by Philip Short
20. Edgar Morin remembered a clandestine press service run by Gilles Martinet (the Agence d’Information et de Documentation, or AID) issuing a thick dossier on Auschwitz, but that could not have been earlier than April 1944. The first detailed report to Allied governments on December 10 1942, entitled ‘The mass extermination of Jews in German-occupied Poland’, drawing on information from Jan Karski and Witold Pilecki, both members of the Polish Resistance, had been published early in 1943. But Karski had not had access to the death camps and Western leaders were reluctant to believe him. Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz in April 1943, but when he provided an eyewitness account of the gas chambers it was thought that he was exaggerating. Not until the winter of 1944, when the Russians liberated Auschwitz and other camps in Poland, did the Allies finally face up to the reality of what had been happening there.
21. Neither General de Gaulle in his speeches nor his spokesman, Maurice Schumann (himself of Jewish origin) in his BBC radio broadcasts, addressed directly the persecution of the Jews. To the extent that they were mentioned at all, they were included with communists, Freemasons and Gaullists as victims of reprisals by the Germans and their collaborationist allies.
22. Letter of January 26 1943, cited in Péan, Une jeunesse française, pp. 251 & 253–4.
23. Pinot was opposed to armed struggle until a general uprising became feasible, arguing that premature action would only provoke needless reprisals.
24. A note on the state of public opinion in France, issued over Cailliau’s signature on February 1 1944, said that Jews and Freemasons should be kept out of a future French government. Cailliau insisted afterwards that that did not reflect his personal views and in the 1970s he won a court case against Mitterrand for suggesting otherwise.
25. Pierre Merli’s group in Nice started sabotage activities in February 1943 and Munier and Pelat in the autumn of that year.
26. According to Dechartre, the meeting, which he recalled as having taken place on May 28 1943, was arranged because ‘there were three movements . . . the Gaullist movement, the communist movement and a movement which was a bit more bizarre which was born out of the Mutual Aid Centres . . . The General said, “three movements, that’s two too many” . . . so I was given the mission to prepare what was afterwards called the fusion [of the three movements].’ In that account, given long afterwards, he apparently conflated two different discussions, for the communist prisoners’ movement was not launched until the end of 1943. He was also mistaken about Mitterrand’s moustache and slicked-back hair, a disguise which the latter adopted on his return from Algiers in January 1944. In an earlier version, given to his close friend, Charles Moulin, in the 1970s, Dechartre also conflated different encounters but not in the same sense. To Moulin he claimed that at Lyon they only ‘exchanged three words’ and that their first serious discussion took place in Paris in March 1944. That is not plausible either. Dechartre’s recollections are important and their substantive accuracy is not in dispute: the only uncertainty is over the timing of their conversations. In this section I have cited only those remarks which I feel were likely to have been made at Lyon, leaving to subsequent chapters those parts which the internal chronology indicates must have been made later.
27. Dechartre used the term, ‘Bakerfix’, which was a popular brillantine pomade for women marketed by Mitterrand’s future hostess in Marrakesh, the music hall star, Josephine Baker.
28. Philippe Dechartre, interview with Jean Lacouture, c.1999, IFM typescript.
29. Jacques Bénet said the Committee appointed in February 1943 had seven members: Barrois, Bénet, Mauduit, Mitterrand, de Montjoye, Pilven and Pinot. In February that could not have been so, but the seven names may well have corresponded to the membership of the Committee in the late spring of 1943, after the departure of Michel Cailliau in April and of Jean-Albert Roussel. It is unclear exactly when the initials RNPG were first used. In November 1943, Mitterrand used the term MNPG (National Movement of Prisoners of War). The name by which it would later be known, RNPG, appears to have been coined later that winter for the discussions on a merger with Cailliau’s movement. Before that it was referred to as Pin’–Mitt’, or simply, ‘the movement’.
