French leaders, of course, were deeply concerned about events inside their beleaguered capital. The idea of combat inside Paris between unarmed citizens and the German Army was nightmarish to de Gaulle and Leclerc. Moreover, given the strategic and operational positioning of Allied forces, if the Allies decided to send units into Paris to protect the population, those units were more likely to be American than French. Despite repeated promises from Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley that the French would have the honor of liberating Paris, the three closest corps to Paris were all American: Major General Wade H. Haislip’s XV Corps was just 25 miles away and engaged in a river-crossing operation over the Seine; Major General Walton Walker’s XX Corps was at Chartres, approximately 55 miles away; and Major General Gilbert Cook’s XII Corps was at Orléans, approximately 80 miles away. Most elements of Leclerc’s Deuxième Division Blindée, by contrast, were more than 140 miles away, still engaged in operations near Argentan. If the Allies were to liberate Paris quickly, it looked as if it would be the Americans who did it.30
The American high command had in fact begun to take its first active steps to deal with the problem of the liberation of the French capital. Still unsure of what exactly was going on inside the city, they settled for half measures. Bradley ordered the formation of a secret unit called the “T Force” that had orders to be ready to move into Paris quickly if the situation there deteriorated. Its small group of sixteen officers and seventy enlisted men, mostly special forces and intelligence operatives, were to make contact with members of the French Resistance, amass critical documents that could help him interpret the strategic situation, and identify high-value targets for interrogation, such as captured German and Vichy officers held by the FFI. They would also identify strategic locations that regular U.S. Army units would need to prioritize when they entered the city in large numbers. Some members of the T Force had already made limited contact with a handful of French Resistance members who had recently left Paris, and thus had some knowledge of events inside the capital. The T Force positioned itself at Le Mans and prepared to move to Rambouillet, just 30 miles southwest of Paris, where it would join up with 60 French soldiers who would serve as guides and translators.
Allied plans for the city worried officers like T Force’s commander, Major William Hornaday, who wanted no part of the political battles taking place inside the city. Hornaday guessed that the Resistance figures he had met, all of whom were Gaullist, might be using the U.S. Army to prevent the communists from taking power, but he had no interest in getting sucked into that kind of vortex; nor did he have orders to favor one faction over another.
The Gaullists still feared that the Americans would renege on their promise to allow a French unit to liberate Paris. They also realized that they might be forced by circumstances to send the much better positioned American units into the city. Leclerc and de Gaulle met on August 19 to discuss just that possibility. De Gaulle knew that he held the legal title to the French government in exile, but that the FFI, to which he had only tenuous links, controlled the streets of Paris. He also knew that the Deuxième Division Blindée could not possibly hope to move on Paris without logistical support from the Americans. Leclerc understood the constraints as well, but he had already decided to move a portion of his division toward Paris using fuel and ammunition that his division had conserved, begged, and borrowed. Anything more, he told de Gaulle, was impossible: “I can’t move the rest of my division,” he said, “for reasons of supply and the desire not to overtly violate the rules of military subordination.”31
Franco-American tensions were clearly building. Major General Leonard Gerow, Leclerc’s corps commander, and General George Patton both wondered how much longer Leclerc would follow American orders. Leclerc had indeed begun to consider taking his orders directly from his political chain of command (meaning de Gaulle) rather than his military chain of command. Patton, however, had more sympathy for the French plight than either Gerow or the First Army commander, Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, both of whom had grown tired of Leclerc’s obsession with Paris. They still saw the city as strategically unimportant, and Gerow, in particular, came to despise Leclerc.32
Parisians, of course, knew nothing about these dramatic discussions. Most of them understood the importance of the day’s events, but they could not discern where they might be leading. As she went to bed that night, one Parisienne compared the events of August 19 to the events of another day four years earlier. On that night, June 13, 1940, she and her fellow Parisians had known that their city would surrender to the Germans in the morning. Reflecting on that horrible memory, she wrote in her journal that the night of August 19 had a similar feeling of suspense, uncertainty, and silence. But there was one major difference. The silence of June 1940, she recalled, had been a “silence of death.” More than four years later, with liberation approaching but danger still menacing, the city was living through a “silence of waiting.” Waiting for what, she did not know. Across Paris, Yves Cazaux was also confiding his thoughts to his journal. “The storm,” he wrote, “is about to burst.”33
A storm did indeed burst the next morning, as rain showers poured down on Paris on the morning of August 20. The rain, combined with the truce, might have brought a measure of quiet to Paris on this Sunday morning, normally the calmest day of the week. Some Parisians tried their best to treat August 20 just like any other summer Sunday afternoon, even though events had moved far too fast for such normalcy to be possible. Despite the rain and the sporadic fighting, men still fished in the Seine, grandmothers strolled with their grandchildren through the gardens, and couples sat on park benches to enjoy the summer air. Young love in a time of war was the subject of Robert Doisneau’s poignant photograph Amour et Barbelés (Love and Barbed Wire), taken just before the liberation in the Tuileries Gardens across from Choltitz’s headquarters in the Hôtel Meurice. Even amid revolutionary change, the rhythm of Parisian life continued as it always had.
