Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  ALLIANCE, the largest single intelligence circuit in occupied France, was another MI6 group and was run by Marie-Madeleine Fourcade. It was called ‘Noah’s Ark’ by the Germans because of the animal codenames used by its agents.56 Fourcade had spent the first part of 1944 in London, but insisted on returning to France at the beginning of July.57 After being arrested by the Germans and dramatically escaping from prison in Aix-en-Provence, Fourcade made her way north and arrived in Paris at the beginning of August.58 She was installed in a smart flat a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower, and was quickly given a morale-boosting makeover: ‘In Paris, I had to look like a Parisian. Raven-black hair, an Hermès twin-set in beige corduroy (bought in a sale), a pair of large shoes and one of those shoulder bags like a bus conductor’s satchel that all the women were carrying. I felt so unrecognisable that I was no longer afraid of being discovered. All of a sudden, I felt my strength returning.’59 And with that, she began a round of meetings with ALLIANCE agents in Paris, beginning with Jean Sainteny (‘Dragon’), who had also recently escaped from the hands of the Germans. The ALLIANCE and JADE-AMICOL circuits were both active in Paris, and were both attached to MI6, but it appears they knew nothing of each other’s work, even though earlier in the year Sainteny and Colonel Ollivier of JADE-AMICOL had returned from London on the same aeroplane.60

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  At 02:00 on 12 August, while Jedburgh Team AUBREY was swilling champagne, buses and lorries stopped at two sites in Paris, on either side of the Seine. German soldiers and French members of the Milice poured into the nearby buildings and began to herd men and women into the lorries, hitting them with rifle butts, kicking and punching them. Then tarpaulins were pulled over the vehicles, and they drove off into the darkness.

  Unknown to most Parisians, the Drancy internment camp had three ‘annexes’ in the centre of Paris. Jews were not only interned in these buildings, they were also put into forced labour there, as components of a macabre scheme called Möbel Aktion (Operation Furniture). This involved stealing household effects from French Jews and shipping the loot to Germany where the Nazi hierarchy took the richest pickings and what remained was supposedly distributed to the victims of Allied bombing raids. The role of the hundreds of internees in Paris was to sort the material that had been seized, parcel it up and load it ready for deportation. Sometimes they found themselves handling personal effects that belonged to their own family members. During the occupation 69,619 apartments were pillaged, and 26,984 railway wagons filled with stolen goods trundled down the tracks eastwards.61 The last train of Möbel Aktion material was assembled on 2 August. It was made up of 52 wagons, 5 of them packed full of 148 cases containing works of art by Monet, Dufy, Cézanne and others. However, because of the chaos caused by Allied bombing raids on the railway network and the effects of the rail strike, the train got only as far as the northern suburb of Aubervilliers, where it was put into a siding. It was not until mid-October that the cases were finally moved to safety in Paris.62

  Around 500 internees who had been dragooned into Möbel Aktion lived and worked in the three Paris ‘annexes’ of Drancy. Two of the annexes were conveniently close to railway stations – the Levitan furniture store on the rue Faubourg Saint-Martin near the Gare de l’Est, and two warehouses on the quai de la Gare, next to the Gare d’Austerlitz. At the third site, on rue de Bassano in the wealthy 16th arrondissement, a few dozen internees worked as tailors and seamstresses, making German uniforms. Concerned by the Allied advance, SS officer Alois Brunner, commander of Drancy, was preparing for evacuation and had ordered the Jews in the Parisian camps to be brought back to Drancy so they could be sent off to Germany – this was the reason for the terrifying night raids.63 Some of the prisoners from Levitan were transported in a Parisian bus, accompanied by armed members of the Milice; Michèle Bonnet recalled what happened as the loaded bus moved off: ‘I pressed the button. In a conditioned response, the driver stopped. Everyone panicked. I helped as many people as possible to get off . . . Just as I was about to jump, the bus started up again. A member of the Milice grabbed me by the arm. I had with me a nightdress wrapped around a 1 kg tin of food; furious, I swung it round and gave him a good crack on the head. Then I was in the street, running.’64

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  For the Jews who remained at liberty in Paris, the situation was becoming alarming. While it seemed probable that liberation was at hand, it was likely that things would get worse before they got better. This was why Odette Lainville received a visit from one of her daughter’s friends, who was involved in sheltering Jews. Earlier in the year, Odette and her husband, Robert, had agreed to hide Jewish children if needed. Now was the time. Suzanne (five years old) and Adèle (aged twelve), Turkish Jews who lived in the Marais, were brought to Odette’s apartment in the early evening. Their father had fled Paris and was now in a prison camp in the south of France. Their mother, distraught with worry, had allowed them to go to the relative safety of the 6th arrondissement, just the other side of the Seine.