30. Letter to Marie-Claire Sarrazin, July 17 1943, cited in Péan, Une jeunesse française, pp. 322–3. As often in Mitterrand’s private correspondence during this period, he indulged in flights of fancy which are misleading if taken literally. Here the sentence which I have paraphrased as ‘I am not in that league’ actually stated: ‘[As for me], I can only be a leader by scheming or by terror, or by virtue of the ruthless networks of [all that is] inhuman . . .’ His intention was to draw a distinction between his own lesser talents and those of the truly ‘great men’ who were able both to move the masses and to love them as individuals, but that was not how he wrote it. The imagery may have been drawn subconsciously from the struggle between the Resistance and the Gestapo.
31. In a note on December 13 1943, Captain Lejeune attested that ‘Monnier’ (Morland) ‘belongs to the [paramilitary] Service d’Action of the DSS [Giraudist Special Services], incorporated into the BRAL [London Intelligence and Action Bureau, set up in November 1943]’.
32. That Bousquet, from 1943 onwards, aided the Resistance, or its individual members, is not in doubt, though his reasons for doing so are open to question. Mitterrand did not meet him until 1949. He was on record as saying that Bousquet had ‘saved lives’ during the war and, during Bousquet’s trial that year, authorised Jean-Paul Martin to testify that ‘Bousquet had rendered great services to the Resistance, and that I [Mitterrand] would vouch for that’. Martin, who had been Mitterrand’s informant in the police department, said later that Bousquet and Mitterrand had been the two most important influences in his life. André Rousselet, for decades part of Mitterrand’s inner circle, said he was convinced that Mitterrand’s support for Bousquet was in part ‘for services rendered’.
33. The award was almost certainly made between February and mid-April 1943. Mitterrand later maintained that he did not receive the medal in person, having already left for London when the awards ceremony was scheduled, some seven to nine months later. That seems not to have been true. Some of his friends remembered him wearing the francisque in the summer of 1943.
34. Jean Pierre-Bloch, who in 1943 was with the BCRA in London, wrote that members of the Resistance were instructed to accept decorations from Vichy because refusal would attract suspicion. He added that in Mitterrand’s case, the BCRA had been informed and advised him not to refuse. André Ullmann, who had belonged to Cailliau’s movement and was therefore in principle a hostile source, confirmed that.
35. Jacques Bénet dated the beginning of ‘permanent and methodical resistance’ to ‘the first days of March 1943 . . . That marked the real start of the RNPG.’
36. Mitterrand obtained admission to the meeting using a pass provided by an ex-prisoner working for Masson’s Commissariat.
37. This is taken from Maurice Schumann’s account on the BBC French service on January 12 1944.
38. Another version holds that he was helped by a communist militant named Piatzook, who ordered the doors to be opened as the Milice were coming to arrest him so that he could escape. Since that makes a better story, it is hard to understand why Mitterrand never told it himself if it were true.
39. Pierre Péan quoted an unnamed friend of Mitterrand as saying that, after the Wagram incident, some of Pétain’s aides considered offering Mitterrand Masson’s job. At that time the entourages of the Marshal and of Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister, were locked in a struggle for influence. The appointment of Mitterrand, a maréchaliste, to replace Laval’s man, Masson, would have marked a victory for Pétain’s group. Mitterrand himself, in this account, decided the moment for such an initiative was past. The suggestion is intriguing, for, if founded, it would show that, even after Wagram, Mitterrand had not completely burnt his boats with Vichy and could still consider returning to the maréchaliste fold. But it
does not ring true. Masson’s post was not vacant – he reportedly offered his resignation, but it was refused and he remained in office until the following January – and even if it had been, there is no reason to think that Laval would have accepted Mitterrand, known as an ally of Maurice Pinot, as his replacement.
40. A few weeks earlier, Dobrowolsky had run off with the movement’s treasury. Jean Munier and Pol Pilven had tracked him down and brought him back to face Mitterrand, who had decided to spare his life. When arrested, in August 1943, he was on his way to North Africa where, on Mitterrand’s instructions, he was to join the Free French forces.
