by Bower, Tom
Barbie’s alternative ally was the Wehrmacht. After weeks of discussions, Pflaum agreed to launch the first ‘search and destroy’ mission against the Maquis in France. The plan was to encircle the large area south of Nantua, between St Martin-du-Frêne, Artemare and Ambérieu, and launch a pincer attack starting in the hills around Brénod, sweeping down to the plains on the southernmost part of the Ain, nearest Lyons. No one would be allowed to leave their parish or village; there would be a curfew between 8.00 p.m. and 6.00 a.m.; no one was to be allowed to use a car or bicycle; all trains would be stopped and telephone lines cut. With the area sealed off and all movement frozen, thousands of German troops were to be deployed to comb through the villages and countryside hunting for the Maquis. The Gestapo’s mission was to exploit the disruption caused by the Wehrmacht and ferret out the whereabouts of the Maquis, using their traditional methods. The prize was the capture of the Maquis’ command staff.
On 5 February, as the German forces were manoeuvring into position, Heslop, Johnson and ‘Colonel Chabot’ (Henri Girousse), the temporary commander of the Ain, with other members of the Maquis command group, were slowly trudging their way through exceptionally deep snow in very hilly terrain towards Brénod. Heslop was expecting more RAF drops. Soon after settling into a remote farmhouse at Le Mollard, overlooking Brénod, a messenger brought the news that German soldiers had just occupied the town. Heslop and ‘Chabot’ decided to wait rather than rush off. Walking through deep snow was not only very difficult, but also left a very noticeable trail for the Germans to follow. For the moment, there seemed to be very little need for concern. It was only during the day, as the sound of gunfire from German troops attacking a Maquis camp on a nearby wooded hill intensified, that news about the scale of the German operation trickled through. At nightfall, Johnson heard from London that there would be a drop that night. Heslop felt that he had little alternative but to organise the reception party while Johnson remained in the farmhouse. The next day, the German attack on Camp Michel intensified. Several hundred German soldiers had gradually worked their way through snow drifts and were wearing the Maquis defenders down. Marius and Julien Roche, two brothers working with the command staff, watched from a hill as fourteen German trucks and artillery arrived in Brénod. As they watched, a Messerschmitt flew overhead firing its guns. Back in the farmhouse, Johnson had already seen a column of German soldiers marching up from the town towards the farmhouse. Within minutes, the house was empty and twenty-four people were trudging south-west towards another remote farmhouse, La Ferme de la Montagne at l’Abergement de Varey, known locally as ‘le petit Abergement’. For three days they trudged through the deep snow, with little food and under constant fear of being caught by a German patrol. Unknown to them, they were walking straight into the very area that Barbie had selected for his personal attention. He had translated the ‘search and destroy’ mission into a scorched-earth operation.
Barbie already knew that ‘Chabot’ was in the area. On the first day of the operation, he had sent ‘Gueule Tordue’ to interrogate ‘Chabot’s’ family; but the family was already in hiding and ‘Chabot’s’ father-in-law convincingly pleaded ignorance. Nevertheless, for Barbie, the hunt was on. His first victims on 6 February were in the pretty village of St Rambert-en-Bugey, at the south-westernmost tip of the operational area. Fifteen people were arrested and one Jew killed outright for resisting arrest.
He then set off for Evosges, another small but undistinguished village about ten kilometres away. Travelling behind him were five army trucks carrying about 100 Wehrmacht soldiers, and also several black Citroën cars carrying five collaborators including Lucien Guesdon and Robert ‘Pierre’ Moog. Inside his own car was Erich Bartelmus, one of the most sadistic torturers in the Lyons Gestapo. Driving along the twisting, narrow, snow-covered roads, it would have taken Barbie about an hour before he turned the final bend and saw the grey stone house of Jean Carrel, a roadmender, at the entrance of the village. Until Barbie’s arrival, the 150 villagers of Evosges had hardly been aware of the war. Throughout the sixteen months of occupation, they had continued their farming isolated from politics, only troubled by shortages and the price of their produce. Except for those few who had seen the rare German convoy speed down the main route national between Bourg and Belley, the majority of the villagers had not even seen a German soldier.
