Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  Meanwhile, an attempt to relieve the German garrison was being made from the north-east. During the night, a section of the Panzer Lehr Division had been ordered to fight its way into the centre of the city. Commanded by Captain Hennecke, a small battle group composed of tanks and infantrymen left Le Bourget in the morning, but soon found its advance bogged down by the barricades and by sustained attack from résistants. The open-topped troop carriers were particularly vulnerable to Molotov cocktails hurled from windows, and by the early afternoon the operation had been called off.18 A schoolteacher in the north-east suburb of Pantin described the situation: ‘A German column of about 60 vehicles, including 10 tanks, moves towards Paris; it drives along the side of the school towards the Porte de la Villette. Half an hour later, it turns up again, heading back to Le Bourget. There is gunfire; some bullets hit the front of the school.’19

  Dr Hans Herrmann, who was the surgeon with the group, wrote about the failed operation in his diary: ‘We were involved in heavy street fighting in Paris which meant a lot of work for me. Street fighting is always the worst. We were fired upon from windows and we could never see the enemy . . . I stood on the running board with a carbine under my arms, driving through the streets to treat the wounded. The feeling was strange. One would hear a round whistle through the air and not know from where it came.’20 The Paris garrison’s last hope of reinforcements – a hope von Choltitz did not even know existed – had collapsed. The Germans in Paris were on their own.

  *

  The first fighting of the day involved Captain Dronne and the men of La Nueve. In the morning they were sent from the Hôtel de Ville to seize the nearby central telephone exchange on the rue des Archives, to prevent the Germans from destroying it. The telephone system had continued to function throughout the insurrection, giving the Resistance an enormous advantage and helping the Parisians cope with the uncertainty and the lack of reliable information that had characterised the previous ten days. To allow the Germans to sabotage the telephone network as freedom was about to dawn would be a disaster. Dronne split his men into two groups and sent them along the rue des Archives and the rue du Temple, both of which stretch north-east from the Hôtel de Ville. The group advancing up the rue des Archives joined with a local FFI section and soon cleared out the telephone exchange and took a few dozen prisoners.21 All that remained was the task of dealing with 100 kilos of explosive charges that had been laid in the building.22 Meanwhile, on the rue du Temple, Warrant Officer Caron climbed out of his tank to help a group of FFI fighters moving towards the place de la République, where an SS regiment was based. A German machine-gun nest hidden in the entrance to the Temple Métro station shot him dead, along with three FFI fighters.23 Although the telephone exchange had fallen without much resistance, the strong-points would prove more costly.

  Soldiers of the 4th US Infantry commanded by General Barton also entered the city. The first US soldier into Paris was Captain William Buenzle. Desperate to win a bet, Buenzle drove his armoured troop car at full tilt right to the centre of the city. At 07:30 Buenzle radioed his headquarters: ‘I am at Notre Dame.’ ‘How do you know?’ they asked. ‘Dammit,’ he replied, ‘I am looking right up at Notre Dame!’24 Most of the US advance was more sedate. Keeping to the east of the main advance of the 2e DB, Barton’s soldiers swept through the southern suburbs and into the eastern parts of the city, taking the Bastille and then moving towards Nation and the German barracks at Vincennes. They were cheered at every step. Hard-boiled war correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote: ‘Gradually we entered the suburbs and soon into the midst of Paris itself and a pandemonium of surely the greatest mass joy that has ever happened . . . Everybody, even beautiful girls, insisted on kissing you on both cheeks. Somehow I got started kissing babies that were held up by their parents, and for a while I looked like a baby-kissing politician going down the street. The fact that I hadn’t shaved for days, and was grey-bearded as well as bald-headed, made no difference.’25 As the US troops passed through the southern suburb of Orly, a child was held out to a soldier in a lorry. The child said, ‘Daddy dead in war.’ The soldier took the child, kissed it, and explained that he too had a baby. As one observer wrote: ‘All around us, eyes shone with tears.’26