41. Miller was arrested in October.
42. Mitterrand told Jean Warisse in London a month later that d’Astier had provided his movement with money and arms.
43. Bettencourt quoted Mitterrand as saying that Lenin and Trotsky had also thought about ‘getting themselves up’ for power. Captain Lejeune of the ORA who received him in London, claimed many years later that Mitterrand often said during this period, ‘When I shall be a Minister . . .’ By then, however, Lejeune had fallen out with Mitterrand and his account must be read accordingly.
44. Ginette Munier offered an alternative version of these events, in which she and Jean Munier went together to the station and, finding Mitterrand and André Bettencourt in one of the carriages, warned them not to descend. The four of them then travelled on to Clermont-Ferrand, where they stayed with one of Bettencourt’s friends. The two versions are not necessarily contradictory: Fanny Pfister, Jean Munier and Ginette may well all have been at the station that day. Ginette, Mitterrand and Munier returned briefly to Vichy soon after to try to get news of Pilven and Jean Renaud, but Jean-Paul Martin told them the Gestapo had already taken them away.
45. In his book, Ma part de vérité, Mitterrand wrote that on arrival in London he had been asked to sign a register acknowledging de Gaulle’s leadership and, when he refused to do so, was denied clean clothes and accommodated in ‘a room with neither door nor window’ – an unfortunate phrase which prompted his opponents to ask how he had got in. But that was written twenty-five years later when he was at loggerheads with the Gaullists and, like much of what he said at such moments, was invective rather than history. De Gaulle could be equally cavalier with the truth when the mood took him.
In fact, the BCRA financed Mitterrand’s stay in London from the day he arrived. Whatever reservations he may have had about the Gaullists were quickly dispelled and soon after his return to France, his movement publicly proclaimed its loyalty to the General.
His failure to register the RNPG as a resistance organisation under the BCRA, in the same way that Cailliau had registered the ‘Charette network’, did cause problems in one respect, however. When the war ended, its members were denied the benefits that other, officially recognised, movements obtained. The fact that the MNPGD (which succeeded the RNPG) was integrated into de Gaulle’s FFI, the French Forces of the Interior, in 1944 was not regarded as sufficient proof of their status. Recognition was finally accorded almost half a century later, in 1991.
Mitterrand’s own position as an officer in the FFI was confirmed in 1945 by General Koenig, the Military Governor of Paris, who, in another citation for the Croix de guerre – Mitterrand’s third of the war – described him as ‘Lieutenant-Colonel in the FFI’ and wrote: ‘Animated by the deepest patriotic feelings. Extremely active and with an inflexible will, took the initiative to create . . . all over France the Resistance Movement of Prisoners and Deportees. By untiring activity and despite great dangers . . . he organised a clandestine intelligence service for the Allies [and] sustained and animated Resistance in the most diverse forms – sabotage of railways and factories, punctual attacks and false identity papers.’
46. ‘Interrogation of Pepe and Monier, 23rd November 1943’, SOE archives, London.
47. This corresponded to the ‘Committee of Seven’ described by Bénet as leading the movement in the summer of 1943, allowing for the withdrawal of Mauduit and de Montjoye to run the maquis at Montmaur and the replacement of Pol Pilven by Munier following his arrest on November 11. The main difference was that Mitterrand now placed himself at the movement’s head while Maurice Pinot ranked third.
48. The relative strengths of the two groups was shown when, after the merger of March 1944, the RNPG was given control of nine of the 12 military regions, while the MRPGD and the communist CNPG shared the other three between them.
49. Mitterrand’s incorporation into the Gaullist ranks was backdated to 15 November, the day of his arrival at Tangmere. He was appointed to the BRAL’s ‘Action Service’ on December 1.
50. Mitterrand and Benamou, Mémoires interrompus, pp. 129–31. To Pierre Merli in 1944, he said, ‘It was not pleasant’; to Benamou, fifty years later, that ‘it went less badly than has been reported’. Merli’s conclusion, that it was ‘tough but not negative’ is probably a fair summation.
51. Letter from Frenay to ‘Vergennes’ (Michel Cailliau), March 18 1944, in IFM carton 7.
52. That Schumann was acting on instructions from Algiers was shown by his (premature) announcement in the same broadcast that the three prisoners’ movements had already merged: ‘It is a wonderful piece of news that I have the privilege of announcing to the country: from now on there is one – I say again, one – prisoners’ movement in France’, a point which he repeated no fewer than four times.
