Bad Faith

by Carmen Callil

  Before his appointment as commissioner Darquier had assured the embassy that he was in “such a combative mood” that “he would resign quickly if the government did not accept the bills he was preparing.”50 Instead, on 15 September 1942, in the Berlin magazine Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question), Louis took his revenge in a front-page article which he headlined “The Current Position of the Jewish Problem in France.” The article was rushed and badly written, no more than a cutand-paste job from his earlier journalism, but it was a detailed attack on the “maudlin sentimentality” of the Vichy legislation against the Jews, and it had a sting in its tail.51 After the usual reference to his French masters, the Marquis de Morès and édouard Drumont, Louis launched into his familiar hymn of anti-Jewish clichés, all taken from the Protocols.He followed this with an all-out attack on Laval.

  When I took over the Commission for Jewish Affairs I envisaged a series of laws which would suit all of France and which would permit us to do without the German ordinances in the Occupied Zone. At the

  moment, I have been unable to achieve this aim. The French administration, which still includes many Jews in its ranks, opposes me with all its might…

  If we want to stop this sabotage of anti-Jewish laws, a purge of this administration is therefore the first task we have to undertake … the influence of a certain number of Jews reaches the highest levels.

  In charge of the embassy's political section was Dr. Ernst Achenbach, a blond and stylish young Nazi with an American wife. Louis managed to get his diatribe sent to Germany by the malleable Achenbach without Abetz's approval, after which he disappeared “for a very long absence.”52 Telegrams flew from the Foreign Office in Berlin; Abetz reprimanded Achenbach; systems were overhauled so such an outrage could not occur again.

  After September 1942, contempt for and despair of Louis Darquier began to thrum in German circles too. Rejection by Vichy placed Louis in the dubious position of being a rabid French patriot who could only demonstrate his wares within the Nazi camp. German command, in choosing Louis Darquier, had ignored the personality disorders for which he was notorious. They estimated that he would react to their approval, a sentiment so rarely bestowed upon him, with docility. The embassy had even assured Berlin that “We are much nearer a definite and clear-cut solution to the Jewish problem with the appointment of Darquier de Pellepoix to the post of Commissioner.”53

  The Germans made numerous misjudgements in appointing Louis Darquier, Abetz being the chief culprit, because though he insisted on a commissioner who would be “a French national of complete financial independence and undisputed authority,” he chose Darquier with full knowledge of his financial history. The Germans were also aware that in Vichy there were two political camps, that of Pétain and that of Laval. They knew that the CGQ J was not a senior Vichy department, and had agreed to raise its status so that Louis could attend meetings of the council of ministers. From his first hour, therefore, Darquier made matters worse for his German masters, and brought relations between Vichy ministries and the German authorities to a new low.

  Timing was against all of them. Darquier's appointment began only six weeks before Laval made the famous broadcast on 22 June 1942 which so shocked the French people, and which was to lead him to the firing squad: “I hope for the victory of Germany because without it, communism would soon be established everywhere in Europe.”54 He spoke just as the possibility of Germany losing the war was becoming obvious to even the most hardened Pétainist. American forces arrived in Great Britain as Darquier took up his appointment. With the German advance, in the summer of 1942, the battle of Stalingrad began.

  After unpleasant encounters with men he revered, Louis always alternated outbursts of fury with descent into fantasy. Such was to be the case with the Vichy state. By 1978, he could speak well of Laval: “We had words sometimes, that is true, but Laval was a splendid fellow, he did his job very well…he was a good man, very hard-working, very competent. Unfortunately, one must be frank—he knew nothing about the Jewish question.”55

  In November 1942, for different reasons, both Laval and Darquier began plans to close down the CGQ J's Vichy office completely, and from that time, although Louis had to divide his time between his two offices, he came to Vichy as rarely as possible. He told everyone that he hated working there. But then, he barely tolerated working in Paris. He did not like to work.

