Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  During the interview – or monologue – Hitler instructed von Choltitz to take command of Paris and to transform the city from a pleasuredome for troops on leave into a garrison prepared to fight to the end.18 The Führer’s written orders stated: ‘All non-essential German administrative services and all individuals who are not required to be in Paris should be evacuated as soon as possible . . . The territory of Greater Paris must be protected against any act of rebellion, of subversion or sabotage.’19 With that, von Choltitz was dismissed and dispatched by train to Paris. He had been given unprecedented command over both Wehrmacht and SS troops, as well as over all parts of the Nazi Party, along with the powers of the commander of a besieged fort. The message could not have been clearer: von Choltitz was to defend the city as a vital military base. He had been chosen for this task because he was prepared to carry out even the most difficult orders. In a secret conversation with a colleague, von Choltitz confessed what he had done during the Crimean campaign of 1941–2: ‘The worst job I ever carried out – which however I carried out with great consistency – was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this order down to the very last detail.’20 While admitting his role in the extermination of the Jews in the Crimea, von Choltitz claimed that he also knew all about the 20 July plot in advance – the main participants were ‘all friends of mine’, he boasted.21 His fellow officers recognised these contradictions. They said he was ‘two-faced; when with Nazis he is “150%” for Hitler and when with anti-Nazis he is all against him’. Worse, they said he was ‘a thoroughly uncongenial fellow . . . he played the big man . . . a cunning fellow . . . sly’.22 Sometimes, their opinions of him verged on the ridiculous, as when one German officer stated: ‘I haven’t seen him since we were at school together and nobody liked him then . . . He used to be the dirtiest little pig in the whole school. He was smelly. I know everyone used to say: “Go away, you stink.” He was filthy and lazy to the last degree.’23 The best that was said about von Choltitz by his comrades was that he was ‘a nice fellow; but, as a soldier, a dud’.24 Perhaps the most perceptive view came from an Allied officer who observed him closely: ‘a cinema-type German officer, fat, coarse, bemonocled and inflated with a tremendous sense of his own importance’.25

  Hitler not only changed the Paris command, he also ordered a new tactic on the battlefield. Early in the morning of 7 August, German forces on the Western Front launched a massive attack to retake the town of Mortain, thirty-five kilometres east of Avranches. Hitler’s order deployed his usual crazed rhetoric and showed a typically poor grasp of military reality: ‘Continue the attack recklessly to the sea, regardless of the risk . . . The greatest daring, determination and imagination must give wings to all echelons of command. Each and every man must believe in victory.’26

  The offensive failed after only two days, at the cost of thousands of lives and the destruction of nearly a hundred German tanks. Any sensible commander would have drawn the same conclusion as Field Marshal von Kluge had done a week earlier, and would have ordered a rapid retreat to safety. Hitler carried on regardless, wasting men and materiel. Less than three weeks later, Lieutenant-General Elfeldt complained about ‘the madness at Mortain of thrusting towards Avranches with six Panzer Divisions which weren’t Panzer Divisions any longer. It was just madness. The High Command wouldn’t listen to our reports on the strength of our forces.’27 For Hitler, the cause of the inevitable failure of the Mortain offensive was simple: ‘the attack failed because Field Marshal von Kluge wanted it to fail,’ he spat.28 The Führer had given von Choltitz the task of defending Paris against the oncoming Allied armies; that encounter was getting closer.

  *

  For weeks, the Resistance leaders had been complaining about Chaban, the National Military Delegate – the Resistance had not received enough weapons from the Allies, and they felt Chaban was responsible. On 9 August, an increasingly frustrated Rol wrote a bleak letter to COMAC, (the Resistance military leadership), and to the Free French Military Delegation: ‘As far as Paris is concerned, I am unable to ensure the security of the main services – water, gas, electricity, telegraph, telephone, transport, food supplies, etc. Because the FFI has no weapons, the Parisian population is at serious risk from the Huns who will inevitably fall back on Paris. The FFI and all patriots are determined to fight with all their force. They will take weapons from the enemy. The question is, will the Military Delegation give them weapons?’29 At one level, this was a fair criticism: Chaban had control of all supply drops, and he consistently refused to press London to deliver more arms for the Resistance. In reality, even if Chaban had done everything that Rol wanted, the result would probably have been the same. The Free French and the Allies had long ago agreed to strictly control the supply of light weapons to the Resistance, for fear that those weapons might be used not only against the Germans. They were particularly suspicious of Resistance forces that might be influenced by the Communist Party.30 When General Koenig had asked the Allies to drop 40,000 Sten guns to the Resistance in the Paris region, the British Foreign Office blocked the request because ‘there will always be the temptation to put them to mischievous uses should political passions be inflamed when the war is over.’31

