Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  Shortly before 16:00, news of the bomb attack reached Paris via a coded telephone call. Walter Bargatzky, a young Army lawyer who was part of the plot, grabbed a bewildered colleague and urged him: ‘Always think back on this moment – it is the most important in the whole war.’55 General Stülpnagel, the military commander of occupied France and one of the plot leaders, told his officers that the SS had carried out a coup in Berlin – this was the cover story that had been agreed in order to dupe Hitler loyalists. Stülpnagel then instructed Lieutenant-General von Boineburg, the military commander of Paris, to arrest all the members of the SS in the city. Anyone who resisted was to be shot.56 Bargatzky described how the mutiny was set in motion: ‘Stülpnagel, three floors below me, is handing out the orders that have been ready for months. The telephone connection with the Reich is to be interrupted, and the functionaries of the security service, down to its lowest officials, are to be arrested.’57

  Shortly afterwards, teenager Micheline Bood was at home in her mother’s apartment overlooking the rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Intrigued by the sound of German being spoken in hushed tones on the street below, she and her mother went to their balcony:

  We saw a long convoy of lorries, with no lights, going from the rue du Cirque towards the avenue Matignon; then we saw loads of German soldiers getting out, taking care not to make too much noise . . . We thought ‘yet another raid’, but instead the soldiers formed up in single file while their officers continued to give orders in lowered voices. They skirted round the place Beauvau before heading off towards the rue des Saussaies with fixed bayonets, their bodies hunched as though they were preparing to attack.58

  Shortly afterwards, a surprised French policeman noted that tanks were surrounding the SS building on avenue Foch: ‘a Gestapo officer turned up on a bicycle; straight away a German soldier pointed his machine gun at him, while another removed the officer’s pistol. The officer was then taken off to a nearby German lorry, which contained other members of the Gestapo . . . Several lorries containing the arrested Germans drove off down the boulevard Lannes, to an unknown destination.’59 In less than an hour, over 1200 Germans had been arrested, including the head of the SS in France, General Carl Oberg, who was beside himself with rage as troops burst into his office.60

  The Supreme Field Commander in France, Field Marshal von Kluge, had known of the plot for some time, but had carefully refused to endorse it. Wanting to be certain of success, he would support the coup only if Hitler were dead.61 At around 18:00 von Kluge swept into his headquarters at La Roche-Guyon, a beautiful castle on a bend in the Seine mid-way between Paris and Rouen. He was told first that Hitler had been killed, then that the assassination attempt had failed and that the Führer was alive. Faced with this confusion, von Kluge immediately summoned von Stülpnagel from Paris. By the time von Stülpnagel arrived at 20:00, von Kluge was certain that Hitler was alive and he began furiously distancing himself from any involvement.62 Lieutenant-Colonel von Hofacker, von Stauffenberg’s cousin and the lynchpin of the Paris conspiracy, made an impassioned plea to von Kluge: ‘Field Marshal, your word and honour are under fire. In your hands lies the fate of millions of Germans and the honour of the Army.’63 But von Kluge would not budge and refused to be involved in any way. When asked one final time if he would support the coup, von Kluge replied – ‘Yes, if the pig were dead!’64

  The conspirators knew that was the end of the matter: without von Kluge’s support, the Paris putsch would collapse.65 Even if the circumstances were dire, the niceties still had to be observed, so Kluge ordered dinner to be served. As von Kluge’s aide later recalled: ‘They ate by candlelight, as if they sat in a house just visited by death.’66 When a dejected von Stülpnagel left shortly before 23:00, von Kluge relieved him of his duties and gave him a final piece of advice that both men would have done well to follow: ‘Swap your uniform for civvies and disappear!’67

  Once von Stülpnagel was back in Paris, he set about undoing the putsch, ordering his officers to release the SS men. At around 02:00 the next morning there was a tense meeting between von Stülpnagel and his erstwhile prisoner Oberg, in the presence of the German ambassador to France, Otto Abetz. A few floors above them, Walter Bargatzky prayed for events to take a different course: ‘Even now, everything could have been saved. The general would only have had to rise and shoot Oberg and Abetz beside him. But a fatal quality hampers him: his intelligence. Clearly, too clearly, he sees thousands shrinking back from the risk, as Kluge did . . . And the same resignation inhibits us from going down to the general from where we are, on the fourth floor.’68

  And so the putsch came to an end, with a whimper. To reassure the rank-and-file troops and to maintain a veneer of German unity, it was agreed that the attempted coup would be described as ‘an exercise’. The erstwhile enemies toasted the agreement in champagne and a jovial Oberg left the Hôtel Raphael in the early hours.69 Von Stülpnagel was recalled to Berlin the next day, his fate sealed. On the journey back, he attempted suicide but succeeded only in blinding himself. He was hanged in Plötzensee prison on 30 August.

