The next eighteen days will determine the fate of the City of Light. But Christiane will never leave her secret hiding place — until de Gaulle finally makes his triumphant return to the capital.
* The notation on a 1942 letter from Auschwitz stated, “Each prisoner in protective custody may receive from and send to his relatives two letters or two cards per month … Packages may not be sent, because the prisoners in the camp can purchase everything.” (www.historyinink.com/935308_WWII_Auschwitz_letter.htm)
† Eight hundred eighty-five ships will disgorge 151,00 Allied troops in another huge operation, barely remembered because it was overshadowed by Normandy. Seven of the eleven divisions under American general Alexander Patch are actually Free French soldiers commanded by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. (Ousby, Occupation, p. 279)
‡ “It was obvious,” Christiane said many years later. “I never thought I was doing anything extraordinary. Never. Never!” (author’s interview with Christiane Boulloche-Audibert, March 11, 1999)
Seventeen
Even when motionless, which he often was, others could feel the volcano inside.
— Gregor Dallas describing Charles de Gaulle
ONE DAY AFTER Jacques, Hélène, and Robert Boulloche are arrested, Adolf Hitler summons General Dietrich von Choltitz to meet with him at Wolfsschanze. At the first of the three security rings, all of the general’s luggage is removed from his car — a new precaution inaugurated after Stauffenberg’s failed assassination attempt.
A fourth-generation Prussian soldier, Choltitz had led the Nazi assault on Rotterdam in 1939. Three years later, he captured Sebastopol in the Russian Ukraine. When the siege there began, Choltitz was leading a regiment of 4,800 men. When it ended, only 347 of his soldiers were still alive. But the Germans had won the battle.
Shortly, Choltitz will tell a Swedish diplomat, “Since Sebastopol, it has been my fate to cover the retreat of our armies and to destroy the cities behind them.”
His flair for destruction and his fierce loyalty to the Führer are the reasons he is meeting with Hitler on August 7. Hitler has been told Choltitz is a man who never wavers in the execution of an order. Coming from France, where his corps has failed to halt the breakout of American forces into Brittany, the general hopes to be rejuvenated by his leader after his recent setback on the battlefield.
But when the general reaches Hitler’s lair, he finds the same hollow man Erwin Rommel and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt had encountered in France a few weeks earlier. “I went into the room and there he stood, a fat, broken-down old man with festering hands,” Choltitz remembered two months later. “I was really almost sorry for him because he looked horrible.”
Then Hitler “began reeling off a gramophone record like a man stung by a tarantula and spoke for three-quarters of an hour!” The Führer told him that “dozens of generals” had already “bounced at the end of a rope” since the assassination attempt, because they had tried to prevent him from fulfilling his destiny of leading the German people.*
Today Hitler is making Choltitz his new commander in Paris. The Führer has chosen the Prussian to make sure that he has someone who will leave Paris in ashes if the Germans are forced to abandon their greatest prize. He is making Choltitz a Befehlshaber, a title that gives him the widest possible powers for a commander of a German garrison. Hitler orders him to “stamp out without pity” any act of terrorism against the German armed forces in Paris.
But Choltitz leaves the meeting more pessimistic than ever about the future of the Third Reich. When the Allies reach the outskirts of Paris, he knows what the next order will be from the mad dictator: Blow it all up.
THE URGENCY to liberate Paris felt by the Resistance fighters in Paris and the Free French Forces under de Gaulle is not shared at all by Eisenhower and the rest of the generals leading the Allied invasion. While they obviously understand the power of the capital’s symbolism, they don’t think it has much importance as a military objective.
De Gaulle is worried that Communists will try to seize control of the capital if there is a premature insurrection there. But the Allies believe that the liberation of the French capital will require the diversion of tremendous resources from the effort to defeat the Germans. Right now they are determined to save every ounce of fuel and food and ammunition for combat operations that will “carry our lines forward the maximum distance” to wipe out the Nazi armies.
