The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas

by Christopher Robbins

  He lunged at the American, grabbed his coat and began to tear it from him. The commandos watched the assault in mute confusion before a couple of GIs pulled Michel from their captain and took him to the commander. ‘He was a very different man and apologised. He took the prisoners and made everything all right. But I was still furious.’

  In Grenoble, the Biviers Commando was formed into a Special Police Group, and Michel was put in charge of the investigation and arrest of Milice, Vichy officials and criminal collaborators. He also served with the Deuxième Bureau (French Army intelligence).[118] It appealed to his sense of irony that the hunted had finally become the hunter. In the days following liberation, there were hundreds of arrests and Michel’s unit was especially active. Those captured were taken before a judge and formally charged, but retribution was not always so measured as the population took its revenge all over the country. Members of the Milice in particular often met with rough and ready justice. They were hanged from lamp-posts, made to dig their own graves and even burned alive. ‘I had nothing to do with that sort of thing and regretted it. I was not seeking revenge but intent on doing a job that I considered important. I wanted to see these people brought to justice.’

  There were also swift reprisals on the day of liberation for the cruelty of the Germans in Grenoble. The populace remembered with bitterness the fate of ten young non-combatant hostages taken in the Vercors after two Germans had been killed. They were jailed for months until the SS took them from their cells, telling them they were to be set free. The hostages were driven in a truck in the early hours of the morning to the Cours Beriat and killed one by one with a shot to the neck. Their bodies were left on the pavement until noon as an example. Now, in an act of revenge, nine young French militiamen who had served beside the Germans were taken to the same place, tied to posts and shot before a jeering crowd.

  Others harshly treated were the collabos horizontales (horizontal collaborators), the name given to French girls who had slept with German soldiers. Their heads were shaved and they were dragged through the streets, mocked and beaten. The strength of feeling against them can best be judged by a comment made by the FFI chaplain-general, a man who later became an advocate of forgiveness and reconciliation. He recorded an incident in his diary of entering a café full of German soldiers accompanied by French girls. He stared hard at one and she blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘Those girls could be dipped in tar and burned in the public square and it would affect me no more than a fire in a fireplace of a neighbour’s house.’[119]

  Gertrude Stein, the American writer, who spent the entire war in the mountains north of Grenoble in the village of Culoz, was similarly hard-hearted to the breed. ‘Today the village is excited terribly excited because they are shaving the heads of girls who kept company with the Germans during the occupation. It is called the coiffure of 1944, and naturally it is terrible because the shaving is done publicly... Life in the Middle Ages, it certainly is most interesting, and logical it certainly is.’[120]

  One of the horizontals came under Michel’s jurisdiction when he was asked to deliver her to the authorities. She sat meekly beside him in the jeep as she was driven to her fate. He looked across at her, a young, attractive girl apart from her crudely shaved head. ‘I was tempted to let her go. And I think that any appeal or explanation on her part would have swayed me. But as I looked at her I realised she was psychologically gone. She expected punishment and was resigned totally to it. Perhaps she even welcomed it. She had no urge to escape and reminded me of those at Les Milles who had succumbed to the Siren Song, or the last man chasing the tumbril to take him to the guillotine. Had I stopped the jeep and let her go she would not have understood. She expected to be delivered, so I delivered her.’

  His new role as policeman put him in constant contact with the US military and he found he got along well with Americans despite his disastrous first encounter. ‘The more I met, and liked, the more I thought of how influenced we are by first impressions. They can change our lives. The captain might have turned me into an anti-American for life. I hope not, but it could have happened.’

  The American Army was preparing to move on and fulfil their mission of pursuing the retreating Germans through France and into Germany itself. For the men and women of the Résistance in Grenoble, and the mountain area surrounding it, the war was finally over. But for Michel it had simply entered a new phase, and he was now detached from the FFI to join the American Army as a liaison officer.