  The girls were soon settled in, running up and down the long balcony, getting lost in the corridors, and playing with Odette’s daughters’ old toys. Then it was time for bed, as Odette recorded in her diary: ‘Adèle, the eldest, says a very polite “Goodnight”. Little Suzanne, very emotional, throws her arms around my neck. They really need a mum at that age – I am overjoyed that I have been accepted so quickly.’65 The next morning, the girls woke early, so Odette took them out to do some shopping. But as soon as they left the building they bumped into one of the few neighbours Odette did not trust. ‘Are these your little relatives?’ the woman asked; Odette mumbled something about helping their mother out. ‘Oh, the little one does have frizzy hair,’ said the eagle-eyed busybody. ‘Yes, Madame, just like me,’ retorted Odette. Even though the Germans were leaving, Odette could take no chances; nowhere was safe.66

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  In the small hours of the morning of 14 August, Suzanne Torrès of the ‘Rochambelle’ ambulance group ordered her small convoy to halt. They were on a narrow forest road five kilometres south of Argentan, and a ferocious artillery battle was going on around them. With her group completely unprotected – it was composed only of ambulances and a single half-track vehicle – Torrès felt it would be safer to hide in the woods. Suddenly, out of the darkness loomed the vague shape of an enormous tank, which came clanking to a stop less than thirty metres in front of them. When Torrès heard German being spoken she realised they were trapped. After warning her comrades to stay in their vehicles, she strode towards some shadowy figures and demanded to be taken to their commanding officer. A Frenchman from Alsace, who had been conscripted into the German Army and found himself with the armoured column, was brought in to act as an interpreter, and the commander of the German column boasted to Torrès that the German offensive was going brilliantly and that the Allies were beaten. The interpreter duly translated this, but added: ‘That’s all lies – we’re trying to escape under the cover of darkness.’ When the German officer explained that Torrès and her group would be taken prisoner, the young Frenchwoman lost her temper, gesticulating and invoking the Geneva Convention, pointing out that they were merely women and that their vehicles would surely slow down the column’s advance. After some discussion, the Germans agreed they would not take the women with them, on condition that Torrès agreed not to move for two hours. When the deal was done, six massive Panzer tanks and twelve armoured vehicles rumbled past the Rochambelles’ convoy, belching exhaust fumes.

  As soon as the German column had disappeared into the darkness, Torrès ordered her drivers to start their vehicles and they quickly headed off towards Mortrée, five kilometres to the east, to find the camp of her commanding officer, Colonel de Langlade. Some of Torrès’ colleagues complained that she had broken her word; she was more interested in reporting the position of the German tanks. She burst into the camp and dragged a bleary eyed de Langlade from his bed. The artillery was alerted, maps were brandished and as soon as day broke, a
scout plane was sent up. The enemy column was soon localised and destroyed.67 Torrès and her comrades had a lucky escape, but many of the 2e DB’s soldiers were not so fortunate: during the fighting to close the Falaise pocket, 141 men of the 2e DB were killed, 78 were missing and 618 were wounded, while 52 of their tanks had been destroyed.68

  While the 2e DB was involved in fighting to contain the Germans, General Patton, commander of the Third US Army, of which the Leclerc Division was a tiny part, ordered half of the XV US Army Corps to drive eastwards to the Seine, with Paris on the horizon. Furious, Leclerc wrote to Patton demanding to know when the French troops could join in the advance on the capital. ‘It’s political’ was Patton’s laconic reply.69 In fact, it was simpler than that: Paris was not on Patton’s radar. He had no immediate intention of taking the city. It had been decided by Eisenhower that the Allied armies would circle around the French capital and harry the enemy eastwards, leaving the German garrison cooped up with millions of Parisians.

