by Matthew Cobb
ELEVEN DAYS
IN AUGUST
Also by Matthew Cobb
THE RESISTANCE: THE FRENCH FIGHT AGAINST THE NAZIS
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2013 by Matthew Cobb
The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Matthew Cobb to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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For Lauren and Evie, a tale of your city
Contents
Maps
Dramatis Personae
Glossary
Introduction
Prelude. April 1944: Bombers
1 June–July: Hope
2 Early August: Breakout
3 Mid-August: Build-up
4 Tuesday 15 August: Turning-point
5 Wednesday 16 August: Crimes
6 Thursday 17 August: Twilight
7 Friday 18 August: Waiting
8 Saturday 19 August: Insurrection
9 Sunday 20 August: Cease-fire
10 Monday 21 August: Conflict
11 Tuesday 22 August: Barricades
12 Wednesday 23 August: Destruction
13 Thursday 24 August, Day: Battle
14 Thursday 24 August, Evening: Arrival
15 Friday 25 August, Day: Endgame
16 Friday 25 August, Evening: Triumph
17 Saturday 26 August: Celebration
18 27 August–31 December: Restoration
Epilogue: Mythification
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Notes
List of Illustrations
Index
Dramatis personae
2e DB Free French 2nd Armoured Division
Colonel Pierre Billotte
Colonel Alain de Boissieu
Colonel Paul de Langlade
Captain Raymond Dronne
General Philippe Leclerc
Lieutenant Suzanne Torrès, Rochambeau Ambulance Brigade
Allies
Colonel Claude Arnould (‘Ollivier’), JADE-AMICOL MI6 circuit
General Omar Bradley, US Army
Colonel George Bruce, OSS
Captain Adrien Chaigneau, Jedburgh Team AUBREY
General Leonard Gerow, US Army
Sergeant Ivor Hooker, Jedburgh Team AUBREY
Captain Guy Marchant, Jedburgh Team AUBREY
General George S. Patton, US Army
Collaborators
René Bouffet, Prefect of the Seine
Robert Brasillach, writer
Amédée Bussière, Prefect of Police
Marcel Déat, fascist politician
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, writer
Philippe Henriot, journalist
Max Knipping, northern leader of the Milice
Pierre Laval, Prime Minister
Lucien Rébatet, journalist
Pierre Taittinger, President of the Paris Council
Free French
Georges Boris, London head of propaganda
General Jacques Delmas (‘Chaban’), National Military Delegate
Francis-Louis Closon, BCRA
Marcel Flouret, Prefect of the Seine
General Koenig, Commander of the Free French Army
Charles Luizet, Prefect of Police
Alexandre Parodi, General Delegate
Edgard Pisani, Luizet’s aide
Roland Pré (‘Oronte’), Regional Military Delegate
Germans
Otto Abetz, German ambassador to France
Lieutenant Dankwart Graf von Arnim, aide to von Choltitz
Emil ‘Bobby’ Bender, German intelligence, British agent
Lieutenant-General Wilhelm von Boineburg, military commander of Paris
General Dietrich von Choltitz, military commander of Greater Paris
Private Walter Dreizner, military electrician, photographer
Colonel Jay, Ordnance officer to von Choltitz
Field Marshal von Kluge, German commander in the West
Field Marshal Model, German commander in the West
SS General Carl Oberg, SS chief in Paris
Lieutenant Erich ‘Riki’ Posch-Pastor, German officer, British agent
General Hans Speidel, Chief of Staff of Army Group B
Quartermaster Robert Wallraf
Neutrals
René Naville, Swiss legate
Rolf Nordling, brother of Raoul
Raoul Nordling, Swedish Consul General
Others
Ernest Hemingway, writer
Philippe Herriot, ex-President of the National Assembly
P. G. Wodehouse, writer
Parisians
Berthe Auroy, retired schoolteacher
Georges Benoît-Guyod, retired officer
Andrzej Bobkowski, Polish exile
Marc Boegner, Protestant priest
Daniel Boisdon, lawyer
Micheline Bood, teenage schoolgirl
Yves Cazaux, civil servant
Simone de Beauvoir, writer
Edmond Dubois, Swiss journalist
Jean Galtier-Boissière, journalist
Benoîte Groult, single woman, sister of Flora
Flora Groult, schoolgirl
Albert Grunberg, hairdresser
Jean Guéhenno, schoolteacher
Odette Lainville, housewife
Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar, housewife
Pierre Patin, railway engineer
Pablo Picasso, artist
Claude Roy, journalist
Jean-Paul Sartre, writer
Jean-Claude Touche, student
Paul Tuffrau, university lecturer
Victor Veau, retired surgeon
Camille Vilain, poet
Résistants
André Amar, Organisation Juive de Combat
Major Armand (‘Spiritualist’), SOE
Georges Bidault, President of the Conseil National de la Résistance
Claire Chevrillon, Parodi’s coder
Captain Roger Cocteau (‘Gallois’), FFI
René Courtin, Secretary-General for the Economy
General Dassault, Front National
Georges Dukson, FFI
Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, ALLIANCE
Colonel Pierre Georges (‘Fabien’), FTP
Léo Hamon, Ceux de la Résistance representative on CPL
Maurice Kriegel (‘Valrimont’), member of COMAC
Marie-Helène Lefaucheux, OCM representative on CPL
Pierre Lefaucheux, OCM head of Paris FFI until July 1944
Colonel Tessier de Marguerittes (‘Lizé’), FFI
Commander Raymond Massiet (‘Dufresnes’), FFI regional chief of staff
Doctor Monod, FFI
Bernard Pierquin, Resistance medical servic
e
Jean Sainteny (‘Dragon’), ALLIANCE
Colonel Henri Tanguy (‘Rol’), regional FFI commander
Madeline Riffaud, FFI
Roger Stéphane, FFI
Charles Tillon, FTP
Pierre Villon, communist, member of COMAC
Count Jean de Vogüé (‘Vaillant’), member of COMAC
Glossary
AMGOT
Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories
2e DB