  He was attached to the S-2 (Combat Intelligence) section of the 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry, of the 45th Division - known as the Thunderbirds - US Seventh Army. Although it was highly irregular for a foreign national to work in combat intelligence, the Americans were more than happy to have him. His French and English were fluent, and he spoke German like a native. From now on he would wear the uniform of the American Army, but he refused to take any pay because he felt that would make him a mercenary. ‘It was all most unusual, but it was also in the midst of war. I had already established good relations with American combat intelligence. I didn’t need money because everything was provided and the cigarette ration was like hard currency.’

  He particularly liked the cheerful, battle-hardened ‘citizen soldiers’ of the Thunderbirds, and the more he learned about them and their combat record for the previous year, the more he admired them. The 45th was a National Guard infantry division, headquartered in Oklahoma City, and originally made up of non-professional ‘citizen soldiers’ from the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Its recruits were mostly tough young country boys who had been brought up in the hard times of the Depression. Its history was tough too, stretching back to the taming of the Wild West. Although the American Army was segregated from the time of the Civil War throughout the Second World War, the Thunderbirds included many thousands of Native American Indians from tribes such as the Cherokee, Apache, Sioux, Osage and Comanche.[121]

  The fifteen thousand men of the Thunderbirds, fresh from Stateside training camps, had experienced their first taste of enemy fire as they waded ashore on the southern beaches of the island of Sicily on 10 July 1943. It was a date the green troops would come to remember as well as their birthdays. The amphibious landings on Sicily were a success, casualties were relatively light, and the Thunderbirds moved quickly across the island. The men faced their first real test when they ran head on into the newly raised Herman Goering Panzer Division, the elite of the Luftwaffe’s ground troops, but after little over a month of combat the island of Sicily was taken. The performance impressed the commander of the Seventh Army, General George S. Patton: ‘The 45th Division, a green outfit, went into combat with two veteran outfits, and asked no favours, made no excuses... I’m damned proud of every officer and man in the division.’[122]

  Italy sued for an armistice on 3 September 1945, switching sides in the war, but the Germans dug in and committed themselves to defending every inch of territory. The Thunderbirds now landed at Salerno, south of Naples, in the face of well-planned and determined German Résistance. The enemy finally withdrew to its defensive mountain line further north and took up winter positions. The Allies would be forced to fight their way up the Italian boot in one of the toughest struggles with the Wehrmacht on any front in the Second World War. The terrain favoured the defence, and advancing troops had to endure heavy rains which washed away bridges and turned motor pools and bivouac areas into marshes.

  At the end of January 1944 an infantry battalion of the Thunderbirds landed on the beach at Anzio, and the entire division became committed to what was to prove a savage and costly campaign, one of the bloodiest battles in US military history. The plan called for an amphibious landing to the rear of the Germans’ forward winter position, just thirty miles south of Rome. The attack caught the enemy by surprise, but the Allies spent too long landing men and equipment and became trapped on the beachhead. The Germans launched a furious counter-attack with the intention of liquidating the confined
force. Elements of seven German divisions, with full air support from the Luftwaffe and the heaviest artillery bombardment of the Italian campaign, were brought to bear. The conflict raged over four months, involved hundreds of thousands of men, and was more akin to a First World War battle, with massive artillery bombardments and human-wave assaults. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but the tenacity of the Thunderbirds saved the beachhead.[123]

  The Thunderbirds then faced months of slogging battle through Italy until they reached the south bank of the Tiber, entering Rome across a blown bridge on 5 June. A month later the division was back in the Salerno area for intensive amphibious training. And after a further two weeks they were wading ashore at St Maxime on the French Riviera. The men Michel now came across had been in combat for more than a year and displayed a battle-hardened confidence he recognised. It felt good to be among them. ‘I grew to love the men of the 45th. These were combat troops from Oklahoma, a long way from home, who faced heavy fighting with great individual courage. I developed enormous respect for the capabilities and fighting spirit of the US Army.’[124]

  The Americans moved north out of Grenoble. The German Army in southern France had been ordered by Berlin to conduct an orderly fighting retreat, and the military command in Lyon was ordered to hold the city until the Xlth SS Panzer Division had passed through. The Wehrmacht was threatened with encirclement as the Allied armies coming from Normandy and the south moved closer to joining up. General Patton reached Orleans at the same time as the Americans reached Grenoble. Lyon found itself trapped in an ever-tightening vice.