  Chaban’s civilian counterpart was Alexandre Parodi, de Gaulle’s ‘Délégué Général’ (General Delegate) in occupied France who was a minister in the Provisional Government. Unlike the dashing Chaban, Parodi was an austere, balding 43-year-old civil servant who had spent the whole of the occupation in Paris, planning for the moment when the Free French would set up their government in the capital.32 He had to deal with the operators of the Comité Parisien de la Libération (CPL), the political leadership of the Resistance in the Paris region.33 Parodi’s task was made more difficult because Paris was both the capital, and therefore the focus of all Free French preparations for taking power, and also a city with its own local government and a centuries-old tradition of revolution that was at odds with the Gaullist project. Half the members of the CPL were members of or sympathetic to the Communist Party – the President of the CPL, 31-year-old André Tollet, was a communist trade unionist, and there were also representatives from both the Communist Party and the Front National, the broadly based Resistance organisation the Communist Party had set up in 1941 (there is no connection with the modern French far-right party of the same name).34 As a supposedly neutral civil servant, Parodi’s duty was to carry out the instructions of de Gaulle’s Provisional Government in Algiers. Whenever the views of the government clashed with those of the Parisian Resistance (which was often), Parodi had to find a way through the thicket of opposition and ensure that de Gaulle’s will prevailed.

  At the beginning of August, however, Parodi found himself on the same side as the Resistance and on a collision course with Algiers. In a firm message to his Free French comrades, Parodi criticised their policy of trying to break COMAC’s control over the FFI fighters, noting that this would divide those who were loyal to Algiers from those who followed the Resistance. Above all, like so many Free French plans drawn up from afar, it was completely impractical. ‘In non-liberated areas,’ Parodi told his comrades, ‘COMAC is the only body that can really lead the FFI.’35 Algiers made no reply. The next day, Parodi sent yet another message to Algiers on his debate with the CPL over ‘who should lead operations in the liberation of Paris’. Parodi’s message closed with a plea to his comrades on the other side of the Mediterranean: ‘You must give us your confidence and your support in this affair so that we can come to an agreement and the Government’s authority can be maintained. Could you please send us instructions?’36 Again there was no reply.

  Two days later, Parodi met with the CPL and they all finally agreed that the CPL ‘alone has the authority to lead the national insurrection in the region and receive the Allies in Paris’.37 Parodi sent an enthusiastic account of this decision to Algiers (‘we have completely settled the problem of the seizure of power in Paris’) and for once there was an immediate response from t
he Minister of the Interior, the veteran Resistance leader Emmanuel d’Astier.38 The minister was scathing: ‘The General asked me to communicate his surprise regarding the content of the telegram concerning the liberation of Paris . . . There can be no question of divesting ourselves of any power.’39

  Had he received this reply, Parodi would no doubt have gone dutifully back to the CPL for yet another round of arguments, and might not have later behaved as he did. But he never got the message. At the beginning of August the complex communications web between Paris, London and Algiers collapsed, for reasons that are unknown. In truth, communication was always a source of tension, because of the delays inherent in the system – coded messages from Paris were broadcast to Britain; they were then decoded and recoded in London, and finally sent on to Algiers by telegram, in batches that could represent over a week’s correspondence from France. This produced a frustrating delay: a message sent from France could take at least a week to reach Algiers. Messages from Algiers or London, however, were immediately received in Paris, reinforcing the impression in Paris that those safe in Britain and North Africa were engaged in a one-way conversation, not listening to those on the ground.40

  During the communications problem that occurred in August, transmissions from Paris got through as normal – that is, with the habitual delays – but no messages were received in the capital for at least two weeks.41 Even de Gaulle’s secret instructions to Parodi, sent on 31 July, were never received. The Free French leader had said: ‘Always speak loud and clear in the name of the State. The numerous acts of our glorious Resistance are the means by which the nation fights for its salvation. The State is above all these manifestations and actions.’42 In fact, this piece of Gaullist rhetoric would have been useless for dealing with the razor-sharp factional minds that Parodi encountered in some Resistance meetings. He was better off on his own.

  *

  On 7 August, Colonel Rol issued an order to all FFI fighters in the Paris region, beginning with a perceptive description of the military and political situation in the capital:

  The main characteristic of the Allied offensive is that the Wehrmacht is completely unable to resist in the current theatre of operations. In the Paris region, there is nothing to indicate that the enemy has decided to carry out a determined resistance; but this situation could change with the arrival of German troops in the Parisian basin and it could transform the area into a zone of deadly combat. The Allied offensive, the precarious situation of the Wehrmacht and the recent events of 14 July 1944 all indicate that we are on the eve of an insurrection in our region.43

  That evening, Rol’s position appeared to get support from a most unlikely quarter: General de Gaulle himself. Broadcasting from Algiers, de Gaulle said: ‘Everyone can fight. Everyone must fight. Those who are able should join the FFI. Everyone else, wherever they may be, can help our fighters. In the countryside, in the factory, in the workshop, in the office, at home, in the street, whether you are imprisoned, deported or a prisoner of war, you can always weaken the enemy or prepare that which will weaken him.’44

