Liberation of Paris : How Eisenhower, De Gaulle, and Von Choltitz Saved the City of Light (9781501164941)

by Smith, Jean Edward

  De Gaulle’s response was exactly what Ike had hoped for. “I assure you again that the French government is very happy to have a place in your army under your supreme command for operations in the Western theater, and it has the fullest confidence that you will conduct the armies of liberation to a rapid and complete victory.”12

  On May 26—less than two weeks before D-Day—the Committee of National Liberation in Algiers declared itself the Provisional Government of the French Republic, with de Gaulle at its head. That same day Churchill cabled FDR: “It is very difficult to cut the French out of the liberation of France,” and he requested the president’s acquiescence to inviting de Gaulle to London.13 Roosevelt reluctantly agreed. “I hope your conversations with General de Gaulle will persuade him to contribute to the liberation of France without imposing his authority over the French people.”14

  Churchill sent his personal plane to Algiers to fetch de Gaulle, who arrived in London on June 4. The prime minister immediately took him to Ike’s field headquarters near Portsmouth, where, Churchill told Roosevelt, “Generals Eisenhower and Bedell Smith went to their utmost limit in their endeavor to conciliate him, making it clear that in practice events would probably mean that the Committee [FCNL] would be the natural authority with whom the Supreme Commander would deal.”15 Churchill was preparing FDR for what would become the new reality in France.

  Eisenhower gave de Gaulle a lengthy briefing on Operation Overlord, the planned Allied landings in Normandy. Then it was agreed that General Pierre Koenig would fold the Resistance (FFI) into the French army and report to Ike. Eisenhower told de Gaulle he was worried about the weather, and had at most twenty-four hours to decide on a date for the landing. “What do you think I should do?”

  De Gaulle, who was flattered that Ike had asked him, insisted the decision was Eisenhower’s alone. “Whatever decision you make, I approve in advance and without reservation. I will only tell you that in your place I should not delay.”16

  When the briefing concluded, Eisenhower, with evident embarrassment, gave de Gaulle a speech, written by speechwriters at SHAEF, that they wanted de Gaulle to deliver to France after the troops had landed. As Ike had anticipated, de Gaulle refused. Instead, he wrote his own:

  The supreme battle has been joined…. It is, of course, the Battle of France, and the battle for France! For the sons of France, wherever they are, whatever they are, the simple and sacred duty is to fight the enemy by every means in their power…. The orders given by the French government and by the leaders it has recognized must be followed precisely…. From behind the cloud so heavy with our blood and our tears, the sun of our greatness is now reappearing.17

  Eisenhower was delighted. De Gaulle did not say he was the president of France nor did he call Ike the supreme commander, but it was obvious what he meant. To the Combined Chiefs, Ike cabled, “General de Gaulle and his chief of staff are anxious to assist every possible way and to have the lodgments effected as soon as possible.”18

  With the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on June 6, Eisenhower took charge. And the relationship with de Gaulle prospered. Behind the scenes, Ike had sent an explicit directive on May 25 to the British and American commanders who would land on D-Day: “Military government will not be established in liberated France…. The French themselves will conduct all aspects of civil administration in their country, even in areas of military operations.”19

  On June 14, little more than a week after the Allies had landed, de Gaulle returned to France with a lightning visit to the ancient Norman city of Bayeux, famous for its tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings, where the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxons. Bayeux was the first French city liberated by the Allies, and de Gaulle’s return was a spectacular event. He dismounted from his vehicle and proceeded on foot to the town hall. He was immediately surrounded by cheering crowds. “We walked on together, all overwhelmed by comradeship, feeling national joy, pride, and hope rise again from the depths of the abyss,” he later wrote.20 De Gaulle also visited two nearby towns, received similar receptions, and departed that evening feeling in control. Whatever doubts Washington may have had about the general’s support had been overwhelmingly dispelled. And for all practical purposes, Bayeux had become the temporary capital of liberated France.

