Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed

by Mortimer Moore, William

  “The posters have already been ordered,” replied Villon.

  “In that case,” said Parodi, “the truce is totally finished!”

  “No,” replied Jacquis Debu-Bridel. “Until the Americans arrive in Paris, the unity of the Resistance must be maintained more than ever. But the CNR must tell us exactly under what circumstances they have entertained this truce and what they have agreed to.”37

  Until this moment the atmosphere was immensely confrontational. Then, over thirty-five minutes, Chaban-Delmas gave a well-informed, objective resumé of the situation. First, without interruptions, he explained the practical problems facing the Resistance in Paris; the fine balance between political objectives and the slender military means for pursuing them. He explained Nordling’s contribution, and the German High Command’s need to maintain order in a city through which they still needed to withdraw battle-worn divisions. He explained the negotiations immediately before the meeting at Nordling’s consulate; pointing out that von Choltitz made an enormous concession by accepting that the Resistance controlled certain areas and recognising them as regular forces. But when Chaban used the English phrase “gentleman’s agreement”, disapproving groans rose from COMAC’s three Vs and FTP members.

  “You don’t make ‘gentleman’s agreements’ with murderers,” said an FTP member.

  “And you,” retorted Chaban, “you want to massacre 150,000 people for nothing?”38

  “He speaks a lot of technique,” said another, alluding to Chaban’s grande école education. “Eh bien! Well, this technique of his, it is not the technique militaire, it’s the technique financière! ”

  Several found Chaban’s notions of fair play somewhat trite.

  COMAC’s Kriegel-Valrimont said, “There is among certain factions of the Resistance, particularly those résistants who have come from London, a manifestation of a deliberate desire to prevent the people from seizing by force of arms a tangible victory which might gave them a say in government.”

  Irrespective of the risks to the people and fabric of Paris, Kriegel-Valrimont declared that by disregarding Nordling’s truce, “I place myself on the sentimental plan.” Though pale and exhausted after days of unceasing activity, Valrimont continued, “We will not stop fighting in open battle. It is unthinkable to deprive the people of Paris of a battle they’ve wanted for four years. I left combatants behind in order to come here and I am going back to be with them. There is where I feel at ease. One’s duty is clear. I am speaking as a French officer who, for four years, has waited for this battle.”

  Villon, staring at Chaban with hard eyes, said icily, “He would do better to stick to his previous job.”

  Then, as the squabbling escalated, Villon said loudly, “That’s the first time I’ve seen a French general so cowardly.”

  As Chaban smiled wrily, Parodi remarked on the courage required of anyone living la vie clandestine, and told Villon to withdraw his insult.

  “I was not accusing him of cowardice,” said Villon, “simply saying that he was conducting himself like a coward.”

  “That’s insupportable and disgraceful,” said another member of the Delegation. “He wants to rupture the truce.”

  “I’m leaving,” said Parodi.39

  At that moment there was a smash of breaking glass. The journalist Debu-Bridel, using a gesture familiar among the French Revolution’s political clubs, startled the room to order.

  But Villon had not finished. After apologising to Chaban, he explained that, while there might only be six hundred men at the Préfecture and a few thousand FFI, the Milice Patriotique and the people at large offered “enormous possibilities”. Since FFI actions elsewhere in France had achieved great successes since D-Day, “Why shouldn’t there be similar successes in the capital which is the best place in the world for guerrilla warfare? It’s in Paris that we should be doing this. The [Paris] FFI are not mobile. They are attached to their homes. They can hardly go and fight the Germans outside Paris. Apart from anything else the ‘military delegate’ has not said whether the Allied governments agree with this truce. It can hardly have been agreed among them given their policy of leaving the enemy no respite until they capitulate unconditionally.”

