General de Gaulle reached Rambouillet by the 22nd, the last stage before his triumphant entry into Paris. Since the Overlord and Dragoon landings his position had altered radically. The Allies had recognised the Provisional Government of the French Republic as the de facto authority in liberated France. Since landing in Normandy Leclerc’s 2nd Armoured Division had been hastening towards the French capital via the Chevreuse valley, while de Lattre’s divisions were busy securing Marseilles and Toulon and fighting their way north. De Gaulle was determined that France would achieve equal status among the Allies and that her sovereignty would be fully restored and recognised despite the actions of the Vichy government.
The Communist Resistance and the French police had forced Eisenhower’s hand. ‘Throughout France the Free French had been of inestimable value in the campaign,’ Eisenhower recalled. ‘So when the Free French forces inside the city staged their uprising it was necessary to move rapidly to their support. Information indicated that no great battle would take place and it was believed that the entry of two Allied divisions would accomplish the liberation of the city.’ Just as de Gaulle was arriving at Rambouillet, Eisenhower authorised Leclerc’s armour and General Barton’s 4th US Infantry Division to drive on Paris the following day.
Leclerc of course was determined to get to Paris before Barton. His division, totalling 16,000 men equipped with 200 Sherman tanks, 650 pieces of artillery and 4,200 vehicles, converged on the city in three columns. The Americans were dismayed at the antics of the French soldiers, who treated the advance as one big party, kissing and hugging everyone en route. A furious Gerow phoned Hodges to complain that the French troops were stopping at every town for a celebratory drink, with predictable results, and that they were holding up the traffic. At about 1700 hours a light aircraft swooped over the besieged Police Prefecture building and dropped a canister. When the ill-equipped defenders opened it, they discovered it contained a message from Leclerc that read: ‘Hold on, we’re coming.’ While this was welcome, the question remained, when?
As the Allied forces neared Paris the German resistance became more vigorous. Leclerc’s main thrust was launched from the south, with a feint from the south-west. Outlying German defences consisted of small numbers of tanks supported by anti-tanks guns holed up in the villages and at the crossroads. At Jouy-en-Josas three French Shermans were lost in tank-to-tank engagements. Stiff resistance was also met at Longjumeau and Croix de Berny south of Paris. German 88mm guns at Massy and Wissous accounted for more of Leclerc’s tanks. An 88mm gun sited in the old prison at Fresnes, blocking the Paris road, held off three of his Shermans for a while. The first was knocked out, but the second destroyed the gun and the third ran over it. The French lost another four tanks to anti-tank guns trying to outflank Fresnes. Despite Gerow’s complaints, the push on Paris proved no picnic, costing Leclerc’s division 71 killed and 225 wounded, with 35 tanks, 6 self-propelled guns and 11 assorted vehicles disabled or destroyed.
Generalmajor Hubertus von Aulock, who was in command of a Kampfgruppe tasked with defending the western and southern approaches to Paris, fell back before Leclerc’s advance. Choltitz ordered Kampfgruppe Aulock’s 2,000 men to withdraw back across the Seine and they ended up west of the Eiffel Tower near the Boulevard Suchet.
In the evening of 24 August a French patrol comprising 3 light tanks, 4 armoured vehicles and 6 half-tracks slipped into the city through the Porte Gentilly. By nightfall the tanks were within a few hundred metres of von Choltitz’s headquarters at the Hotel Meurice. The next day, as the division entered in force, cheering Parisians mobbed the tanks crossing the Seine bridges. Elements of the 2nd Armoured Division reached the Police Prefecture at 0830. The Germans, though, were not ready to give up just yet. During five hours of fighting to clear the German defenders from the foreign office building on the Quai d’Orsay, another Sherman tank was lost. At the Arc de Triomphe a French tank silenced its German counterpart at a range of 1,800 metres. Three Shermans were then lost after they drove into the grounds of the Place de la Concorde with their turret hatches open and a grenade was thrown into each one.