53. Following his remarks in November to Marie-Claire Sarrazin (‘making my entrance into the century’) and Bettencourt (‘doing something once the war is over’), this phrase – in a letter to Dayan written from London in February 1944 – was a further sign of Mitterrand’s nascent political ambition.
54. While in Algiers, Mitterrand was offered a post with the Consultative Assembly – which de Gaulle had set up to buttress his role as supreme representative of the nation and to prepare the transition to a provisional government – but turned it down.
55. Mitterrand, Ma part de vérité, p. 23.
56. Having appointed Mitterrand to head the prisoners’ movement, de Gaulle had no reason to prevent him returning to take up his post. Michel Cailliau later acknowledged that ‘if the General had given orders to keep Mitterrand in Algiers . . . he could not have left’. It was Cailliau himself, using his uncle’s name, who persuaded his Gaullist friends to block Mitterrand’s departure. According to Colonel Passy, Jacques Soustelle, whom de Gaulle had appointed to head the combined Gaullist and Giraudist special services, was among those whom Cailliau misled. As a result Mitterrand turned to the Giraudists, whom Cailliau could not influence, to get him a flight out.
57. Mitterrand, François, La paille et le grain, Flammarion, 1975, pp. 164–6.
58. Mitterrand arrived in Marrakesh on December 29. He reached London on January 2 from Prestwick, where Montgomery’s plane had landed. Five days later he was given a new code name, ‘Merchant’, by the SOE in preparation for his return to France.
59. Mitterrand thought Colonel Passy had used his influence with the SOE to arrange his return. The MGB502 was captained by Lieut.-Cmdr. Philip Williams, not, as Mitterrand remembered, by David Birkin (whose daughter, the singer, Jane Birkin, later made her home in France); David Birkin was the vessel’s navigator.
60. These details are from the account of John Motherwell, a Canadian officer who made an identical crossing exactly a month before.
61. According to Pierre Péan, the 7.65mm automatic had one more surprise in store. Mitterrand, who had no use for weapons, gave it to Jean Munier, who was astonished to find that the first bullet in the chamber was a blank. Had he tried to use it to defend himself in a firefight, he would probably have been killed. A simple mistake? Or a parting shot from one of Cailliau’s friends in London?
62. They were hidden with Jean’s brother, Georges Munier, at Levallois. Mitterrand had told Jean Warisse in London the previous November that Colonel Buckmaster had promised to organise parachute drops of 60 containers of weaponry for the use of the
prisoners’ movement. They were to be delivered the following month at a dropping zone at St Laurent du Pont, just north of Grenoble, where Patrice Pelat was active. Whether Buckmaster followed through is not known.
63. After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Mauduit refused repatriation until his fellow prisoners could also return. Mitterrand sent Pelat and Finifter to bring him back to France, but when they arrived on May 11 they found he had died two days earlier after contracting pleurisy.
64. According to Charles Moulin, who had been in Stalag XIB with Cailliau, the decision to set up the CNPG was taken in June 1943 by a small group of communist prisoners from that camp. Four months later Cailliau asked a colleague, Jacques Bourgeois, to negotiate a merger between the CNPG and his own network. In a letter to de Gaulle on February 1 1944, he referred specifically to the communist movement as one of the three which were to come together. Mitterrand and Frenay, in letters to Cailliau on January 26 and February 16, mentioned only the fusion of two movements – Mitterrand’s RNPG and Cailliau’s MRPGD. De Gaulle was already aware of the CNPG’s existence when they met in December, yet the collegial leadership which the General approved – Mitterrand, Bénet and Cailliau – did not include a communist representative, and when Frenay realised that a communist had been added he blamed Mitterrand for allowing it. The likeliest explanation is that both Frenay and de Gaulle had been led to believe that Cailliau’s movement and the communists were already in the process of becoming a single organisation and therefore Cailliau would represent both.