PHILIPPE DE GAULLE WAS INVITED TO DINE with his father at the War Ministry on the Rue Saint-Dominique. After the Liberation, black-out curtains and gaffer tape crosses had disappeared. Dust-sheets had been lifted from the impressive Empire furniture. As on the evening before D-Day, it was a Spartan meal “based on American military rations, curiously completed by beef en gelée, called ‘monkey’ and sardines in oil. … A reasonable wine and freshly baked bread were the only luxuries enjoyed by a small committee of men; an ADC, a member of Leclerc’s staff, a member of the Resistance and someone from ‘outside’.”164
“In liberating Paris, we have redressed the scuttling of the fleet at Toulon!” de Gaulle told Philippe.165 He struggled to forgive the French Navy for mostly remaining under Vichy’s authority until November 1942, and wasting the expensive ships they received during the 1930s. When, that same August, Pétain sent Admiral Auphan to Paris to negotiate a gracious transfer of power, de Gaulle ignored Auphan’s feelers. Albeit a footnote, this detail indicates de Gaulle’s anger towards the French Navy over the Vichy period.
But what had the Liberation of Paris cost the 2e DB? “My father regretted that the French, particularly Parisians, ignored the human cost of this battle. He would say, ‘They only remember the image of a day of jubilation and acclamation,’” Philippe de Gaulle told journalist Michel Tauriac. “They did not know that in Paris, and in the Paris region, the 2e DB lost more people than during the rest of the campaign in France. Effectively we sustained losses of ninety-six killed and two hundred and eighty-three wounded out of twelve thousand men intra muros—within the walls—of Paris and two times as many within the environs of Paris, making a little less than fourteen per cent of our strength out of action after eight days in combat.”166
On the German side, during the last actions at Le Bourget, their 47th Infantry Division is believed to have left seven hundred dead on the ground. Other figures for German losses around Paris run at between three and four thousand dead and up to fourteen thousand prisoners while casualties among the FFI and French civilians were nine hundred and six hundred dead, respectively, and many more wounded. Civilian casualties were difficult to attribute; if someone living alone was shot while looking out of their window they might not have been found for weeks.
At one hundred and seven hectares, the cemetery at Pantin, which opened in 1886, is the largest in Paris. It was here that the 2e DB brought the Tricolore-draped coffins of their dead. Watched over by General Leclerc, their souls prayed for by the divisional chaplain Père Houchet of the White Fathers, they were interred. “Sadly moving,” wrote Girard in a diary entry that also mentions departed comrades he knew well.167
AS PIERRE TAITTINGER AND SACHA GUITRY languished, first in the Vélodrome d’Hiver, then the Drancy housing estate internment camp, others, who either collaborated or avoided taking sides, testified to the art of surviving well. Although Coco Chanel’s affair with German attaché Baron von Dincklage was well known, the famous couturier got off lightly compared to other Frenchwomen accused of collaboration horizontale. Arrested at the Ritz early one morning, she told her maid Germaine Domenger that if she did not return reasonably soon Domenger should contact “Monsieur Churchill”. Domenger waited anxiously, then went to her mistress’s home on the adjacent Rue Cambon to search for useful telephone numbers. Released after a brief interrogation, Chanel was already at her home when Domenger arrived.168
Chanel’s survival undoubtedly had everything to do with the fact that, whoever she slept with, she was a world brand. “She just put an announcement in the window of her emporium that scent was free for GIs, who thereupon queued up to get their bottles of Chanel No. 5, and would have been outraged if the French police had touched a hair on her head. Having thus gained a breathing space, she proceeded to look for help à gauche et à droite, and not in vain, thereby managing to avoid making even a token appearance among the gilded company—Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau, Sacha Guitry, on a collaborationist charge,” wrote Malcolm Muggeridge in amused, worldly tones.169
For Picasso, being a world brand also undoubtedly saved him from an ugly fate during the Occupation. He was a Spaniard who hated Franco, who claimed impishly to be a communist despite the stashes of cash secreted around his home, a trail-blazer of exactly the kind of degenerate art the Nazis officially despised—and Hitler barely touched him. Intellectuals among the occupiers, notably Ernst Junger, befriended him, albeit not in a particularly meaningful way, and acquired some of his paintings. But when a man has painted Guernica, the greatest anti-Fascist statement committed to canvas, accusations of collaboration could never have stuck. “It is not that I behaved well, but others behaved worse,” he said afterwards.170
According to his biographer, Arianna Stasinopoulos-Huffington, Picasso became a “Symbol of the victory over oppression, of survival and of the glory of old Europe. He was a celebrity they could co-opt to add more glamour to their triumph. Having always had a preference for symbols over reality, he accepted. There were thousands of anonymous heroes in the Resistance, but Picasso, although certainly no hero, was a monument, as well known as the Eiffel Tower and almost as accessible.”171
Shortly after the Liberation, Françoise Gilot found around twenty American soldiers snoozing in the atelier she shared with her elderly lover on the Rue des Grands Augustins. They had come to see Picasso.172
The lights were back on in the City of Light.