  De Gaulle returned to Algiers on June 16, addressed the French Consultative Assembly (the temporary stand-in for the National Assembly), informed them of what had been achieved, and paid special tribute to Eisenhower, “in whom the French Government has complete confidence for the victorious conduct of the common military operations.”21 As de Gaulle recognized, it was Ike who was primarily responsible for the swift transition he had made from being an outcast to being the leader of France. Eisenhower had ignored Washington’s wishes and relied on his own judgment. Having suffered through the chaos of civil affairs in North Africa, he was not about to let it happen again.

  De Gaulle’s lightning visit to Bayeux established the Provisional Government of the French Republic in Normandy. De Gaulle appointed François Coulet as regional commissioner, and Coulet moved quickly to consolidate his position. Roosevelt, at a press conference in Washington on June 23, once again attempted to debunk the effort. “Let us liberate a little more of France before we go into the matter of civil administration,” said the president, but it was clear that the liberated territory welcomed de Gaulle’s representatives.22 As Anthony Eden put it, “Whatever de Gaulle’s gifts or failings, he was a godsend to his country at this hour, when France must otherwise have been distracted by controversy or bathed in blood.”23

  Initially, Allied progress was slow. At the end of June, American and British forces had moved little beyond their initial beachhead, and the Germans were holding firm. The Allied buildup continued through July, and on July 26, the breakthrough came when the American VII Corps overwhelmed the German lines at Saint-Lô. George Patton’s Third Army tore through the gap in the German lines, and the breakthrough became a breakout. “The whole Western Front has been ripped open,” Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, the German commander, informed Berlin. “The left flank has collapsed.”24

  Patton’s army raced into Brittany virtually unchecked. “Once a gap appears in the enemy front we must pass into it into the enemy rear areas,” said General Bernard Montgomery, who was commanding all Allied ground forces at the time. “The broad strategy of the Allied armies is to swing the right flank towards Paris and force the enemy back to the Seine.”25 In the next three days, Patton advanced one hundred miles, and the Germans now faced encirclement as the Canadian First Army came on from the north.

  On August 7, Eisenhower moved his command post from England to the Norman village of Tournières, about twelve miles southwest of Bayeux. The ground war was divided into two army groups—the Twenty-First under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, consisting of the Second British Army and the First Canadian Army, and the Twelfth under General Omar Bradley, consisting of the First and Third U.S. armies. “If we can destroy a good portion of the enemy’s army now in front of us we will have a greater freedom of movement in northern France and I would expect to move very rapidly,” Eisenhower cabled Marshall on August 11.26

  Kluge and his commanders planned to fall back to a shorter defense line roughly along the Seine, but Hitler rejected the plan and ordered an all-out counterattack at Mortain, the shoulder of the Third Army’s breakout. If the German attack was successful, Patton’s armored columns would be cut off. But the heroic stand of the U.S. Thirtieth Division at Mortain, combined with round-the-clock air bombardment, saved the day. After a week of some of the heaviest fighting of the war, the Germans found themselves encircled in the Falaise Pocket, the First Canadian Army coming in from the north, and the French Second Armored Division, commanded by Major General Jacques Leclerc, coming in from the south. Jacques Leclerc was the nom de guerre of the Viscount Jacques-Philippe de Hauteclocque, a career French Army officer who had joined de Gaulle in 1940 and had assumed the pseudonym “Leclerc�
� to protect his family in France. A legendary battlefield commander, Leclerc was most famous for fighting his way north with a Free French force 420 miles from Fort Lamy in Chad to join the British Eighth Army in the Sahara in February 1941.27

  General Leclerc

  The French Second Armored Division was unique in many respects. It had been sent to England from Algeria in April 1944 following de Gaulle’s earlier discussion with Eisenhower, and was intended to lead the Allies in the liberation of Paris when the time came. Unlike the Free French forces that were fighting in Italy under General Juin, or the First French Army that would soon land on the Riviera, both of which were primarily African troops, the French Second Armored Division under Leclerc was comprised of native Frenchmen, a smattering of European legionnaires (Spanish, Italian, Czech, and Polish), plus a Chadian regiment and a battalion of Moroccan Spahis. It was organized to make the best possible impression in Paris, and Leclerc was an ideal commander for that purpose.

