Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  Luizet immediately put the order into effect; policemen were withdrawn to the Préfecture and neither arms nor men were sent to the barricades in the south of the city despite urgent requests from Colonel Lizé and de Vogüé. This triggered yet another row at a meeting of COMAC that morning, although Chaban quickly defused the matter by suggesting that only one third of the police should be transferred to Luizet’s command. Koenig apparently feared that the Resistance was planning to seize power, and wanted to regain control over the police and strengthen the Prefect’s hand. Chaban had no such worries – indeed, he argued that the FFI should be at the forefront of the welcoming party for the Leclerc Division.33 Chaban’s approach was more astute because he was convinced that neither the Resistance nor the Communist Party would try to take power. But he showed his hand too much when he informally suggested that the three Vs – Valrimont, de Vogüé and Villon – should all be given the rank of general in the Free French Army, as part of the incorporation of COMAC into the Ministry of War. This rather transparent attempt to buy support was politely rejected.34

  *

  In the early afternoon, certain that liberation was close, Parodi summoned all the secretary-generals to the Préfecture de Police so they would be there to welcome ‘the General’. René Courtin, Secretary-General for the Economy, dashed across town, unsure whether he was going to meet Leclerc or de Gaulle. When he got to the Préfecture he was amazed by the bustle: ‘German lorries, FFIers, guards in uniform. The whole of the Delegation is there, as well as most of the Secretary-Generals and Chaban.’35 But the General did not arrive, and as Courtin noted wearily, ‘the day wore on, broken only by the sound of machine-gun fire.’ Meanwhile, on the other side of the Seine, the members of the Conseil National de la Résistance and the Comité Parisien de la Libération turned up at the Hôtel de Ville, also to wait for the General. They, too, were unsure which general they should expect.36

  For four years, the Resistance and the Free French had held contrasting views about the fight against the Nazis and the collaborators. Although they were united by the desire to drive out the Germans, each side had its own aims, objectives and methods. With their military/administrative approach, the Gaullists were more focused, but for most of the war they had also been weaker – they were completely dependent on the Allies. The Resistance may have had forces on the ground, but their views were varied and sometimes incoherent, although the one thing that united them in their opposition to Nazi Germany was their recognition of Charles de Gaulle as figurehead. Now, as the moment of victory beckoned, that political division took a clear geographical form, as the two forces were separated by only a few hundred metres and the waters of the Seine. The Free French, who represented the unfolding Gaullist state, naturally felt at home with the most visible representation of state power and order in the city – the police. For Parodi and Chaban, the Préfecture was the perfect place to welcome the liberating forces of the Free French Army and stamp the seal of Gaullist authority on the new France. The CNR and the Resistance, with all their varied and contradictory views, were expressions of the self-sacrificing, popular and insurrectionary movement that had seen tens of thousands die in fighting across the country, and which had reached its paroxysm in the Paris insurrection. For the Resistance, the Hôtel de Ville, with its powerful, centuries-old revolutionary tradition that resonated in the minds of all Parisians – indeed, the minds of all French citizens – was the natural place to be.

  Because the Resistance radio was controlled by the Ministry of Information, not by the Resistance, the radio station dispatched a mobile studio to the Préfecture de Police, not the Hôtel de Ville. All afternoon, those Parisians lucky enough to have electricity heard a series of Free French figures present their view of the events of the previous ten days, not so much rewriting history as writing it as it took place. Without a trace of irony, Parodi (who remained anonymous) praised the Parisian population for its enthusiastic participation in the insurrection, and claimed that through the uprising the city had proved itself ‘worthy of General de Gaulle’. Then there were two speeches emphasising the role of the police – Luizet claimed that the population and the police would be forever bound in mutual respect, while the new head of the municipal police, Bayet, explained how the police had launched the occupation of the Préfecture to be in the vanguard of the fighting. Pisani (Luizet’s chief of staff) brazenly justified his support for the cease-fire, simultaneously arguing that it was a success because the Germans acknowledged the Resistance as the government in the city, and that it had merely been a ruse to gain time. Well-informed listeners must have been surprised by the enthusiasm these men proclaimed for the insurrection they had done so much to restrain.37