  The next day, the Parisian press parroted the Nazi lie that the troops had been on an exercise. The Resistance was not fooled, however, and on 22 July a Socialist Party leaflet described the events in Paris under the headline ‘The disintegration of Nazism – Wehrmacht against Gestapo’.70 Even Albert Grunberg, hiding in his attic on the rue des Ecoles, knew what had really happened – more or less. His concierge had hurried to see him, proud to be the first to tell him of the ‘pitched battle’ that had taken place between the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht. No matter how exaggerated this gossip might have been, for Grunberg and for many others, this remarkable event was a sign of hope: for a few hours, the Nazi machine had been at war with itself.

  *

  The chaotic situation in the German ranks that followed the attempt on Hitler’s life raised the question of what would happen when German control of the city finally disintegrated. In Algiers, Free French agent Francis-Louis Closon outlined three possible scenarios: fighting between Allied and German troops in the city (‘very unlikely’), gradual withdrawal of the Germans from Paris coupled with action by guerrilla groups, or a straightforward German collapse in the face of an insurrection. Above all, Closon was concerned about how the Free French could control the population once an insurrection had begun. He outlined the Gaullists’ nightmare scenario in a series of clipped phrases: ‘Revolutionary ferment. Highly charged atmosphere. Uprising of the suburbs and possible anti-communist reactions . . . Highly probable occupation of all big factories, the workers will refuse to obey collaborationist bosses or management.’71

  For the moment, however, the Germans remained firmly in control and none of these issues was pressing. On 27 July, the Gestapo arrested two men at La Muette Métro station in the 16th arrondissement. One of them, Alain de Beaufort, tried to flee. Shots rang out; he was wounded in the foot and captured. De Beaufort’s arrest was a serious blow to the Resistance – he was in charge of all air drops in the northern zone. His comrade, André Rondenay, was an even bigger catch for the Germans – for three months he had been the Military Delegate for the northern zone, one rank below Chaban in the Free French hierarchy in occupied France. When he was captured, Rondenay was on his way to meet Chaban; if he had been followed, the Germans could have made a clean sweep of the Free French military leadership in Paris.72 Both de Beaufort and Rondenay were taken off to Fresnes prison, where they were tortured. Two years earlier, Rondenay had been a prisoner in Colditz; after repeatedly attempting to escape, he was transferred to Lübeck, from where he successfully escaped to London, following an amazing journey across Nazi Germany, through occupied France, Spain and Portugal. There would be no escape from Fresnes.73

  *

  For over a year, 32-year-old SS officer Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner had been commander of the Drancy internment camp for Jews in the north-east suburbs of Paris. Under Brunner’s command, the Drancy camp plumbed new de
pths of depravity. He insisted that all food and medical supplies for the inmates should come from the Jewish community itself, through a stooge organisation set up by Vichy, the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF – General Union of French Jews). The UGIF collaborated with Brunner and his goons in tracking down family members of Drancy internees and bringing them to the camp; if they did not surrender, Brunner tortured their loved ones.74 As a former UGIF leader put it after the war: ‘Brunner . . . is the very model of the degenerate Nazi with the bearing of a mad sadist.’75

  On the evening of 21 July, Brunner found that he was still several hundred people short of his monthly deportation quota to the death camps in Germany. So he sent his men to raid six UGIF orphanages, arresting 215 children; the next night they picked up another 27 infants and also arrested around 30 adults working for the UGIF.76 All of these people were taken to Drancy to be put on a rail convoy to Germany. When the train left Drancy for Auschwitz on 31 July, it carried 1,300 people, including 327 children. As soon as they arrived 726 people were gassed; only 209 survived the camp and returned to France.77 The youngest person on the train was a baby called Alain Blumberg. He was two weeks old. He did not survive.