  The battlefield at the Falaise Pocket was one of the fiercest killing grounds of the war in the west. “Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap,” Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs, “I was conducted through it on foot; to encounter scenes that could only be described by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.”28

  The battle for Normandy was over. It had raged for seventy-five days. The Germans had deployed 600,000 men and 1,500 tanks, commanded initially by Field Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel, then by Kluge. The Allies also deployed about 600,000 men, and 3,000 tanks. The principal difference was the number of planes available. The Allies brought more than 12,000 aircraft to the battle; the Germans had almost none. When the fighting ended, the Germans had lost almost 500,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, and virtually all of their equipment. The Allies lost almost 200,000 men, two-thirds of whom were American.29 Allied losses were replenished quickly. German losses were irreplaceable.

  As German resistance faded, the Allies moved quickly. Patton continued his relentless advance toward the Seine. Le Mans, Orléans, and Chartres fell to the Third Army as the Germans retreated. On August 19, the day the gap on the Falaise Pocket closed, Third Army troops reached the Seine, thirty-fives miles west of Paris, and established a bridgehead on the other side of the river.

  Eisenhower’s plans called for Paris to be bypassed. Patton’s Third Army would swing south of the city, cross the Seine at Melun, near Fontainebleau, and move eastward toward Metz and the German border. The American First Army, commanded by General Courtney Hodges, would move north of the city heading for Reims, the Ardennes, and Luxembourg. General Montgomery’s Twenty-First Army Group would assault the V-1 and V-2 rocket launching sites in the Pas-de-Calais, move into Belgium, and take the port of Antwerp.

  Eisenhower believed Paris should be entered at a later date. If the Germans defended the city, street fighting would consume the Allies for a month. Casualties would be high and the collateral damage would be unacceptable. At present, Paris was undamaged, and air raids had only hit the suburbs. There was also a serious logistical problem that Ike wished to avoid. Providing food and fuel for a city of four million people would strain Allied supply lines to the breaking point. General Pierre Koenig, commanding the French Forces of the Interior, had ordered the Paris Resistance to stand down until notified, and Eisenhower was confident the Allies could bypass Paris for the moment.

  De Gaulle watched the Allied advance from Algiers. In early July, FDR had invited him to Washington and had provided a plane to fly him to the nation’s capital. De Gaulle arrived on July 6 and stayed five days, also going to New York and Canada, where he was warmly received. With the American election under way, the trip was Roosevelt’s way of putting the issue of de Gaulle and the FCNL behind him. The press and the public were enthusiastic. De Gaulle was also on his best behavior. When he returned to Algiers on July 13, he received a message from Washington that should have put matters to rest. “The United States recognizes that the French Committee of National Liberation is competent to insure the administration of France.”30

  Back in Algiers, de Gaulle asked the Resistance to stand down until the Allies were ready. On August 11 he wrote a new “directive to the Resistance” that was very cautious:

  For Paris and the great occupied cities

  1. Do not carry out tasks useful to the enemy; if the enemy tries to enforce them, go on strike.

  2. If the enemy weakens, seize his employees in the factory, whatever their jobs may be. Use them as hostages.

  3. In any event, prevent the retreating enemy from taking his staff and machines with him.

  4. Return to work at once and in an orderly manner as soon as the Allied forces move.31

  Three days later he sent a telegram to FDR telling him that according to reports he was receiving from France, “it will be possible to establish order there without any great upheaval.”32 But the situation in Paris changed quickly. And de Gaulle, like Eisenhower, was caught off guard. On August 12, French railway workers walked off the job, paralyzing the city’s transportation net. On the fifteenth, the Paris police force went on strike. On the eighteenth, the postal service shut down, the Communist newspaper L’Humanité called for a popular insurrection, and three thousand policemen, armed but wearing civilian clothes, seized the préfecture de police and raised the French flag, the tricolore.