A note from the 2nd Armoured Division was sent to Choltitz demanding that he surrender or face annihilation; bravely, he refused even to receive the note. Unfortunately he felt that he should put up at least token resistance before capitulating. Choltitz then went through the farce of urging his men to fight to the last, even as Leclerc’s Shermans closed in on the Hotel Meurice. Choltitz himself was soon captured and driven to the Prefecture to see Generals Leclerc, Barton and Chaban-Delmas, as well as Luizet and Colonel Rol. The latter wanted joint signature on the surrender document with Leclerc. While the liberation had cost the 2nd Armoured Division 130 dead and 319 wounded, the Free French forces bore the burden of the casualties, losing up to 1,000 dead and 1,500 wounded. Rol felt they deserved the credit. Nonetheless Leclerc, feeling he was the ranking officer, signed on behalf of everyone. Afterwards Choltitz requested a glass of water. Alarmed, an interpreter asked: ‘I hope you’ve no idea of poisoning yourself.’ Irked at the idea of such dishonour, the general replied: ‘No, young man, I wouldn’t do anything like that. I have to take medicine for a heart ailment.’
Understandably the Communist Resistance leaders felt aggrieved, after weeks of fighting the Germans, so a second surrender document was drawn up, this time giving prominence to Colonel Rol’s signature. De Gaulle and the Allies were displeased at this piece of diplomacy, which failed to acknowledge that Leclerc had been acting as a subordinate of the Allied High Command. At 2130 hours teams of Free French and German officers went out to pass the word to the remaining German strongpoints that were still holding out.
De Gaulle’s triumph
De Gaulle made his official entry into the city on 26 August. On hearing that he intended using the 2nd Armoured Division, Gerow ordered Leclerc to disregard this and get on with cleaning up the city. There remained 2,000 German troops in Paris, Kampfgruppe Aulock continued to represent a potential threat and fighting was still taking place. But when de Gaulle insisted, Eisenhower had little choice but to give way. Triumphantly de Gaulle, Leclerc, Koenig and Chaban-Delmas, surrounded by French officials, walked from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame with Leclerc’s 2nd Armoured Division proudly lining the route.
Afterwards Gerow ordered Leclerc to clear the Germans from the northern suburbs, but de Gaulle wanted to keep the division in Paris to counter the Communists. He then wanted the division to join de Lattre’s 1st Army pushing up from the south of France, but instead Leclerc found his force reassigned to XV Corps moving towards Alsace. During September Leclerc’s Shermans bested a German armoured formation near Epinal and by the end of the month had liberated Strasbourg. They then drove, appropriately enough, on to Hitler’s former lair of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria.
Chaos reigned in Paris as de Gaulle manoeuvred to place himself in ascendancy and ultimately grasp the French Presidency. Both Gerow and Koenig considered themselves to be the temporary military governor of Paris. Gerow flew to Hodges’ headquarters and demanded: ‘Who in the devil is the boss in Paris? The Frenchmen are shooting at each other, each party is at each other’s throat. Is Koenig the boss, is de Gaulle the boss? Am I, as the senior commander, in charge?’ In addition to Leclerc’s, Barton’s and Choltitz’s men, there were now 50,000 self-proclaimed Free French forces running about the city.
The Council of National Resistance wanted de Gaulle to proclaim the Republic from the Hotel de Ville. His haughty response was emphatic: ‘The Republic has never ceased to exist … Vichy was, and remains, nothing. I am the President of the Government of the Republic. Why should I proclaim it?’
On 28 August de Gaulle acted to remove the threat of the Communist Resistance as an independent force. The Free French forces were dissolved and any useful units absorbed into the regular French Army. De Gaulle requested thousands of American uniforms for them and additional military equipment with which to organise his new French divisions. Perhaps more
worryingly, de Gaulle asked for the loan of two American divisions to help establish his position in Paris. Eisenhower was bemused: not even in North Africa had the French requested Allied troops to reinforce their political authority. Nonetheless, in response to this request, on the 29th two American infantry divisions marched down the Champs Elysees on their way to the front.