A planning document that lands on Eisenhower’s desk after the Normandy invasion warns that “Paris food and medical requirements alone are 75,000 tons for the first two months, and an additional 1,500 tons of coal daily are likely to be needed for the public utilities.”
For all of these reasons, Eisenhower hopes to put off the “actual capture of the city” as long as possible — unless he receives “evidence of starvation or distress among its citizens.”†
ALTHOUGH CHRISTIANE is confined to Dr. Cler’s apartment building, she still manages to learn the fate of her newly arrested family members, because the doctor is in touch with some of her comrades. Her parents and Robert are going to be shipped off to Germany on a train that is scheduled to leave the Gare de l’Est in Paris on August 12.
But with the Allies pushing steadily forward, and the Liberation achingly near, the Resistance redoubles its efforts to prevent any more deportations. On August 10, national railroad workers in the Paris region declare a general strike. Their leaflet exhorts, “To make the Hun retreat, strike! For the complete and definitive liberation of our country, strike!” Within two days, half of the eighty thousand railroad workers have walked off the job, and the train that is supposed to deport Christiane’s parents and brother is stranded at the station.
On the night of August 12, the Resistance launches another sabotage mission, which cripples the Gare de l’Est. But nothing will halt the demonic momentum of the Nazis.
Instead of bringing them to the Gare de l’Est, on August 15, General Choltitz orders more than two thousand prisoners assembled on the “quai au bestiaux” (the animal platform) of the Pantin station.
Among those boarding the train are Jacques, Hélène, and Robert Boulloche, André Rondenay, and Alain de Beaufort — while Christiane remains cut off from all of them in her secret hiding place.
This will be the final train of French prisoners to depart Paris for Germany, the infamous dernier convoi.‡
Unusually, the train carries 168 Allied airmen — Americans, Britons, and Canadians — who have been rescued by the Resistance only to be captured by the Nazis afterward.
The Red Cross arrives at the station before the train leaves and manages to distribute some food rations to the prisoners. Somehow, the Red Cross agents also convince the Germans to release thirty-six prisoners who are sick or pregnant. Then the train rumbles out of the station.
Half an hour after it leaves Paris, the long line of wooden cattle cars suddenly shudders to a halt. At the last minute, the Nazis have figured out the identity of two of their most important prisoners. A Gestapo officer gives the order to unlock the doors on one of the cars, and Rondenay and de Beaufort tumble off the train, along with a handful of others. Minutes later, they are driven to the Domont forest, where they are executed by a German firing squad. Christiane imagined the horror of their final moments: “They must have thought they were being taken off the train so that they could return to Paris.”
The three Boulloches remain in their fetid cars to continue their wretched journey.
A survivor of the convoy remembered hearing railroad workers yelling at the train, “You won’t go any further, the war is over! The Allies have landed at Saint-Tropez” — as indeed they had. But despite more attempts by the Resistance to halt the convoy — several prisoners try to escape and are immediately shot, and another insurrection forces the Germans to transfer all the prisoners to a new train at Nanteuil-Saâcy — the convoy continues its relentless progress.
On August 19, the train arrives at Weimar, Germany. Th
e following day, the men are dispatched to Buchenwald and the women to Ravensbrück.
Much later, Christiane learns that her mother has been waterboarded by the Gestapo after her arrest and before her final train ride. But Hélène Boulloche never tells the Germans anything.
BACK IN PARIS, German demolition teams are planting the charges necessary to blow up every bridge, every factory, and every telephone exchange, as well as every famous Paris landmark, from the Palais du Luxembourg to Napoleon’s tomb and the Quai d’Orsay, home of the French Foreign Ministry. The chief German engineer promises General Choltitz that the Allies won’t find a single working factory when they reach the capital — the industry of Paris will be paralyzed for at least six months.
Since Allied bombers are continuing their obliteration of German cities every day, German generals see nothing unusual about their plan to level Paris. They have just finished demolishing Warsaw, after the uprising there.
