By the time they had arrived and made contact with a local FFI leader, who was code-named Dominique, Monod had managed to win Gallois over to his point of view, convincing him to ask the Americans for more than just air drops. Dominique promised to find them a local farmer, who he said could navigate them through minefields and past a squad of SS soldiers camped nearby. He told the men to park their car on a hill, then directed them to a field, where they were to await their guide. Sitting in the rainy, muddy field, Monod began to sense that something wasn’t right. They felt, he recalled, like rabbits waiting for hunters. Fearing that their sixth sense was telling them that they had been double-crossed by Dominique, they headed carefully back to their car and used their knowledge of the area to make an escape. They then headed to the sanitarium, where Monod had contacts and felt safer.
If their sixth sense had indeed been right, their decision not to trust Dominique likely saved their lives and possibly the lives of thousands of Parisians as well. Once at the sanitarium, Monod introduced Gallois to a reliable FFI contact code-named Georges, who agreed to take Gallois to the American lines. Monod left Gallois there, telling him that if the Americans would not listen, then he should claim that he and Leclerc were old friends and ask to see him. If that bluff worked, then Gallois could make his case directly to the French general, a man he had never actually met but who Monod was sure would be sympathetic. Monod then returned to Paris and his badly understaffed hospital. Georges drove Gallois to a spot where the American and German lines were so close to one another that Gallois could see soldiers from both armies at the same time. He was sure that the Germans saw him crawling through the woods as he made his way toward the American lines, but concluded that they were afraid to shoot at him for fear of provoking an American response. He crossed the lines at 7:30 p.m. on August 21, tired, wet, and hungry.21
Gallois’s remarkable journey continued as he left occupied France for the first time in four years. He crawled to some American soldiers and warned them about the presence of German soldiers nearby. “What the hell do you want us to do about it?” was their reaction, leaving Gallois wondering what kind of unit he had stumbled into. Eventually, he talked to an American lieutenant, who put him in a jeep with gum-chewing soldiers who were under orders not to talk to him. Gallois later recalled the oddity of not being able to speak English, a language he had worked hard to learn, with these curious Americans. The soldiers brought Gallois back to their regimental headquarters to meet with a lieutenant colonel who was connected to a military intelligence branch that specialized in the French Resistance. More than five hours of intense discussion served to convince the officer that the Frenchman in front of him was a genuine member of the Resistance with whom the American high command might want to speak. They got into another jeep and headed to a large American military camp, arriving in the middle of the night.22
Gallois did not know it, but he had arrived at a critical time. American planners had discovered that Leclerc had dispatched a detachment of his Deuxième Division Blindée toward Paris without permission, while the rest of the corps to which it belonged was moving to a rest area. The detachment contained ten tanks, ten armored personnel carriers, and ten armored cars. Gerow, as the corps commander, had received a terse message from army headquarters asking why troops under his command were not where they were supposed to be, followed by a none-too-subtle suggestion that he had failed to exercise effective command over his own unit. A furious Gerow ordered Leclerc to reverse the order and recall the detachment, but Leclerc refused, creating both a command and diplomatic crisis. Leclerc had, however, offered to come to discuss the matter with Gerow, Bradley, and Eisenhower, and he was in fact on his way to Allied headquarters when Gallois made his appearance.23
At the same time, Eisenhower’s position on Paris was beginning to soften. He had determined that Allied forces would be “compelled to go into Paris” because of the incessant urgings of de Gaulle, who, Eisenhower knew, would likely be the head of the postwar French state. He was a man the Americans would need as an ally both in the final phases of the war and in the years that would follow. In any case, as Eisenhower had told General George Marshall, Paris “falls into our hands whether we like it or not” as soon as the Germans in the area surrendered or withdrew. The Allies would then need to assume responsibility for the city. Eisenhower also argued, consistent with Allied policy that predated the Normandy landings, that it would be best for all concerned to have a French unit accept that surrender, both to honor previous American promises and to ensure as smooth a transition as possible.24
The information Gallois brought with him reinforced these conclusions. Among the men who met with him was Harold Lyon, the commander of the American T Force. Lyon reported that the Frenchman brought with him five critical pieces of information: that the Paris police had begun an uprising on August 19; that barricades were being erected all across the city; that the FFI had control of the center of the city as well as its western bridges; that the German high command in the city had requested a truce; and that the truce was set to expire in a matter of a few hours. Lyon concluded from this information that the German garrison in Paris was close to surrendering and therefore that “the situation in Paris was an opportunity which the Allies had to take advantage of immediately.”25
A colonel with whom Gallois had also met turned to an aide and mumbled something Gallois did not understand. The aide then left the room. A few minutes later, at 1:30 a.m. on August 22, a man in a general’s uniform appeared before him. Sleepy and disheveled, the general turned to Gallois and said, “OK. I’m listening. What’s your story?” Gallois, unsure who the man was but certain that he was someone of importance, explained why he had come as carefully and passionately as he could. The general listened thoughtfully, but then told Gallois that he would not change American plans. The goal of the Allied armies, he said, was “destroying Germans, not capturing capitals.” The general then continued in a measured, professional tone, speaking to Gallois “as a soldier”:You ought to know full well that our operations at this moment were not conceived lightly or without full reflection. We are obli- gated to follow our plans to the letter and not even a fortuitous or unexpected event like this one can change these plans, even if the event is of such extraordinary importance. Our objective is Berlin and we want to end this war as quickly as possible. The immediate capture of Paris is not part of the plan and we are not moving toward the capital; it is not a military objective, its capture would be a burden, for we would have to assure the feeding of the popu- lation as well as the repair of the things the Germans destroyed. We want to destroy the enemy not save cities. You should have waited for orders from Allied headquarters before launching an insurrection and not taken the initiative yourselves.
