Eventually, as dusk started to settle, draping the village in twilight with a few fires blazing here and there through its thick veil, Yves heaved a sigh and followed Marcel back to the hills. He could have been a born soldier first and foremost, but he had spent enough time alone with God to know that sometimes God knew better. They left completely unnoticed, stumbling blindly on in the fury of a snowstorm that was whirling around the countryside in its savage violence. The trail that they were leaving after themselves was covered by fresh snow by the time the SS squad reached the barn, behind which they had been hiding.
Klaus felt cheated. The devastation that he had left after himself would be remembered for years to come, that he didn’t doubt. He did teach them a lesson of what happens to those who dare cross Obersturmführer Barbie. Their mutilated bodies were left in the open – for the maquis to discover – their faces smashed with hobnailed boots into a bloody mass. Under the punishment of death, Klaus forbade the remaining locals from burying them for the following eight days. Hundreds were arrested, executed or deported; dozens of houses burned. Yet, sitting in his office on the first floor of the Ecole, Klaus played with his lighter with a look of frustration creasing his brow; he still didn’t have any leads to the camp of the maquis.
The SD headquarters in Paris remained oddly quiet. Before, Standartenführer Sievers would send him countless teletypes demanding immediate action, this time it was Klaus who contacted him first with his report. The languid reaction which he had received in response, something to the effect of “I trust in your abilities, do what you must, if you need any resources I’ll see what I can do” sounded almost like a barely veiled request to leave him, Sievers, the hell alone with his, Klaus’s, maquis. Better for me, Klaus shrugged, drawing up a list of the resources he might need since Sievers was kind enough to suggest he would supply them. Maybe that bitch Sophie is keeping him occupied in other ways, and he will finally let me be.
Klaus was not mistaken in his assumptions, whatever Sievers’ reasons for such a passive attitude were; a month later he received confirmation from the latter that everything was settled with the commanders of the local Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe and that whenever he, Klaus, was ready, he could use them as he pleased. For such a special occasion, feeling no less like an army general with eight thousand men under his command and two air squadrons awaiting his orders, Klaus put on his full uniform. However, after stopping in front of the mirror and looking himself over with a somewhat mocking sneer, he turned on his heel sharply, went back to his bedroom and changed into his regular civilian clothes which he preferred wearing.
“I don’t need all this regalia to show them who’s in charge here,” he muttered under his breath and walked outside, into a breaking March day.
The morning of March 25 started with a massive bombardment of the area, where Klaus knew the maquis hid, but which was too vast and impenetrable for the regular troops to search. So, using Sievers’ unexpected generosity, Klaus decided to do what he did best; annihilate everything that had the insolence to resist him, and what, if not air bombardment, suited such a purpose better?
With both Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe commanders standing silently nearby, awaiting his orders, Klaus unrolled a map over the hood of his car and explained his intentions to them.
“Drop all the bombs that are available on this plateau before you parachute in your Airborne Division. As soon as you do that, the Wehrmacht troops will follow them, sweeping the remaining maquis forces from here,” his hand glided over the map from the north of the plateau to the mountain, “to here. We don’t need prisoners. They’re partisans, after all, so shoot them all indiscriminately. They’ve been fighting us with their guerilla tactics, ambushing our soldiers and shooting us in the back, so they don’t deserve the honor of being treated like soldiers. Kill them all like the dirty partisans they are. They don’t deserve any better.”
He watched the massacre unravel from a distance. At first, a triumphant grin played on his face, but it had soon disappeared, replaced by a bored expression. He started looking at his watch now and then, nodded to the reports without really listening, then walked over to the troop commanders and announced, much to their dismay, that he was going back to Lyon.
“Aren’t you going to stay to supervise the operation?” General Pflaum inquired, still refusing to believe that this arrogant Gestapo butcher, who never saluted his officers and generally treated the Wehrmacht as if they were his personal troop, who was young enough to be his son, and whom fate, by some extremely unbelievable twist, had placed as his commander, was leaving them all to their devices in the middle of such an important military operation.
Barbie only shrugged one shoulder in a dismissive manner. “Military operations are your forte, not mine.”
“What is your forte then?” Pflaum demanded sarcastically.
“Bring me some maquis to Lyon.” Barbie offered him a bright grin, which sent shivers down the general’s spine. “I’ll show you then what my forte is.”
Only a little over four hundred maquis survived Operation Frühling – Spring, as Klaus poetically called it. The first maquisards were captured on April 9. They were all handed to Obersturmführer Barbie for interrogation.
21
Algiers, April 1944
Etienne lapsed into a profound melancholy, surrounded by all the shouting men and their heated debates, their voices soon drifting into nothing as he stared out of the window, looking dreadfully bored. It was only April, but the heat was already unbearable, stifling. After he had run from Lyon and traveled to Algiers on a submarine to join the Free French who had set their headquarters up there after kicking Rommel and his Africa Corps out, he never ceased to long for France. Everything here depressed him, starting with the weather and finishing with these never-ending debates.