Deuxième Division Blindée (Free French 2nd Armoured Division), Free French Army / Third US Army
BCRA
Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action – Free French Intelligence Service
Ceux de la Résistance
Resistance group, based mainly in Paris region
CGT
Conféderation Générale du Travail – General Labour Confederation
CNR
Conseil National de la Résistance – the Resistance leadership
COMAC
Comité d’Action Militaire – the Resistance military leadership
CPL
Comité Parisien de la Libération – leadership of the Parisian Resistance
FFI
Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur – armed wing of the Resistance
Free French
Generic term for supporters of de Gaulle and of the Provisional Government
FTP
Franc-Tireurs et Partisans – Communist Party armed group
Libération-Nord
Resistance group based in the north of France
OCM
Organisation Civile et Militaire – right-wing Resistance group
OSS
Office of Strategic Services – US intelligence organisation
mairie
Town hall
Milice
French fascist paramilitary organisation that specialised in fighting the Resistance
PCF
Parti Communiste Français – French Communist Party
SHAEF
Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force
SOE
Special Operations Executive – secret British military organisation
Introduction
On 14 June 1940, when the German Army marched into Paris without a shot being fired, over a dozen people took their lives in despair.1 Less than ten days later, the French government surrendered. The battle of France, which had begun in earnest six weeks earlier, had been brief, but bloody: over 300,000 French soldiers had been killed or wounded in the fighting, and nearly 2 million had been taken prisoner.
Under the terms of the armistice, France was divided up, with the industrial north, including Paris, placed under direct German administration and occupation. For the next four years the Germans stamped the city with their Nazi presence. Official buildings were draped with massive swastika flags; French road signs were replaced with instructions in German gothic script; café terraces and public transport were packed with the grey-green uniforms of German troops. While some urbane Nazis hobnobbed with unprincipled French artists and intellectuals, swilling champagne in the nightclubs and discussing philosophy over cups of tea, tens of thousands of German administrators and soldiers based in the capital oversaw the systematic pillaging of France’s wealth, and the oppression and exploitation of the entire population. Rationing and shortages affected every aspect of life in the city, as the massive German military machine sucked resources like some vast parasite slowly destroying its host. The Germans spun a web of spies across the face of the capital; its centre was the Paris Gestapo headquarters on the rue des Saussaies, where French men and women were beaten, tortured and killed. The Gestapo were aided by the French police, who rounded up thousands of Parisian Jews and then deported them to Germany. After 1942, those Jews that remained in the city were forced to wear the yellow Star of David.
In the south of France, which was not initially occupied by the Germans, the octogenarian Marshal Pétain led a nominally sovereign government, based in the spa town of Vichy. Pétain, who was in his dotage, coined the infamous term that marked this period in history: collaboration. As well as Pétain and the other collaborators, there were also committed fascists and anti-Semites who revelled in the triumph of the Nazis and wanted to see collaboration taken to an even higher level. These people, who included journalists, writers and politicians, tended to be based in Paris rather than Vichy. During the occupation the capital became a hothouse world in which the fascists plotted to take power from Pétain and his prime minister, Laval, and where their vile views were reinforced by the proximity of their jackbooted idols. From November 1942 the Germans occupied the southern zone of France, too, and all semblance of independence for Vichy disappeared. Although Pétain and his collaborationist government remained as an increasingly futile façade, real power in France always lay in the hands of the Germans, who were based in Paris.2
Paris is not only the capital and the traditional seat of the French government, it has its own local administration and municipal police forces: In 1944, Paris was also the seat of the regional administration – the Seine département, which covered both the city and its suburbs. At the time there were ninety French départements, each of roughly equivalent size. In each département there was a representative of central government, called the Prefect; he had authority23 over all the civil servants in the region, and also acted as an interface between the government and the local councils. Paris was divided into twenty local areas or arrondissements, each with their own town hall or mairie and, before the war, an elected local council. The capital also contained two police forces – the municipal police, under the control of the Paris council, and the national police operating in the city, who were controlled by the Prefect of Police (not to be confused with the Prefect). Policing in the rural areas surrounding the city was the responsibility of French gendarmes, who were part of the Army.