  *

  At around 09:30, General Leclerc arrived at the Porte d’Orléans – the main southern entrance to the city – accompanied by Chaban, who had been summoned to help guide the 2e DB vehicles.27 Leclerc’s aides were concerned about sniper fire from Germans and die-hard collaborators, so the Free French general transferred to an armoured scout car. It made no difference: heedless of the danger, Leclerc stood upright in the open-topped vehicle as they drove up the avenue that now bears his name, passing first by place Denfert-Rochereau and then on to the Gare Montparnasse, where Leclerc set up his headquarters.28

  Leclerc’s aides were right to be worried about snipers – shortly after 11:00, two soldiers of the 2e DB were shot dead near the Ecole Militaire.29 There were dozens of similar incidents all over the city, giving rise to a widespread fear about ‘les tireurs des toîts’ – the snipers on the rooftops. At least some of these tireurs were in fact members of the Resistance sent up to look for snipers. For example, at the beginning of the afternoon, Bernard Pierquin’s concierge told him there were snipers on the roof; wearing his FFI armband, Bernard climbed on top of the building. He found no Nazis, but the FFI fighters below shot at him, thinking he was a sniper.30

  Two left-wing activists, members of the Front National who had sheltered Allied airmen, were victims of mistaken identity, with dreadful consequences. Max and Madeleine Goa were on the balcony of their apartment on the avenue d’Italie when shots rang out. The crowd below pointed up at them and a group of people, convinced that they had discovered the culprits, charged up the stairs and barged into the couple’s apartment. The pair were manhandled down the stairs by what was turning into a lynch mob and, on the avenue, Max fell under the tracks of a passing tank, either thrown there by the mob, or stumbling by accident. Madeleine, having seen her husband killed before her eyes, was accused of being a sniper. Her nightmare soon grew even worse: she was taken away by a rogue FFI group who locked her up in their ‘prison’ at the Institut Dentaire in the 13th arrondissement, where she was subject to terrible abuse and gradually lost her mind.31

  Odette Lainville and her husband Robert had direct experience of the firing when they went down to the boulevard Raspail to join the crowds. Odette had brought some flowers from her balcony, and she threw them on top of a tank. Along with the rest of the crowd, she shouted at the top of her voice: ‘Vive la France! Vive de Gaulle! Vivent les Alliés!’ All of a sudden, over the noise of the cheering crowd and the rumbling engines, shots rang out. Everyone ran for shelter, people flattened themselves against the wall; Odette crouched down while her husband protected her. The tanks swivelled their barrels up to the windows where the shots had come from. Eventually the firing ceased – had those shots really been fired in anger? – and the tanks rumbled past once more. Odette and Robert returned home, where, to Odette’s amazement, Robert began to cry. The last time she had seen her husband so upset was at the outbreak of World War I. ‘I feel overwhelmed,’ he said, ‘it has stirred up all those feelings of love for our country that are deep inside me.’ Odette took him in her arms and comforted him.32

  As Odette and Robert were finishing their lunch, there was a knock at the door. A 12-year-old boy was standing there, breathless, clutching a note. It was from Odette’s nephew, Bob, who was a soldier with the 2e DB: ‘Am on boulevard Montparnasse, your son is well, and Nelly too. Come quickly.’ After giving the young lad a glass of wine and a couple of biscuits as a reward, they dashed off to find Bob, who gave them news of their two children who were with the Free French (Jean was fighting in Italy, Nelly was an airborne nurse). While they were talking there was more shooting, and everyone dashed for shelter; soon the firing died down and the crowd returned to the street, thronging round the tanks and half-tracks. Ode
tte spent the rest of the afternoon with Bob, shaking hands with US generals, talking to US soldiers and greeting Bob’s comrades, walking in the sun-filled streets until her feet were aching in her wooden-soled shoes.33

  On the other side of the city, crowds gathered in the place Beauvau, where the Ministry of the Interior was now draped with massive flags and banners. Someone found a set of German flags inside the building and brought them out into the street, where they were burnt as girls danced around in a ring, singing the ‘Marseillaise’. Micheline Bood was watching: ‘I will never, ever, forget the sight, even if I live to be 100 years old. It was as though we were burning Hitler.’34

  *

  Colonel Billotte of the 2e DB was given the order to move on the heart of the German occupation of Paris – von Choltitz’s headquarters at the Hôtel Meurice. Billotte had set up his headquarters in the billiard room of the Préfecture de Police; after a brief discussion with Parodi and Chaban, it was agreed that Billotte would first demand von Choltitz’s surrender.35 No one else was consulted about how the city was to be formally liberated: from the very beginning of the final day of the German occupation, the Free French ignored the Resistance completely.

