Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  Less than a week later, von Choltitz recalled his feelings on reading the message: ‘You know, that really made me boil. I was ashamed to face my people.’14 Deeply disturbed, von Choltitz showed the order to his aide, Colonel Jay. In the late afternoon sunlight, the two men stood on the balcony outside von Choltitz’s office on the rue de Rivoli. As Jay later recalled, perhaps through rose-tinted spectacles: ‘In front of us the Tuileries lay in sunshine. To our right was the place de la Concorde and to our left the Louvre. The scene merely underlined the madness of this medieval command.’15

  Shortly after receiving the message from Berlin, von Choltitz telephoned the Chief of Staff of Army Group B, General Speidel. In a sarcastic tone, von Choltitz said he was going to carry out the orders to the letter, destroying major buildings throughout the city. Speidel became alarmed, and it was only when von Choltitz shouted that he was going to demolish the Eiffel Tower to block the surrounding streets that the penny dropped. A relieved Speidel said: ‘My thoughts are with you. You know we think exactly the same.’ He, too, was convinced that Hitler’s order was futile.16

  Neither von Choltitz, nor Jay, nor Speidel were motivated by any deep-seated love of Paris (von Choltitz had spent a little over a week in the capital) nor were they in principle opposed to the idea of destroying a city (the German commander had done exactly that at Sebastopol two years earlier). They simply did not have the resources to mount any kind of a fight. The Allies were advancing rapidly, and there were no substantial German forces between the front and the French capital. As a result there was nothing von Choltitz could do, except sacrifice his men pointlessly. In his memoirs he claimed: ‘The situation in Paris being what it was, I could not successfully oppose the enemy’s armoured divisions. All of these orders were mere paper, with no military value whatsoever.’17 From the very moment he arrived in Paris less than two weeks earlier, von Choltitz had been unconvinced of his mission. Now he was revealing himself to be a defeatist with no spirit for a fight. Hitler’s order had been designed to rally the troops and convince his officers to fight to the end, but it was having the opposite effect.

  *

  Whatever he might have thought in private, in public von Choltitz was determined to bluff the Resistance into submission. The Germans produced a leaflet for the Parisian population that described the Resistance as ‘scum’ and claimed the fighting had ‘stretched the humanitarian sentiments of the German troops to breaking point’. The last section of the leaflet sounded like the threats of a gangster running a protection racket: ‘Paris remains for us one of the most beautiful cities in this Europe we are fighting for; we will preserve it from the chaos it has itself created . . . It would be easy to leave Paris after blowing up all the depots, all the factories, all the bridges and all the stations, locking up the suburbs as tightly as if they were encircled. Given the lack of food, water and electricity, in less than 24 hours there would be terrible catastrophe!’18 In a discussion with the Swiss legate, René Naville, von Choltitz threatened that he would deploy ‘150 Tiger tanks’ against the Resistance strongholds and hinted at the possibility of an aerial bombardment before saying, with the leer of a bully, ‘I’m sure you agree that it would be quite understandable if a general were to take fright and turn nasty.’19 The fire at the Grand Palais helped reinforce this atmosphere of menace, and further weaken the resolve of some members of the Resistance. Pasteur Vallery-Radot turned up at Victor Veau’s apartment slightly panicked – he feared that following the destruction of the Grand Palais, all public buildings would now be attacked ‘by tanks which the Germans had assembled in large numbers in the south’.20 There were no such tanks. In the same vein the Germans delivered an ultimatum to the résistants occupying the Hôtel de Ville: if firing continued, there would be an attack the next morning by forty tanks. Shaken, Léo Hamon consulted fellow-résistant Roger Stéphane as to how they should respond, but in the end they decided to do nothing so as not to worry the résistants unnecessarily.21 This was the right decision: there was no attack.

