It is ultimately misleading to dwell excessively on the military contribution of the Resistance. Probably more has been written on these two months of military operations than on the rest of the history of the Resistance, but for most of the Resistance’s existence, military activity comprised only a tiny part of its experience. The Liberation fighting is the least characteristic moment by which to judge what resistance had represented for most of its protagonists most of the time. The resisters whom Viannay led into action in June had no idea how to use the few arms they had. One of them said: ‘[the deputy DMR] was supposed to show us how to use our equipment. But he never deigned to do so. I had a rocket-thrower. I carried the thing about with me two or three times, but each time I left it in a field because I had no idea what to do with it.’51 Equally, the arms dropped on Mont Mouchet were only of limited value because the younger men lacked experience in how to use their weapons.
The importance of the Resistance to the Liberation was political and moral rather than military. By August, the FFI forces, which had been approximately 50,000 in January 1944 and 100,000 in June, approached 500,000.52 The case for the Resistance—if a case needs to be made—is not that liberation could not have occurred without it, but precisely that it could have done. Those who joined the FFI towards the end chose to enlist in a battle that would have been won without them—which does not mean that they were running no risk. About 24,000 FFI combatants were killed in the Liberation fighting. Those who fought at the Liberation did so voluntarily, contradicting the truism that no soldier wants to risk his life at the end of a war that is already won.53 The FFI, of course, did not include all the French people. To what extent did the population as whole participate in the Liberation? Was there a national insurrection in 1944?
Even the GPRF started to back this idea of an insurrection as the battle moved to its final stages. On 5 August, Algiers radio called on the people of Brittany to join in a ‘national uprising’, as the Americans moved west. Two days later, de Gaulle broadcast that it was everyone’s duty ‘to participate in the supreme effort’—although the BBC refused to broadcast the word ‘uprising’.54 It was, of course, the Communists who did most to whip the population into a preinsurrectionary fever. Numerous strikes occurred in the spring of 1944, most of them short-lived. The biggest was a general strike in Marseilles on 25 May which started with a demonstration by women protesting against food shortages. But the strikers were stopped in their tracks after an Allied bombing raid on 27 May which left 1,700 dead. From 6 June, the Communists called for a general strike in the Nord/Pas-de-Calais. Everywhere they used their front organizations to organize food demonstrations and push for the formation of Patriotic Militias. Where they could not get the CDLs to proclaim an insurrection they set up their own insurrectional committees.55 Under Communist pressure, the CNR issued a strike call for 14 July. The Communists worked tirelessly for this strike which was billed as a preparation for the National Insurrection: in the Var, they produced forty-five tracts in two weeks, full of references to 1792.56
What were the results of this frenetic activity? The Communists got nowhere in forming Patriotic Militias. In most places, these were tiny or non-existent.57 In Marseilles, working-class morale had not recovered from the Allied raid, and when the Communists tried to prepare a demonstration on 14 July, they had to bring in FTP members from Aix.58 In Toulon also, the Communist strike was undermined by Allied bombing raids: the workforce of the Arsenal fell to half its normal strength as people fled the city to escape the bombs.59 Elsewhere the 14 July strikes were successful, but they were not usually the prelude to a generalized insurrection.
Liberation assumed many different forms. The Haute-Savoie was the first département to be liberated without Allied help. The Resistance fighters, numbering about 55,000, faced 2,500 ill-equipped and low-grade German troops. In four towns, there was a semi-insurrectionary situation.60 In the south-west, the rapid German retreat meant that there was no enemy against whom to stage an insurrection. In Limoges, for example, a general strike was called on 19 August, and the Maquis surrounded the city. On the next day, the Maquis leader Guingouin, working with SOE and OSS representatives, got the German commander to surrender without firing a shot. In Provence, there were some urban insurrections before the Allies arrived. In Marseilles, which had a German garrison of 17,000 men, a general strike broke out on 19 August. The Groupes francs built barricades, shots were fired at German lorries, and the Liberation Committee took over the prefecture on 21 August. By the time the Allied troops arrived on 24 August, much of the city had been in Resistance hands for several days. The Germans finally surrendered on 28 August. The insurrection, which lasted ten days, had resulted in 5,500 German deaths. Among the resisters, an important role had been played by the MOI. The same was true in Nice, where of the hundred resisters who sparked off the insurrection, about sixty were in the MOI.61
In Lyons, most Resistance leaders had been arrested in the spring, leaving only the immigrant Communists of the ‘Carmagnole’ group. By 20 August, the Germans were retreating northwards through the city. On 24 August, members of the Carmagnole group set off to liberate the two prisons near the central station. On arrival, they discovered that most of the inmates had already been released. They were fired upon by the Germans, and retreated to the suburb of Villeurbanne where people were gathering on the streets. The leader of the Carmagnole group tried to disperse the crowds, but instead they started to build barricades around the Villeurbanne town hall. The Carmagnole group found itself at the head of an insurrection that it had not planned. Setting itself up in the town hall, it appealed for help from the Resistance outside the city. No help arrived because the regional FFI leaders felt that the insurrection was premature. So when the Germans arrived in Villeurbanne, on 26 August, with heavy arms to clear the barricades, the crowds melted away, and the resisters defending the barricades were too poorly armed to hold out. By the end of the day, the insurrection was over, and the Resistance leaders had dispersed to join the Maquis outside the city. The liberation of Lyons was delayed until the first week of September when Allied troops arrived. By then, the Germans had evacuated the city: it was too late for an insurrection.62