  Billotte’s ultimatum letter gave von Choltitz thirty minutes to surrender and closed with a threat: ‘Should you decide to continue a combat that has no military justification, I will pursue that fight until your complete extermination.’36 Colonel Billotte signed himself ‘General Billotte’, perhaps to impress von Choltitz.37 To get the letter to the German commander, the services of the Swedish consul would be needed, so Lieutenant-Colonel de la Horie was ordered to take the letter to Raoul Nordling at the Swedish consulate on the rue d’Anjou. Eighteen-year-old Jean-Claude Touche saw two French armoured cars driving up the rue d’Anjou, which was draped with French, American and English flags, as well as a huge banner that stretched across the rue de Rome which read: ‘Welcome’.38 The vehicles, which were soon surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd, carried de la Horie and 30-year-old Gisèle Hasseler, who had been Chaban’s secretary and was now acting as a liaison officer and unofficial guide to Paris.39

  Inside the consulate, de la Horie gave the letter to Nordling, who was up and about again after his angina attack. Nordling, accompanied by the omnipresent ‘Bobby’ Bender, left for the Hôtel Meurice but could get only about halfway down the rue de Rivoli before being stopped by German gunfire. Sheltering in the arcades that line the northern side of the street, they proceeded on foot until they got to the rue Saint-Honoré, where they were stopped by German guards. The troops were unimpressed by Nordling’s credentials, and it took a great deal of persuasion before their officer agreed to telephone von Choltitz and tell him that the Swedish consul wanted to deliver a letter from the Free French. Lieutenant von Arnim, the German commander’s 25-year-old Ordnance Officer, was sent down to say that there was no question of the letter being accepted.40 Shortly afterwards, Billotte ordered his men to attack the Hôtel Meurice. Nordling’s final attempt to negotiate a peaceful end to the German occupation of Paris had failed.41

  *

  On the other side of the Seine, two separate columns of the 2e DB were headed for the German strong-point at the Ecole Militaire. In the late morning, Bernard Pierquin saw the Leclerc Division tanks attacking while Parisians milled around and soldiers shouted at them to take cover: ‘They might as well have saved their breath,’ wrote Bernard in his diary; ‘men, women and children were running around the tanks without a care, completely unaware of the danger . . . Every now and again, someone would fall – wounded or killed. But it didn’t seem to matter; the party went on. The weather was marvellous, the sun was glorious, and the buildings were covered with flags (I have never seen so many flags in Paris) and, at the end of the day, the Germans were not fighting with much determination and surrendered quite easily.’42

  Pierquin might have felt the Germans were not putting up much of a fight, but it did not look that way to those who were involved. As the battle raged to take the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the edge of les Invalides, two tanks – Quimper and Saint-Cyr – were firing on a German bunker when a bazooka shell hit the Quimper and it burst into flames. The crew, alive but badly burnt, fled the tank shortly before an explosion dramatically blew off the turret. After the fighting was over, someone painted on the side of the hulk: ‘Three French soldiers died here’.43 In fact, no soldiers died in the tank, but four men were killed in the fighting on that stretch of road.44 One of them was Lieutenant Jean Bureau of the Saint-Cyr, who was advancing on foot by the side of his vehicle when he was shot dead; an hour earlier Bureau had telephoned his father to say he would soon be home.45 Also involved in the fighting were FFI fighters from near Orléans who had come to help drive out the Germans. After making their way along the left bank of the Seine, the Resistance fighters found themselves underneath the pont Alexandre III, the bridge that spans the river between les Invalides and the Grand Palais. They were then ordered to join in the fight to take the ministry. As the building went up in flames, several of the men were killed or seriously wounded.46