Paris combined a glorious architectural heritage in the centre and the west of the city with sordid working-class slums in the north and the east. Densely populated, with a substantial Jewish and immigrant population (many of whom had fled Russian pogroms, the Nazi invasion of Poland or the rise of fascism in Italy and Spain), Paris was still an industrial centre, with factories and workshops all over the north, east and parts of the south of the city. It was surrounded by a sea of industrial suburbs, full of engineering factories, many linked with the railways, and the vast Renault and Citroën car plants that sprawled across the south-western edge of the city. As well as the workers in the Paris factories and small workshops, there were tens of thousands of clerks working in the capital, employed by private companies or the government, earning just enough to buy what food they could find in the markets that existed in every neighbourhood. The markets got food from the immense abbatoirs at La Villette on the north-eastern edge of the city, or from the bustling wholesale market at Les Halles, right in the very centre of the capital. As the war continued, food supplies became increasingly restricted, and the black market flourished.
*
Even before France fell, General Charles de Gaulle was in London, broadcasting on the BBC and calling for French resistance to the occupation. De Gaulle had in mind continued military struggle by sections of the French Army, but this proved a vain hope, and only a few thousand troops joined de Gaulle’s ‘Free French’ in London.3 However, another form of ‘resistance’ soon appeared – underground Resistance groups were created, with Paris as one of the first and most important centres of their activity. These groups had a wide variety of political views and also differed over the kind of action they felt ought to be taken against the Germans; despite being lumped under the title ‘the Resistance’, in reality they never formed a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, in Paris, as elsewhere in France, for many people the Resistance shaped the course of the occupation, providing a voice of opposition by publishing underground newspapers, working with Allied secret agents, and even for a period sh
ooting soldiers and throwing bombs in a vain attempt to terrorise the immense German military machine.4
After the tragic destruction in summer 1943 of a Paris-based group of Allied agents belonging to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Allies focused their attention outside of the capital, and by 1944 underground work against the Germans in Paris was very much left to the Free French and to the Resistance.5 Throughout the occupation, Paris was the scene of a series of disputes within the Resistance over what should be done to fight the Germans, with what means and under whose command. These arguments were amplified by the very real danger involved in carrying out underground activity, which created awful tensions and magnified minor differences. There was also an important difference between the activists in the Resistance and the Paris representatives of the Free French, who were widely seen as simply wanting to wait for the Allied armies to arrive. This difference not only related to means, it was also about ends. Most of the Paris Resistance organisations were not on the same political wavelength as the Free French. Indeed, many Resistance fighters in the capital and its region were close to the communists. Although all the groups came to accept de Gaulle as the Resistance figurehead, few of them were in favour of him taking power after the liberation of the country. The Resistance felt it should play an important role, but this was not at all how de Gaulle saw matters – by 1943 he was in charge of a provisional government in Algiers, and he intended to take control of France once the country had been liberated.
Ultimately, the fate of France would be decided in Downing Street and the White House: the US and British Allies controlled all the levers of economic and military power. Although de Gaulle had undoubted popular support in France, the whole of the French ruling elite supported Pétain’s collaborationist government – not one leading industrialist, banker or military leader came over to the Free French. De Gaulle’s movement was entirely financed by handouts or loans from the Allies, while the Free French armed forces were completely integrated with the Allies and depended entirely on Allied tactical and logistical support when they carried out their operations. As a result, the fiercely independent de Gaulle had to count on the goodwill of Roosevelt, Churchill and, to a lesser extent, Stalin, while the three leaders saw France as merely part of the map of Europe, the future of which would be decided by the Allies, not by the French themselves. Throughout the war, de Gaulle’s relationship with the Allies remained stormy, and in the run-up to D-Day in June 1944 the Americans and the British prepared to take charge of France themselves, through an Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT). There were therefore three contending forces struggling for the future of France – the Allies, the Free French and the Resistance – and each had a different vision of what a post-war France should look like. The outcome of this three-way conflict was not determined in advance, and it was not certain that it would be peaceful. Paris came to symbolise that struggle, and the battle for Paris that took place in August 1944 played a decisive part in determining the future of the country.