* Following the Liberation, Georges Dukson found it difficult to reintegrate into civilian life, falling into petty crime. Shot in the leg while trying to escape from jail, he died on the operating table. The photographer Henri Cartier Bresson made a particular point of ensuring that his photograph including Dukson was published as widely as possible.
* This street was named after the founders of the La Samaritaine department store.
Epilogue
September 1944–December 1947
SEEN FROM THE AIR, WARLUS, IN THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOMME, is an agricultural village of modest size, built in red brick and torchis—a mix of clay and straw. The village green, bracketed by pollarded trees, lies slightly to the west of the main road through the village. The honey-coloured stone church to which Madame Philippe de Hauteclocque was taking her children on Assumption Day stands on the green’s northeast side. To the north, among irregularly shaped rectangles of woodland, at the end of an oval-shaped gravel drive, the manor house Tailly stands like a squadron of dragoons. By early September, Montgomery’s British 21st Army Group had taken Amiens, placing General Leclerc’s home behind Allied lines.
On the morning of 6 September a 2e DB Piper Cub landed in a pasture west of the woods behind Tailly. To Leclerc’s immense relief the first people he saw cycling along the track towards the aircraft were his eldest sons, Henri and Hubert, now substantially larger than when he left them in 1940. In the meantime, young estate worker Léopold Doualle cycled to the main house to tell Madame Thérèse de Hauteclocque of her husband’s return.
“Give me your bicycle,” said Thérèse.
Seeing his wife cycling out of the woods, Leclerc grabbed Hubert’s bicycle and pedalled towards her. Each astride the standard transport of the Occupation they were reunited. Later that day, with his wife’s approval, Leclerc gave his elder sons permission to join the 2e DB.1
ANOTHER JOYFUL HOMECOMING THAT SEPTEMBER was had by Pierre Lefaucheux, whose arrest in June had enabled Henri Rol-Tanguy to step further up the hierarchy of the P1 FFI. After leaving Paris on 27 August, Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux made her way into German-held territory in her relentless quest to find and, if possible, rescue her husband. Field Marshal Model had yet to reconsolidate the Wehrmacht’s western front, and Marie-Hélène managed to get through with the help of an Italian haulage contractor from Nancy who had a friend in Buchenwald. Miraculously, Molinari put Marie-Hélène in contact with a Gestapo official in Nancy, another Nazi anxious to demonstrate that Germans could be humane; a young, thin man called von Else. Von Else discover
ed that the prison train of 16 August took Pierre Lefaucheux to Buchenwald. Von Else also had sufficient rank to order both the release of Lefaucheux and Molinari’s friend back to the Gestapo in Nancy. Even better, von Else drove Molinari and Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux to Buchenwald to ensure that his order was carried out. While Marie-Hélène waited anxiously at the camp’s gates, von Else spent several hours negotiating her husband’s release, eventually returning to the gate with a dishevelled, thin looking individual who was indeed Pierre Lefaucheux. Like a classical legend, Marie-Hélène ventured to the gates of Hades to save the man she loved. Thrilled by her success, Marie-Hélène telephoned Claire Girard, whom she met during mid-August when Claire was trying to save her brother, only to discover from her mother that Claire was among the last people the Germans shot before withdrawing from Courdimanche northwest of Paris.2
NOW THAT THE PÉRIODE INSURRECTIONELLE WAS OVER, Henri Rol-Tanguy had to consider his future. Although some former résistants felt that de Gaulle had acted both brutally and ungratefully towards the Resistance, returning France to the rule of law was a priority. Most Parisians wanted this above all, even telling Leclerc’s boys that, while they were grateful for the liberation, it was time they moved on. Liberated France had massive re-organising to do, particularly rebuilding its armed forces. To this end Rol-Tanguy gave the French Army full information on the most useful members of his former command, who mostly joined the new 10th Infantry Division, largely composed of Parisians, and whose badge was the ship and lys of Paris. Rol-Tanguy’s clandestine rank of colonel was confirmed and he was given a regiment.
