Most countries maintained embassies at Vichy, and the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs housed the forty-odd accredited foreign diplomats, one of the reasons its bar became so vivid a part of Vichy intrigues. De Monzie held court there in the early years, but despite the services with which he had provided Pétain, his time had passed. The pink art deco Villa Ica, the American embassy of Admiral William Leahy, had the most cachet until Roosevelt closed it down in November 1942. (Leahy's return to the United States only increased Roosevelt's stubborn faith in Pétain, or rather anyone but de Gaulle; all the more surprising as Pétain, like Darquier, thought the United States was controlled by Jews.)
Vichy should have been the perfect spot for Louis Darquier. The spa town partied exactly as he and Myrtle liked to do. There were diplomatic receptions, dinner parties, and private carousing in the hotel rooms and villas, while behind the pomp and circumstance, tales of sexual abandon flourished. Vichy could also command the best of artistic France: Sacha Guitry performed; Yvonne Printemps sang; there was wonderful music and opera at the Grand Casino; there were cabarets and nightclubs and crowded cafés. Actors from Danielle Darrieux to Pierre Fresnay came to perform; five (heated) cinemas played to full houses.
On 14 May 1942 Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac devoted his BBC programme “Les Français parlent aux Français” to his exposé of Louis Darquier in Offlag II D. He also deplored his appointment as commissioner:
The annals of political infamy include examples of those who have sold themselves, those who prevaricate, crooks, cowards and traitors. Darquier de Pellepoix, an expert collector of titles and positions, can be proud to represent all these qualities. He was an enemy agent before the war and made little attempt to hide it. This shady salesman and regular at the German embassy did not shrink from making public speeches in praise of Hitler and he was supported in his activities by German money … 34
This was not a good beginning: the broadcast coincided with Louis' arrival to take up his post in Vichy, and it was published by the Resistance journal France immediately. On 16 May Henri Frenay, the future leader of the Resistance group Combat, bumped into Louis in the bar of the Majestic. Louis made a tremendous scene about the BBC programme, which news, reported back to Crémieux-Brilhac, prompted him to go further in a second radio jeremiad. All of France listened avidly and secretly to the BBC, issuer of “Anglo-Jewish lies,”35 beamed on short wave. For obvious reasons, its German and Vichy masters did likewise.
Nothing improved. Louis brought Myrtle to Vichy later that month. Though entertainment of the kind which raised funds for food for prisoners of war was not Myrtle's cup of tea, there was a great deal in fashionable Vichy which could have suited her. With so much rationed and unavailable, women who could afford it, or who had access to state money, poured their coupons into monumental hats which echoed the architecture of the town. In Vichy, most of the social hum took place in the packed hotel bars, the only places in which you could get a drink.
On 23 May Louis, in Vichy with Myrtle for a meeting with all the regional directors of the CGQ J, met a journalist, Wanda Laparra, again in the bar of the Majestic. She describes Myrtle as an “Englishwoman born in Tasmania… already celebrated for her eccentricities of dress.” Myrtle was forty-eight, though admitting to only forty, when Wanda spotted her sitting in the official corner on the left of the crowded bar, wearing an enormous confection “weighed down by multicoloured bunches of flowers.” Wanda Laparra was one of the beauties of Vichy, and thus had no mercy for Myrtle: “Apart from a musical voice, she had the indestructible charm of those Englishwomen who have been [my italics] very pretty. Was she sincere when she pretended to total ignorance of her husband's professional activities? In any case, only one thing mattered to her: rejoining her children [sic] who were in a school outside London. I listened, incredulous. That the wife of the Commissioner for Jewish Affairs should innocently avow that she had only one wish and that was to get to London, was beyond belief! Darquier listened to her revealing all without intervening, directing an ironic smile at us as if to say: ‘You weren't expecting that! ’ ”
Laparra thoroughly disliked Louis' “square jaw, deep-set eyes, thick eyebrows and large, low forehead.” While Myrtle “babbled,” Wanda and Louis came to verbal blows, with the usual result—a lengthy diatribe about Jews and what to do with them. Myrtle's “face had flushed, not because of the discussion—it's unlikely she could follow stormy conversation in French—but because of the second glass of whisky which she'd got someone to pour her.” Louis helped Myrtle roughly to her feet, looking irritated with everyone but most of all with Myrtle, “because she'd given in to her little weakness, alcohol.”36 This was only ten days after Myrtle and Louis had been reminded of Anne's existence by the French consul-general in London, and the BBC had beamed its first character assassination of him, which may explain both the irritation and the alcohol.