  15

  The Rat Pit

  WHAT LOUIS LIKED TO DO was to gallivant in Paris. There, as commissioner, he could do what he liked best, dining at Maxim's, drinking in nightclubs, casing the brothels and living the triumphal life of the German occupiers. Otto Abetz's embassy provided a patron absolutely to his taste, “Waiter, more champagne” being words heard more than any others during Abetz's years in Paris.1 The Paris office of the CGQ J, with its close contacts to the German occupiers, was in all ways a much more sophisticated milieu than the Hôtel Algeria.

  InParisLouishadsetaboutcreatinghisowncommissionimmediately— his “spring clean,” he called it. His old secretary Paule Fichot joined him, and spent much of her time doing his office work: “He often called and told me to sign his post as he couldn't come to the office.”2 His first move was to get rid of almost everyone who had worked for Vallat and to install his own friends, arranging matters with them “in cafés and especially in bars.”3 Pierre Gérard, already employed by Vallat, was instantly promoted to assistant director of the Service de Contrôle des Administrateurs Provisoires (SCAP), the Department of Provisional Administrators or Trustees, responsible for the Aryanisation of Jewish enterprises. Next came revenge. Marcel Garnier, who worked in the Ministry of Finance at the CGQ J, had fought with Louis over money. Louis sacked Garnier “from one day to the next,” his wife was arrested by the PQ J, his mother's home was searched, the family ration cards taken and his home searched by the Gestapo.

  Since René had ceased to support him, Louis had gathered together a collection of people who lent him money. Some he had milked by way of his anti-Semitic associations; others gave personal loans. The men he called his friends were in fact either an army of creditors, or biddable young fellows who would do as they were told. Throughout the years of the war, these were the men who were to benefit from the sale of Jewish possessions. Louis believed that he was rewarding his old friend and creditor Pierre Galien when he appointed him as his deputy.4 In fact the Germans had chosen Galien to keep an eye on him.

  The structure of the CGQ J looked imposing. At the top was Louis Darquier, and beneath him his cabinet, his management team, led by Galien. Under them fanned out various branches, each dedicated to a different aspect of anti-Jewish activity. The General services department included an Administrative, Financial and Legal section, and a Status of Persons5 office which examined racial inheritance. Economic Aryanisation was devoted to acquiring and administering Jewish wealth. The CGQ J, and so Darquier, were also responsible for UGIF, the Jewish body Dannecker had constructed to organise Jews for their own despoliation and deportation. Finally Louis was to have his favourite toy, the Propaganda Department Dannecker had always wanted.

  Into all this German military command tucked a “representative” to observe matters. Galien did the same job for the SS, while economic Aryanisation was supervised by Rosenberg's Colonel Behr. In fact, every department was under German control, another reason Louis Darquier spent so little time in the office. Out and about in Paris, he added his usual accompaniment, a younger man to act as general factotum, personal secretary and bodyguard who went everywhere with him. For this bodyguard, Roland Lécuyer,6 and for Galien and himself, Darquier demanded of Dannecker permission to carry guns, to cope with the “anonymous threats” they were already receiving.

  When he took over the CGQ J, Darquier inherited a department with a budget of nearly thirty million francs. He nearly doubled this during his time as commissioner. By 1944 it was raised to fifty million francs, over 70 percent of which paid the staff, who under Darquier grew from nearly seven
hundred to over a thousand. Darquier's CGQ J was described by his successor as “a complete and utter shambles and an absolute free-for-all.” The chief reason for this was the “ceaseless, useless personal quarrels,”7 and an overpowering atmosphere of financial skulduggery. Sexual intrigue merged with the financial: Louis' private secretary often heard groans coming from his office—his habit of draping secretaries over the office desk was complained of in later life too—and he liked to have pretty secretaries at his disposal. He was the office bottom-pincher, and tried to seduce both the wife of one of his colleagues and her sister.