There are two accounts of what occurred as Barbie’s car stopped outside Carrel’s house: the one Guesdon gave in July 1945, and that of Georges Brun, a villager whose family have lived in Evosges since 1650. The accounts are identical. Before Barbie’s arrival, the village had already been surrounded by troops to prevent any escapes. Leading the way, Barbie burst into Carrel’s house and found him in bed. Outside, there was some shouting. Someone had opened the barn door and found it stacked with bags of flour, bearing an official swastika sign. These had been stolen by the Maquis. Dragging Carrel undressed down the stairs and out of the house, Barbie personally shot the twenty-eight-year-old man without any questions asked. Georges Brun, then aged fifteen, heard the shot as he and some other villagers were being herded along the main street towards Carrel’s house by German soldiers. All of them were ordered to stand in front of the body. Everything had happened so quickly that Brun, like the others, was totally bewildered.
Brun’s twenty-one-year-old brother Julien was one of the few who tried to escape with his lifelong friend, Jean Jiet. Both of them had been avoiding the STO and knew the consequences of arrest. At first they hid in a barn, but the owner, fearing reprisals if they were caught, screamed at them to leave. Running off into the fields they lay in the snow until they decided to make a bolt, but were immediately spotted. They were captured, beaten, and dragged back to the village.
Leaving the terrified group at Carrel’s house, Barbie walked thirty yards to the soldiers guarding Julien Brun. Without any preliminaries, he asked Julien to lead him to the nearby Maquis camp. According to Guesdon, Julien ‘categorically refused’. According to Georges, Julien just did not know the way. The result, testified Guesdon in 1945, was that ‘Barbie shot him immediately’.
Georges Brun heard the shots but remained mystified. An hour later, he was released and walked slowly back to his house. ‘When I saw him there, I became mad. You can imagine how I felt. I was only fifteen and there was my brother’s body. My friends had to lock me up because I was determined on vengeance with the gun I had hidden.’
After searching the village, Barbie left at about five in the afternoon. The two bodies were brought in and most of the young men said goodbye to their families and went into the hills. Georges Brun stayed to console his father. ‘We just didn’t think that they would come back.’
Early the following morning, soldiers again surrounded the village. Barbie felt cheated. The operation was three days old and he had not discovered any positive leads to the Maquis. Boiling with frustration, he resorted to senseless violence. Within minutes of arriving, he had arrested the mayor, Jean-Marie Jaquemet and ordered him to stand on the street with his family. A peremptory command, and Jaquemet’s house was set ablaze. While the Germans were momentarily distracted by the flames, Jaquemet told his wife and two daughters to escape. Seconds later, he was shot in the stomach. Seeing the soldiers pull back the bolts to shoot him again, the wounded mayor covered his face with his hands. The bullets blew his fingers off and he fell to the ground. His family, running across the fields, heard the final coup de grâce fired into his head. For Barbie, it was just the beginning.
Evosges was ransacked and pillaged. Eight more houses and the village’s six cars were burnt. Among the new arrests were Georges Brun’s cousin, André Madiglier, and Astride Brun, both of whom had given food to the Maquis. They were taken to Barbie, who was still standing by Jaquemet’s body and burning house. He gave the order and they were shot. Barbie then drove out of Evosges, no doubt forgetting at once both its name and its tragedy. Georges Brun still suffers today. ‘They would not allow us to bury the bodi
es for eight days. We had not expected them to be so cruel. We had not imagined they could do anything like this.’ The tragedy is compounded for Georges because he has no sons and with his death the Brun family, who have farmed in Evosges for over three hundred years, will disappear, except from the village graveyard.
Barbie’s next stop was Nivollet-Montgriffon, three miles northwest of Evosges. By then he had successfully extracted some accurate information, perhaps from the three young maquisards whose bullet-riddled bodies were found in the hills outside Evosges when the snow melted. After a house-to-house search the town’s deputy mayor, Marius Chavant, a member of the Maquis, was arrested at midnight in his house. He was shot fifty yards from his home for refusing to reveal where his son and the other young men from the village had escaped to. Four other bodies, including the village cheesemaker’s, were also found when the snow melted.