Eisenhower, Gerow, Koenig and de Gaulle stood on the reviewing stand as the troops trudged past. De Gaulle, though, left before the parade was finished, a deliberate snub that was not lost on the American generals. To make matters worse, de Gaulle’s actions in liberating Paris helped prolong the war, for the delay around the city enabled the greater part of the German 1st Army to escape over the Rhine. The parade, though, had achieved de Gaulle’s aim, which was to send an unequivocal warning to the various Free French factions: look at my powerful friends. His political coup was now complete. De Gaulle, not the Resistance nor the Americans, would be remembered as the saviour of Paris, and ultimately of France.
On 3 September Eisenhower reminded de Gaulle of the French Army’s significant debt to US industry in a radio broadcast:
From this battle front American fighting troops send their grateful thanks to the workers of America for having made this the best equipped fighting force in all history. In this expression of our gratitude we are joined by our gallant Allies. The British units include in their category of weapons many types that you have produced. The French divisions now fighting in southern and in northern France are equipped exclusively with the products of your toil and skill. Each of you justly shares in the credit for the tremendous successes the United Nations have gained on this important front.
However, five days later, Eisenhower tacitly and probably grudgingly recognised de Gaulle’s achievements:
I address my words to the people of Paris. Two weeks ago French and Allied troops made their entry into the city. They came to give the coup de grace to the last elements of the enemy remaining here. But the liberation of Paris was already nearly complete. A week before, armed with courage and with resolution, the men of the French Forces of the Interior, who for four years, under the inspiration of General de Gaulle, had never ceased to struggle against the enemy, went into the streets to drive out the despised invader. The glory of having largely freed their capital belongs to Frenchmen.
De Gaulle was incensed by Hitler’s actions in needlessly causing 1,169 casualties in Paris with several futile terror raids using the Luftwaffe and V-2 flying bombs. Hitler gave frantic orders for the French capital to be retaken or obliterated, but the reality was that it was already firmly under the control of de Gaulle, with General Pierre Koenig appointed as Governor.
Once de Gaulle had secured his power base in Paris, he set about an extensive tour of the country to reinforce the authority of his government, especially in the south where many of the Resistance movements and liberation committees contained Communists who were reluctant to recognise him. In de Gaulle’s mind he had thwarted a Communist takeover of France, and he implied as much in his memoirs. The reality was that the Communists had had no such intention; they simply did not have the strength to take power, though regionally they could have made life difficult for de Gaulle by defying Paris. Ultimately, though, he was the one who commanded the loyalty of the regular army divisions.
Vengeance was soon exacted upon the wretched supporters of Vichy France, with up to 10,000 summary executions. De Gaulle, though, on reviewing the 7,037 death sentences passed by the French courts, commuted all but 767 of them, and among those eventually spared was Pétain. While de Gaulle accepted the need to purge the country of collaborators, he did not wish it to turn into a witch-hunt, and felt that the purge should be carried out in a manner that would not tear the country apart again.
While Eisenhower had been committed to the liberation of Normandy and the Riviera, his hand had been forced over the Parisian sideshow. It was now evident that Ike and Roosevelt’s concerns over de Gaulle’s political ambitions had come to pass. Meanwhile, after the heady success of the Riviera landings, de Lattre’s victories at Belfort and Colmar were to be much more drawn-out and costly affairs.
Chapter Ten
The Battle of the Belfort Gap
In the south of France, with the Germans being pressed from the west and the south, the only remaining resupply and escape route lay through the network of roads and rail lines located in the 24 km-wide Belfort Gap between the Vosges Mountains to the north and the Jura Mountains to the south-east. Since the days of the Roman Empire this had formed a strategic corridor connecting the Paris basin to the Rhine valley. This area also holds the principal tributary of the Rhône, namely the headwaters of the Saone-Doubs river. The latter’s river valley formed the natural route that Patch’s US 7th Army would have to follow north. The region was also ideal for guerrilla activity by the Free French forces as the hilly and heavily forested countryside was criss-crossed with numerous streams and rivers, providing ideal locations for ambushes and acts of sabotage. The Vosges Mountains consist of the High and Low Vosges, divided by the Saverne Gap. The Belfort Gap lies at the southern end of the High Vosges, the main route of approach to the Plain of Alsace. The lynchpin of the High Vosges is Epinal on the Moselle, which has two major routes through the mountains, one to Strasbourg and the Rhine and the other to Colmar and the Alsace Plain.
