Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France

by Stephen P. Halbrook

The police investigation revealed that Monsieur Gautier left his firearms in his small estate in Assier, Lot, but he had not been there since the armistice in 1940. His mother lived there but did not know where the handguns were, so he promised to give instructions to his mother in order to surrender them.4 His fate thereafter is unknown.

  But the fates of other gun owners were well publicized. The new year hardly began before the routine Avis from Ernst Schaumburg, the commander of Greater Paris and second in command of occupied France, announced that Lucien Gourlot from Paris was sentenced to death for illegal possession of arms and ammunition and was executed on January 9.5 Auguste Chaussin from Montreuil-sous-Bois (Seine) and Essaid Haddad from Paris were executed for arms possession a few days later.6

  Death sentences were typically carried out a few hours after sentence was pronounced. Firing squads were composed of ten members of the order police (Ordnungspolizei, or Orpo), standing in two rows at five paces. Prisoners were tied onto posts, blindfolded, and shot. The killing was stressful for the executioners, who needed schnapps and cigarettes, and who sometimes refused to untie the corpses from the stakes and place them in coffins.7

  Otto von Stülpnagel, military commander of France (Militärbefehlshaber, or MBF), had no hesitation to approve the execution of gun owners, but opposed the large numbers of hostages Hitler ordered to be executed in the wake of attacks on Wehrmacht soldiers. On January 15, he reported to Berlin that German and French police solved twenty-two of the sixty-eight attacks since the Nantes shooting on August 21. He was thus only willing to order “a limited number of executions” for the attacks, but “I can no longer arrange mass shootings and answer to history with a clear conscience….”8 A few days later, he resigned from his position as MBF.

  Before doing so, he issued yet another admonition to the French to surrender their guns: “All of those who still possess weapons that are not authorized are urged to turn them in. The turning in of weapons shall be done without formal procedure and with complete impunity.”9 That sounded like an amnesty, but the authorities who collected the arms must have asked a few questions. The directive was dated January 18, but that night a soldier was shot near Luna Park in Paris. A young woman seen standing near him was urged to come to the police préfecture, who guaranteed extreme discretion.10 It is unclear whether anyone was apprehended, but it was equally clear that things would only get worse.

  Jean Moulin Returns

  The Resistance took a step forward when, before daybreak on January 2, Jean Moulin parachuted out of an RAF airplane with two other men and radio equipment near Avignon in southern France. Fresh from meetings with de Gaulle in London, Moulin’s mission was to organize the disparate resistance movements.11 On January 23, alerted by code words heard on BBC, members of Combat received the first cache of arms to be parachuted from British airplanes. The containers were trucked to a nearby farm and temporarily hidden in a haystack.12

  Patriotic French police tried to divert and hide arms that were turned in, for future use against the Germans. Combat reported, “In Paris, a police chief of the rue Bois-le-Vent (16th arrondissement) has just been shot, along with the owner of a small café. They buried arms in the café courtyard that people had brought to the police station.”13

  The commander of Greater Paris made sure that executions were prominently published. Some January executions for arms possession were Lucien Michard from Livry (Seine-et-Oise);14 Louis Blaise from Paris;15 and Henri Bourbon from Paris, which was also reported in the New York Times and who German data indicated to be the two hundredth French citizen executed.16 The Times further reported the execution of four more Parisians: Amar Zebbouddi was shot for illegal possession of arms, two others for Gaullist activities, and the last for “activities in favor of the enemy.” Reprisal executions were on the increase after a lull following the executions of 198 people at Bordeaux and Nantes during the fall of 1941.17

  The above reports combine executions of specific people for arms possession and other crimes with executions of hostages for crimes committed by others. Executions announced by an Avis from the MBF were presumably carried out by the Germans, but Vichy may have executed more French than the Wehrmacht in this period. As discussed below, who got shot or guillotined for what became even more blurred after the SS took charge of German security on June 1, 1942.