  Less than two weeks earlier, 18-year-old Michel Varin de Brunelière had joined the Leclerc Division along with his twin brother, Paul, as the 2e DB passed through Alençon. In his identity photograph, Michel has an upturned collar, slicked-back thick hair and a serious mouth. He was involved in the fighting to take the Eiffel Tower, where the Germans had installed machine-gun posts at each corner of the first stage. Crouched on the bridge that crosses the Seine at the foot of the tower, Michel found time to write to his sister Renée: ‘There is fighting all around me . . . Paul is at the other end of the bridge. The machine guns are crackling, we’re in the middle of a firefight, it’s astonishing. We have had an amazing welcome from the Parisians, it’s enough to make you cry. There are Germans all around me. But Paris will soon be ours . . .’ Shortly afterwards, the tricolour was hoisted atop the Eiffel Tower. Michel did not have much time to appreciate it, as his group was soon sent across the Seine to attack the Chambre des Deputés. About an hour after writing to his sister, Michel was shot through the head. He died in hospital that night.47 A few dozen metres away from where Michel was shot, Sergeant Jean Vandal of the 2e DB, who had got a message to his mother announcing his imminent arrival, was severely wounded. He also died in hospital.48

  *

  About 500 Germans were stationed in the network of buildings that housed the Luftwaffe headquarters in Paris, and which was centred on the Jardin du Luxembourg. The buildings were defended by seven tanks (including four Panzers), three armoured flame-throwers and a number of armoured cars.49 Alongside the 2e DB, FFI fighters led by Colonel Fabien were heavily involved in the fight to contain and then destroy the German strong-point.50 Paul Tuffrau, who lived nearby, chatted to a couple of them and found them to be ‘polite young folk, looking awkward in their helmets, as though they were embarrassed by their rifles’.51 By the early afternoon the situation had grown tense as fighting broke out along the southern stretch of the boulevard Saint-Michel. Attempts by the FFI to deal with the German bunkers located at each corner of the Jardin proved costly: Paul Tuffrau heard shouting from a foolhardy group of spectators on the western edge of the park:

  ‘There you go. They got him.’

  ‘Who? A Hun?’

  ‘No, a Frenchman. Killed stone dead.’

  Shortly afterwards, an ambulance turned up with stretcher-bearers standing on the running boards, waving Red Cross flags.52 They took away the body of 31-year-old Jean Lavaud, an FFI fighter from Fontenay-aux-Roses.53 Lavaud was just one of dozens of people killed in the neighbourhood that day.

  *

  At 12:00, Colonel de Langlade’s column crossed the bridge at pont de Sèvres and streamed through the Porte Saint-Cloud, the south-east entrance into the city. Like all the other Allied soldiers, they were fêted by the population, kissed repeatedly by the women, and generally made slow progress because of the crowds. Colonel Bruce of OSS, who was with them, wrot
e in his diary: ‘Kissing and shouting were general and indiscriminate. It was a wonderfully sunny day and a wonderful scene. The women were dressed in their best clothes, and all wore somewhere the tricolour – on their blouses, in their hair, and even as earrings.’54 As the column entered Paris, the 2e DB artillery regiment led by Commander Mirambeau fired salvo after salvo of shells onto the German artillery batteries to the west, ensuring that there would be no counter-attack.55 By the early afternoon, de Langlade’s group had made it to the place de l’Etoile, where they were greeted by thousands of Parisians. De Langlade positioned tanks facing down each of the major avenues that radiate out from the Arc de Triomphe and then set up his headquarters next to the monument. His target was the German administrative centre at the Hôtel Majestic, just down the avenue Kléber, where the Germans had built a massive concrete bunker. Shells fired by two of de Langlade’s Shermans destroyed three German tanks and several vehicles stationed outside the hotel, while a Free French infantry bazooka unit took out a small Panzerjäger tank by the avenue d’Iéna. Within minutes, the Germans in the Majestic were surrounded and had no significant defences.56

  As smoke from the burning vehicles poured into the sky, a bareheaded, balding German officer appeared waving a white flag. Frightened by the baying crowd – the Parisians seemed completely heedless that they were in a battle zone – the German attempted to negotiate surrender conditions. De Langlade replied curtly that there was only one condition – either they surrendered within thirty minutes or they would all be killed. The officer returned to the Majestic, accompanied by Colonel Massu, a number of soldiers and even a film crew. Shortly afterwards around 350 Germans marched out of the bunker.57 The first German strong-point had fallen.