The advance of the seven divisions of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s French 1st Army and the fourteen divisions of the US 7th Army was quite remarkable. Bypassing Toulon and Marseilles, the lead elements of the 7th Army had reached Grenoble by 22 August, with the objective of linking up with elements of Patton’s US 3rd Army near Dijon and pressing eastwards down the Belfort Gap.
‘An enigma’
It was now the duty of General Friedrich Wiese’s 19th Army to bar the way to the pursuing enemy. Indeed, Blaskowitz hoped and intended that Wiese’s men would form a loose cordon that would permit the remaining elements of his depleted army group to retreat safely north-eastwards into the Belfort Gap.
Operation Dragoon: from the Riviera to the Belfort Gap. (Dennis Andrews)
The 11th Panzer Division rolled into Besançon on the evening of 5 September to cover the first units from the 19th Army moving into Belfort. Allied intelligence intercepts showed that the 11th Panzer Division was hardly a viable rearguard as by this time it consisted of just 9 panzers and 6 old French tanks, supported by 5 88mm guns with 400 rounds between them. Back in August, this division had fielded 79 Panther tanks, but by 1 September its numbers had fallen to just 30, plus 16 Panzer Mk IVs and 4 old Mk IIIs. It was subsequently strengthened by Panzer-Brigade 113, which brought the numbers up to a more respectable level, with a total of 40 Panthers, 19 Mk IVs and 4 Mk IIIs. Despite these welcome additions, the 11th Panzer Division’s inventory was far below its authorised strength of 91 Panzer Mk IVs, 79 Panthers and 21 StuG III assault guns.
With the exception of the 11th Panzer Division, most of Wiese’s combat forces were essentially improvised Kampfgruppen or battle groups made up of the remnants of his infantry divisions and fleeing rear echelon units. To help bolster his army, the German high command ordered the 30th Waffen-SS Division to move to France for anti-partisan duties. This unit arrived in Strasbourg on 18 August with instructions to hold the entrance to the Belfort Gap and counter any Free French units operating in the area. The division’s 102nd Battalion deployed to the northern end of the gap and reached Vesoul on the 20th, with responsibility for the narrow plateau area between Noidans-les-Vesoul and Echenoz-la-Meline just to the south-west. Men of the 118th Battalion deployed to Besançon at the southern end of the gap on the 19th and then moved to Camp Valdahon, about 32 km south-east of Besançon.
The French Resistance’s 9th Battalion Franc Tireurs et Partisans ‘Adam Mickiewicz’ with the Chariot Group successfully attacked the retreating Germans on 8 September at Autun (65km south-west of Dijon), inflicting damage to both their morale and the transport network. Also on the 8th Allied
fighters strafed the Belfort area, hitting ten trains with good results, and a horse-drawn vehicle convoy near Strasbourg; the following day motor transport and rolling stock were bombed and strafed with particular success in the Belfort-Mulhouse-Freiburg areas. On the 10th the XII Tactical Air Command’s fighters and fighter-bombers blasted communications in the Belfort and Dijon areas, cutting railroads and hitting several trains. They also cut the tracks in the Belfort, Basel and Freiburg areas.
De Lattre’s French I Corps was counter-attacked west of Belfort along the Doubs river by German forces in the Montbeliard area on 8 September and the French were repelled. Also on the 8th the German 1st Army returned to Blaskowitz’s control and his command became a full Army Group once again. This, though, was simply a formality as most of the units earmarked for Hitler’s planned counter-attack came from the 1st Army anyway. However, Blaskowitz was granted a much-needed breathing space while the Americans and French regrouped. This gave him time to create an effective defensive line. General Wiese recalled: ‘It was an enigma to the army why the enemy did not execute the decisive assault on Belfort between 8 and 15 September 1944 through a large-scale attack.’ The tired American and French troops had lost their window of opportunity.
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