  German control of the city had been on the verge of break-down since the liberation of Grenoble, and it now drifted towards anarchy as members of the Résistance erected barricades and mounted a sustained campaign of sniping. But the Wehrmacht held on, ruthlessly demolishing whole blocks of apartments thought to shelter snipers. German soldiers continued to patrol the streets as retreating units from infantry divisions, as well as the Xlth Panzer Division, passed through unhindered.

  At Gestapo headquarters, Klaus Barbie gave the order to destroy archives and begin the final ‘cleansing’ operation. More than twenty French collaborators complicit in Gestapo crimes were murdered in order to remove witnesses. Barbie then turned his attention to the large prison population in Montluc.

  On 17 August, one hundred and nine prisoners, half of whom were Jewish, were taken to Bron airport on the outskirts of the city. They were told they were going on a work detail to fill bomb craters made by an Allied raid a few days earlier, and they were given shovels to unload a truck full of earth. A German-speaking Alsatian, who had been taken along as interpreter, tried to intercede with the adjutant on behalf of a Jewish prisoner, who had both arms in bandages.

  ‘This man can’t work,’ he said.

  ‘Tonight, he won’t feel a thing,’ the adjutant replied.

  Later, the prisoners were pushed into unfilled craters and machine-gunned. A thin layer of earth was then spread over them.

  Three days after this massacre another one hundred and ten male and female prisoners were taken from Montluc and driven to a disused fort outside the city. Among them was a priest who had hidden weapons and a radio operator in the vestry of his church. The Gestapo had cut off his ears and pulled out one of his eyes. At the fort, the prisoners’ hands were tied behind their backs and they were led up a flight of stairs into a room where they were shot. According to the sworn testimony of a member of the Milice who worked in Gestapo HQ: ‘The prisoners had to walk over a heap of their former comrades. Blood was pouring through the ceiling and I could distinctly hear the victims fall as they were shot. At the end, the bodies lay one and a half metres high, and the Germans sometimes had to step on to their victims to finish off those who were still moaning.’

  An old woman with a wrinkled face turned to the soldier about to shoot her and said, ‘I’m dying for France, but you, you bastard, you’ll rot in hell.’

  The dead bodies were doused in petrol and set alight. SS men lit phosphorus bricks and left the building, wiping blood and brains from their uniforms. ‘While the fire was raging, we saw a victim who had somehow survived,’ the Milice witness said. ‘She came to a window on the south side and begged her executioners for pity. They answered her prayers with a rapid burst of gunfire. Riddled with bullets and affected by the intense heat, her face contorted into a fixed mask, like a vision of horror. The temperature was increasing and her face melted like wax until one could see her bones. At that moment she gave a nervous shudder and began to turn her decomposing head - what was left of it - from left to right, as if to condemn her executioners. In a final shudder, she pulled herself completely straight, and fell backwards.’

  On 21 August, yet more prisoners were taken from Montluc to Bron airport. They too were pushed into pits and machine-gunned. A man at work in a hangar with the airport supervisor said, ‘Look boss, they’re shooting people.’

  The supervisor went to the door of the hangar and saw a further eight men pulled from a truck by their hair and jackets. They too were pushed into a crater and shot. Later a German soldier came over to the hangar to chat.

  ‘It’s terrible what they’re doing, killing them like that,’ the supervisor said.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ the German replied. ‘It’s only Jews, good to make sausage for dogs.’

  The Gestapo were becoming desperate in their murder. At headquarters in Place Bellecour prisoners were shot in their cells or taken to the basement for summary execution. Eight hundred prisoners remained in Montluc. A Résistance leader, unaware of the previous massacres, sent a signed letter to the Gestapo threatening to execute all German hostages taken by the Maquis if any prisoners were harmed. The immediate response of the Germans was to select fifty Jews and shoot them.