But if some Parisians were trying to live their lives as if everything were normal, others were risking their lives to create a new future for the city. Fighting continued all night in some parts of the city, especially in the Latin Quarter, where the casualties mounted. The fighting proved that neither side was respecting the truce. Rol continued to oppose the truce and challenged the authority of the Gaullists to negotiate it. “No order from any higher official has reached me about a cease-fire,” he declared. “In consequence, as long as the Germans are in Paris, we will fight.” Rol even told one associate that he feared the Gaullists might be setting up the FFI to be slaughtered as the members of the Polish Home Army in Warsaw had been.34
The Left scored a coup of its own early that morning when the daring Léo Hamon and a small group of socialists and communists took over the Hôtel de Ville, a long-standing symbol of revolutionary activity in Paris and the place from which Jacques Cazaux had witnessed the raising of the flag at the prefecture just the day before. Hamon had burst into the office of the prefect of the Seine and demanded his resignation, announcing to him that he was taking over the Hôtel de Ville in the name of the people of Paris. When the prefect demanded to see written orders to that effect, Hamon calmly replied, “We’ve got out of the habit of that kind of thing.” He arrested the entire Paris municipal council, including Mayor Pierre Taittinger. The Gaullists now had control of the prefecture, the FFI had control of the streets, and the communists had control of the Hôtel de Ville.35
Rol could see that the last act of the Paris drama was about to unfold. In part to protect himself from the Germans and in part to set up a more effective command post, he closed down his hideout in a water and sewer authority building in northeast Paris and opened a new subterranean headquarters. He preferred to work underground, in part for security; underneath Paris sat a vast infrastructure that could not have been better designed for his purposes. Most of the city’s sewer and telephone workers were Resistance members who knew this hidden world, with its miles of tunnels an
d hundreds of hiding places, intimately. The tunnels provided cover for snipers and escape routes for Resistance members conducting guerrilla operations. Rol himself had worked on the ventilation systems in many Métro and sewer passageways and thereby knew this troglodyte world as well as anyone. The sewer system, Rol knew, had a separate telephone network that the Germans had tapped but only listened to twice a day, always at the same hours. It would provide the perfect communication system for him. He had decided to set up his tactical command post underneath the Denfert-Rochereau Métro station near one of the most extensive sections of the Paris catacombs. “It would be difficult,” he noted, “to do better.” The station’s name, honoring a colonel who had defended the fortress of Belfort against the Prussians in 1870, also carried with it some symbolism for those who were historically minded.36
“Follow me. Keep your faithin eternal France.” This Vichypostcard with the image of Marshal Philippe Pétainappealed to conservative values and implicitly urged the French to reject both the Resistance and Charles de Gaulle. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
June 23, 1940: Hitler poses near the Eiffel Tower at the end of his only visit to Paris. The visit did not even last long enough for him to eat a meal in the French capital. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
German soldiers stand over the bodies of several dead members of the FFI. The angle of the photograph suggests that it was likely taken by a French observer watching carefully from an apartment window. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
General Dietrich von Choltitz in 1944, by which time he was no longer the aggressive general he had been when directing the sieges of Rotterdam and Sevastopol. (BUNDESARCHIV BILD 183-E1210-0201-018)
American soldiers approaching Paris via a damaged French village. The fighting in Normandy and Falaise had been bloody and had distracted American attention from the problems of Paris. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
Allied bombers strike targets in Paris. Although Winston Churchill and others had qualms about bombing an occupied capital and adding to the misery of Parisians, Allied airmen insisted on striking what they saw as strategic targets of value to German industry. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
Parisians line up behind a makeshift barricade in the crucial days of the uprising. The barricades were little military match for German tanks, but they did make German movements around the city much more difficult. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
Street fighting in Paris. Note that the woman to the left is wearing a German
helmet, likely taken from a German casualty or prisoner. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
An American-made M10 tank destroyer moves through the streets of Paris. Armored vehicles gave both physical and morale support to Frenchmen who had been fighting the Germans with whatever small arms they could find. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
An American armored vehicle rolls down the Avenue des Champs Élysées in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Finding enough gasoline to get tanks like these to Paris proved to be an enormous challenge. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
The French victory parade, which began even as thousands of Germans remained unaccounted for and the German air force still had planes at nearby Le Bourget airfield. Note the large French flag flying from the Arc de Triomphe. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
An ecstatic scene near the Hôtel de Ville during the victory parade. Note the mix of Americans and Frenchmen in the crowd. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
French and German officers move through Paris together on an American-made Sherman tank to announce the surrender. The German looks none too pleased, but he is at least alive. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
Parisians gather to hurl insults at German prisoners. Afraid of what the mob might do to them, German soldiers were often among those happiest to see Allied soldiers arrive in the city. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
German POWs being marched through Paris. Based on the dress uniforms of the French soldiers and the calm demeanor of the crowd, this photo was likely taken a few days after the emotions of the liberation had begun to ebb. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
FFI commander Henri Rol-Tanguy inspecting members of his unit.
