AROUND 11AM PIERRE TAITTINGER heard that Nordling’s truce was official. Cars with loudspeakers announced the ceasefire in French and German while, at the Hôtel de Ville, a Garde Republicaine sounded the recall with a bugle.
At the Secrétariat Général building Madame Miret, an official’s wife, arranged lunch for both the internees and their guards, setting up a well laid table in the vestibule. Everyone was surprisingly hungry and the food, though plentiful, disappeared quickly. Résistant Fournier telephoned the Hôtel de Ville to ask Lieutenant Stéphane if he might release Taittinger and his colleagues, but Stéphane insisted that the truce changed nothing. Surprised by Stéphane’s intransigence, Fournier advised Taittinger to plead his case with the Commissaires du Peuple (People’s Commissars) who had set up a tribunal at the Hôtel de Ville.115
Outside once again, Taittinger recognised the report of Mausers exchanging fire with the FFIs’ diverse weaponry. Not all Resistance factions would willingly cease combat.116
THE PREVIOUS EVENING’S CEASEFIRE ORDER reached Henri Rol-Tanguy only at 7am on 20 August, after taking a circuitous route via Chaban-Delmas to Colonel Lizé’s chief of staff, Commandant Dufresne, who was preoccupied with taking the Hôtel de Ville. Despite lack of sleep, Rol-Tanguy reacted vigourously, first warning COMAC who were unaware of it. Next, he told Colonel Lizé that he intended to continue with the Insurrection. Uninterested in the motives behind Nordling’s efforts, Rol-Tanguy insisted that “The order for the Insurrection was given in accordance with the ‘delegate Commissar’ of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, in agreement with the Committee for the Liberation of Paris, and must be carried out.”117
Around 8am, Rol-Tanguy heard that Colonel Lizé believed the Germans were again preparing an “offensive brutale” on the Préfecture. He advised Lizé to create a diversion elsewhere, then told Dufresne emphatically, “I am a soldier. All negotiation with the enemy in time of war is a crime against the Nation.” Rol-Tanguy and Lizé issued the following directive: “The formal order [from headquarters] is to attack à l’outrance the enemy wherever he is to be found. This order annuls any other orders given which may contradict this prescription.” From mid-morning on 20 August the commander of the Paris FFI declared Nordling’s truce over.118
Henri Rol-Tanguy’s biographer, Roger Bourderon, emphasises that since Rol-Tanguy had not attended the meetings held either by Parodi or Nordling, the mixed messages regarding the truce were attributable to communication failures. While Parodi always insisted that, since he was senior, he should have been obeyed, it seems extraordinary that, having appointed Rol-Tanguy as FFI commander on 19 August, no communication about Nordling’s negotiations reached his HQ on Rue Victor Schoelcher, which is not far from Avenue de Lowendal.119
In any case, Rol-Tanguy insisted on fighting, and it was the renewed gunfire following his decision to disregard Nordling’s truce that Taittinger heard during luncheon at the Secrétariat Général.
ACCOMPANIED BY RÉSISTANT FOURNIER, Tait
tinger returned along the subterranean corridor towards the Hôtel de Ville to plead with the Commissars of the People who now sat in one of the grand committee rooms. There were five of them, four quite young and a fifth, more senior, who seemed to be in charge. They introduced themselves to Taittinger by their noms de guerre—“fantasy names”, Taittinger called them. Expecting to be released along with his colleagues, Taittinger explained that neither he nor the Conseil Municipal had done anything shameful during the Occupation.
The chief Commissar—Valin—brandished his left-wing credentials, emphasising that they came from “different sides of the barricade”. He accused Taittinger of playing a “harmful” role under the Germans, even saying Taittinger acted treasonously by negotiating with Boineburg-Lengsfeld for the lives of hostages. When Valin said that saving factories from destruction went against “the revolutionary mystique”, Taittinger was stupefied.