Soon after leaving Paris the 2e DB was in action again as part of General Patton’s drive into the Vosges. After liberating Vittel the 2e DB fought two classic armoured battles at Dompaire and Baccarat where Leclerc demonstrated that, even if Paris was set up for him, he was an excellent armoured division commander. Much of the damage to the counterattacking Panzer forces at Dompaire was inflicted by the RBFM’s Tank-Destroyers. Leclerc rewarded them by reinstating their red lanyards. The dying of course did not stop. Shortly after becoming a sub-group commander, Jean Fanneau de la Horie was killed by shrapnel at Badonvilliers.
But the 2e DB was not big enough for both Leclerc and Pierre Billotte. There were insinuations that Billotte could have entered Paris quicker. As de Gaulle’s former ADC, Billotte had become used to the diplomatic aspect of soldiering and the benefits that went with it. Matters finally boiled over when Billotte used von Choltitz’s Mercedes to get around the units in his battlegroup while Leclerc merely used a Jeep. Luckily de Gaulle had another plan for Billotte: command of the newly formed 10th Infantry Division. His departure enabled Leclerc to give Jacques de Guillebon a battlegroup command, something Guillebon had long deserved.
ON 13 SEPTEMBER FORTY-EIGHT SPITFIRES escorted Alfred Duff Cooper to take up his new appointment as British ambassador to France. “It was a perfect morning and we enjoyed the flight,” wrote Duff Cooper. “It was interesting to see the traces of war as we went along. We flew quite slowly over Paris and saw all the familiar buildings. The streets looked very empty but I do not think they are really emptier than the London streets, and there are many more bicycles and horse carriages. We were met by the staff, Holman, Reilly, etc., and also by representatives of General de Gaulle and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We were attended on our way from Le Bourget by French police motorcyclists, and everywhere as we passed the people seemed pleased to see us, saluting and waving. We went to the Arc de Triomphe where I had to lay a wreath on the grave of the Unknown Soldier, and then to the Berkeley Hotel, where we always used to stay, and which Freddie [Fane] has requisitioned complete for us and the staff. There we had an excellent lunch, and then went round to the embassy.”3
At 35 Rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Duff Cooper saw virtually the same spectacle of expatriate possessions as Lord Carrington and his comrades three weeks earlier; although a start had been made sorting out the belongings of those who had fled in 1940. Otherwise there was little damage and the only obstacles to immediate habitation were lack of utilities.
The following day Duff Cooper met Georges Bidault, now de Gaulle’s Foreign Minister, who admitted being over-promoted. Difficulties continued over de Gaulle’s status as a de facto but unelected head of state, something Duff Cooper knew remained a sensitive issue for the proud Frenchman. When Major Desmond Morton said that Churchill wanted to visit Paris as soon as possible, Duff Cooper replied that the British should recognise de Gaulle’s government first. “Nothing could do more harm,” Duff Cooper wrote in his diary, “than if he [Churchill] came as part of SHAEF and lived outside Paris with them at Versailles.”4
Socially, Duff Cooper and his wife, Lady Diana, were in their element. In the words of Malcolm Muggeridge, the Coopers “raised the banner of pre-war smartness and many flocked to it, some of whom for various reasons had been lying low since the liberation”.5 Duff Cooper’s diary acquires a whiff of Proust as he describes these gatherings. “Nelly de Vogüé was there, and also her husband, whom I had not met before. He has been a leading light in the Resistance movement, and was wearing the FFI armlet.”6
There were plenty of people in Paris anxious to tell Duff Cooper everything that had happened during the Occupation. Prefect of Police Charles Luizet, whom Duff Cooper knew from Algiers, gave him a guided tour of Nazi torture chambers. A few weeks later, Luizet was the catalyst of a lighter moment when he ordered the arrest of British comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse, who was living quietly at the Hotel Bristol after his release from internment in Germany where he unwisely made light-hearted broadcasts. Once Luizet recognised that Wodehouse’s sins were caused by unworldliness rather than treachery, a face-saving fudge was arranged whereby Wodehouse was released via a short stay in hospital. Discussing the Wodehouse affair at the British Embassy, Duff Cooper began falling asleep, until Muggeridge more amusingly pointed out that, “Though so dyed in the wool a noncombatant, Wodehouse had, all unconsciously, made at least one useful contribution to the war effort. The Germans, in their literal way, took his works as a guide to English manners, and used them when briefing their agents for a mission across the Channel. Thus it happened that an agent they dropped in the Fen country was wearing spats—an unaccustomed article of attire that led to his speedy apprehension. Duff Cooper agreed that this was a notable service deserving of an OBE, but did not feel that, in the circumstances, he could recommend Wodehouse for one.”7