  The true balance of forces was revealed in two different events on either side of the city. First, at around 09:30, an old couple stood underneath Victor Veau’s window selling Resistance newspapers. Suddenly, a German car screeched up and an officer got out, waving his gun and shouting loudly. ‘He grabbed all the newspapers, threw them into the car and then zoomed off. Almost immediately, the newspaper sellers found another stock and were selling again,’ Veau noted in his diary.22 The Germans could not impose their will, even at the simplest level. This was underlined later on in the day, when the Commander of the German barracks at the place de la République sent a polite letter in slightly wonky formal French, addressed to ‘Monsieur the Chief of the 11th Arrondissement’. The commander respectfully asked the ‘Chief’ to remove the barricades that had been erected in the neighbourhood, stating that if this did not occur the commander would find himself obliged to remove them using heavy weapons. His polite conclusion showed the real German position. ‘The responsibility of any losses incurred as a result of this action would be entirely yours. As far as the rest is concerned, I am ready to discuss with you as I have already done with the Chiefs or the Mayors of other arrondissements. Please accept, Sir, my most distinguished greetings.’23 The barricades remained in place and were not attacked. All down the line, the Germans were bluffing.

  *

  In the darkened corridors of von Choltitz’s headquarters at the Hôtel Meurice (power cuts affected the Germans, too), the Swiss legate, René Naville, discussed the possibility of the Germans releasing some of their massive stocks of food. The Germans said they would allow their supplies to be distributed, but only in the ‘quieter’ parts of the city. When Naville pointed out that the fighting was shifting all over the capital, von Choltitz said he would release the food on condition that the Resistance removed the barricades and ceased shooting at German forces.24 That was never going to happen.

  Gas supplies to the city had been turned off and the electricity cuts not only affected light and power for much of the day, they also made the water supply extremely erratic as they affected the pumping stations. To ease the situation, railway engineer Pierre Patin was asked by his director to convince striking train drivers at the Montrouge depot to move a trainload of coal to a nearby power station. The strikers were unimpressed by the suggestion – some of them said he was a provocateur, and the overwhelming feeling was that any train that moved on the southern section of the line around Paris might be attacked by Allied aircraft. The coal train stayed where it was and the electricity stayed off.25

  Among those suffering from the lack of water was the collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach, hiding in an attic room just down the road from the German strong-point in the Senate building. With no water, he had nothing to eat but dried noodles and a few tomatoes brought to him by a friend.26 On the other side of the city, Berthe Auroy weighed her last few potatoes and tried to work out how long they would last, while not far from Brasillach, Yves Cazaux and his young family were reduced to making their own flour. They took turns to grind wheat grains laboriously in the hand-cranked coffee grinder; when they had obtained something like flour, it was carefully sieved and then turned into thick pancakes, which were cooked on a small petrol stove. In addition, the family had hoarded a few tins of sardines and cans of vegetables that were now being slowly consumed.27

  As food supplies became increasingly scarce, there was a massive opportunity for profiteering. In the plush western suburb of Neuilly, Maurice Toesca saw a concierge selling lettuces and pears for exorbitant sums. But a passing policeman decided to impose a bit of on-the-spot price control and rationing, and ordered the woman to drop her prices and to sell only one kilo of pears to each buyer.28 In the 17th arrondissement, people queuing to buy radishes and salad from a cart were shot at by a passing German motorcycle crew; one badly injured girl had to have her leg amputated.29

  Daniel Boisdon took three hours to make the round trip from his home
near the rue des Ecoles in the 5th arrondissement across the boulevard Saint-Michel to the place Saint-Sulpice – a distance of around three kilometres. He had to duck for cover nearly a dozen times. As he wrote in his diary:

  German tanks were prowling around the Senate, firing everywhere. Machine gunners, hiding down by the Odéon theatre, were shooting from behind the columns, all along the rue Racine, where a man was shot dead just as I was about to cross. I waited until it was quiet and then ran over to the other side. Everywhere there were stretcher-bearers taking the wounded away. The sight of deserted Parisian streets, covered in all kinds of debris, with these groups of four or five men running along them, generally preceded by one or two nurses waving Red Cross flags, will remain one of the most striking images of these truly glorious days.30