It was 8 February, the middle of the German operation. The disruption throughout the region was enormous but the military results were meagre. Hundreds had been arrested, many of whom would be deported and disappear for ever. Dozens of houses had been burnt and many innocent civilians had been killed in the most brutal circumstances. The cost to the Maquis however, although they were on the run, was so far slight. Heslop, also on the run, was moving west from Corlier towards L’Abergement de Varey, when he heard that the RAF was dropping supplies indiscriminately over the area. Most of it was falling straight into German hands. There was now chaos as well as grief. In an attempt to save at least some of the arms, Heslop began a cross-country march which ended summarily when he fell through a snow drift and cracked his shin.
‘Chabot’, Johnson and the twenty-two others had marched for three days to reach L’Abergement de Varey. As they slid down the final hillside towards the remote farmhouse, they were too exhausted to notice the signs of a sudden evacuation, only twenty-four hours earlier, by another Maquis group who had been denounced. It was past midday and informers had already alerted Barbie.
While ‘Chabot’ cautiously walked around outside the house, the others took off their clothes to dry, and lay exhausted on the floor. Marius Roche and his twin brother Julien, were amongst them:
We were exhausted when we arrived. It was the first and only time that we didn’t set up a guard at once. Even when a peasant woman breathlessly burst in shouting, ‘You’ve got to leave, the Boches are on the way,’ we didn’t take it seriously. It was two hours later that there was the unmistakable noise of Germans and milice driving up the long, tree-lined road, followed by an immediate burst of shooting. I looked at my twin brother, and said ‘Adieu’. We were twenty-two and inseparable.
Just grabbing their clothes and without a chance to dress, everyone ran out of the house. Miraculously, a sudden snow flurry covered the farmhouse, cutting all visibility. Ducking behind the cover of hedges surrounding the house, they hid and waited, unable to move because heavy machine-gun fire was raking the whole area. Only the farmer’s wife, in another house, managed to run. But after twenty yards she was stopped by a German dressed in civilian clothes, who spoke good French: it was Barbie. After a short interrogation he released her, but as she walked away from the gunfire, a German grenade fell nearby, injuring her slightly. The German soldiers had by now pinpointed the maquisards behind the hedges and began lobbing grenades and mortars in their direction. Some of the group, unable to withstand the terrible cold, crept back into the house. The shooting intensified and a maquisard fell wounded near Johnson. As the German fire closed in on their targets, both ‘Chabot’ and Johnson realised that the only hope for survival was to withdraw, leaving those in the house shooting wildly at the Germans. By the time they had reached the woods at the top of the hill, several more retreating maquisards had been wounded; there was no alternative but to leave them in the snow.
It was some days later that the eight survivors and Heslop returned to the farmhouse. Those who were wounded in the rush for the woods had been brutally treated, their faces completely crushed by hobnail boots. The imprint of the hobnails was still visible. Inside the destroyed building were the charred, limbless and unrecognisable bodies of the remainder, including Julien Roche. The owner of the farm had also been killed.
The operation ended four days later. In its wake, the Germans had left a trail of destruction, death and grief. The Maquis had been disrupted but militarily they were undefeated. Within days Heslop had contacted London and a massive re-supply operation began with as many as nine planes simultaneously dropping canisters over the Ain. With new arms came a flood of recruits, spurred on to join the struggle because of the recent atrocities.
Any frustrations Barbie felt because of failures in the countryside were relieved by 7 March, when the Gestapo in Lyons arrested ‘Chatoux’, an important member of the region’s Resistance movement. Interrogated in the Ecole de Santé, quite probably by Barbie, ‘Chatoux’ immediately betrayed his whole underground network. Over the next weeks, 101 Resistance workers, including the regional chief, Albert Chambonnet, were picked up at Barbie’s direction. The movement lost key supporters in the police, medical profession and post office, and many of those responsible for false documents and the distribution of newspapers; a devastating blow to the region’s fight against the Germans and a major coup for the Gestapo.