  The vicious rows of the men in the Darquier rat pit, conducted in a haze of intoxication, were so extensive that the concierge at place des Petits-Pères was given a list of people who were to be thrown out if they tried to set foot in the building. Paule Fichot described Galien's behaviour: “I remember asking him to intervene on behalf of a ten-month-old infant whose parents had been arrested. He replied, ‘It's a Jew child, let it die. ’ I should add that he seemed to me to be in a state of inebriation.”8

  Working for the CGQ J was viewed as a low occupation from the safe altitudes of other Vichy ministries. None of its staff had secure tenure, nor were they civil servants. As the qualifications required were to be “a trustworthy, determined anti-Jew, anti-Freemason and racist,” the work attracted a strange class of person.9 They were paid less than and did not have the benefits of other Vichy personnel, perhaps because Vichy, though always unwilling to admit it, knew that the staff had access to Jewish money on such a large scale. For Vichy the Commissariat was temporary. Once the Jewish problem was solved it would cease to exist. Darquier and his appointees and successors, however, gave no sign of seeing their work as finite. Or shameful. They encouraged all their employees to act as informers, and automatically hired people who would be indifferent to the growing hostility of the French public.

  German command had been waiting for Louis' investiture to force all Jews in France to wear a yellow star, so that it would appear to be a Vichy measure. This he achieved—in the Occupied Zone only—on 7 June 1942. French and foreign Jews over the age of six were ordered to wear the Star of David; on the yellow background “JUIF ” or “JUIVE ”was printed in bold black. Instructions were minutely detailed: the star must measure so and so, and it must be sewn on the top left side of outer garments. It was sold to Jews at police stations and cost one month's clothing rations.

  For children the star was often the hardest to bear—it meant torment at school, exclusion from public places, no more ice creams in the park. The French began to commiserate: some who were not Jewish took to wearing the star, or sported yellow handkerchiefs. Some wore a star marked “Papuan” or “Buddhist,” or shook hands with Jews in the street, or gave up their place in a queue so a marked Jew could go to the front of it. Some of these “Friends of Jews” were labelled as such and imprisoned, one young girl for tying the yellow star to the tail of her dog. Cardinal Suhard of Paris requested that Jews converted to Catholicism be exempted. Vichy refused. After the war, Knochen complained about Dannecker's mismanagement of Vichy in the matter of the yellow star. It had made the French public indignant, particularly on behalf of the children; it created pity for the Jews and ridicule for the Germans. Apart from anything else, he added, the star was a waste of precious material.

  Once his star was seen upon Jewish breasts in Paris, Louis was rarely to be found in either of his offices, in Paris or in Vichy. If an important meeting took place in the morning, as like as not he was not there. He could often escape to his provincial empire, for the CGQ J was instructed to have branches in both Zones, in the office of each regional préfecture. These in turn were connected to a police section, and when Louis got into full stride they were threatened with a propaganda department as well.

  This network was an essential pillar for the chief activity of the CGQ J—tracking down Jewish assets while its police arm assisted Bousquet and the Germans in tracking down Jews for deportation. To regional branches already in place when he took over, in Limoges, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Marseille and Nice, Darquier added new ones in Bordeaux, Dijon, Nancy, Poitiers, Rennes and Rouen. He enjoyed this; in particular he liked to visit the Nice office on the Côte d'Azur.

  Pierre Galien had probably had more to do with Louis' appointment as Commissioner than anyone else. He was a German spy who, under the code name of “J11,” worked for Knochen's Gestapo and Dannecker's Jewish Office, the Judenreferat, in the avenue Foch. Dannecker and Galien were friends, their shared pleasures extending to the Paris nightclubs and brothels which were to bring about Dannecker's downfall at the end of July 1942, after which Galien continued to work seamlessly with Dannecker's replacement, his former deputy Heinz Röthke.

  As Galien spent as much time at avenue Foch as he did at rue des Saussaies, it may well be that he had been in the pay of the Nazis from 1938, when he first funded Louis. Little is known of his activity before the fall of France, except that he was one of the signatories to placards that went up all over Paris denouncing the war as a Jewish plot. On 5 December 1944, after his arrest, Galien stated, “I never displayed any pro-German sentiments.” But Knochen described him as a man in whom they had “full and entire confidence.”10