  Daily Searches for Arms

  American intelligence operatives were watching closely. Royall Tyler, a League of Nations appointee who now worked with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), reported after a three-day visit at Lyons with Paul Squire, the American consul in Geneva, that the recent entry of the United States into the war encouraged anti-Axis sentiment. A bank manager in Dijon in the occupied zone observed that German troop morale was very low—many had been sent from the Russian front to recuperate and became mutinous when about to be sent back, resulting in numerous German enlisted men being executed by firing squad. The report continued:

  There are daily searches for arms, and those in whose houses arms are found are shot—an average of about one a day in this particular town. The banker exhibited several issues of the local newspaper announcing executions to substantiate his assertion. Only a very small percentage of the arms concealed, he stated, are ever discovered. There are huge quantities ready for use when the opportunity comes. Hatred of the Germans is becoming fiercer as time passes and executions continue. Arms concealment is no longer just a matter of individual initiative, but there is a very efficient organization directing it.18

  Indeed, the MBF in France reported that in January, eighty-eight French citizens were sentenced to death, fifty-two for illegal arms possession. To be sure, not all death sentences were carried out. Of seventy-eight prison sentences of over five years, seventy-three were for the same offense.19

  Numerous incidents were reported. From Béthune, it was reported that extensive house searches for arms and Communist or Gaullist propaganda, often based on anonymous tips, were successful, with active cooperation from the French police.20 Cooperation between the military police and the French gendarmes and police elsewhere was reported as good. At Rouen, the capital of Normandy, someone shot a soldier with a pistol and escaped. A Frenchman named Denoyelle was shot to death for weapons possession at the Rouen shooting range. In February, at Amiens, three French citizens on bicycles threw a homemade bomb into the window of the French Legion recruiting office—the bomb failed to explode. A German guard and two French policemen apprehended one of the perpetrators.21

  A specific gun became of special interest. District B in Angers inquired as to which hunting-gun depot was the storage place of a Drilling 16 x 16 x 9.3 three-barreled Teschner Collath-Söhne rifle no. 19207. It was delivered to the French police by the wife of a German citizen named Vormbaum on September 6, 1939, just days after Hitler attacked Poland and France declared war on Germany. After the German occupation, it was transferred to a German hunting-gun depot. If the gun was loaned to a holder of an army hunting permit, it was ordered that he must be tracked down and reported.22 Perhaps the gun was claimed by someone influential.

  Death Penalty for Failure to Denounce?

  In this period, drafts were circulated of a new weapon surrender order by Dr. Grohmann, military administrative counselor to the MBF. Section 3 required a person with knowledge that another possessed a firearm to denounce such person to German or French authorities, with the death penalty for failure to comply. An exception was made for spouses, children, the elderly, and siblings.23 Vichy Minister Jean-Pierre Ingrand met with the Germans in Paris on the matter on February 2.

  Werner Best, the chief military administrative officer (Kriegsverwaltungschef ), recommended that the MBF not issue a new order with yet another deadline to surrender weapons. That was despite the fact that Vichy officials had just been asked to meet with the MBF to discuss a new deadline. Yet issuance of an order without an amnesty deadline, Best noted, would make people unable to turn in arms without punishment. That would make
it more difficult for the French officials who were collaborating and who were willing—at the suggestion of the MBF—to request a new surrender deadline. Further, the denunciation provision in section 3 would only increase criminal proceedings. Best concluded that further discussions with Vichy officials would take place about whether the French government planned to issue an order, after which the Germans could weigh the pros and cons further.24

  Best’s arguments were buttressed by the French minister of state, who endorsed Best’s memorandum, noting that since the decree of May 10, 1940, the population had been ordered enough times to surrender their arms. Repeatedly setting new deadlines for the surrender of arms without punishment, even though hundreds had been executed, would cause the populace to lose all respect for the authorities. Moreover, the extension of penalties to people who had knowledge of the weapons possession of others would lead to a great increase of denunciations. Housekeepers, maids, and spouses would report arms possession when they argued with the owner and sought revenge, which had happened enough already. The French representative continued:

  A new proclamation that weapons are prohibited, subject to a grace period, may result in the surrender or dumping into the Seine of thousands of pistols and rifles and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. But weapons and explosives kept in hiding or newly procured for the purpose of attacking the occupying forces will not be surrendered. Neither will large numbers of weapons (including machine guns, grenade launchers, etc.) that we did not surrender to Germany back then, but rather moved them from one place to the next, sometimes under the eyes or with the help of the police, and in that fashion saved all of the items.