Gestapo successes against the Resistance were matched by those of the Wehrmacht. During the winter, the RAF had dropped supplies to the Maquis of the Haute-Savoie onto the Plateau des Glières, a high remote mountain table near Annecy. Down in the valleys, the Germans carefully noted where the parachutes were landing and in mid-February began to move thousands of soldiers towards the area. Now well-armed and believing he possessed the tactical advantage, Tom Morel, the Maquis leader, decided that the plateau would make an ideal location for a stand against the Germans. Maquis leaders throughout the region were invited to head for the plateau and join the trial of strength. Heslop refused. The idea was contrary to every rule of guerrilla warfare, which was to exploit mobility in hit-and-run tactics rather than stand and fight. His remained a minority view.
As more RAF supplies landed, German spotter planes pinpointed the maquisards’ positions and finally began their attack on 25 March. With 8,000 soldiers and two air squadrons on alert, the German assault began with a massive bombardment. Then the Luftwaffe and the troops, among them the crack Airborne Division, launched a massive attack. There was no escape from the plateau and only a handful of the 450 maquisards survived the battle.
Greatly encouraged by their success, the German High Command decided to press their advantage against the Maquis and on 31 March ordered 8,000 troops to be moved north back into the Ain and into the Jura to take part in ‘Operation Frühling’ (Operation Spring). Unlike the wild scrub and irregular wooded hills of the Ain, the Jura with its steep mountains, deep valleys and rivers was less suitable for guerrilla warfare, but the Maquis had always been stronger here than in the Ain and had for some time been cutting the vital rail link between Lyons and Germany.
During the first week of April, General Pflaum again discussed with Knab the exact locations where, according to Gestapo intelligence, the Maquis were concentrated. Knab wanted the attack to start in Nantua, then drive towards the northern part of the Ain, with special attention to the area around Oyonnax, Arinthod and St Claude in the Jura. Pflaum agreed. During the night of 6/7 April, German troops moved into position to seal off all access to the operational area. At 8.00 a.m. on 7 April Pflaum gave the orders for a three-pronged attack to start, concentrating around Gex, Oyonnax and St Claude. At his disposal were five regiments of mountain troops, a regiment of panzers, light artillery and infantry, and a regiment of Cossacks. Ominously, Knab had persuaded Pflaum that no French forces, even the milice, should participate in the operation. According to Pflaum’s post-operation report, Knab had alleged that ‘they were too timid in carrying out executions and in burning houses’.
On the first day, the German forces made no contact at all with the Maquis
in Gex or Oyonnax, but in the north they were pinned down by heavy and accurate fire from well-fortified positions around St Claude. This picturesque town with a population of 10,000 sits astride the meeting-point of two valleys. Surrounded as it is by high mountains, access to the town is only possible along narrow, winding roads hugging the wooded mountain-sides. Surprised by the Maquis’ strength, and hindered by the terrain, the German troops had to wait until nightfall before they could escape. Their casualties on the first day were five dead and thirteen wounded. After quickly consulting Knab about Gestapo intelligence reports, Pflaum ordered reinforcements to encircle the town. The first maquisards were captured on 9 April; they were handed over for interrogation to the SS detachment led by Barbie.
Barbie had not left Lyons at the beginning of the operation. Mid-morning on 6 April, a squad of a dozen German soldiers led by Gestapo officers and milice drove from Lyons to the tiny and extremely isolated village of Izieu. Local milice had allegedly heard from Henri Bourdon, a farmer, that for the past year the village’s largest house had been used as a school and refuge for Jewish children, aged from three to fourteen. One of them, Theo Reiss, actually worked in Bourdon’s fields. Until then none of the villagers had been concerned for the children’s safety; the village was so remote from the war that there was no sense of secrecy about their presence. None of them even knew at the time of the two German lorries which had pulled up in front of the house, or of the panic that followed inside. The school’s director, Miron Zlatin, was told by the Germans that the children were to be evacuated for their own safety. Immediately suspicious, he tried to dissuade the Gestapo officers from moving the children; having failed, he told the children to pack their belongings and climb into the lorries.