It is impossible to consider every case in detail. Philippe Buton, examining local studies of the Liberation, has tried to quantify the number of insurrections which took place in 212 urban centres. He distinguishes three models of liberation. First, the ‘ideal type’ insurrection which involved the FFI fighting the Germans, and the general population participating through strikes and the erection of barricades. Secondly, liberation by ‘partial insurrection’, where the FFI’s contribution was important, but the population remained passive. Thirdly, liberation without any form of insurrection, carried out by the Allies alone or occurring thanks to the spontaneous departure of the Germans. In the first category, Buton finds only five localities (2 per cent of the total), but these include the major cities of Marseilles, Lille, and Paris; in the second, he finds twenty-eight localities (13 per cent); in the third, he finds 179 (85 per cent).63
Inevitably, these categorizations are open to debate. In Toulouse, three eyewitness accounts suggest that the city was liberated by the Resistance. This seems to vindicate Buton’s decision to put the city in his second category. But another eyewitness, Philippe Bertaux, the government’s commissaire in Toulouse, claimed that the Resistance had not genuinely liberated the city because the Germans left so precipitately. On this reading, Toulouse fits Buton’s third category. Appeals for an insurrection in the city had been posted up on 17 August. In the next two days, there were skirmishes with the Germans, but when the Germans left on 19 August, they were observed passively by most of the population. Four days after the liberation of the city, the local MLN paper called on the population to build barricades: ‘as in 1793 our people must conquer their liberty’. The justification for this ‘posthumous’ insurrection was that the Germans were still not far away, but symbolic considerations were pr
obably more important: the German evacuation had cheated the population of its insurrection. On the other hand, 335 people were killed during the fighting that did take place.64
In many rural areas the population played no part at all in the Liberation. After the war the government organized an investigation into the experience of different départements before and during the Liberation. In the Breton département of Finistère 134 mainly rural localities answered the survey. In ninety cases (70 per cent) ‘liberation’ had simply involved the departure of the Germans; in twenty-two cases (16 per cent) it had been carried out by the Allies often accompanied by the FFI; and in fourteen by the FFI alone. In forty-six localities (34 per cent) there had not even been an FFI or Maquis group. And Finistère was a département with quite a high level of resistance.65 Often it is impossible to say whether a locality was liberated as a result of the arrival of the Allies, the departure of the Germans, or the action of the FFI. Indeed these possibilities were not mutually exclusive. In many cases liberation did consist of maquisards marching into towns from which the Germans had recently departed to the cheers of the local population, but this does not necessarily make such liberations phoney. Often, as in Limoges, the peaceful arrival of the Maquis followed sporadic clashes between Maquis and Germans in the surrounding countryside: in such cases, the Maquis can be said to have earned its victory.66 Nonetheless, it is undeniable that the summer of 1944 did not witness a national insurrection of the kind envisaged by the Communists. If the image of insurrection remains an enduring one, the reason lies in the Paris insurrection whose symbolic resonance was enormous—but whose insurrection was it?
The Liberation of Paris
Careful plans had been made for the takeover of power in Paris.67 De Gaulle’s Delegate, Alexandre Parodi, had full authority to act for the GPRF. The provisional secretary-generals had been selected, and they were in contact with the NAP members in the relevant ministries. The role of NAP was to neutralize opposition at the designated moment, and ensure a smooth transfer of power. But the situation was complicated by the strong presence of the Communists in the CPL (and many CLLs in the suburbs), in the trade unions, and in the FFI, whose regional commander was Rol-Tanguy. The Delegation had initially agreed that while it would occupy government offices at the Liberation, the CPL could take over other buildings. But de Gaulle sharply reminded Parodi that no sector should escape the authority of the GPRF.68 De Gaulle made clear what he expected of Parodi in a telegram of 31 July: ‘Always speak loud and clear in the name of the State. The numerous acts of our glorious Resistance are the means by which the nation fights for its salvation. The State is above all these manifestations and actions.’
From early July, the Communists were exerting every effort to create a pre-insurrectionary climate. Some 100,000 people participated in strikes and demonstrations on 14 July. On 10 August, the unions called a railway strike which quickly spread to other industries. On the same day Charles Tillon, in the name of the FTP, issued a call for insurrection. This was not followed by any immediate flare-up, and the next stage towards the insurrection came from an unexpected quarter: the police. Having become increasingly mistrustful of the reliability of the police, the Germans started to disarm them. In response, the three police Resistance organizations went on strike from 15 August. Two of these organizations were non-Communist—the Gaullist Honneur de la Patrie and the Socialist Police et Patrie—but it was the Communist Front national which took the lead. The police were warned that those not obeying the strike call would be considered as traitors after Liberation.