  Cardinal Gerlier, horrified by reports of the massacre at the fort, went personally to Gestapo HQ to plead for the remaining prisoners’ lives. At the same time the Résistance, now aware of the murders, announced the execution of eighty German hostages. The Gestapo was informed that a further seven hundred captives would be executed unless the murder stopped.

  At 9.50 on the evening of 24 August the survivors at Montluc discovered that the Germans had abandoned the prison, leaving the keys with the highest-ranking inmate. People in the streets outside the jail heard the prisoners singing an emotional rendition of La Marseillaise.

  Klaus Barbie was among the last Germans to leave the city, taking a train out on 30 August. He was commended by his superiors for his work while in Lyon and duly promoted. Lyon was liberated by the Americans on 3 September.[125]

  The Thunderbirds rolled forward in the peculiar atmosphere created by the contrast between fierce combat and euphoric liberation. Michel immediately demonstrated his value to S-2 by establishing a network of Résistance contacts behind enemy lines able to supply vital information. ‘I interrogated prisoners about the strength and location of enemy troops. I questioned suspected Nazi operatives who had been captured on issues of sabotage or espionage.’ The officers in charge allowed him an increasingly free hand. And as his fellow intelligence agents wrote their reports, he was surprised to find himself frequently asked to spell words in English.

  The pitiful retreat of the Germans from the region, often in trucks pulled by horses because they had no petrol, was described by Gertrude Stein, who watched motorbikes roar through her village. ‘Then there came along hundreds of German soldiers, walking, it was a terribly hot dry day and in the mountains the heat is even hotter than below, and these soldiers were children none older than sixteen and some looking not more than fourteen... these childish faces and the worn bodies and the tired feet and the shoulders of aged men and an occasional mule carrying a gun heavier than the boys could carry and then covered wagons... and later we were told in them were the sick and wounded, and they were being dragged by mules... and about a hundred of them were on women’s bicycles that they had evidently taken as they went along, it was unbelievable, the
motorised army of Germany of 1940 being reduced to this, to an old-fashioned Mexican army, it seemed to be more ancient than pictures of the moving army of the American civil war... it was a sorry sight in every way.’

  The mayor’s wife remarked that the Germans probably picked young soldiers because children could set fire to homes and kill without really knowing what they were doing, while even the worst of grown men drew the line somewhere. And once the Germans left - Stein’s dog, Basket, was so traumatised after a hundred soldiers moved through the house and garden that it was unable to bark for days - people awaited the Americans. A splendid rumour circulated through the village that all the officers wore ten-gallon hats, a story Stein did nothing to suppress.

  The first Americans were from the Thunderbirds, and they arrived in a jeep. ‘What a day of days,’ Stein wrote euphorically about the liberation of her village. ‘Oh happy day, that is all I can say: oh happy day... We talked and patted each other in the good American way, and I had to know where they came from and where they were going and where they were born... After at least two years of not a word with America, there they were... Then we went to look at their car the jeep, and I had expected it to be much smaller but it was quite big and they said did I want a ride and I said you bet I wanted a ride and we all climbed in and there I was riding in an American army car driven by an American soldier. Everybody was so excited.’[126]

  The division advanced rapidly, clearing snipers out of some towns and villages, and taking others without a shot. ‘The Thunderbirds surrounded a German infantry unit and delivered an ultimatum to them to surrender or be destroyed. They didn’t surrender. It was insanity. So we went ahead and destroyed them.’ The survivors were taken as POWs, and most proved to be untrained, while some were not truly fit enough to serve. Michel was told by prisoners that when they took their medical they were passed with the words ‘Gut fur die Knochenmühle!’ - good for the bone mill! He questioned the commanding officer on his motives for refusing to surrender and inviting the slaughter of his own men. ‘I thought he was playing for time and waiting for reinforcements - something logical. I needed to find out, and asked him, “What were you thinking? I want to know: what were you thinking?”’