After receiving an anonymous phone call, warning of the Germans’ plans to blow up every bridge crossing the Seine, the capital’s Vichy mayor, Pierre-Charles Taittinger, decides to pay a call on the German commander. Choltitz recites his plan to blow the whole city up “as indifferently as if it were a crossroads village in the Ukraine.”
Taittinger decides there is nothing he can do except to try to convey his love for the city. “Often it is given to a general to destroy, rarely to preserve,” Taittinger begins. “Imagine that one day it may be given to you to stand on this balcony as a tourist, to look once more on these monuments to our joys, our sufferings, and to be able to say, ‘One day I could have destroyed all this, and I preserved it as a gift for humanity.’ General, is not that worth all a conqueror’s glory?”
“You are a good advocate for Paris,” Choltitz replied. “You have done your duty well. And likewise I, as a German general, must do mine.”
The general’s response is disheartening. But the Frenchman has planted a powerful seed.
WHEN DE GAULLE returns to France from his headquarters in Algiers, he reaches General Eisenhower’s headquarters on August 20. Once again, Eisenhower declares his intention to bypass Paris when his troops cross the Seine. De Gaulle says this strategy might be acceptable, if the Resistance had not already begun an uprising there.§ Eisenhower replies that the uprising has begun too soon, and against the Allies’ wishes.
“Why too soon?” the French general replies. “Since at this very moment your forces are on the Seine?” Ultimately, Eisenhower commits himself to liberating the capital with General Leclerc’s French troops, but he still refuses to specify a date. De Gaulle believes it is “intolerable that the enemy should occupy Paris even a day longer than it was necessary, from the moment we had the means to drive him out of it.”
De Gaulle also suggests to Ike that if the Allied command delays too long, he will ignore the Allied chain of command and give the order to General Leclerc’s armored division to take Paris himself.
The next day, Roger Gallois, an emissary of the Resistance in Paris, sneaks through German lines to make another appeal to the Americans to get to Paris as soon as possible. When he reaches the tent of George S. Patton, the famously gruff general tells the Frenchman that the Americans are in the business of “destroying Germans, not capturing capitals.” The insurrection in the city has begun without permission from the Allies, and now the Resistance will have to accept the consequences; the Allies cannot accept “the moral responsibility of feeding the city.”
But Eisenhower’s gratitude to the Resistance for everything it has done to make the Normandy invasion successful will soon make it impossible for him to ignore the demands of the Free French.
BY NOW General Choltitz has received the order for the “neutralizations and destructions envisaged for Paris,” but he does nothing to carry it out except to blow up a single telephone exchange. Eventually his troops will also set fire to the Grand Palais.
In the final week of the Occupation, the troops under Choltitz’s command are increasingly skittish; now you can put your life in the Nazis’ hands just by walking down the sidewalk.
One morning in the third week of August, Simone de Beauvoir leans out the window of her Left Bank apartment. This is what she remembers:
The swastika was still flying over the Sénat … Two cyclists rode past shouting, “The Préfectureǁ has fallen.” At the same moment a German detachment emerged from the Sénat, and marched off toward the Boulevard St-Germain. Before turning the corner of the street the soldiers let loose a volley of machine gun-fire. Passersby … scattered, taking cover as best they could in doorways. But every door was shut; one man crumpled and fell in the very act of knocking … while others collapsed along the sidewalk.
By now the walls of Paris are plastered with posters reading À CHACUN SON BOCHE — meaning, roughly, that each Parisian should choose his or her own German to shoot.
THE NIGHT AFTER Roger Gallois’s pleas are rejected by General George Patton, the Frenchman gets one more chance to make his case that the Allies must advance on Paris immediately. On August 22, he reaches the headquarters of General Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, where Gallois is given an audience with Brigadier General Edwin Silbert, Bradley’s intelligence chief. As soon as the meeting ends, Silbert and Bradley are scheduled to leave to meet with Eisenhower.