  *

  In the afternoon the rain stopped, and the weather became unbearable. Sitting at his window, Victor Veau noted: ‘The road is quiet and utterly deserted – it is very hot.’38 The close atmosphere added to the growing tension. Berthe Auroy heard so much shouting in the street that she thought the Americans had arrived. She raced down the stairs only to find that the excitement was caused by a case of head-shaving.39 Paranoid rumours – not necessarily unjustified – began to run rife. Paul Tuffrau’s neighbours heard that the Germans had mined the nearby Senate building and were about to blow it up. Similar announcements were made later in the evening by the air-raid wardens.40 In the evening, FFI headquarters heard that the Germans were preparing to destroy the main telephone exchange on the rue des Archives, but were prevented from doing so by a German communist soldier who was in contact with the Resistance.41 Odette Lainville expressed a widespread feeling of unease when she wrote in her diary: ‘It feels like we are sitting on a volcano! Were the Huns not moving around in the sewers last night? What were they doing down there? Have they planted explosives?’42

  As the final moment approached, Rol ordered the FFI to prevent acts of pillage, which were becoming widespread. Anyone caught pillaging was to be immediately executed and a sign reading ‘pillager’ was to be hung on the corpse.43 As the tension grew, there was the potential for tragic mistakes. Daniel Boisdon and his family were having lunch when there was a knock at the door. When his daughter answered, a man pushed a revolver under her nose and barged his way in, a grenade in his left hand. Behind him there was another man with a submachine gun, a string of grenades at his belt. Horrified, Boisdon stared at them with his coffee cup in his hand. The men were chasing someone who had been firing from Boisdon’s building over the last few days, and they had gone up the wrong staircase. Although they laughed off their mistake, they nevertheless cast a quick eye over the apartment, including lifting up the sheet that protected the bath full of precious drinking water, before leaving sheepishly.44

  Not far away, Pablo Picasso began work on a watercolour and gouache version of the ink drawing of Poussin’s The Triumph of Pan that he had made the previous day. He sang loudly as he worked, drowning out the sounds of gunfire that rattled the windows of the Ile Saint-Louis apartment. Despite its classical theme, the exuberant painting was clearly inspired by the events taking place in the street below, and by the tension and excitement that everyone felt.45 Poussin’s mountainous backdrop was transformed into an urban setting of grey walls and square shapes, like those of the tomato plant paintings of two weeks earlier. Picasso amplified the main colour notes in Poussin’s original (pink, flesh and blue) to red, white and blue, the colours of the tricolour flag. A group of characters that in Poussin’s rural version were a putto and a satyr helping a drunken Pan to his feet were transformed into a figure wearing a red revolutionary cap, protecting a man who was helping a stricken comrade.46 The war had decisively got into Picasso’s art, transforming his work. Through the power of his unique vision, it had also transformed a 300-year-old masterpiece.

  A few days later, Picasso was visited by Squadron-Leader John Pudney, the RAF intelligence officer and poet. Picasso told the young man that he had created his version of Poussin’s painting as ‘an exercise, a self-disc
ipline, a healthy fascination’.47 But above all, Picasso underlined the significance of the date the work had been started – the prelude to liberation. That liberation was clearly signified in the background to the painting, where Poussin’s pale twilight had become a radiant sunrise.

  *

  The German defences west of Paris were crumbling. A planned air attack against the Allied bridgehead at Mantes did not take place because the requisite support from the Parachute Regiment failed to materialise. In fact, the regiment did not hear of the order until the morning – the staff officer carrying the instruction was ambushed by Resistance fighters during the night and got lost, then his vehicle broke down and he had to wait until daybreak before proceeding.48 In the mid-afternoon, General von Aulock gathered commanders from all the combat zones around Paris to discuss the situation. He decided to destroy the bridges over the Seine at Colombes and Bezons north-west of Paris, but had neither the men nor the equipment he needed.49 In the late afternoon, German troops began to pull out of Versailles, but they were harassed by the Resistance and by the advancing Allies, and fighting continued into the night.50 As an indication of how German commanders in the field saw the coming battle, von Aulock moved his battle group headquarters from Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the western side of the city to Le Bourget on the northern flank. The secondary line of defence that General Model had wanted to create to the north and east of Paris was beginning to become a reality.