  De Gaulle monitored the changing situation closely. He was concerned that the Communists might be attempting to seize power. “If they managed to establish themselves as directors of the uprising and to control the authority in Paris, they could easily establish a de facto government there in which they would be preponderant.”33 To meet the threat, he decided to take charge personally. On August 14 de Gaulle advised General “Jumbo” Wilson, the overall Allied commander in the Mediterranean, that he wished to return to France in the next day or two. (The trip still required Allied approval.) Wilson forwarded de Gaulle’s request to Eisenhower, who told the Combined Chiefs of Staff he had no objection, and that he thought de Gaulle wanted to be present at the liberation of Paris. Eisenhower asked whether de Gaulle’s “rather premature arrival will in any way embarrass the British or American governments.”34

  At the War Department, Eisenhower’s query was fielded by John McCloy, who raised no objection. Neither the White House nor the State Department was informed. The British were more than eager for de Gaulle to return because they too were already worried about the possibility of a Communist insurrection in Paris.35 One problem was that de Gaulle wanted to return to France in a French plane. Ike offered an American B-17, but de Gaulle insisted on using his own aircraft, an unarmed Lockheed Lodestar. He took off from Algiers on the afternoon of August 18, bound for Casablanca. He was accompanied by General Juin and a host of officers using the B-17 the Americans had provided. De Gaulle intended to stop only briefly in Casablanca but mechanical problems in the accompanying B-17 required him to spend the night there.

  On the morning of the nineteenth he left Casablanca for Gibraltar, before proceeding up the coast of Spain and France. In Gibraltar, the B-17 developed more mechanical problems, and de Gaulle was told it would be best to wait until they were repaired, rather than proceed alone. He rejected the advice and took off in his Lodestar on schedule. Approaching Normandy at night in heavy weather, his pilot, Colonel de Marmier, became disoriented and wound up flying over England. The plane was low on fuel, but de Gaulle refused de Marmier permission to land in the United Kingdom and refuel. Instead, he joined Marmier in the cockpit and directed the plane back across the Channel. When the plane touched down at Maupertuis, near Cherbourg, just after eight on the morning of August 20, the fuel gauge read empty. Despite the problems, de Gaulle had made the trip successfully. He was met when he landed by General Koenig and François Coulet, the commissioner of the republic in Normandy, as well as an officer from Eisenhower’s headquarters who was assigned to bring de Gaulle to meet with Ike
as soon as possible.

  De Gaulle arrived at Eisenhower’s headquarters in Tournières shortly after 10 a.m. on August 20. The men greeted each other warmly. De Gaulle congratulated Ike on “the astonishing speed of the Allied forces’ success,” and then listened intently as the supreme commander explained his plans for the coming advance.36 Patton’s Third Army would cross the Seine at Mantes north of Paris and at Melun to the south, while Montgomery advanced toward Rouen and the Belgian frontier. Patton would then move toward Lorraine, where he would link up with the armies of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny and General Alexander Patch coming up from the Mediterranean and solidify the front. De Gaulle was impressed with the thoroughness of Eisenhower’s plan, but raised a major concern.

  “I don’t see why you cross the Seine at Melun, at Mantes, at Rouen—in short, everywhere—and yet at Paris and Paris alone you do not…. If any location except the capital of France were in question, my advice would not commit you to any action, for normally the conduct of operations must proceed from you. But the fate of Paris is of fundamental concern to the French government. Which is why I find myself obliged to intervene and to ask you to send French troops there. The French 2nd Armored Division is the obvious choice.”37

  According to de Gaulle, “Eisenhower did not conceal his embarrassment from me. I had the sense that fundamentally he shared my point of view, that he was eager to send Leclerc to Paris, but that for reasons not entirely of a strategic nature he could not yet do so.”38 Those reasons, de Gaulle thought, pertained to what was another effort by the White House and the State Department to short-circuit the FCNL and conclude a separate peace with Pierre Laval and the Vichy government. The problems posed by a Communist takeover led by the Resistance in Paris were clear. What was under the surface were the efforts by Laval to surrender Paris to the Allies with a deal similar to Darlan’s in North Africa that would keep Vichy in charge. As de Gaulle put it in his memoirs, “Eisenhower’s uncertainty suggested to me that the military command found itself somewhat hampered by the political project pursued by Laval, favored by Roosevelt, and requiring that Paris be protected from all upheavals.” De Gaulle wrote that General Juin, visiting Allied headquarters, came to the same conclusions “drawn from his contacts with the general staff.”39