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  In the afternoon of 14 August, General von Choltitz had his first meeting with Field Marshal von Kluge and the two men discussed the plans for the defence of Paris.70 Once the evacuation of non-essential forces was complete there would be around 20,000 Germans in the capital, together with the anti-aircraft units and about thirty armoured vehicles of one kind or another. These forces would clearly be unable to defend the city against the kind of massive army being assembled in the west, but they would easily be sufficient to restrain an unarmed civilian population. The flak units were disposed in a ring around Paris and preparations were made to face the Allied onslaught. Staff officers were told they could not leave the city without the express approval of von Kluge; in an atmosphere permeated with evacuation and flight, it was essential that the commanders should give an example to their troops.71 However, von Kluge was a realist: the weakness of the defences, coupled with the critical supply situation, meant that the garrison would be unable to withstand a siege of more than a few days. Von Choltitz, as commander of the city, was ordered ‘to resist as long as possible and to remain in Paris until the end’.72

  Ambassador Abetz was also preoccupied by the growing menace of the Allied advance. In a secret message to Berlin, which was retransmitted to the Allies by the US spy Fritz Kolbe, Abetz recounted the latest twists in Laval’s scheme to call a meeting of the National Assembly, focusing on the fate of Pétain, who Abetz felt was the key to continued German control over France. The imminence of an Allied landing in the south of France, and the growing strength of the Resistance in the region around Vichy, raised the possibility that Pétain could be either captured by the Allies, or even assassinated. Abetz cynically explained to his masters:

  The summoning of the National Assembly is to the Reich’s advantage in this instance. However, it is of secondary importance whether it is really allowed to meet. Aside from the propaganda value this will afford us against dissidents, Communists and Roosevelt, the summoning of the National Assembly provides us with the only chance to get Pétain out of Vichy of his own volition, and in this way to keep the legality of the French Government on our side, should the Anglo-Americans further occupy France.73

  At midday on 14 August, Alexandre Parodi went to Professor Victor Veau’s apartment for lunch. Veau was a retired surgeon who had pioneered the treatment of cleft palate, and was now intimately connected to the highest circles of the Resistance through his good friend Louis Pasteur Vallery-Radot. ‘PVR’, as he was known, was the grandson of Louis Pasteur and the founder of the Comité medical de la Résistance, the clandestine system for treating wounded Resistance fighters. For over a year PVR had been hiding from the Germans, living in Veau’s first-floor apartment at the junction of the boulevard Haussmann and the rue de Miromesnil, in the 9th arrondissement. PVR held meetings there and regularly entertained Resistance leaders together with Veau, who claimed he did not understand much of what was said because he did not know people’s code names, and was not interested in the internal politics of the Resistance. At lunch, Veau, PVR and Parodi ate an expensive joint of beef and discussed the political situation. PVR and Parodi dismissed Laval’s manoeuvres as doomed to failure, but they were concerned that the US would look to the Vichy collaborators as their preferred political partners, and that the Resistance and de Gaulle would be sidelined.74 The Allied armies were advancing rapidly, but even the highest ranks of the Resistance were uncertain about what would happen next.

  Over the previous five days Parodi, Valrimont and Chaban’s second-in-command, General Ely, had thrashed out a compromise agreement in the long-running dispute between COMAC and the Free French over who had ultimate control over the FFI. COMAC was designated as ‘the supreme command of the FFI in France’, but at the same time this power was ‘delegated from General Koenig’. The Free French military delegates, who were described as mere ‘liaison officers’, would put all their weapons, materiel and finances at the disposition of the FFI, but the FFI would follow the orders of General Koenig. There was enough there for Valrimont to claim later that ‘all the positions defended by the Resistance were contained within it’, but in reality nothing fundamental had changed, and the Free French retained the upper hand. There was no sudden surge of arms from the military delegates, and above all there was a get-out clause: if there was a major disagreement between COMAC and Chaban, then COMAC’s decision would be suspended for up to five days while the CNR decided the matter.75 This procedure undoubtedly satisfied COMAC, because it gave the Resistance the final say; but in the heat of battle, five days could be an eternity, and during that time Chaban would be in charge. Rather than unambiguously resolving the issue of who would have the final say, the text merely put off the question. Within a week, that lack of clarity, coupled with fast-moving events, created an atmosphere of uncertainty that had a decisive impact on the course of the Paris insurrection.

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  In London, Free French agent Georges Boris was trying to get Algiers to decide how it would react to an insurrection in Paris. He sent the last of his increasingly desperate messages, using terms that were even more clairvoyant than he realised: ‘if the Provisional government does not give any indications or advice to Paris, the movement will begin without the authorisation of the government.’76 That was exactly what was about to happen.