Based on their uniforms, this photo was likely taken after the liberation, when many veterans of the FFI joined the regular French Army. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
Left to right, Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Marie-Pierre Koenig, and Omar Bradley walk through Paris. Koenig was in nominal charge of the FFI during the uprising but had virtually no say in its day-to-day operations. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
An American soldier tours Versailles after the liberation. Americans found Paris and its wonders to be, in the words of journalist Ernie Pyle, “a champagne dream.” (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
Charles de Gaulle (left) and Philippe Leclerc walk proudly through Paris. Although he was not a major player in the city’s liberation, de Gaulle benefitted more than anyone else from the events of late August. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
A “horizontal collaborator” having her head shaved in public. Women who had taken German lovers were often singled out for humiliations like these in the heady days following the liberation. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
Despite its liberation, the threat of German aircraft remained, as illustrated by an air raid the day after the parade. This antiaircraft gun emplacement near Notre Dame was a reminder that Paris was not yet safe. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
American soldiers found Parisian women particularly appealing. Most, however, were struck by how thin many of them looked and how desperate the food and fuel problem remained for months after the liberation. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
The Eiffel Tower lit up to celebrate the end of the war. Victory brought hope, even if the city was still short of food and other essentials. (UNITED STATES ARMY HERITAGE AND EDUCATION CENTER)
That afternoon, at around 2:45 p.m., the Gestapo arrested Alexandre Parodi and two of his Gaullist colleagues. Their first instinct was to shoot all three in the streets, but something in the behavior of their captives made the Gestapo think that they had arrested men of importance. At this point, a shadowy German intelligence official named Emil Bender intervened. Better known by his improbable nickname, Bobby, Bender was a member of a Paris-based German anti-Nazi group and may well have been a double agent working for the French Resistance. Bender urged the Gestapo to bring the men to the Hôtel Meurice to meet with Choltitz. At Bender’s urging, the German commander agreed to the meeting, his first with Resistance members, and asked Nordling to attend. Choltitz asked them if they were in a position to speak for the Resistance and the provisional government. Parodi said that he was, but he gave the Germans a fake name and fake code name. Choltitz then asked Nordling if these were “the kind of gentlemen you urged me to negotiate with the other day.” Parodi cut the Swedish consul off before he could reply, saying, “You know full well, Monsieur [Nordling], that I am the sole representative of the French government in Paris!” It was a brave proclamation, as it could well have led to his arrest, torture, or deportation. The Germans had killed people in Paris for much less.37
Instead, Choltitz extended an olive branch. He told Parodi that he needed order in the city and pledged not to fire on the French in any building they occupied if the French would promise not to harass German movements through the city. Then, hoping to establish a means of communication with the Resistance through these three men, he sweetened the deal even further. With Nordling observing the negotiations, Choltitz pledged to expedite food shipments into the hungry city if the Frenchmen would ensure that the FFI obeyed the ceasefire. Parodi bravely replied that Paris had starved for four years, and it would wait for another four days. Choltitz, following his belief that the violence in the city was the work of a few extremists, then ordered food brought in, despite Parodi’s defiance, on the condition that it not be distributed to members of the Res
istance. Nordling told him that he needed to accept the reality that “almost all of Paris is now in the Resistance.” The meeting ended with Choltitz agreeing to release the men and extending his hand to Parodi. The Frenchman refused it and calmly walked out of the Hôtel Meurice with his two colleagues as free men.38
The Resistance was clearly making headway inside Paris, but its efforts still had little direct effect on the Allies. The Americans, who, as one Parisian noted in his journal, were “not at all pressing to make their entry into Paris,” continued to divert their eyes from the city as much as they could. Eisenhower and de Gaulle met on Sunday morning, but the French leader failed to convince the supreme commander to redirect his forces toward Paris. It was an operation that American planners estimated would require five divisions and unknown tons of badly needed supplies. Eisenhower continued to stay focused on the drive to the east, hoping that if the Allies reached Reims they could cut off the German avenues of escape. Then, he argued, German troops “would just drop into our laps,” and with them, Paris. De Gaulle responded by implying that he might assume control of French forces in France in his capacity as the head of the provisional government, but Eisenhower, knowing that he alone controlled the gasoline and ammunition supplies that the French needed, just smiled. Patton, who was indirectly involved in these strategic discussions, was no less determined than Eisenhower to keep driving east, despite his sympathies toward the French. In his characteristic manner he thundered, “They started their own goddamned insurrection. Now let them finish it.”39
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