“It is,” declared Valin, “only on the smoking ruins of Paris that the Commune can be installed. In a Paris that is protected, with its houses still standing, we would never be able to plant the red flag!”120
Between the wars Taittinger had been a notable member of France’s anti-democratic Right. But these details from his opinionated, snobby memoirs—which were praised by the Academie Française—make extraordinary reading and are probably true. In the next line he calls Valin an énergumène (oddball) before writing that Valin’s accomplices seemed disappointed that Paris was not becoming another Warsaw. Irrespective of his several years as a clandestin, Valin did not strike Taittinger as someone who had risked much. Their exchange ended when Lieutenant Stéphane arrived, saying that Yves Bayet wanted Taittinger at the Préfecture.121
This time Taittinger was led to the Cité Metro station and the staircase up to the Préfecture. At the top they encountered three policemen in mufti sitting behind sandbags, armed with revolvers, a rifle and some freshly made sandwiches. The main courtyard, the Cour Jean-Chiappe, named after a 1930s police chief notable for suppressing the Left, was now clogged with vehicles of diverse provenance. Taittinger joined other deposed officials, including René Bouffet and Périer de Féral. Bussière’s son André welcomed them, but André-Jean Godin, whom Taittinger had known many years, without suspecting that he was head of Ajax Nord, cut him dead.
“At the Préfecture,” Taittinger wrote, “there reigned an atmosphere of civil war and revolution. One heard shouts, orders and gunfire. Every so often the arrival of new arrestees elicited frenzied clamours. Blows rained down on them producing cries of sorrow and pain. We were in the centre of a great drama, beginning there and which, quartier by quartier, was taking over Paris, a drama called épuration.” Taittinger, Bouffet, Bussière and the deposed officials of Occupied Paris were relieved to be together, but having to lie on bare flagstones amid the cries of collabos being beaten up was nerve-racking. One of Luizet’s deputies told Taittinger that they were “considered hostages, destined to be shot if any captured résistants were executed either by Miliciens or the Germans”.122
AT 8AM DE GAULLE LANDED AT MAUPERTUIS in Normandy. Though aware that the flight from Gibraltar was pushing the limits of his Lockheed Hudson’s range, de Gaulle “never for a moment seemed worried about the risks we were running. He didn’t look out of the window until France was under our wheels,” remembered Lionel de Marmier. The Constable was more worried about the communists among the Paris Resistance and whether the Americans would finesse France towards a transitional assembly led by Laval and Herriot, delaying the Republic’s restoration. “Why do you think,” de Gaulle later asked his son Philippe, “that I struggled so much in London and Algiers in 1943 to see your unit take part in the landings if it wasn’t to be sure of seeing Paris liberated by ourselves, whatever the Allies wanted?”123
Welcomed at Maupertuis by General Koenig, de Gaulle was anxious for news of Paris and Leclerc. Koenig told him Laval had been taken to Belfort, alleviating one of the Constable’s worries. Of von Choltitz’s role de Gaulle wrote in his memoirs that “the enemy, busying himself with the withdrawal of his services, had not, so far, reacted very harshly, but with more of his columns passing through Paris, he could, at any time, have inflicted reprisals”.124
Perusing the campaign map at Shellburst, de Gaulle complimented Eisenhower on the Allied Expeditionary Force’s stunning successes. But he noticed that Patton had two corps near the Seine at Mantes and Melun while Hodges’ First Army, which controlled Leclerc’s division, merely mopped up around Falaise. Given that First Army’s General Courtney Hodges had earmarked the 2e DB for Paris as early as 15 August when American corps were being reorganised, de Gaulle could have been more trusting.125
“From the strategic point of view,” began de Gaulle, “I cannot understand why, since you cross the Seine at Melun, at Mantes and at Rouen, it is only at Paris that you do not cross. If it were the question of an ordinary place and not the capital of France, my opinion would not be binding on you, because normally the conduct of operations is your concern. But the fate of Paris is of essential consequence to the French government. For this reason I think myself obliged to intervene and to urge you to send my troops. It goes without saying that it is the French 2nd Armoured Division that must be selected to take first place.”126
De Gaulle claimed that Eisenhower was embarrassed. But Eisenhower’s reply, that he prefered to avoid fighting in large cities which would involve horrific damage and casualties, was legitimate. But what about the Insurrection? Eisenhower replied that it had kicked off too soon.