Albert Lebel, a French colonel who is a liaison officer to the U.S. Army, has already made his own written plea to General Bradley: “If the American Army, seeing Paris in a state of insurrection, does not come to its aid, it will be an omission the people of France will never be able to forget.”
Now Silbert is accompanying the haggard envoy of the Paris Resistance, as Gallois begins to pour his heart out: “You must come to our help, or there is going to be terrible slaughter. Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen are going to be killed.”
By the time Silbert climbs into a Piper Cub to fly to Eisenhower’s headquarters, he has already begun to reconsider his opposition to an immediate move on Paris.
When Silbert and Bradley give their report to Eisenhower, the supreme commander realizes that his hand has finally been “forced by the action of the Free French forces inside Paris.” Because they had begun their uprising, “it was necessary to move rapidly to their support.” Eisenhower also recognizes that de Gaulle “was always determined to get where he wanted to go, and he wasn’t about to let anybody stop him.”
When Silbert and Bradley fly back to their headquarters a few hours later, General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc, commander of the 2nd French Armored Division, is waiting for them on the tarmac. He rushes up to their airplane before the propeller has stopped turning. “You win,” General Silbert tells him. “They’ve decided to send you straight to Paris.”
ON THE SAME DAY that Eisenhower finally decides to move on the capital, General Choltitz has summoned Swedish consul general Raoul Nordling to a remarkable meeting. Nordling has already convinced the general to release 3,893 prisoners, including 1,482 Jews held at Drancy, although he has failed to halt the train that has carried the three Boulloches to concentration camps in Germany.
By now the German general has decided that he has nothing to gain by following Hitler’s orders to blow up the City of Light. So Choltitz makes an extraordinary request of the Swedish diplomat: He asks him to cross German lines, so that he can tell the Allies they must advance on Paris immediately. If they don’t, they will enter a city that is already in ruins.
Choltitz then hands the Swede a laissez-passer: “The Commanding General of Gross Paris authorizes the Consul General of Sweden R. Nordling to leave Paris and its line of defense.” But before Nordling can leave Paris that night, he is stricken with a heart attack. In his place, he sends his brother, Rolf, accompanied by two Allied intelligence agents and two Gaullists the consul has selected, to improve the chances that the improbable story of the defecting German general will be believed by the Allies.
When the motley crew finally reaches General Bradley’s he
adquarters the next day with their bizarre message, the American commander reacts immediately: “Have the French division hurry the hell in there,” he declares. He also orders the American 4th Division to get ready to “get in there too. We can’t take any chances on that general [Choltitz] changing his mind.”
De Gaulle has tried hard to convince the Allies that there is a danger of a Communist takeover of the capital if his forces don’t get there quickly enough. French Communists are indeed “the driving force” behind the on-again, off-again insurrection in Paris, but the historian Julian Jackson and others argue that this did not mean they were trying to seize power. If there was a strategy for that, it came from the Gaullists: They were the ones who decided to occupy the Préfecture on August 19 and the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) the next day.
After fierce fighting with the German troops dug in on the outskirts of Paris, most of General Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division has reached the “immediate proximity” of the capital on the evening of August 24. When the spectral outline of the Eiffel Tower finally appears on the horizon, the troops are “galvanized by an electric current” that propels them forward.
SHORTLY AFTER NINE P.M., a tiny French detachment of three tanks and four half-tracks form a steel ring around the Hôtel de Ville. At last, Free French troops are back in Paris — four years and seventy-one days after the first German troops passed through the Porte de la Vilette to begin their odious Occupation.
A Paris radio station has been seized by the Resistance five days earlier. Pierre Schaeffer grabs the microphone and begins to shout:
Parisians rejoice! We have come on the air to give you the news of our deliverance. The Leclerc Division has entered Paris. We are crazy with happiness!
The Cost of Courage Page 15