  2

  Early August: Breakout

  Tuesday 1 August. Pierre Bourdan, a journalist embedded with the Free French Army, writes: ‘Over the past four years, some of us have had brief contacts with France. These furtive visits were almost painful, mere fleeting landfalls from a boat moored offshore. But tonight we truly return to France. In the cool night, the sea air accompanies us across the fields of Normandy; although we cannot see much in the darkness, the smell of France is reassuring, an unmistakable sign that we are home.’1

  Early in the morning of 1 August, soldiers of the Free French 2nd Armoured Division or ‘Deuxième Division Blindée’ (2e DB) stepped onto ‘Utah Beach’ in Normandy. Although some French troops had been involved in the D-Day landings nearly two months earlier, this was the first time that a unit of the Free French Army landed on home soil. They were accompanied by the Rochambeau medical group, composed primarily of female ambulance drivers, nicknamed ‘Les Rochambelles’. Lieutenant Suzanne Torrès spent the voyage across the Channel smoking cigarettes, filing her nails and losing substantial of amounts of money at poker, before passing the night and much of the next day moored off the coast, watching vehicles being unloaded in a swelling sea. Then, after hours of waiting, the moment came. As Torrès recalled: ‘Night is falling and, with queasy stomachs, we finally set foot on the sand of “Utah” Beach. Instantly, our feeling of joy overwhelms everything else . . . it is the kind of moment that occurs rarely in your life. Before jumping into my vehicle, I scoop up some sand and press it against my cheek . . . I could almost eat it!’2

  The 2e DB was not just another set of soldiers. None of them knew it, but they had been chosen to be the first Free French troops to enter Paris. The 2e DB had been transferred from Morocco to England at the end of April 1944, and assigned to General Patton’s Third US Army. In other words, although this was a 15,000-strong Free French unit, commanded by General Leclerc (hence ‘the Leclerc Division’), it was part of the US Army. Its orders, weaponry and supplies – even its uniforms – were American.3 The division commander’s real name was not Leclerc but Philippe de Hauteclocque – like many Resistance fighters and Free French soldiers, he had adopted a nom de guerre to protect his family in France.4 Tall and gaunt with a toothbrush moustache, Leclerc was a 41-year-old aristocrat and career officer who walked with a cane – an affectation rather than a medical requirement – and was utterly loyal to de Gaulle, whom he joined in June 1940. The men and women of the 2e DB shared that loyalty. A small number of them had escaped from France to join de Gaulle; others were in Britain when France surrendered. But the vast majority were from France’s African colonies – either white settlers or indigenous black or Arab men who had joined up as the group fought its way across North Africa.5 After their first major success at Kufra, deep in the southern Libyan desert in 1941, Leclerc and his men swore a solemn oath not to lay down their arms until the French tricolour flag flew over Strasbourg cathedral.6 Most of these men had never set foot in France, let alone Strasbourg, yet the symbolic power of the French Empire, the loyalty it inspired among sections of the indigenous populations, and their certainty that they were French, had led them to join up and risk their lives.

  Although the black and Arab men of the French colonies were convinced that they were just as French as de Gaulle or Leclerc, the Allies did not agree. At the beginning of the year, US Major General Walter Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), had insisted that only ‘white personnel’ should be involved in the liberation of Paris, even if it meant ethnically cleansing the Leclerc Division.7 In the end, the thousands of North African soldiers were not actually removed from the 2e DB, nor were 400 Spaniards, many of them exiled republicans, who had joined up to continue the fight against fascism after the end of the Spanish Civil War.8 But there were no French West African soldiers among the thousands of 2e DB men who landed on Utah Beach at the beginning of August. Furthermore, all the US soldiers who were eventually involved in the liberation of Paris were from white regiments (the US Army systematically segregated its units at this time).9 The freedoms the Allies brought to France were not yet for everyone.