“Why too soon?” asked de Gaulle. “At this very moment, your forces are on the Seine.”
Without giving precise dates, Eisenhower reassured de Gaulle that when he ordered an advance on Paris Leclerc would have the honour of entering the city first. De Gaulle nevertheless impressed upon the Americans in slow, precise French that “l’affaire” was one of “une telle importance nationale” and that he would send the 2e DB to Paris himself if necessary. Describing this interview with Eisenhower, de Gaulle omits to mention his concerns over the communists in Paris.127 However, de Gaulle’s American biographer Don Cook quotes Eisenhower’s summary of this meeting: “He made no bones about it; he said there was a serious menace from the communists in the city, and that if we delayed moving in we would risk finding a disastrous political situation, one that might be disruptive to the Allied war effort.”128
De Gaulle seems to have believed that Roosevelt wanted to prevent him from reaching Paris and that Laval’s proposed transitional government (based on André Enfière’s tenuous OSS connections) was part of this. During the years of solitary struggle to maintain his ideals of French greatness, perhaps the Constable had developed a form of paranoia which discounted the myriad concerns affecting both Churchill and Roosevelt.129 That Leclerc should be held back with Hodges’ First Army reinforced a terrible fear that the Americans wanted to reach the Eiffel Tower first.
“But,” de Gaulle later wrote, “renconfort—reassurance—was not far away. A great wave of enthusiasm and popular emotion greeted me when I entered Cherbourg and followed me all the way to Rennes, through Coutances, Avranches and Fougères. In the ruins of destroyed towns and wrecked villages the population massed by the roadside to hail my passing. Whatever remained of windows was decorated with flags and bunting. Bells sounded. Roads pocked with shell-holes seemed joyful under the flowers. Mayors gave martial addresses with sobbing voices. I then said a few words, not of pity that would not have been wanted, but of hope and pride, finishing with la Marseillaise which the crowd sang with me.”130
Hoping to expedite matters, Leclerc visited V Corps’ General Leonard Gerow accompanied by Weil. Gerow conceded: “You are not only a divisional commander, you represent the French Army.” But when Leclerc sought a more substantial commitment, Gerow replied, “That does not depend upon me. You’ll have to go higher.”
Gerow’s “puritan sense of discipline” got Leclerc down. “There were things they simply didn’t understand,”
wrote Girard, “and the General was right to go and explain things to them, but I doubt that it will make them see the reasons for his attitude any more clearly. They will continue to take for indiscipline what is in fact his conscientiousness in having to carry out an extra-military mission.”131
Next Leclerc took a Piper Cub to Hodges’ HQ. According to First Army’s war diary, Leclerc argued incessantly that his division should march on Paris, first claiming to have sufficient supplies, then admitting that he needed more. French pride kept colliding with “poor relation” status. “The General [Hodges] was not impressed with him or his arguments, and let him understand that he [Leclerc] was to stay put until he gave orders otherwise.”132
For the French the oft-used American arguments about regrouping were wearing thin.133
OSS COLONEL DAVID BRUCE and his entourage of well-travelled, multi-lingual patricians were anxious to lead the Americans into Paris. After witnessing the first phases of l’épuration in newly liberated Chartres, they had spent the previous night in a field near US 5th Infantry Division’s CP. Eschewing K rations, Bruce’s party sustained themselves on omelettes washed down with wine or instant coffee depending on the time of day. Visiting châteaux could be disappointing; one had been used as a German HQ and left filthy, with weapons strewn about and “the usual heaps of empty wine bottles”. They also found packs of booby traps which the Germans had not had time to set.134
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