  Thus, a new order would result in an increased number of denunciations. We would have to sentence to death harmless little people. In the meantime, terrorists and organized nationalists would ignore the new order the way they ignored the old one and the urgent requests to surrender weapons which each time were made under the threat of severe penalties.

  As if to illustrate the above points, the commander of Greater Paris announced that Lucien-Louis Selve of Ivry-sur-Seine, who was sentenced to death for illegal possession of arms, was executed that day.25 Roger-Georges Laus of Paris met the same fate days later.26

  Sensitive to the attacks on the occupiers, Dr. Best directed that Reich Germans may be issued weapons permits that would be valid for the entire occupied territory without regard to their profession.27

  On February 16, Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel—the cousin of Otto von Stülpnagel—assumed command as MBF. Unlike Otto, Carl-Heinrich would follow orders from Berlin without protest, but he would also join the anti-Hitler conspiracy that was brewing within the Wehrmacht. A week after taking office, Communists threw a grenade at Wehrmacht soldiers at Le Havre. Hitler ordered that thirty hostages be executed. Some of those selected had been convicted of firearm possession and anti-German activity.28

  Trial of Resistants of the Musée de l’Homme

  In this period, a major show trial took place. It involved the group associated with the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Man) that published the underground paper Résistance. The nineteen conspirators were betrayed by a Vichy infiltrator. Agnès Humbert, one of the defendants, wrote a vivid account of the ordeal.29 A Wehrmacht judge named Ernst Roskothen presided, and the defendants were represented by French lawyers. After several weeks, the verdict was rendered. Roskothen later wrote, “Because these tracts [Résistance] were clearly an incitement to armed revolt against the occupation … they may be considered as aiding and abetting the enemy … Under martial law, the death sentence is mandatory.” And yet the judge openly stated his admiration for these French patriots.30

  Jean Guéhenno wrote in his diary that “the plea for clemency sent to Berlin last week was useless, and they were shot yesterday afternoon [February 23]. Seven men and three women, almost all of them from academia…. For one of them, I can imagine what his last look was like, in front of the firing squad.”31

  The firing squads were operating at Fort Mont-Valérien, to the west of Paris, where around a thousand people would be executed during the war.32 The shots of the execution squads could be heard at the suburb of Suresnes. As Guéhenno learned, the three women were actually not executed but were pardoned and sent to prison. “They shot the seven men …, one after the other, every five minutes…. No notice appeared in the newspapers. Thus, when they tell us almost every morning that one or two men have been shot, it’s only to keep us in suspense.” Guéhenno was further informed about the condemned men and the group’s leader, Boris Vildé:

  The first thing Monday morning they told them they were going to be shot that day. Vildé saw his wife that morning and had the strength to tell her nothing. In the afternoon, they drove them from the prison in Fresnes to Mont Valérien. They went through all of Paris piled in a truck with their guards. They were singing. Each of them had a white paper square pinned over his heart and they were killed at nearly point-blank range. Vildé, as he had asked, was executed last.33

  Agnès Humbert, one of the imprisoned women, would record her deportation to Germany to work as a slave laborer for Hitler’s war machine. Her diary records the horrendous conditions suffered by countless French and other nationalities who were deported for crimes against the occupation. When liberated by the Americans in April 1945, she helped protect the liberated prisoners from the German diehards called Werewolves. An American soldier gave her two revolvers to do so.34