“…we will found a new Republic, which will sweep away the profoundly reactionary regime set up by Vichy and which will give the popular and democratic institutions the efficacy that had been taken away from them by the organs of corruption and treason that existed before the capitulation. In this way, there will be a democracy which will unite continuity of governmental action with real control by the elected representatives of the people.”
Frenay was making yet another impassionate speech, interrupted from time to time by his counterparts. They were discussing the political system of a liberated France, seemingly forgetting that France was still very much under occupation. They were dividing political parties and suggesting their own candidatures as future ministers while the war was still raging and their countrymen were dying in their hundreds. Etienne was sick to his stomach from it all. To them, all those deaths were only numbers in the newspapers, a convenient political excuse to exploit in the future. For Etienne, they were comrades, selfless and fearless, who gave their lives for their country without any regard to which political system would be installed after they perished. All they wanted was to see France free, just as he did.
“I want to go back,” he told Frenay later that day, as they were heading to a meeting with de Gaulle.
The General had demanded another assembly where they could discuss future plans for France. De Gaulle’s concern was at least understandable; the Allies were still very mistrustful of his Free French and the Resistance in general and were hoping to disarm the former French Empire entirely and install their own administration – the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories. Needless to say, de Gaulle didn’t fancy the idea one bit.
“To Lyon?” Frenay lifted both eyebrows in amazement. Moulin died a brutal death there; he, himself, had narrowly escaped Barbie’s clutches and therefore considered it pure madness, the very fact that someone would voluntarily go back to the lion’s den.
“No.” Etienne looked away, a faint blush coloring his cheeks as though in shame. He remembered far too well the treatment Barbie’s men had subjected him to. He still woke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, after seeing Philippe’s pale face w
ith his eyes glazed over, after they dragged his body away to dump it wherever they dumped the dead who ‘didn’t deserve a proper burial.’ “To Paris, maybe. I can’t stay here any longer. I need to do something.”
“Wait at least for the Allies to land,” Frenay advised, shrugging as if to say, what’s the rush? It’s nice here; the weather is warm and beautiful; the wine is cool and fresh.
“Our comrades from the Resistance are dying while we’re having all these political polemics,” Etienne remarked bitterly.
“Somebody has to have political polemics, and somebody has to do the dying for the cause,” Frenay countered.
Etienne glared at him. Moulin, your former counterpart, who did the dying as you call it, would never say something of the sort.
“Shouldn’t we be ashamed to rely on the Allies to liberate our own country?” he asked instead.
Frenay regarded him coldly.
“I’ll let you know as soon as someone goes to Paris next time,” he spoke, completely ignoring Etienne’s previous remark. Do you want to die right before the liberation? Go ahead, die. What do I care? “They’ll take you with them.”
“Thank you.”
Etienne shook his hand out of politeness and walked away, already knowing that he wanted nothing to do with these people anymore.
Paris, June 1944
Giselle was pedaling along the Place de la Concorde, out of pure habit glancing up at the building where she used to live only four years ago. She wondered who lived there now and if it would be possible to get the apartment back once the Boches left… But she would worry about that later. She needed to survive first.
Sievers had agreed to let her go alone to meet the contact, Mariette Savatier, even though it did take several hours of persuasion. Finally, he saw Giselle’s reason and, more importantly, the warmth with which she greeted the SOE agent, who went under the alias of Thomas Krupp. “If I don’t come back, you have him and my niece as hostages,” she spoke calmly. “With such trump cards up your sleeve, I wouldn’t worry about me running away back to the underground. Besides, they would hardly take me now, would they?”
Sievers may not fall for her sweet-talking, but to her logic, he always listened. So, not only did he let her go without the usual escort but even told his men to give her a bicycle so she could travel to wherever she needed.
Mariette, a pretty woman in her mid-thirties with black eyes and beautiful dark hair, wasn’t as pleased to see her as was her niece Violette, who had lived with Mariette since Kamille’s departure to Germany. Giselle’s Pekinese Coco, now technically Violette’s charge, also wouldn’t stop wiggling her whole body with delight at the sight of her old mistress. Giselle positively refused to put the dog down and held her tight against her chest throughout the entire visit. Coco smelled like her old home, her old life, carefree and so beautifully splendid before all this horror in tall black boots marched in and took it away from her, together with her dog. Giselle swore to herself there and then to fight to the bitter end to have it all back; the old home, the old dog, the old France itself.
With much hesitancy and mistrust, Mariette reluctantly agreed to get in touch with the local SOE agents but categorically refused to allow Giselle any direct contact with them.
“I hope you understand my reasoning. You might be Kamille’s sister and all, but you live with that Boche in his quarters, and I can’t possibly know if he’s using you just to arrest us all.”
“I understand.” Giselle nodded. She would think the same in Mariette’s place. “No need for me to meet them. I’ll be his liaison agent; you’ll be theirs. That’s all he wants.”