  As the German retreat became increasingly disorganised, they left behind vital supplies. The substantial stock of torpedo warheads in the tunnel under the hill at Saint-Cloud was initially intended to destroy the Paris bridges; now it was supposed to be either removed or destroyed. In a brief message, Admiral Kracke reported that because of the growing insurgency, it was ‘almost impossible’ for him to transport the torpedo heads from Saint-Cloud. The army was welcome to take the explosives, he said, but he thought it ‘doubtful’ that it would be able to do the job, either. And with that he fled Paris.51 The torpedoes were neither removed nor detonated – Colonel Kurt Hesse, one of von Aulock’s officers, left Saint-Cloud in the middle of the night without carrying out an order to destroy the torpedoes.52

  Von Choltitz knew little of this – he was cut off from the southern defences, and could not even contact the strong-points around the city by telephone.53 Von Aulock had warned him that a massive Allied attack was expected in the morning, but the German commander of Paris did not know what was happening at the front. It was therefore hardly surprising that dissent began to appear in the German ranks. The previous day, one of von Choltitz’s staff officers had argued that the Germans should leave the city, as they would be unable to resist the Allied onslaught. Furious at this challenge to his authority, von Choltitz called a meeting of all his senior officers, and gave them their final orders. To leave the city would be to lose their honour, he said, and anyway it would be impossible to organise an orderly retreat.54 Instead, he expected his men to do the ‘honourable’ thing and fight on.

  Not all Germans saw things this way. Walter Dreizner was ready to roll; his bags were packed and the order in which his unit’s vehicles would leave the city had been decided. ‘The only thing missing is our marching orders,’ he wrote impatiently in his diary.55 Quartermaster Robert Wallraf was equally unenthusiastic about making a stand. Together with the rest of the administration, he had moved from the Senate building and was now on the other side of the Seine, hunkered down in the Hôtel Crillon on the place de la Concorde, listening to the sound of gunfire coming from the Champs-Elysées. Eckelmann, the head of the German administration, came into the hotel and told his men that von Choltitz was infuriated that the Resistance newspapers were openly on sale, and that the city’s walls were covered with declarations. Von Choltitz’s annoyance was quite understandable. L’Humanité intimidated the German troops with screaming headlines: ‘EVERYONE GET A HUN! CONSOLIDATE THE BARRICADES! UNION IN BATTLE! FIGHT LIKE LIONS. ARM YOURSELVES BY DISARMING THE ENEMY. TO ARMS! TO ARMS! TO ARMS!’56 The Préfecture adopted a slightly different approach as it produced hundreds of posters printed in German: ‘German soldiers, surrender! Your leaders have already surrendered.’57 If no other solution could be found, said Eckelmann, then tanks would have to be sent to destroy the newspaper printworks around the rue Réaumur. ‘No one should think they will be able to escape from defending Paris,’ said Eckelmann, ominously. However, not all the tasks were frightening or dangerous: Wallraf was simply told to listen to the Resistance radio station in case he learnt something important.58

  *

  To the south of the capital, Allied progress was slow as the scattered German defences held out. South of Versailles, Free French Sherman tanks were destroyed by German anti-tank guns at Toussus le Noble and at Buc, while there was a fierce firefight in the aptly named forest of l’Homme Mort (the Dead Man), where a German 88 mm anti-aircraft gun was holding up progress. A Sherman tank piloted by Jean Zagrodzki managed to destroy the gun with two shells. Zagrodzki’s tank – named after his brother, who had been killed in Normandy two weeks earlier – then proceeded north until it approached the main road to Versailles. At 14:00 the tank came to a halt, and suddenly the whole forest exploded as armour-piercing shells and grenades crashed onto the machine over and over again. A camouflaged German motorised anti-aircraft gun was no more than twenty metres away and was firing at almost point-blank range. The Sherman fired back and began to reverse but it became stuck against a tree stump; the motors overheated and the tank stopped moving. It was a sitting duck. Over forty shells hit the vehicle, and as the crew leapt out, Jean Zagrodzki was killed outright along with two of his comrades. The German gun was soon destroyed by Free French reinforcements, who reduced the enemy weapon to a heap of twisted metal and either killed or captured its crew.59