Sacha Guitry received less understanding. Asked by an examining magistrate why he agreed to meet Goering, Guitry replied “par curiosité”.8 Merely meeting a senior Nazi amounted to a smoking gun for those administering the épuration (purge). Perhaps, like Wodehouse, Guitry’s real crime was to continue his career, apparently indifferent to the suffering around him. Towards the end of his Paris appointment Duff Cooper wrote, “He [Guitry] was a notorious collaborator and was in prison for a long time, but everything appears now to be forgiven. He told some funny stories and told them beautifully.”9
COMPARED TO OTHERS, Guitry’s collaboration was comparatively minor. Liberation courts were far more concerned with active displays of common cause with the Nazis and Vichy. Drieu la Rochelle, having already attempted suicide during the liberation and been revived by his housekeeper’s intervention, avoided liberation justice by taking a second overdose but carefully left a note, “This time, Gabrielle, let me sleep.” She did.10
Robert Brasillach’s trial happened fairly quickly. He made the mistake of giving a great speech, declaring that he was prepared to pay for what he had done. Had he been content to let his counsel do the talking he might have lived. The jury condemned him by a majority rather than unanimously. Brasillach accepted his death sentence with the words, “C’est un honneur.”11
But de Gaulle’s government really wanted those who wisely left the Metropole in the slipstream of la grande fuites des Fritzs; men like Milice leader Joseph Darnand, and his henchmen Max Knipping and Jean Bassompierre, Vichy’s pl
enipotentiary in Paris, Fernand de Brinon, who even Laval called a “pig”; men with French blood dripping from their hands. They also wanted Pétain and Laval themselves, and everyone who, by following Vichy’s line, promoted Nazi Germany’s interests. Although Pétain and Laval detested each other, both honestly believed they were serving France’s interests, regarding their forcible abduction to Germany that August as a form of martyrdom.
For young Frenchmen like Christian de la Mazière who took collaboration to its logical conclusion and re-mustered in the SS Charlemagne Division that autumn, their choice might still mean something if Pétain gave them his blessing. But when La Mazière and a brother officer, in new SS uniforms, arrived at Sigmaringen hoping Pétain would see them, they were disappointed. “The Marshal cannot receive you,” they were told by an official. “He can’t receive us though we’re going to get ourselves killed?” protested La Mazière. “What about Laval?” But he also refused to see them. “We walked back into Sigmaringen where there were several Gasthause where the French congregated,” wrote La Mazière. “Feeding time for us is a sacred hour, but it was first come, first served. We saw Rebatet, Céline with his wife, and Vigan pass in the street. I wanted to speak to them, but La Buharaye, who had not got over his anger, told me to forget it.”12
DE GAULLE WAS ANXIOUS that France finish the war not only with her liberty restored but with her rank in the world reinstated as well. “Coming home” was not enough. And even if Paris was French again, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill seemed willing to take France seriously. One reason for this was obvious: France’s coffers were empty. The Americans were unenthusiastic about financing any more units for France’s renascent armed forces. Once de Lattre de Tassigny’s First Army got past its initial burst up the Rhone valley, its divisions were used to hold the line rather than conduct major thrusts into Germany. Leclerc, who hated de Lattre anyway, believed that his treasured 2e DB would finish the war better if they remained under US command. For their part, American generals Patton, Haislip and Patch were glad to have Leclerc. But when Leclerc asked for the RBFM to be re-equipped with the new Tank-Destroyer, he was told such items were not included in the French rearmament programme.
Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed Page 54