Gallois warned the general that France would never forgive the United States if it did not help Paris in its hour of need. “I was bluffing, because it wasn’t at all true,” he later recalled. “But I thought that the idea might impress the Americans.” It did not. After shaking Gallois’s hand, the American general turned and left the room.26
A dejected Gallois stood stunned and crestfallen. After all of his efforts, and those of his comrades in Paris, he had failed in his mission. There would be no arms for Paris and no change of plans for the Americans. Gallois then pleaded to be taken to see his “friend” Leclerc, but the Americans said that they did not know where Leclerc was, a statement that was probably true, given that Leclerc had, in American eyes, effectively gone AWOL. Just as Gallois was sinking into a state of depression, the general, George Patton, suddenly returned with a bottle of champagne and offered Gallois a toast to victory. After clinking their glasses, Patton turned to Gallois and said, “Are you ready to take a long voyage?” There was another American general whom Patton thought Gallois should meet. Someone or something had changed Patton’s mind. At 3:30 a.m., an American major showed up with a jeep, and Gallois sped away once more, not sure where he was going or who the general was
who wanted to see him.27
Gallois was not the only man trying to get to Allied lines. Another, quite different, representative of Paris had come up with a similar plan to make contact with the Americans and urge them to come to the city. Earlier that night, Choltitz had called Nordling and asked him to come to the Hôtel Meurice. After pouring a couple of glasses of whiskey (“Don’t tell the English,” he had joked), Choltitz told Nordling that the truce was not working. Furthermore, his encounter with Parodi the day before had convinced him that talking to the FFI was futile, because they were unable to control their own people. Nordling replied that only de Gaulle had the power to negotiate a lasting agreement that could end the fighting. “Why doesn’t someone go to see him?” Choltitz asked. Nordling, who might have been forgiven for wondering how many whiskeys Choltitz had downed before his arrival, offered to go himself if the German general’s offer was sincere.
Choltitz then told Nordling that he had received orders to begin demolitions in the city; the failure of the truce might leave him no option but to carry out those orders. What he needed, Choltitz said, was for the Allies to get to Paris so that he could surrender the city to a recognized authority. The German commander then took out a pass and wrote on it an authorization for “R. Nordling to leave Paris and its line of defense.” As Nordling was officially a neutral diplomat, the pass should be all he would need to get through the lines, but Choltitz told him to take along a German officer, the same “Bobby” Bender who had played a key role in saving the lives of Parodi and his two comrades. If there was any trouble at checkpoints, Choltitz said, Bender could clear it up. “Go fast,” Choltitz told Nordling. “Twenty-four, forty-eight hours are all you have. After that, I cannot promise you what will happen here.” 28
Although Choltitz had warned Nordling that he might be forced to carry out orders to demolish the city, it is clear that he lacked the means to do so. During the meeting, Choltitz had taken an official-looking document out of his tunic pocket that he claimed contained orders to destroy Paris, but he was careful not to let Nordling see it. In a few isolated places, like the Batignolles train station, FFI agents had discovered explosives and disabled them. There were also rumors spreading through the city that the Germans had placed explosives in the Palais du Luxembourg; these were the same rumors that were then prompting widespread evacuations of the surrounding areas. But the Germans were far from having the means to conduct widespread demolitions, especially given their limited mobility around the city.