Wanda Laparra's account makes it clear that Myrtle's drinking habits were as well known as her hats. When she was drunk she would repeat her anglophile tally-hos, and though Louis safely withstood the complaints of Madame Pétain and other wives, for most of the war Myrtle remained in Paris. He was generally tolerant of Myrtle's addiction, which to some degree he shared, so perhaps a more important reason for her despatch to Paris was the chance of so much other sexual activity in Vichy.
Louis spent the summer of 1942 between Vichy and Paris, where the deportations to Auschwitz were just beginning. In Vichy he settled into the CGQ J's office in the seedy Hôtel Algeria. Vichy allotted hotels according to rank and status, and its uneasiness about its Ministry for Jews buried it in one of the town's least attractive hotels, more distant from Pétain's offices than most others. The Algeria is one of the few Vichy hotels to have changed its name after the war years; today it is called the Hôtel Carnot, though the almost obliterated words “Algeria Hôtel” linger on one side of the building—boarded up now and empty for over a decade.37
You can still stay in many of the Vichy hotels of the time, and see the stretch of town houses around the Hôtel du Portugal which housed the Gestapo after November 1942. At right angles to it the Germans built a wall three metres high with a bunker guarded by four surveillance boxes. The road was closed when prisoners were delivered to the Hôtel du Portugal; the screams emanating from it were so loud that the neighbours had to keep the radio on all day to drown out the noise.
Today the Hôtel du Portugal is open for business, as is the Hôtel Thermal, which housed Darlan and many other Vichy dignitaries. Many of the more modest hotels are still functioning, names unchanged, but others have been shut down or converted into apartments. Whatever is left seems pickled in aspic or submerged in genteel dilapidation, and the only memento of Pétain's four-year government in Vichy is a plaque inside the old Hôtel du Parc in memory of the 6,500 Jews, including hundreds of children, sent from the Vichy Zone to the Occupied Zone and then to Auschwitz on 26 August 1942. 38
Some of these were the Jews of Vichy itself. During his brief sojourn at the Hôtel Algeria Darquier passed by the Vichy synagogue on every walk to the Hôtel du Parc, but though Jews were officially banned from Vichy from June 1941, the synagogue was still open in May 1942 to scandalise him. There is a large board in the synagogue today listing the names of the 138 Jews deported from Vichy and its environs. Today the list of names—“EBSTEIN: Monsieur, Madame et 2 enfants; FEINSTEIN: bijoutier, et Madame; FEIST, Philippe; FENSTER, Claire Fanny; FOGIELMAN, Esther: ses enfants Anna, Paulette, Marcel …”—hangs next to the sign instructing female worshippers as to which portion of the synagogue they are permitted to enter.
Vallat drafted his avalanche of laws against the Jews of France in the Commissariat at the Hôtel Algeria, often complaining about its inadequacies. His constantly expanding staff were jammed into its rooms, and he shared some of its four floors with its then proprietor, who much admired the pious Vallat, who went to Mass at 6:30 every morning, saying of him: “Every time he makes a decision, he consults the Pope.”39
Louis Darquier liked to raise difficult matters by letter. Only two days after Myrtle's lapse at the Majestic, Laval received the first of many demands to supply “without further delay, the necessary means to accomplish the mission that has been assigned to me.”40 After the request for money followed his proposals for the tightening up and extending of Vallat's legal measures.