  Not all parts of the city were equally affected by the fighting, as shown by the provisional figures for dead and wounded which the police drew up that day.31 Approximately the same number of French policemen and German soldiers had been killed in the first four days of the insurrection (sixty-two and sixty-eight, respectively). The vast bulk of casualties were among the civilian population, which presumably included non-uniformed Resistance fighters: 483 dead and nearly 1200 wounded. Most of these tragic incidents were in the working-class areas: strikingly, no one had even been wounded in the wealthy 16th arrondissement.

  *

  Throughout the day there was fighting in many neighbourhoods, especially in the less well-off areas.32 In the 19th and 20th arrondissements, there was a dramatic incident involving three German trains. At around 08:00, news arrived at FFI headquarters that the Germans were moving trains along the inner Paris railway line, from Bercy in the south up to the Gare de l’Est. As one train emerged from the tunnel at Belleville-Villette station, the local Resistance stopped it and removed the driver. In so doing, they blocked the tunnel, trapping a second train which was just behind – FFI fighters surrounded the other end of the tunnel at Ménilmontant station to prevent it from reversing out. After more than five hours waiting in the stifling dark under the hill, the German troops eventually surrendered. Over thirty prisoners were taken, along with the contents of the trains, which apart from guns, ammunition and flour also included central-heating radiators, electric batteries and swastika pennants. Hundreds of Parisians streamed out to watch what was happening, crowding onto bridges and peering through railings.33

  Unknown to the FFI fighters at Ménilmontant, there was a third German train, further north on the line, waiting in a tunnel between Belleville and a deep cutting that runs through the eastern edge of the Buttes Chaumont park. Young Madeleine Riffaud and three of her FTP comrades from the 19th arrondissement, including 16-year-old Max, heard that the train would shortly be emerging from the tunnel. They grabbed whatever weaponry they could find – two machine guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails and some flares – and sped off in a car to the bridge where the railway passes under the rue Manin. As the train puffed out of the tunnel around 150 metres away, sentries on the engine started firing at the four résistants on the bridge, who responded by raining their rag-bag set of explosive devices onto the locomotive as it passed beneath them. Alarmed, the Germans put the engine into reverse and chugged back into the safety of the tunnel, which was blocked at the Belleville end by FFI fighters. There was a brief stand-off, during which the Resistance managed to uncouple the locomotive and drive it out of the tunnel, leaving the wagon-loads of Germans isolated in the dark. After a while, dozens of men surrendered and a trainload of valuable food was captured.34

  Despite such successes, the Resistance was still fighting with one arm tied behind its back. The lack of arms and ammunition was becoming a major impediment to defending whole neighbourhoods from marauding German tanks. The FFI therefore sent the Allies yet another desperate plea for a supply drop. There was no response.35 The need for decent weaponry was made amply clear by events in the 17th arrondissement, where German tanks prowled around all afternoon, firing into buildings. Jean-Claude Touche wrote in his diary: ‘16:00. The tanks are still firing violently from the place Villiers onto the boulevard des Batignolles and the rue Boursault. What fireworks! . . . 17:14: Another round of cannon fire from the tank, which makes an incredible noise. Again the sound of machine guns. The tank isn’t on the place Villiers any more, but it is still firing. I can see people running along the rooftops. Despite the noise, we can still hear the sound of cannon fire in the distance. It must be coming from the front.’36 The fighting eventually calmed down after a young FFIer on the rue de Courcelles threw a Molotov cocktail at one of the tanks, severely injuring a German officer and leading to the capture of two soldiers. At 19:35, Jean-Claude wrote:

  Everything is quiet. I take a trip round the neighbourhood. The place Villiers, on the Batignolles side, has been severely damaged. Virtually all the windows are broken. There is a shell hole in the road, which is covered with bits of masonry. In front of the Monceau ‘Uni’ shop, three burnt-out German lorries lie on their sides. One of them is still ablaze. The firemen are trying to put it out . . . Another lorry lies empty on the rue Larribe, its tyres punctured. Yet another lies upside down, its wheels in the air, in the middle of the rue de Constantinople. The boulevard des Batignolles looks like it has been hit by a hurricane.37

  Similar tank attacks took place on the avenue des Gobelins in the 13th arrondissement, while near the Hôtel de Ville a fire-bomb attack by a young résistant called Michel Aubry destroyed a Panther tank; the crew, unable to put out the fire, fled and left their vehicle to burn.38

  At around 19:00, Yves Cazaux heard the sound of fighting from the Latin Quarter. He telephoned his cousin, who told him there was a major battle taking place – German tanks were firing on two buildings, which were severely damaged. Dr Monin, in his apartment on the boulevard Saint-Michel, saw it all from his window: ‘Great emotion: the tanks have come back and have taken up position in front of us and are firing at the Saint-Michel barricade. The shop windows are smashed. In our bedroom a window pane breaks; another is pierced by a bullet which buries itself in the back wall, and by another which goes through the open door leading onto the landing. It lasts about 20 minutes, then the tanks retreat and relative calm follows the noise of firing.’39 Then a case of munitions exploded like so many fireworks. Cazaux, safe in his apartment about 150 metres away, could hear the crowd shouting ‘Bravo!’40

  The poet Camille Vilain saw everyone from his neighbourhood help build a barricade by the boulevard Saint-Marcel:

  What an extraordinary sight – it is as though we are reliving the heroic days of 1848. The whole neighbourhood is here: men, women and children, and for two hours, everyone is working like crazy. Determined men in shirt-sleeves rip up the paving stones, women and children form a human chain to pass the stones along. The barricade is built with great enthusiasm. I can see local shopkeepers, officer workers, labourers, the boss of a biscuit factory, women of all classes. I join in, too – my wife looks after the stones.41

  On the barricades and in the ferocious street fighting, the rousing slogans of L’Humanité were being realised on the streets of the capital: ‘All of Paris to the barricades! . . . Attack is the best form of defence. Harass the enemy! Not a single Hun should leave insurgent Paris alive.’42

  *

  In the heart of the insurrection, the new Paris was being forged, as many people began to ponder what would happen after the Germans had left. The Comité de Libération at the Préfecture gave the order for all policemen to put their uniforms back on, ready to maintain law and order and to defend ‘republican institutions’. In other words, to make sure that there would be no communist uprising.43 Assuming that the communists did not take power, the whole economy of the country, and of Paris as the economic and political centre of France, was about to make a major lurch. After liberation, the new France would clearly be trading primarily with the Allies rather than with the Germans. The banks were keen to adapt to this coming shift in the economy, and to make conta
ct with the newly installed secretary-generals in the ministries. Robert Labbé, head of the Worms Bank, went to see René Courtin in the newly liberated Ministry of the Economy, to plead for financial support for coal-importers, who would have to gain new contacts in the UK to replace their previous clients in occupied Europe. As Courtin acidly observed in his diary: ‘The Germanophile gang is replaced by the friends of England.’44

  For the first time in nearly two years, Albert Grunberg came down from his attic hideaway and moved into his old apartment, which had remained empty all that time. His legs trembling with emotion, Grunberg opened the windows. Blinded by the sunlight, he peered out; neighbours at windows in the buildings opposite waved in greeting. In the evening, he even ventured out into the street and drank a cup of coffee in a nearby bar. A new life had begun for him.45

  For Robert Brasillach, trapped in his own hideaway a mere kilometre away, the approaching world was frightening. The same friend who brought him the tomatoes told him that there had been a wave of arrests and that 300,000 people would be thrown into prisons and camps. Brasillach, no doubt feeling the noose around his neck, concluded that ‘they’ would ‘try to make out that the greatest industrialists, the greatest artists and the greatest writers were traitors’.46