Choltitz knew that his position was hopeless. Around the time he summoned Nordling, he learned that the 348th Division, which headquarters had promised to send to Paris, would go to the Calais region instead. Rather than more resources and reinforcements, he received empty missives urging him to hold the city at all costs. Down to just two days of rations and facing both an uprising and the possibility of an American drive on the city, Choltitz needed a way out of his increasingly desperate operational situation. “Ever since our enemies have refused to listen to and obey our Fuehrer,” he angrily noted, “the whole war has gone badly.” When Model ordered him to hold the city even if it cost 40 percent of his force, Choltitz replied that the “German high command was out of touch with reality.” Lacking the means to carry out orders that he saw as impossible and unnecessary, Choltitz needed a miracle. The Nordling mission might just provide it.29
Nordling’s extraordinary mission was complicated even further by the fact that he did not know de Gaulle or anyone close to him. He would need someone who could both arrange a meeting and vouch for his authenticity. He therefore decided to bring with him two French bankers who had connections to the French Resistance outside Paris, including a former head of the Banque d’Indochine, a man who knew de Gaulle. One of those bankers then convinced him to also bring the French-born British agent code-named Jade Amicol, who would travel in disguise as a Swiss Red Cross official and facilitate meetings with senior Allied leaders. Nordling thus had with him a strange assortment: a British agent and two French bankers, plus a German minder who would no doubt report back directly to Choltitz.30
The stress of these responsibilities, and the knowledge that he might well have the fate of Paris in his hands, finally caught up to Nordling. As he was making final preparations, he suddenly felt a pain in his chest and sank to his knees. He had suffered a heart attack that left him too weak to complete his critical mission. Even under these circumstances, however, Nordling’s sharp mind kept working. The mission was too important to be halted, even by a heart attack. Lying in his bed, he thought of a way to save it. His pass permitted “R. Nordling” to cross German lines. Nordling called his brother, Rolf, and put him in charge of the mission to find Charles de Gaulle and tell him to hurry Allied troops to Paris.
Parisians, who knew nothing about these events, were not waiting for help from the outside. By the evening of August 21, symbols of impending liberation were beginning to appear everywhere. Parisians heard the first Resistance radio broadcasts that night, which ended with the playing of the Marseillaise. Resistance newspapers were openly on sale in kiosks that only days before had sold the newspapers of the Germans and Vichy. Within just a few hours, eight different Resistance newspapers were on sale, some of them new, and some of them, like the Communist Party’s L’Humanité, prewar newspapers appearing in public for the first time in four years. Despite their shoddy look and low-quality paper, the newspapers had an electric effect on the city. “You cannot understand what they signified for us,” recalled one Parisian. “We read in black and white things that had only been whispered for four years.” To this man, the newspapers were a far more important symbol than the barricades. They meant that “we could believe in freedom.” 31
The most important of these newspapers, Combat, couched its messages in powerful terms. The paper’s editorials, many of them written or edited by Albert Camus, announced that the left-leaning elements of the Resistance had much more in mind than simply removing the Germans from Paris. In its first issue for public sale published on the night of August 21, Combat pledged that “the stunned joy that we are beginning to read on Parisian faces is a joy we share . . . but the task of the men of the Resistance is not yet over.” France, it argued, must not return to the France of 1939, because the prewar “ruling class had failed in all its duties.” The only path for France, it said, was “a true peoples’ and workers’ democracy” that could counter the dominance of the moneyed classes. Anything less, Combat charged, would be a betrayal to France, especially given the number of wealthy Frenchmen who had eagerly collaborated with the occupiers. “Having begun with resistance, [we] want to end with Revolution.” The following day, Camus urged Parisians to keep in their minds the image of “dead children, kicked and beaten into their own coffins,” as they thought of the better, more egalitarian France they wanted to create. “We are not men of hate,” he concluded, “but we must be men of justice.”32
Combat reserved its strongest vitriol not for the Germans, who were obviously on the way out, but for the French collaborators who had made German rule possible. Resistance newspapers publicly identified the city’s most notorious collaborators and reported on their whereabouts. The FFI arrested some, others fled (some under German protection), and a few committed suicide. One Parisian recognized that many of the most notorious collaborators were likely to escape punishment, either by exploiting their powerful connections or by fleeing the country. Those who had waited around long enough to be captured by the FFI, he felt, were likely to be those without money or connections, “those less guilty than their masters who will pay for their crimes and the crimes of those who abandoned them.” With tremendous foresight, he wrote, “Even if silence and forgetfulness protect [the collaborator], history will not be silent forever.” Many collaborators, including those with a great deal of blood on their hands, did indeed escape punishment for years or even decades before their crimes were exposed and punished.33
While Parisians were reading Resistance n
ewspapers on the evening of August 22, Gallois arrived at a vast Allied military camp in a forest about 130 miles southwest of Paris near Le Mans. After taking a few hours to rest, eat, and clean up, he talked to a stream of American officers and quickly concluded that they had no sense of how desperate the situation was in Paris. Gallois did his best to impress upon them the seriousness of the military problem of the FFI, emphasizing that the truce was soon set to expire. When it did, the Germans would be free to attack with their full might, and the resulting tragedy might rival the terrible fate of Warsaw.34
Gallois’s information led the Americans to draw a series of vital conclusions that led, at long last, to a change in American strategy. First, the Americans believed both that the German position in the city was feeble and that the FFI, in the words of the official U.S. Army history of these events, was “holding the city on bluff and nerve.” The Americans deduced that if the Germans could not sweep aside a group of poorly organized and badly equipped civilians, then the Germans were ripe for plucking. They also concluded, however, that the Germans were probably rearming and preparing for a counteroffensive that might destroy the city as soon as the truce expired.35
The Blood of Free Men Page 23