  Remembering his discussions with General Ismay and General Koenig, Chaban replied confidently that they agreed with him. “We are not talking about an armistice, but the neutralisation of a portion of French territory.”40

  Villon claimed that the threat of German reprisals was not worth worrying about because the Resistance could retaliate against thousands of German wounded presently in Paris hospitals, along with German prisoners taken earlier during the Insurrection. Villon claimed the truce was a con since the numbers provided by the FFI medical service were not available until either Sunday evening or Monday morning; ninety-nine killed and two hundred and forty-four wounded on the French side against five hundred and thirty-four on the German side. “Unless these are fantasy figures bearing no relation to reality, one can hardly see that the truce has had a sensible influence on our losses,” said Villon.41

  Parodi, the Delegation and moderate members of the CNR such as Georges Bidault felt the argument slipping away from them. Exhausted by arguing their case to ears that refused to listen, and uncomfortable owing to the heat, they were being ground down. Briefly Chaban thought he was pulling COMAC and the FTP around to his way of thinking, but then he hit the hard reality that continuing the truce meant dividing the Resistance. Both Villon and Vaillant—the populist Count Jean de Vogüé—insisted that a proclamation should end the truce.

  Though haunted by the possibility of a Warsaw-style catastrophe, Parodi consoled himself with the thought that the Insurrection was only two days old and the Allies knew the situation in Paris. Every passing hour brought liberation closer. His arguments having failed, Chaban remained aware that, if the Allies did not arrive soon, the Insurrectionists might share the fate of their comrades at Vercors. But the Resistance wanted and needed this battle. There was also the fear that Paris might come under AMGOT unless she was seen to liberate herself.42

  With a heavy heart, Parodi agreed to the resumption of hostilities. “He did not have the sense of certainty of a revolutionary,” wrote Adrien Dansette, “nor of a man of iron who, having given himself a goal, would march towards it, crossing everything without having any care for the victims harmed along the way. He had the scruples of a politician who worried profoundly for those men and things he had to do his best for.” Before agreeing to end the truce, however, Parodi had a condition of his own: that fighting would not resume until 4pm on the afternoon of 22 August. The CPL’s poster was not to appear.43

  “Until now,” said Chaban, “my role was to put the brakes on. Today I am committed to fighting.”

  “Console yourself,” replied Count Jean de Vogüé. “You have not put the brakes on anything that big.”44

  Though present at the meeting, Henri Rol-Tanguy said very little. Following his discussions with Parodi earlier at the Hôtel de Ville, he foresaw much of this, although he felt for Chaban’s predicament. After Rol-Tanguy left, Parodi spoke to Colonel Lizé. Afterwards Lizé prepared an order telling his men to respect the truce for the time being, attached to which were notes detailing the routes to be permitted to German troops retreating through the city. Given Lizé’s previous hostility to the truce, Rol-Tanguy wondered what Parodi said to him. Had Lizé submitted to Parodi, whose place in the chain of command led straight to de Gaulle? Given that Lizé was his immediate deputy, Rol-Tanguy gave him an order of his own; that hostilities must resume. In effect, Lizé obeyed both.45

  “WEIL RETURNED,” WROTE GIRARD. “His mission seemed not really to have been to report the sending of Guillbon’s detachment, but to explain to Bradley that we were under-employed, that our troops were not advancing, that—apart from Haislip—the Corps generals were hopeless and the general commanding the army should be sacked.” Naturally this was not what Weil said; Girard was simply venting his frustratio
n in his diary. “I exaggerate,” he continued. “But it was a bit like that. Bradley received him very graciously and told him that everything was going very well, that we needed to have a little patience and that we would go to Paris just as he said we would go and be the first.”

  On debriefing Weil, Leclerc was disappointed that Bradley had said nothing more tangible.

  “If you send a simple cavalry major with such a message to a general commanding a whole army group, what do you expect?” said Weil.46

  Almost concurrently, General Eisenhower welcomed de Gaulle’s chief of staff, General Alphonse Juin, to Shellburst. Juin told Eisenhower, “De Gaulle was my classmate at Saint-Cyr. I know his determination. Give the order to march on Paris to the 2e DB yourself, because they are going to go anyway.”

  Eisenhower apparently replied, “Stop nagging! I know what I’m going to do. I shall send a telegram to Marshall to persuade Roosevelt. I have decided to send Gerow’s Corps. And, if the boss [Roosevelt] doesn’t agree, I’ll do it anyway.”47

  Meanwhile, Gerow’s staff kept a firm eye on Leclerc’s division, and air reconnaissance patrols reported American vehicles around Sénonches, beyond the 2e DB’s authorised axis of advance. Who were they? Leclerc’s operations officer, André Gribius—presumably because he was not a gaulliste de la première heure—had not been informed of Guillebon’s Patrouille. Hence Gribius denied knowledge of Guillebon’s force in good faith.