After the conversation that took place in Mariette’s unheated apartment, many things quickly happened. The Allies had finally made their landing in Normandy. Giselle still remembered the havoc it caused in the early pre-dawn hours when a loud banging on the door and Sievers’ quick steps awakened her. When she cracked the door to her bedroom open and stuck her head out, he was already dressed and ready to leave for the Kommandantur.
“Your friends have landed,” he threw over his shoulder on his way out. She opened a bottle of wine as soon as he closed the door after himself, and to hell with anyone who said that it was too early to drink, or to celebrate.
Giselle rode her bicycle past newly reinforced Wehrmacht positions, past sentries strategically positioned on nearly every corner, past a few roadblocks, presenting the men minding them her Ausweis. Paris had changed, grown anxious and watchful, ready to spring into action. Mariette met her in her usual nurse’s apron, ready to leave for her shift at the hospital.
“I just finished decoding the letter from Kamille,” she said instead of a greeting, without any unnecessary preamble. They would never become friends; business contacts at the most, but that suited both women just fine. “She sent me quite an interesting message.”
Giselle accepted a mug with steaming chicory from Mariette’s hands. Friends or not, Mariette was a good host.
“What is it?”
“She says that a group of Wehrmacht officers is planning to assassinate Hitler.”
Giselle regarded her with skepticism.
“She says her husband is a part of the plot.”
This time Giselle’s expression changed from mocking to concerned. “Is there a chance you could have decoded it wrong? Hartmann was never particularly loyal to his Führer, but he never seemed to be the conspirator type.”
“I decoded everything correctly,” Mariette assured her in an even tone. “Kamille asked me, on his behalf, to find out if it was possible to begin negotiations with General Koenig of the Free French once they seize power in Germany. They want to talk peace, it appears. Has Sievers ever spoke with you about something of this sort?”
Giselle shook her head thoughtfully. “No. He never mentioned anything involving a plot. I don’t think he’s aware of it.”
“I didn’t think so myself. Though, with his current maneuvers with the SOE, I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew but didn’t alert anyone. He needs Hitler as the head of state just as much as Hartmann and his friends do, from the looks of it.”
When Giselle gently probed him about the subject later that day when they were having their dinner in his suite, Sievers shook his head categorically as if he didn’t want to hear anything about it.
“It’s a stupid idea. If I were you, I would tell your dear sister to get out of the country while she still can. Together with her husband.”
“You do know about the plot, don’t you?” Giselle’s fork with a piece of pork stabbed on it froze in the air as she regarded him closely.
“They will never succeed.” Sievers shook his head again, evading the question once more.
“Why didn’t you warn anyone in Berlin then, if you knew all along?”
He smirked slightly and then answered after a pause, “Wanted to give them a fighting chance in case they might succeed.”
Berlin. July 20, 1944
Kamille and Marthe waited next to the radio, which was suspiciously silent, for two long hours. The atmosphere in the room was charged with worry, etched into the women’s pale faces, and even Marthe’s little son, who was busy playing with his new pup, in blissful oblivion, failed to distract them.
“Something’s wrong,” Marthe whispered, passing a wet palm over her forehead. “Lindemann was supposed to make a proclamation to the German people a long time ago. Erwin told me that von Stauffenberg called the headquarters a little past twelve, assuring them that the bomb went off as planned and the Führer was dead. They were supposed to announce it to the public by now.”
“Is von Stauffenberg sure that Hitler is dead?”
“He said he was. He left the bomb under his conference table, almost next to him. It must have killed him.”
The wait was unbearable, draining.
Claus von Stauffenberg finally decided to implement the plot himself after a few attempts had already failed, either because Hitler didn’t make his appearance in th
e conference room because of a last-minute change of plan or because the man, charged with executing the plan, couldn’t find the strength in himself to go through with it. So, von Stauffenberg had taken a bomb, with a pencil timer detonator, to Wolf’s Lair – Hitler’s headquarters in Eastern Prussia – for the plot couldn’t be delayed any longer.
“We’re not only losing the war; the Gestapo got wind of our preparations,” he explained to the rest of the conspirators before flying out to the Wolfsschanze. “Either we do it now, or we all get arrested for nothing.”
Erwin and Jochen were waiting for his arrival back in Berlin.
Finally, a radio crackled to life, but the message was not the one that the women were hoping to hear. The man who was speaking was not Lindemann but their Führer, and he was very much alive.
“My comrades, the men and women of the German people!
I don’t know how many times it is by now that an assassination has been planned and attempted against me. But I am talking to you today for two reasons in particular. First, so that you can hear my voice and know that I am unhurt and well; second, so that you may know the details of a crime that is without equal in German history.
A very small clique of ambitious, dishonorable and at the same time criminally stupid officers have conspired to remove me and at the same time overturn the staff leadership of the German armed forces.
Liberation Page 21