From 15 August, there were almost no police to be seen on the streets of Paris. This emboldened the FTP fighters in their skirmishes with the Germans. They were also encouraged by being able to hear the battle raging between the Allies and the Germans to the west of the capital. On 17 August, for the first time since the start of the Occupation, Parisians woke up to hear no Radio Paris. Its best-known voice, Jean-Hérold Paquis, had left Paris in a convoy of other collaborationists. The end seemed near.
The escalation of violence worried Parodi whose instructions were to avoid a premature insurrection which might become a bloodbath without Allied intervention. Such intervention seemed unlikely because Eisenhower, fearing that the capture of Paris would delay the Allied advance, had decided to by pass the city and only return once the Germans had been fatally weakened. Chaban-Delmas returned from a visit to London on 16 August, with the news that the Americans did not intend to reach Paris before early September. Parodi sent telegrams to London urging that the Americans change their plans, or, if this was impossible, that the BBC appeal for the Paris population to stay calm. On 17 August, at a meeting of the CNR Bureau, Parodi argued against Villon who wanted to call for an insurrection. Even Bidault, usually a reliable ally of the Delegation, felt that events were developing a momentum which could not be stopped. The CPL also met on 17 August, and was split between the Communists, arguing for an insurrection, and Léo Hamon, the representative of CDLR, arguing against. A decision was deferred until the CNR had taken a formal decision.
On the next day (18 August) three posters appeared, summoning the population to action: one from the unions, calling for a general strike; one from Rol-Tanguy, in the name of the FFI, calling for a mobilization of all resistance forces; one from the Communist Party, calling for an immediate insurrection. By the evening of 18 August, the FTP had seized a number of town halls in the suburbs, and it seemed as if an insurrection was underway. It was the occupation of the Prefecture of Police on the next morning (19 August), which finally overcame Parodi’s opposition to an insurrection. The Prefecture was a building of central symbolic importance, as well as being in the geographical heart of Paris, opposite Notre-Dame. The decision to occupy it had been taken by the three police Resistance organizations, but on this occasion the initiative came not from the FN, but the Gaullist Honneur et Patrie.69 The building was occupied without a shot being fired, and at 11 a.m. the GPRF’s appointee as Prefect of Police, Charles Luizet, arrived to take up his post. Neither Parodi, who was trying to slow things down, nor Tanguy, who was trying to speed them up, had any prior knowledge of the seizure of the Prefecture. In the light of this event, at a meeting of the CNR Bureau on 19 August, Parodi decided to ignore his orders from London. He later said that to have opposed the insurrection any longer would have compromised his authority over the Resistance, and jeopardized his chance of exercising any control over events. As it was, Parodi at least ensured that the CNR’s call to insurrection occurred in the name of the GPRF. On the same morning, the CPL published its call for action. The insurrection which had started the day before was now official.
During the rest of the day, the plans for the occupation of key buildings were put into effect. The provisional secretary-generals moved into several ministries without opposition; a group of security guards took control of the Élysée Palace; post offices and telephone exchanges were seized. In the district town halls of Paris and the suburbs, CLL representatives, often Communist, took over the local administration. Although supposedly under the control of the CPL, this process occurred in a very haphazard way, sometimes resulting in skirmishes with the Germans.
The Germans were far from beaten. The 15,000–20,000 German troops armed with tanks were still a match for 35,000 poorly armed FFI fighters without anti-tank weapons. There was serious fighting in the Latin Quarter and around the Gare de la Villette in the north-east. In the afternoon of 19 August, the Germans started attacking the Prefecture whose defenders had insufficient ammunition to hold out beyond the next morning. At this point, the Swedish consul Raoul Nordling, who was in touch with the German commander General Dietrich von Choltitz, proposed an hour-long truce to allow the wounded on both sides to be evacuated. Hearing of this, Hamon, the most prominent non-Communist member of the CPL, contacted Nordling and got the truce at the Prefecture extended until 6 a.m. the next morning.
At the same time, Hamon conceived the bold stroke of seizing the Hô
tel de Ville, ostensibly on behalf of the CPL. But since he did not inform the other members, it is likely that his intention was to pre-empt a similar action by the Communists. Early the next morning (20 August), Hamon arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, with a small group representing different resistance factions. The Vichy prefect was arrested, and later that morning, Marcel Flouret, whom the GPRF had selected as the new prefect, arrived to assume his post without any problem. Hamon then went to see Nordling. Claiming to speak for the CPL, he got him to agree to negotiate an extension of the truce to cover all the fighting in Paris, not just around the Prefecture. Hamon took this proposal to the CNR Bureau (of which he was not a member) to secure official approval for it. Parodi was enthusiastic, arguing that the German willingness to concede a truce, leaving most public buildings in Resistance hands, was recognition that the insurrection had succeeded. Villon, who argued that the truce would cheat the people of their insurrection, was overruled. The text of the truce was taken to Choltitz who agreed to sign it. He had chosen to ignore Hitler’s order to destroy Paris rather than surrender.
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