  “You’re sure?” asked V Corps.

  “I’m quite sure,” replied Gribius.

  “Really sure?”

  “Absolutely sure,” replied Gribius.48

  WHEN A LOCAL DELEGATION, including an archbishop, presented Colonel David Bruce with a gold-fringed French Tricolore and a signed certificate confirming his role in liberating Rambouillet, he recognised the deep emotion and hope with which the French awaited their Liberation. Many of his compatriots, however, seemed to be disbanding. US XX Corps’ push south of Paris, and the 7th Armoured Division’s arrival in Fontainebleau suggested that Rambouillet was not the Allies’ route into Paris. Hence many journalists left, leaving Hemingway to await his big moment at the Hôtel du Grand Veneur. “Hemingway and I are holding this position,” wrote Bruce, “and sending out small patrols along all the roads. It is maddening to be only thirty miles from Paris, to interrogate every hour some Frenchman who has just come from there and who reports that even a very small task force could easily move in, and to know that our Army is being forced to wait, and for what reason?”49

  Other interviews yielded some useful local knowledge. “One man knew the exact location of a minefield he had seen the Germans lay last night. Another had taken part in yesterday’s insurrection in Paris. Another had spent the preceeding night at Trappes and so on.”50

  While boastfully claiming that his scouting operations were akin to those of the Confederate cavalry raider John S. Mosby, in fact when it came to intelligence gathering, Hemingway was a real expert.51 Bruce and “Mouthard”—a local reistance leader—listened as Hemingway performed skilful interrogations in fluent French, building up a picture of German troop dispositions between Rambouillet and southwest Paris. The positions of roadblocks, minefields, tanks and artillery were plotted with corrections being updated every hour.52

  Sometimes there were moments of immense humour, as when a French husband and wife arrived in Rambouillet with three German prisoners in the back of their car guarded by a youth toting a Sten gun. Two Alsatian women were accused of collaboration horizontale, a hotel worker accused of being the mistress of a Gestapo officer in Paris, and a woman with a family to support was vilified for working for Vichy. All the FFIs present at the Hôtel du Grand Veneur were convinced that she had also committed collaboration horizontale, openly speculating whether her husband looked like a cuckold, “the sort of conversation in which the French delight and excel”, wrote Bruce. More usefully, “a very young Pole deserted from the German tank unit ahead of us”, wrote Hemingway. “He buried his uniform and his submachine-gun and filtered through the lines in his underwear and a pair of trousers he found in a shelled house. He brought good information and was put to work in the kitchen of the hotel.” Then an old man was picked up on the road north of Rambouillet who furnished complete information on minefields and anti-tank guns beyond Trappes. “He joined the Polish child in protective custody,” Hemingway wrote, but only after interrogation.53

  Gene Currivan of The New York Times had joined them. Unaware that Bruce and Co. had already arranged their dining, Currivan cut himself badly opening a K-ration tin and “pretty damn near bled to death” before Hemingway applied his renowned first aid skills. Dinner compensated for this little drama. The Hôtel du Grand Veneur’s owner hailed from Périgord and served them “pate de foie gras stuffed abundantly with truffles”.54

  As they dined, news arrived that weapons would be dropped to the FFI around Rambouillet that night. “So,” wrote Bruce, “we decided we ought to warn any American patrols, and to place Frenchmen with them to identify any friendly transport that might have to pass through in this connection. Ernest, Mouthard, Gravey (Graveson), Red (Pelkey) and the Resistance Adjutant sallied forth with us into the blackness for this purpose.” Gathering in Uncle Sam’s parachuted largesse was, Bruce wrote, “a comedy of errors”. The cannisters contained dismantled bazookas, rifles, grenades and ammunition, which found their way into Hemingway’s arsenal. When Mac returned from Le Mans with cash, Papa could both arm and pay his irregulars.55 Hemingway’s men loved him, all wondering when they were going to Paname—to Paris!