  US journalist John MacVane was with Leclerc during the fighting near Fresnes, a couple of kilometres east of Antony. A small German anti-tank weapon was positioned in a drain and was firing from pavement level, making it impossible for a French Sherman tank to lower its barrel sufficiently to destroy it. The tank was hit several times, without too much damage, before a group of French infantrymen approached the drain and threw in grenades, ending the German resistance. Meanwhile, the local population was enthusiastic, as MacVane recalled: ‘The people of the suburb were so happy that they seemed incapable of staying out of the way of the battle. They could not comprehend that their homes and their streets were the front line.’60 Veteran journalist Ernie Pyle had observed this behaviour by French locals a number of times: ‘You would have tense soldiers crouching in ditches and firing from behind low walls. And in the middle of it you would have this Frenchman, in faded blue overall and beret and with a nearly burned-up cigarette in his mouth, come striding down the middle of the road.’61

  Sometimes the locals were rather too enthusiastic. The ‘Rochambelle’ ambulance group drove into Arpajon as night was falling; a girl jumped onto the running-board of Suzanne Torrès’ ambulance, stuck her head through the window into the dark cabin and said to Torrès, ‘Kiss me!’ Suzanne gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘Not like that,’ said the girl in a husky voice. ‘Happy to oblige,’ replied Torrès, ‘but I’m a woman.’ The girl let out a shriek and jumped to the ground.62

  The presence of German 88 mm cannons along the road from Longjumeau meant that the Free French task force advanced in fits and starts. Eventually a substantial traffic jam built up, as hundreds of vehicles began to block the main route and the side-roads, unable to advance until the Germans had been dealt with. At one point Colonel Bruce of OSS, along with Hemingway and his rag-tag band of fighters, was forced to wait by a munitions dump that began exploding after a tank shell hit it. Bruce was alarmed: ‘The crackle of small arms ammunition, tracer bullets, and the heavy roar of larger stuff exploding was not only annoying but quite dangerous, as missiles were whizzing by in every direction. We finally passed within a few yards of the edge of the dump, and I for one found this part of t
he journey terrifying.’63 As they crawled towards the capital, they were repeatedly mobbed by the population, kissed and given fruit, flowers and drink. Bruce wrote in his diary: ‘We yelled ourselves hoarse, shouting “Vive la France” as we passed through the crowds. Everyone thrust drinks at us that they had been hoarding for this occasion. The combination was enough to wreck one’s constitution. In the course of the afternoon we had beer, cider, white and red Bordeaux, white and red Burgundy, champagne, rum, whiskey, cognac, Armagnac and Calvados.’64 The joyous advance came to a halt about a mile from Paris, as the tanks found themselves engaged in a hard battle with some Germans sheltered in a factory building. With the Eiffel Tower literally in sight, they could do nothing but wait.

  RAF intelligence officer and poet John Pudney was also caught up in the advance:

  Late that evening we followed French armoured columns through a lush suburban countryside south of Paris. ‘If you see a place without the flags out,’ we were told, ‘you’ll know that you’re getting the wrong side of the line.’ Down the road a bunch of Luftwaffe ground staff came marching in bare feet over the cobbles. A boy in a fireman’s helmet of shining brass flourished a revolver and gave them ‘left, right, left, right’ in ever-increasing tempo. He explained that he was sixteen years old, that he had captured the Germans with two school friends, that he was now in a hurry to get home because his mother didn’t know he was out. We stopped and, in the shadows of a wooded defile, found the overnight headquarters of General Leclerc. Fires burned; there were barricades in the village; the FFI, youthful in their bandoliers, accompanied by tricolour-decked vivandières, fraternised with the tough, joyful troops Leclerc brought out of Africa. The master race, hobbling by, was booed. It was the Revolution again . . .65