  In the weeks following D-Day, men and machines poured endlessly onto the Normandy beaches. By the end of July the Allied armies were nearly 1 million strong. New ports and roads were built to maintain the flow to the front, but the fighting was hard and progress was slow. However, at the end of July the Allies launched a massive land and air offensive against the German lines and, on the evening of 31 July, US troops finally succeeded in taking Avranches south of the Cotentin peninsula, opening the way eastwards to Paris. Field Marshal von Kluge confided to his colleagues: ‘Gentlemen, this breakthrough means for us and the German people the beginning of a decisive and bitter end. I see no remaining possibility of halting this ongoing attack.’10 Von Kluge was right. Within a little more than a week, the Allies had progressed 200 km and had liberated Le Mans, approximately halfway to Paris from the Normandy beaches. The speed of the advance kindled new hope in the hearts of the Parisians, who were finding life increasingly harsh. On Sunday 6 August Protestant priest Marc Boegner wrote in his diary: ‘New restrictions: we will have gas only from 12:15 to 12:30 at lunchtime and in the evening from 19:20 to 20:30. The Métro will be shut from 11:00 to 15:00. Working hours will have to be adapted to this new situation. The week that is beginning will undoubtedly be one of the most extraordinary in history. The week that has just finished has left us stunned. The Americans have advanced 300 km with their tanks and the Russians have taken the war onto German soil.’11

  *

  In the first week of August the military situation in the west grew increasingly serious for the Germans. The Allies pushed eastwards, then turned north at Alençon, beginning a pincer movement towards the town of Falaise, with the aim of trapping the German armies in Normandy. Caught in what became known as the ‘Falaise pocket’, surrounded on all sides by overwhelming forces and with no air support, the Germans soon found their food, ammunition and fuel supplies rapidly dwindling. Unless they could find a way to escape, they were doomed.

  A few dozen kilometres to the south, away from the fighting, Colonel David Bruce, London head of the US intelligence agency the Office of Strategic Services (OSS – the forerunner of the CIA), was setting up his headquarters in Le Mans. Bruce had found the town in good shape: the buildings were undamaged, food supplies were plentiful and the population was in good spirits. Because farmers had no way of getting their produce to the Paris region, they were happy to supply the townsfolk of Le Mans and the thousands of Allied soldiers with some excellent food and wine. Two things struck Colonel Bruce that day. Driving into Le Mans he was amazed by the scale of the Allied supply lines – fuel, ammunition and rations were c
ontinuously transported along the road, together with engineers to repair infrastructure and communication lines. The logistics of the Allied advance were mind-boggling. For example, every day the 16,000 men of the US 3rd Armoured Division – less than 2 per cent of the total number of Allied soldiers in Normandy – required 60,000 gallons of fuel, 35 tons of food and an even greater tonnage of ammunition.12 All this had to be brought from the landing beaches up to the front line, creating the elongated supply lines that Bruce noted in his diary. The other event he recorded was more sombre. He learned that six of his French intelligence agents had headed for Paris but had been arrested by the Germans. Five of them were interrogated and executed. The sixth agent, a young man in his mid-twenties, managed to escape back to Le Mans, but was profoundly shocked and disturbed by his experience. Directly or indirectly, Bruce had been responsible for all these people. Three days later, he was shown graphic evidence of the fate of his five agents: ‘I saw the photographs and they were horrible. They had all, including the woman, been shot through the groin and the stomach.’13

  *

  On Monday 7 August, General Dietrich von Choltitz was ushered into Hitler’s presence. Von Choltitz (pronounced ‘Kol-titz’) was a short and plump 49-year-old, with thin lips and a small mouth – US military historian Martin Blumenson said that he ‘looked like a nightclub comedian’.14 Just two days earlier von Choltitz had been on the Western Front, trying to get his men to hold the line as the US Army crashed its way out of the Cotentin peninsula. Then, out of the blue, he received orders to cross the continent and meet Hitler in Poland. Von Choltitz was not a member of the Nazi Party and had never seen the Führer in person. The atmosphere at Hitler’s headquarters was tense, von Choltitz told a colleague: ‘One was looked at very suspiciously . . . there was an SS man behind every tree.’15 The Führer turned out not to be the brilliant leader portrayed by Nazi propaganda, but rather ‘a fat, broken-down old man’ still suffering from the physical and mental effects of the 20 July assassination attempt.16 As von Choltitz told some of his German comrades: ‘You couldn’t shake hands properly. His paws were all swollen and septic. He then started making me a forty-five-minute speech. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from bursting.’17