  MUCH TO TAITTINGER’S SURPRISE after the morning’s menacing treatment, he and his colleagues were served a decent tea including jam and biscuits. Shortly afterwards they learnt they were finally going to the Depot. Once again they were taken through the Préfecture’s great courtyard, now even more crammed with seized German vehicles, including open-top cars with bloody seats. Taittinger also noticed captured Miliciens—who had missed Bassompierre’s buses on the 17th—being roughly herded towards the cells, their womenfolk pulled along by their hair. From every direction firearms could be heard.56

  With Taittinger and René Bouffet in front, résistants herded the deposed dignitaries of Occupied Paris through the Préfecture’s west gate into the relatively calm Boulevard du Palais. “Those are toffs,” remarked an FFI. But there was little degradation at this stage. Taittinger and his friends were marched past the Palais de Justice, near the exquisite medieval Sainte-Chapelle. As they walked, Taittinger remembered a saying from the “Great Revolution”: “Whoever salutes the King will be hung. Whoever insults him will suffer the same fate.” Neither saluted nor injured, he had survived so far. Now in the cells of the Depot, whose usual occupants were petty criminals, tarts and low-lifes, Taittinger noticed René Bouffet’s morale beginning to collapse. “There’s a little sunlight still. There are balconies with geraniums,” said Taittinger comfortingly. The Depot’s warders were professionals; recognising the extraordinary situation they promised to treat Taittinger and his colleagues according to the rules. It was now forty hours since the FFIs had seized the Hôtel de Ville. Taittinger thought their impertinence breathtaking, presuming to liberate Paris and only making matters worse.57

  Their cell was in Quartiers des Soeurs, that part of the Depot normally reserved for female prisoners, now filling up with the épuration’s first victims.

  “If there isn’t enough room you could always put us in the Concièrgerie, where the Royal Family were held during the Revolution,” Taittinger quipped to a wardress.

  Smiling slightly, she replied that those cells were now a museum, as he well knew. Instead Taittinger and his colleagues were allocated the cell once occupied by Monsignor Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris executed by the Communards in 1871.

  “I hope this doesn’t mean that history is going to repeat itself,” Taittinger remarked.

  “Show me a cell that doesn’t have a history,” the wardress replied.

  At least
they could see daylight, but in the lower cells women accused of collaboration, horizontal and otherwise, wailed piteously. Unlike Bouffet, Taittinger noticed that Cornillat and Ruegger kept their spirits up well.58

  AT 11PM, AS THE ELECTRICITY CAME BACK ON, and news-hungry Jean Galtier-Boissière frantically tuned his radio to any frequency offering hope, Bobby Bender arrived at Nordling’s consulate. Nordling’s truce was in tatters, but von Choltitz had a proposal for resurrecting it.

  The previous evening von Choltitz was visited by Otto Abetz, who had briefly returned to Paris to tie up various loose ends. Abetz claimed that von Choltitz wanted to discuss political matters, and they reaffirmed to each other that Hitler’s destruction order should be disobeyed. But the path von Choltitz was following, with the danger it posed for his family under Sippenhaft, was tearing him apart. Sympathising with von Choltitz’s position, Abetz promised that when he returned to Berlin he would protest against Wehrmacht conduct, thereby making von Choltitz appear over-zealous rather than the opposite. Later that night Abetz sent two telegrams to OKW emphasising how conscientiously von Choltitz was behaving.59

  Perhaps power cuts exacerbated the misunderstandings between Joachim von Ribbentrop’s Auswärtigesamt (Foreign Office) in Berlin and Abetz, placing the latter incommunicado for several hours. Given the paranoia among senior Nazis after 20 July, it was unsurprising that Ribbentrop considered whether Abetz would defect to the Allies, launching investigations to find him. Abetz was probably incapable of a complete volte face, but he undoubtedly began laying down moral capital intended to save his skin when Hitler’s Germany collapsed.60

  Even while holding Pétain’s government captive, Hitler’s inner circle never thought them collabo enough. Goebbels farcically regarded Jacques Doriot as “more suited to our needs”, to be Vichy’s Prime Minister “in exile” than Laval. But, prefering Laval’s sophisticated wit to the bully-boy Doriot, Abetz scuppered this idea. Hence Goebbels regarded both Laval and Abetz as disastrous for Germany’s cause, writing, “What could have been accomplished, if instead of Abetz we had had a real National Socialist managing German politics in Paris!”61