Pétain and Laval and the Vichy ministries could be convinced of the necessity of extreme measures against Jews, as long as someone they trusted and respected was running the CGQ J; the fervent Catholic Vallat was such a man. But once Darquier took over, matters were different. At loggerheads with him from the very beginning, well briefed by the BBC and the police, Vichy stalled on every aspect of the platform Darquier elucidated. Crémieux-Brilhac had already addressed Laval in his broadcast on 14 May:
It was money from Colonel Fleischhauer, that is to say from Hitler, that financed Darquier's electoral funds and allowed him to recruit a whole crowd of thugs from a sideshow at a funfair to work as his security police during public meetings … M. Pierre Laval knows this better than anyone since he has, in his services, photographs of the counterfoils from the cheques sent to Darquier de Pellepoix … Now Darquier de Pellepoix is about to enjoy the ultimate gravy train: the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs … 41
Despite this transmission, by 9 June Darquier had extracted five million francs from Laval for his CGQ J; but at the same time, to fill in any gaps that might be missing, a new police dossier was opened on Louis Darquier. Although it included the usual errors, the portrait of Louis and Myrtle presented to Laval and Bousquet did him little good. The Jones family in Tasmania were transposed into French: “Mlle Morisson, Jones, Myrthe, Marione” born in “Lancaster (Tasmania),” daughter of “Henri et Alexandre Lindsay Morisson, d'origine britannique.” Louis and Myrtle were childless, Louis was Anatole de Monzie's godson, he had run a sheep station in Australia for several years, and before the war his particular brand of anti-Semitism had brought him the loathing of his fellow anti-Semites and those on the right who might have agreed with him, because he had no political programme but had whipped up a fierce hatred of Jews simply to draw attention to himself.
On 15 June Louis had a meeting with Dannecker in which he promised to place at the disposal of the Germans “many thousands of Jews from the Non-Occupied Zone.”42 This was no shock to Laval or Bousquet, as Bousquet himself had suggested to the Germans that they should make use of the foreign Jews languishing in French camps in the south for their deportation plans. But Louis Darquier took the German line: all Jews must go, French or foreign.
Crémieux-Brilhac launched his second attack on 1 July 1942. This time he gave the whole story of Louis Darquier, but also first reported the horrors unfolding in Poland, where the Nazis had just put 700,000 Jews to death. The method of exterminating them was fully described by Crémieux-Brilhac—gas. Louis was in Paris when this was broadcast, preparing, with René Bousquet and German command, for massive Jewish deportations. On 12 July Cardinal Hinsley, Archbishop of Westminster, solemnly protested on the BBC about the Nazi extermination of these Polish Jews, and added that Pope Pius XII was convinced of the truth of the report. On 17 December Anthony Eden, British Foreign Minister, told the House of Commons too.
Mostly, however, the BBC's “Les Français parlent aux Français”of 1 July was devoted to Louis Darquier. “Who is this man?” asked Crémieux-Brilhac.
… neither a big-time crook, nor the grand bohemian that de Monzie has called him, nor is there anything romantic about him; he is a common spiv who, pursued by his creditors, took refuge in treason. Every step in his so-called glittering career has only been camouflage to hide his most recent scandal. He threw himself into politics in 1934 because, having married for a vast British dowry, he squandered the lot and was reduced to living in hotel rooms from which he had to scarper every two weeks on the sly. 6 February was his salvation: he made himself President of the Wounded and on this basis was taken on as secretary-general of Le Jour.
This was not a short programme; it was well researched and thorough. Crémieux-Brilhac told his listeners that Louis Darquier had lost his job at Le Jour for putting his hand in the till and up women's skirts, that he had only gone into Paris politics to wheel and deal, and that his career as a councillor was nothing but a sequence of debts and bar bills. And so, “in a roundabout way, through politics and drunkenness, he became an enemy agent… Naturally, he has always denied it. ‘Me? Touch German money? Never. ’ ” Then Crémieux-Brilhac read out the numbers on the stubs of the cheques which had found their way from Elizabeth Büttner into Louis' bank account. “Darquier de Pellepoix,” he concluded, “drink another cognac to German victory.”43
Four days later René Bousquet, calm and impressive, completed the process of removing Vallat's police force, the PQ J, from Louis' control.44 As the Germans were about to test his mettle with the first massive deportations of Jews from France, the loss of his own police force began Darquier's war with Bousquet, a war ignited by envy. As Vichy's police chief, Bousquet had his headquarters there. He was close to Laval, and as Vichy's favourite son he seemed to possess everything Louis longed for, except perhaps money—though that was to come. In Paris the Germans praised him to the skies, while Louis Darquier had instantly become the functionary whose character was most thoroughly assassinated by all who met him.
In the torrent of memoirs and chronicles of Vichy France which mention Louis—though generally only in passing—it seems as though looking at him or hearing him for one second told the men of Vichy a truth they did not like to face. His “constant preoccupation with money” is always noted. He is described as a “street ruffian” and an “outsider,” “indolent and pleasure-loving,” “a right-wing agitator,” “scatological,” with a “reputation for high living, recklessness and venality,” “bored by administration,” “obsequious,” “quarrelsome,” “hot-headed with an extravagant personal style.” Within a month of his arrival in Vichy a German spy, agent FR10, reported to the Gestapo that Louis Darquier was publicly wailing, “I can do nothing against the Jews. I am a foreigner in this government. No one supports me.”45
Laval, an efficient man, found the unmethodical Darquier an agonising subordinate. Darquier had the habit of all bullies: he would only behave when bullied himself. Until the end he pestered Laval with new projects, new laws, bills for even tighter control of every Jew in France, as well as piercing complaints about the loss of his police force and monotonous applications for more money. He used methods most calculated to achieve failure. All his missives were lengthy. Timid in Laval's presence, he would listen meekly while Laval explained why such and such could not be permitted. Then, the meeting over, he would send Laval tedious memos and letters covering the same ground, making the same requests, complaining of ill usage, threatening, his rages fuelled by the praise and respect meted out to Bousquet by Vichy, and the ridicule he himself received. Within weeks Laval began to manoeuvre with German command to close down the CGQ J and get rid of Darquier.
Louis shared the almost unanimous French admiration for Pétain, the Victor of Verdun. In fact Pétain's dislike of Louis Darquier was as well known as the intense irritation which throbs in every account of Louis' numerous approaches to Laval. Pétain nicknamed Darquier “le tortionnaire,” “the torturer,” possibly because almost the first thing Louis did on arrival in Vichy was to ask him for more money, as the means at his disposal were “absolutely insufficient for the heavy task the Marshal has placed upon him.”46 Pétain had to listen to these pleas only a week after the BBC broadcast listed Louis' German cheques.
“They say everywhere,” said Louis in 1978, “that Pétain opposed my actions, that he hated me. But, first, it was he who nominated me to the Commissariat, and secondly he never disapproved of me. Each time I went to see him, as soon as he saw me in the distance he would call out:
The CGQ J: Vichy's Commission for Jewish Affairs
‘Look, here comes my t
orturer! ’ But that was a joke. What's more, he laughed. And that did not prevent him from shaking my hand.”47 Louis behaved with Pétain exactly as he did with Laval. In his fight over the loss of his police force Louis went to Pétain—a dinner, a meeting at which little was said, followed by a long letter, a screech of anxious complaint.
At this time, July 1942, Louis was proving grossly inadequate in Paris, where the Jewish round-ups were under way. This had not gone unnoticed. As ever, he diverted attention by creating trouble elsewhere. He immediately told his collabo fellows in Paris, who already despised Vichy, that he was faced with the “silent conspiracy of every existing organisation, indeed of the entire administration.”48
The SS knew of Louis' shortcomings too. De Brinon hosted a dinner party in Paris at the beginning of September 1942. Laval was there, as was Himmler's new representative, General Karl-Albrecht Oberg. Laval patronised Darquier as “a good chap, but useless for regular administrative work,”49 and described his stream of impossible requests and accusations against various ministers; it was clear Laval wanted to see the back of him. Particularly amusing was his description of Louis' silence in his presence, and the accusatory letters he showered upon him as soon as he left the room. Otto Abetz was at the dinner, so were other German officials, and this account of Darquier as an object of ridicule was minuted and circulated.
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