  On the morning of Sunday 13 August, a group of Resistance fighters met in an apartment on rue Vulpian in the southern part of the city. All the men were members of a Resistance group in the Paris police that was linked to the Front National and thereby to the Communist Party. Although the Paris police had faultlessly carried out the anti-Semitic and repressive orders of Vichy, including a notorious round-up of Jews in 1942, there were several Resistance groups within the police force, some engaged in sabotage or in running escape lines for stranded Allied airmen, others working with Allied intelligence circuits.77 At around 11:00, the meeting was interrupted by the news that the Germans had disarmed and arrested policemen in three northern suburbs.78 Alarmed by the implication that the German Army was now targeting the police force, the meeting immediately decided to call for an all-out police strike from the morning of Tuesday 15 August. However, the Front National had an influence over less than 10 per cent of the 20,000 Paris policemen. For the call to be effective, the other police Resistance organisations would have to be brought on board.79 Contacts were made with the Socialist Party’s group, Police et Patrie, who agreed to print 20,000 leaflets calling for a strike, and a meeting was arranged with representatives of a third, Gaullist, Resistance group called Honneur de la Police, to take place the following day.

  The Resistance was not alone in reacting so rapidly to the disarming of the police by the Germans. Fearing that this marked the beginning of a move against the whole police force, the Paris police headquarters, the Préfecture de Police, immediately ordered all policemen off the streets and out of uniform. Some perplexed Parisians noticed the protest – Victor Veau mused in his diary: ‘The police guarding the p
olice station are wearing civilian clothes. What does it mean?’80 By 13:30 the police were back on the beat, after the Director of the Paris Municipal Police, Emile Hennequin, had sent a telegram to all the police stations assuring them that the incident was due to ‘a misinterpretation by some local German services’ and that the Germans would immediately rectify their mistake.81

  But the disarming of the police was no mistake. On the same day, Milice leader Max Knipping sent a letter to the head of the gendarmerie, stating that the gendarmes in the Paris region would be disarmed, and that arms would henceforth be distributed to groups of volunteers who would patrol alongside members of the Milice.82 With the approval of the Germans, the French fascists were preparing for combat in Paris. Suspicious of the police, obsessed with their campaign against Laval, who was notionally in charge of the government that commanded the police and the gendarmerie, the fascists and their German masters were trying to ensure that only the utterly loyal would have access to weapons. If the operation went well, they would short-circuit any opposition and would have a reliable police force at their beck and call. If it went badly, there would be a civil war in the capital.83

  At 14:00 on Monday 14 August, the three police Resistance groups – Front National de la Police, Police et Patrie and Honneur de la Police – met in an apartment on rue Chapon, a narrow street on the northern edge of the Marais district. The meeting began with a brief discussion of Laval’s scheme involving Herriot. Honneur et Police, the group most closely linked to the Gaullists, were particularly excited by this, so it was decided to let them deal with the affair – they immediately began planning to kidnap Herriot. The meeting then moved on to discussing the real issue: the proposed strike. There was bad news as the leaders of Police et Patrie had got cold feet, and had not printed the 20,000 leaflets as promised.84 In a familiar refrain, their representative explained they were worried about the reprisals that might occur if the movement failed.85 The Front National representative held two trump cards, however. First, he pointed out that by taking action the police force would be able to cleanse itself of the crimes committed by the Brigades Spéciales – the police squad that had targeted the Resistance during the occupation. Then he handed over to Colonel Rol, who was attending the meeting as regional leader of the FFI. Rol made clear that since he was not a policeman he could not express an opinion about the strike, but he deftly pointed out that the FFI had called for workers to stop working for the enemy, which implicitly included strike action by the police. With that, the argument was won, and the meeting voted unanimously for a strike, to begin the next day. A leaflet was produced carrying an ‘order’ (not a ‘call’) from the three Resistance organisations for a strike of all Paris policemen, warning that those who did not obey would ‘be considered to be traitors and collaborators’.86 On the other side of the leaflet was a declaration from Rol, who instructed policemen not to help the enemy in any way and threatened those who did not join the strike: ‘You will refuse to participate in the arrests of patriots, raids, roadblocks, identity checks, holding prisoners, etc. You will help the FFI kill all those who, by not following these orders, are continuing to serve the enemy.’87