  The PQ J had been set up as a separate body within the CGQ J, to work with but not under other police forces—the anti-Masonic police, the anticommunist police, economic brigades, not to mention the various arms and legs of many other German and Vichy bodies—to provide information about “suspect Jewish activity.” Whatever its lines of responsibility, wherever it worked, Vichy had endowed it with considerable powers to “pursue enquiries,” “confirm findings,” “detect violations.”11 After Bousquet closed it down in July 1942, he permitted Darquier to form another investigatory force, but removed all its police powers. This was the Service d'Enquête et de Contrôle (SEC), the Investigation and Inspection Service, with no legal right to search or to arrest. It was this proposal which set off Darquier on his persecutory pursuit of both Pétain and Laval in July 1942. Five days later, on 10 July, overbriefed as to Louis Darquier's administrative inadequacies, the Germans placed the SEC under Galien's control. Galien ignored Bousquet's instructions and made the SEC an arm of the Gestapo, using them as “a team of bodyguards…for petty police duties.”12 More, because the men of the SEC were French, with ears and noses closer to the ground than the occupiers, they specialised in spotting Jews and communists, and passing them over to the Gestapo.

  Darquier had wanted the SEC to be his very own Gestapo, “a sort of 2ème bureau”—a secret intelligence unit.13 All the more irritating for him, under Galien, this was achieved. The SEC did what they liked and became looters, the private army Darquier had always wanted. These police concentrated on denunciations of Jews in hiding, and of those French who helped them; more, they checked on Aryanisation in other administrative services and ministries. Fear of denunciation and consequent internment meant that the SEC could make money from both Jew and Gentile.

  By day Galien imposed German rule on the CGQ J, from which he embezzled money on a grand scale. By night he caroused with German officers in “establishments of pleasure.” One of his most passionate statements in his post-war police testimonies was that his job at the CGQ J was “purely fictitious,” confined to greeting visitors and dealing with the rampant disorder of the office. He maintained that he had “no authority” and took no decisions with any German officers, although he admitted that he felt that the “Jewish problem” needed to be addressed, but with honesty and humanity. The secretaries observed matters differently. One testified that Galien “did his utmost to tighten links with the Gestapo. There was a certain amount of ill feeling among the Germans during the Xavier Vallat period. He was accused of laxness and they ended up demanding his dismissal from the post. Galien did everything he could to win back their favour.”14 Galien was highly paid for his “fictitious” job as Darquier's chief of staff, and was even more interested in the c
ash profits than Darquier, who mostly wanted the money to dine at Maxim's, which he did. Louis' secretary, Paule Fichot, pinpointed the extent of his power: “Galien worked directly with the German authorities for the massive arrests of Jews. He was renowned for his cruelty…I saw him as the blackest type of collaborator…he boasted of having good contacts with the Gestapo.”15

  Galien had a personal doctor, Maurice Tussau, who claimed to be related to Madame Tussaud of waxworks fame. Galien sent him into the Rothschild Hospital, the Jewish hospital, to check if any healthy Jews were lurking there. Tussau decided that the nurse in charge was suspect, after which instructions were sent to the French police chief, François, to “proceed with all urgency and have the Jewess ASSON arrested and interned at Drancy.”16

  From the earliest days, it was clear that the management of the Commissariat left a great deal to be desired. Numbers of its agents had criminal records, made false declarations as to their civic status and were guilty of massive infringements against Vichy's regulatory procedures for the Aryanisation of Jewish assets. Typical of the men who found a home in the CGQ J was Jean Bouvyer, an extremist who had left Action Française for Deloncle's Cagoule. Xavier Vallat had been his defence lawyer when Bouvyer was tried for the Cagoulard murder of two anti-fascists, the Rosselli brothers—Bouvyer had witnessed the assassination. On his release from a two-year prison sentence Vallat gave Bouvyer a job at the CGQ J, and after Vallat's departure Galien placed him in charge of liaison between the SEC and the Gestapo. Bouvyer, a friend since childhood of François Mitterrand—who always maintained that he knew nothing of anti-Semitic activity during the Occupation—was Galien's most “faithful assistant.” His mistress during these years was Mitterrand's sister Marie-Josèphe, “Jo,” a portrait painter in Paris. For Galien, and later for his successor Joseph Antignac, Bouvyer worked at spying on and denouncing Jews, tracking them down, sending them to camps and deportation, and then Aryanising their wealth.17