  In Paris, Chaban and Parodi were surprised by de Gaulle’s speech, which suggested that the population should immediately go on strike and join the FFI in fighting the Germans. With the Allied armies racing towards Paris, everything that the two Free French delegates were working towards looked as if it would actually happen – so long as their actions were coordinated with those of de Gaulle. But this latest speech could wreck everything, by encouraging the very people that Chaban and Parodi had spent their time trying to restrain. Indeed, even some members of the Delegation were beginning to think that an insurrection would be a good idea, as shown by a letter sent to Emmanuel d’Astier by Parodi’s aide, Léon Morandat (‘Yvon’): ‘The atmosphere in Paris has changed quickly over the last few days. We expect the American tanks to arrive any day now. We are feverishly getting ready to launch the national insurrection soon enough for the résistants to be able to welcome them.’45

  Nearly two weeks earlier, it had been agreed that Chaban would fly to London during the August full moon to finalise preparations for the liberation of the city. His visit had now become vital.46 As General von Choltitz, the new German commander of Paris, sat in a train rattling its way westwards towards the French capital, Chaban ran across a moonlit field north of Lyons and clambered into a twin-engine RAF Hudson aeroplane bound for London.47

  Chaban spent the next two days in the Free French intelligence headquarters in Hill Street, trying to convince his comrades that if the Allies did not arrive in Paris soon, there would be an appalling massacre. Two things prompted Chaban’s fears. A few days earlier the Paris Delegation had been contacted by a Resistance agent in Metz, who had overhead Gestapo officers being ordered to make their way to Paris to take charge of 1500 political prisoners. These prisoners were to be murdered, either en route or when they arrived at Metz.48 Everyone in Paris accepted that this was a very real threat. Hundreds of Resistance and Free French prisoners were apparently in danger of being massacred. Important as this was, Chaban was preoccupied by what was happening in a similar situation on the other side of the continent, in Warsaw.

  On 1 August, the Warsaw Resistance – the Home Army – had risen against the German occupiers, in order to set up a pro-Western government before the arrival of the Soviet armed forces, who were advancing from the East.49 The Home Army seem to have expected that if the Germans found themselves caught between an insurrection in the city and the rapidly advancing Russians, they would leave. But the Germans did not leave – they stood and fought. On the first day of the insurrection, around 2000 Resistance fighters were killed. An enraged Himmler gave orders to destroy the city and kill every inhabitant, and the SS were sent into the western suburbs of the city, where in a couple of days they killed up to 50,000 people.50 Thousands died as rebel-held districts in the city were bombarded by aircraft and by artillery fire. After the first week, an awful, bloody war of attrition set in, with the poorly armed rebels facing the destructive might of the German Army. Meanwhile, the Soviet armed forces, instead of arriving at Warsaw as the leaders of the insurrection had expected, lingered in the East, giving the Germans a free hand to kill the USSR’s political opponents.

  Although the full horror of what was happening in Warsaw was not known at the time – not even by the Allies – ordinary people in both France and London knew that a terrible battle was raging in the centre of Warsaw, and that the Germans were crushing the Polish Resistance.51 This was what haunted Chaban. For weeks he and Parodi, together with the more cautious elements in the Resistance, had countered suggestions of Resistance action by repeatedly emphasising the danger of German reprisals. It had almost become a reflex. The situation in Warsaw vindicated their fears, but the Free French outpost in London did not have the authority to take any decisions, and lacked the connections and influence required to convince the Allied command to change tactics. All that Chaban and his London comrades could do was urge Algiers one more time to come up with a solution that would resolve the tensions between the Resistance and the Free French in Paris: ‘the lack of instructions for Paris is a serious problem, given that this situation is both the most pressing and the only one that presents any real difficulties,’ they wrote.52 Yet again, there was no reply.

  In the evening of 10 August, Andrzej Bobkowski, a Polish exile living in Paris, discussed the situation in Warsaw with two fellow countrymen. They were all bitter about what was happening – ‘It takes away our pleasure at the fact that the occupation here may soon be over,’ Bobkowski wrote in his diary. In the twilight, the three of them went for a walk by the side of the Seine: ‘The sun has set; night is falling. The black towers of Notre Dame stand out against a pink sky that shimmers and changes colour. The Eiffel Tower floats in the distance, as if in a fog. A pleasant coolness rises from the water. There is a grinding sound from the street as a steel giant goes by, covered with tree branches. It is a solitary German Tiger tank, and it disappears into
the night. Blue flames burst from its massive exhausts, sending sparks into the sky.’53

  *

  After years of deprivation because of rationing and German pillaging, conditions in Paris were becoming precarious. Important areas of the countryside around the capital, which supplied the 4 million inhabitants of the capital with their food, were ravaged by the war, and rail and road transport were disrupted. At the beginning of August, the Red Cross delegate in Paris published a report describing the cumulative effects of malnutrition on the inhabitants of the capital. Bread supplies were at around 60 per cent of their pre-war levels, milk supplies had plunged to a mere 12 per cent, meat consumption was down to 20 per cent and vegetable supplies had plummeted to 10 per cent of their levels in 1939. Around 25,000 babies were undernourished, and mortality due to tuberculosis was soaring, particularly among the young. Compared with the same period in 1943, typhoid cases in the city had nearly tripled, scarlet fever cases had increased by 25 per cent, while the number of measles cases had more than doubled.54 ‘The capital is threatened with famine,’ the report declared.55