  Noël Créau was a member of the group who escaped. Responding to my questionnaire in 2002, he explained that prewar French law made it difficult to own weapons other than hunting guns, and that the group had no arms.35 He next joined “the Réseau CND – Castille—tracking, counting the different types of enemy airplanes at airports I and F in Normandy.” That referred to the network CND (Confrérie Notre-Dame, Brotherhood of Our Lady) – Castille, which was a Free French intelligence network.36 In that role, he noted that “[i]n the event of a control point, it would have been dangerous to carry a weapon.” He next joined the Special Air Service (SAS) parachutists of Free France in Great Britain. He was “[d]ropped by parachute over Brittany in early June 1944—to perform acts of sabotage and establish contacts with the Résistance network, parachute drops of arms, instruction, supervision, and combat.”

  A New Surrender Order for Hunting Guns?

  Most of France suffered quietly under the occupation. Not long after the occupation began, the Saint-Hubert-Club de France, an association of hunters, had organized the sending of questionnaires throughout France to solicit information on the identities of gun owners who had surrendered their firearms but left no identification for their return. Tens of thousands of trusting gun owners, four-fifths of them farmers, had returned the questionnaires, prompting Club President Maxime Ducrocq to visit Marshal Pétain at Vichy to seek a protocol for the eventual return of the firearms. On February 20, Fernand de Brinon, Vichy ambassador for the occupied territory, congratulated Ducrocq on his efforts to identify the owners of the hundreds of thousands of guns owned by unknown civilians.37 Vichy, of course, was powerless to do anything.

  The MBF’s Dr. Grohmann met with Ingrand on February 26 so that the Germans could receive the French govenment’s attitude of a possible change in the gun surrender policy. Ingrand expressed the following points from the French side:

  1. Hunting Guns

  It is to be expected that the French population, in particular out in the countryside, still possesses “thousands of hunting guns.” These people will only surrender their weapons if they are given assurances that they will receive the weapons back once the occupation ends. Thus, the success of a new surrender action for hunting guns will depend on the issuance of a receipt.

  2. Other Weapons, in Particular Military Arms

  The French government thinks that a new order to surrender would not be successful. Anybody who still owns weapons of that kind will keep them even if promised a new amnesty. Contrary to the owners of hunting
guns, owners of such arms tend to be opposed to the occupying forces.

  3. The French government is concerned about the provision contained in the order of the Military Commander in Belgium and Northern France regarding the duty to report third persons who are known to possess weapons. The French government thinks that such a provision would result in denunciations and greatly expand the circle of persons who might be subject to the death penalty.38

  The Germans listened without comment, particularly regarding whether the MBF intended to issue a denunciation order. In the internal German report after the meeting, Lieutenant Rösch, a liaison officer to the French who is mentioned above, was skeptical about issuing receipts for surrendered hunting guns. The German Armistice Commission opined that private citizens should not be compensated for firearms they surrendered for the reason that, at the beginning of the war, the French government had equipped its units with hunting guns to fight parachutists. Since the French thus used hunting guns in France to wage war on the German Reich, the Germans could seize or destroy them under Article 23 of the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1907. However, the MBF’s economic office (called Wirtschaft IV) opposed that opinion.

  The referenced Article 23 made it forbidden “[t]o destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.” Since the war with France ended a year and a half before, it is unclear how the necessities of war demanded the seizure of the arms of private citizens which had not been issued to French soldiers.

  The Decree of March 5, 1942

  In a March 5 meeting, Dr. Grohmann presented a revised version of the decree on the surrender of weapons to be issued by the MBF.39 Its preamble began with these words: “Frequent reports of illegal firearms possession show that the French population still owns numerous weapons. In the interest of the security of the occupying forces, we must obtain as many of these weapons as possible.” Then followed the Decree Concerning Possession of Weapons of March 5, 1942. The date was misleading, as it would not be given to the French and published until March 18. Reciting the power bestowed on him by the Führer and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the MBF decreed as follows: