by Matthew Cobb
When the FFI decision to ignore the cease-fire was explained to the men of the Victoire armed group, they were overjoyed. Commander Dufresne announced the news at his headquarters: ‘No cease-fire! More than ever, fight to the death! It is forbidden to obey orders that are not from the FFI staff, who alone command you. You can even fire on the cars that are announcing the cease-fire!’ The audience went wild: ‘Vive Dufresne! Three cheers for the commander! He’s a tough one!’ they shouted.37
As the Resistance fighters made clear they would not obey an order they considered to be so profoundly wrong, a furious André Tollet called a poorly attended meeting of the CPL Bureau, at which he described the CNR’s support for the cease-fire as ‘treason’ and had a blazing row with Léo Hamon. Faced with such passion, and with many Bureau members absent, it was decided to postpone any decision regarding the cease-fire until the next day; the CPL’s name was therefore taken off the cease-fire declaration before it was published.38 Then, at 14:30, a full meeting of the CNR took place, its start delayed because Parodi was mysteriously absent – eventually the meeting went ahead without him.39 Although Bidault wanted the CNR to ratify the Bureau’s support for the cease-fire, without Parodi no meaningful decision could be taken, so the meeting simply noted the negotiations and decided to return to the matter the next day.40 At the most vital moment of the insurrection, the Resistance leadership was unable to do the thing it had spent four years preparing for: lead large numbers of French men and women in a confrontation with the Germans.
Rumours began to spread. René Courtin, the Resistance treasurer, was told by the owner of Parodi’s safe house that the Germans were threatening to use flame-throwers against occupied buildings and to set the SS on the city.41 Colonel Ollivier of the Intelligence Service, still busily involved in matters, told a friend of Victor Veau that three Wehrmacht divisions were heading for Paris and that two SS divisions, trained in street fighting, were coming to subdue the city.42 Deeply alarmed, Veau’s colleague Pasteur Vallery-Radot tried to warn Parodi, but could get through only to his secretary.
The reason for Parodi’s absence soon became clear. Claire Chevrillon’s job was to encode Parodi’s secret messages; in the late afternoon she had a meeting in the small square behind the Bon Marché department store on the Left Bank to pick up the latest batch of signals for coding. Her contact was late, and when she did eventually turn up, she was extremely upset: ‘We sat on the park bench stunned,’ Chevrillon later recalled.43 The Germans had arrested Parodi.
*
As planned, at 16:00 the loudspeaker cars left the place Vendôme, manned by German troops and French gendarmes, and drove around Paris announcing the cease-fire.44 Crowds applauded, relieved that the fighting was apparently over. In the 18th arrondissement, Berthe Auroy heard shouts of joy and saw flags appearing everywhere, while on the Left Bank the deserted anti-aircraft platform near the Jardin du Luxembourg was covered with a gigantic tricolour flag.45 Micheline Bood heard the loudspeaker car and drew her own conclusions about what it meant for the Germans: ‘They must have been furious when they had to sign an armistice with the Resistance fighters . . . Paris is less nervous, a gorgeous cool breeze is blowing, and, to sum up, we find ourselves in the pleasant situation of waiting because “something is happening”.’46
Teacher Jean Guéhenno was less enthusiastic: ‘I’m not sure whether or not I’m happy about the armistice that has been signed this afternoon . . . A German half-track and a Resistance car met up. The Germans were the first to wave a white flag. Both sides stopped, discussed, then went on their way as the crowd applauded. That applause worries me. The most important point, I think, is that the country can only truly find and express its soul through an honest struggle. And that is not possible in this situation.’47 Andrzej Bobkowski was openly cynical: ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘they fire a few shots, scare the wits out of the Germans and then, after a day, they sign a compromise. Both sides stop shooting, the Parisians can walk about freely, job done. We wait nicely for the Americans to arrive. A real fairy story.’48
Shortly after the cease-fire was announced on the Left Bank, Jean-Paul Sartre listened to groups of people arguing in the street about whether it was right or not. Some felt the cease-fire was a sign of German weakness or a German ruse to gain time, others that it was a way of avoiding needless bloodshed, while an old man asked: ‘What is there left for us to do if they have signed a cease-fire? Fold our arms, that’s all. But liberty isn’t something that can be given – you have to take it.’ Ironically, the argument was suddenly cut short by gunfire; two women were hit. One of them leant against a tree and blood ran down the trunk.49
As the situation was described and passed from person to person, it got distorted. One of those given the wrong end of the stick was Albert Grunberg, still stuck in his attic hideaway. A neighbour, Madame Oudard, wheezed up six flights of stairs to tell him, in short snatches of breathless speech, that the German commander had capitulated. Perhaps as a result of previous disappointments, Grunberg did not believe her.50
About half an hour after the loudspeaker cars had passed down the boulevard Saint-Michel, two German soldiers strolled down the road towards the Seine, rifles at their shoulders. The sight of them provoked a sudden panic among the crowd and people ran down the street away from them. Alarmed, the German soldiers joined in and ran too, unaware that they were the cause of all the agitation. They were so frightened they ran straight to a nearby policeman and demanded to be taken into custody.51
At 17:30 in the Hôtel de Ville, the new Free French Prefect of the Seine department, Marcel Flouret, entered his new headquarters, walking up a staircase lined by an honour guard of FFI fighters. When Flouret got to his office he found the tables were covered in ammunition belts and a man was asleep in a chair.52 An hour later a massive crowd gathered on the rue des Pyramides and invaded the headquarters of Doriot’s fascist organisation, the PPF. The whole building was trashed, and the street outside was thick with papers that had been thrown out of the smashed windows. The Germans did nothing. The balance of power had shifted.53
In the early evening, the three members of COMAC met and after much discussion issued a long statement on the cease-fire. They understandably expressed annoyance that they and Rol had been sidelined from the discussions, but at the heart of their document was a cogent critique of the arguments used by Parodi, Chaban and the others to justify the agreement with von Choltitz. For example, they examined the claim from the Gaullist Delegation that the Germans were threatening to attack Paris from the air; in reply they pointed out that it was impossible for the Germans to bomb the city without threatening their own troops and blocking the passage through Paris. In the case of the German divisions allegedly heading for the capital to massacre the population, it would be relatively straightforward for the Allies to disrupt and destroy any such troops by bombing them from the air before they arrived. Above all, COMAC argued that the way to liberate the city would involve mobile guerrilla warfare based on the mass of the population, and not a static war of position carried out by small forces holding symbolic buildings. They closed by insisting that if there were to be a cease-fire, it could only be on the basis of the complete surrender of the enemy throughout the country.54
COMAC would have been surprised to learn that General de Gaulle shared the final point of their critique. Parodi and Pré had kept Algiers informed of the negotiations but, as usual, most of the messages took days to get through and there was no reply.55 When de Gaulle finally heard about the cease-fire on 23 August, he said it made ‘an unpleasant impression’, partly because of his distaste for military compromise and partly due to his suspicions about the involvement of the Intelligence Service.56 However, irrespective of whether they were manipulated by MI6, Parodi, Pré and Chaban were merely carrying out their orders from General Koenig and the Free French, which were to prevent an uprising in Paris and to ensure the installation of a Free French government. De Gaulle might not h
ave liked what had been done in his name, but it was the logical consequence of this fundamental part of his policy.57
*
As the cease-fire was announced on the streets of the capital, Rol summoned his chief of staff, Gallois. There had been a series of contacts between the Resistance and the Allies over the past few days, culminating in the mission of Captain Brécy two days earlier, but there was no indication that the Allies had paid them any attention. (Rol had no idea that Brécy had been killed before he had been able to make contact.)58 Rol therefore instructed Gallois, who spoke excellent English, to leave Paris immediately, to make his way through the German lines and to contact the Allied High Command. Gallois was to inform the Allies of the cease-fire, emphasising the weakness of the German forces and pleading for arms and ammunition to be immediately parachuted into the capital. A few weeks later, Gallois recalled Rol’s closing words: ‘As our head of intelligence, you know how weak the German forces are that lie between the Allies and Paris. You must insist that a relief column brushes aside these weak enemy defences and heads for the capital at full speed. Tell them that we are masters of part of the city and of the main buildings, and that they must hurry to take advantage of this situation, and help us.’59
By chance Dr Robert Monod, a medical officer with the FFI, had already offered his services for such a mission.60 As a physician, Monod had a car and fuel, and only two days earlier had encountered an American scouting party far to the south-west of Paris.61 In the early evening, Gallois and Monod set off, accompanied by a young doctor who spoke German. However, they soon found that it was impossible to get through – following the Allied advance, a new German line had been established and there were roadblocks everywhere.62 Disheartened, the group had to turn back and eventually spent the night in a small village, trying to sleep on mattresses on the floor, after an evening meal of a few pears – all that their host could offer them. None of the men could sleep, kept awake by the excitement, a terrible thunderstorm and the sound of an aeroplane circling low overhead, as though it were trying to find a drop site for men or equipment.63
A few dozen kilometres to the north, Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar could not sleep, either. She was sick with worry about her husband, André, as she confessed in her diary: ‘This is the time of night when I ask myself 20 or a 100 times: Where is his train going? Where is it now? Has it passed into the shadows? Is it still in France, this train that the Resistance should be stopping, this train in which he just had to be locked up? Yet another night in which he is taken from me . . .’64
The Resistance had not stopped the Drancy train, but the prisoners were not passively awaiting their fate. They had been able to prise free some of the planks on the rear wall of the wagon, and were planning to remove them and then jump from the moving train. Suddenly the train jerked to a halt, there was the sound of running feet and shouting from German guards, then the loud thump of planks of wood being nailed over the very place the prisoners had weakened. They would have to start again.65
*
While Gallois and Monod were trying to head westwards to meet the Allies, OSS spy chief Colonel Bruce was making his way eastwards towards Paris, ending up in Rambouillet, sixty kilometres south-west of the capital, on the edge of a hilly forest. Bruce met up with Ernest Hemingway, who was supposedly an embedded journalist with the 4th US Infantry Division but had taken off on his own and had found Rambouillet unoccupied since the Germans pulled back earlier in the day.66 After surrounding himself with a bunch of local FFI fighters, some gendarmes and a couple of US paratroopers who had gone AWOL, Hemingway had made his headquarters in the Hôtel du Grand Veneur. The scene was chaotic: ‘it was like being in Bedlam,’ wrote Bruce in his diary. ‘Agents were nipping in and out, and everyone, including a stray American woman resident in France, was buttonholing me, asking questions and giving answers at the same time. Newspaper correspondents had sprouted out of the ground, and the world and his wife were eating and uncorking champagne.’67 Like Hemingway, those journalists had a nose for a story, as well as for alcohol: this was the road to Paris, they thought.
*
In the fort at Vincennes, the policemen who had been arrested at the Gare de Lyon the day before heard the sound of machine-gun fire from the courtyard outside their cell. Eventually they were led outside. ‘We found a terrifying sight. The bodies of our comrades were lying on the ground, terribly wounded. Some had their faces ripped off, or their chests stoved in or were dismembered.’ The policemen were ordered to dig a mass grave for the eleven dead men, and to carry their bodies, still pouring blood. One of the policemen, Monsieur Sylvestri, was taken away, interrogated, then made to stand on the edge of the mass grave, facing a firing squad. Eye-witnesses reported that Sylvestri was calm and dignified, buttoning up his shirt, smoothing his hair and straightening his tie, before standing to attention and shouting ‘Vive la France’ as he was executed. The horror was not over; shortly afterwards there was the sound of more firing, and the policemen were given three more bodies to deal with, while the SS became increasingly aggressive and menacing. Eventually an officer restored order and the remaining prisoners were taken to their cells. One German reassured the men that they would not be shot, although other soldiers shouted threats outside the cell.68
Despite the cease-fire there was fierce fighting in the morning around the place Saint-Michel as the Germans sent armoured vehicles to attack Resistance defences.69 Around 14:00, Jean-Paul Sartre heard that the Milice were firing from a hotel on rue de Buci on the Left Bank. As he reported it, a group of FFI fighters entered the building and brought out a number of ‘Japanese’ men who appeared to be the culprits; a relieved and good-humoured crowd gathered and some of the supposed militia-men were grabbed, their trousers were pulled down and they were spanked; when the police van came to take them away they had to hop in as if they were in a sack race.70 If this incident is true, it raises the question of why the crowd treated them in such a light-hearted way. Not everyone was so benevolent, though, as was shown by what happened when the men were taken to the police station of the 6th arrondissement. One of the ‘Japanese’ was taken into the courtyard by a member of the Resistance, and shot dead. Following protests, the killer was locked up.71
Not far away, on the boulevard Saint-Germain, Georges Benoît-Guyod saw German troops wave down a young woman on a bicycle, who was dressed in trousers and sensible shoes. She ignored their gestures and pedalled furiously; they shouted at her to stop, but she carried on. Shots rang out; she was wounded in the head and careered into a side-road. She was extraordinarily lucky – the bullet had grazed her ear and after some minor repairs from a passing nurse she rode off, without having said a word. Benoît-Guyod concluded that she was a liaison agent for the Resistance.72
In the afternoon, FFI fighters on the Left Bank shot at a passing Citroën car and killed three German officers; the bullet-riddled vehicle – which was still working, despite a shattered windscreen – was brought into the courtyard of the hotel where the group was stationed. The seats were covered with blood. Elsewhere in the building, a group of résistants were busy pouring petrol into bottles, to use as Molotov cocktails against German vehicles.73 Nearby, next to the narrow rue de la Huchette, a young FFI fighter clutched his carbine and told stories of the fighting to two wild-looking women.74 They complimented him saucily and then, their arms around his neck, dragged him off to a nearby bistro ‘to get something warm’.75
The cease-fire enabled Odette Lainville finally to take the two Jewish girls, Adèle and Suzanne, back to their home in the Marais. It was not straightforward – in the morning they had to turn back because of fighting near the Seine and on the way back home they ran into trouble near Censier-Daubenton. In the late afternoon Odette, her friend Louise and the two girls tried again. This time, although there was no fighting, there were plenty of vehicles with the letters ‘FFI’ crudely painted on them, bristling with guns. This frightened little Adèle, who had obviously been affected by the morning’
s events. On the boulevard Henri-IV, on the other side of the river, Odette picked up a spent bullet and gave it to her friend Louise as a souvenir. Even though the girls were glad to be back with their mother, Adèle was still upset from the fright she had received.76
The atmosphere grew close as the heat increased and the tension mounted. At about 16:30 a German armoured group consisting of a large tank and four half-tracks drove down the boulevard de l’Hôpital towards the Gare d’Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes. About halfway down, opposite the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, the tank’s turret swivelled round and several bursts of heavy machine-gun fire were sent into the crowd. A young woman went down, her leg smashed; three men found themselves trapped behind a tree for nearly half an hour, unable to move while the fighting continued. Down by the Seine, there was the sound of explosions as grenades were thrown. After about an hour, the loudspeaker cars arrived to announce the cease-fire and the fighting stopped, and Camille Vilain was able to go and see what had happened. It appeared that forty people had been killed in the incident. Vilain saw an FFI car smouldering by the entrance to the Jardin des Plantes and the bus station was burning. A tree had been cut down by the firing, and the gates of the Jardin had been twisted under the impact of the grenade explosions. Where the tricolour flag had flown the day before, making Vilain’s heart leap with joy, there was now debris, a huge pool of blood and shattered body parts.77
As the fighting ended around the Gate d’Austerlitz there was a ferocious firefight on the Left Bank opposite the northern tip of the Ile de la Cité, downriver from the Préfecture. From the window of his apartment, Yves Cazaux saw a heavily armed SS patrol, backed up by armoured vehicles, attacking an FFI group that had occupied the Monnaie de Paris (Paris Mint). Despite the gunfire, Parisians were lounging on the banks of the Seine and even swimming in the river. After ten minutes, the firing suddenly stopped and then the two cease-fire vehicles drove up, with their white flags.78 There was more shooting, then the announcement of the cease-fire was made in French and German and the guns immediately fell silent. But as the loudspeaker cars drove off, a grenade was thrown at the people swimming in the Seine, with awful consequences. Within a few minutes, there were ambulances outside the Monnaie picking up the dead and wounded. Cazaux went down to see the damage: the ground was covered with broken glass, spent cartridge cases and pools of blood. A German car was lying upside down next to the nearby Passerelle des Arts footbridge across the Seine, showing the ferocity of the fighting. On his way home, he came across a man and a woman, lying dead in the street. They were passers-by who had been shot by the Germans for no apparent reason.79
