Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  In an article in Action newspaper, Resistance leader Pascal Copeau put the violence into context, underlining the responsibility of the leaders of the Free French and of the Resistance, recalling all those broadcasts on the BBC calling for murder and assassination, or the bloodthirsty declarations from the Resistance:

  For four awful years, the best French people learnt to kill, to assassinate, to sabotage, sometimes to steal, and always to avoid being caught by what they were told was the law . . . Will we soon dare imagine where we would be if these outlaws had not existed, if these nice boys had not become killers? And who taught these good Frenchmen to kill? Who gave them orders to murder? Who else but you, General, unless it was you, Maurice Schumann, the radiophonic ‘Passionaria’, or you, Georges Bidault, the President of the Conseil National de la Résistance.86

  As might be expected, ordinary criminals also used the chaos of liberation to commit crimes: men wearing FFI armbands robbed Princess Gagarine of 500,000 francs in cash and 2 million francs worth of jewellery, while ‘US Military Policemen’ stole nearly 2 million francs from a bar owner.87 These ‘false résistants’ paled into insignificance beside the case of an FFI doctor who was arrested in October. He was Dr Petiot, a serial killer who had been murdering people in Paris from 1942 onwards. The police had been hunting for Petiot since the beginning of the year, following the shocking discovery of a torture chamber full of dismembered bodies in the basement of his Parisian house. At the time, many Parisians suspected that Petiot was an invention of the Gestapo, but he was only too horribly real. Petiot’s trial, in March 1946, was a confusing affair, with the prosecution stating that Petiot had killed twenty-seven people, while he claimed to have killed sixty-three – but all his victims were German soldiers or collaborators, he said, and he had always acted under orders from the Resistance. Petiot’s stories were not believed, and he was executed in May 1946.88

  Meanwhile the sordid link between collaboration and criminality became clear with the arrest of Pierre Bonny and Henri Lafont, two underworld figures who had worked for the Gestapo and had tracked down résistants and tortured them. Together with seven other members of their gang, Bonny and Lafont were found guilty and executed on 27 December.89

  Petty crime also flourished, dragging in some very real résistants. In the days after the liberation, Georges Dukson, the young FFI fighter from West Africa, became a minor celebrity. His picture was in the papers after the 26 August celebrations, and he was stopped in the street for his autograph and was soon hob-nobbing with famous actresses. But he was gradually seduced by the possibility of getting easy money by dealing on the black market; arrested by an FFI group, Dukson was shot in the thigh while trying to escape. Taken to hospital, Dukson died on the operating table. ‘The Lion of the 17th’ had perished ignominiously and was soon forgotten, like the vast majority of Resistance fighters.

  *

  One of the most striking features of the épuration in Paris was that so many people seemed to escape its attentions – in particular those who had business dealings with the Germans. At the end of September, Galtier-Boissière sat at the terrace of a bar, where he overheard two fat well-dressed men discussing a forthcoming government inquiry into the money that some people had made during the war. ‘We had a quiet life for four years!’ said one. ‘Now the trouble is going to begin,’ said the other.90 They need not have worried. The economic épuration was largely toothless.91 The banks mostly avoided punishment, even though they had been up to their necks in German cash throughout the occupation. Although the four main banks were nationalised at the end of 1945, this was part of French post-war economic planning rather than a punishment for collaboration, and all the shareholders were generously compensated. Few of the leading figures in the world of banking were punished for their behaviour during the occupation, while only a third of the cases brought against Parisian construction companies led to any kind of punishment, and most of those affected the smaller firms.92 In the autumn, the centre-right politician Max André was optimistic: ‘A decisive struggle is taking place between businessmen and the members of the Resistance. These businessmen must understand that the Resistance did not only have the aim of ridding France of the invader, but also of cleansing the country.’93 But in general, the businessmen won.

  There were two major exceptions, with consequences for the post-war history of Paris and its region. The Renault car company, with its massive Billancourt factory on an island in the Seine just downstream of Paris, was put under state control.94 This meant that both Renault workers and the general public viewed the company as at least partly ‘theirs’; this attitude contributed both to the industrial disputes that punctuated the post-war decades, and to buoyant sales. The boss of the company, Louis Renault, was charged with collaboration and died in Fresnes prison in October 1944. Renault remained under state control until 1996, shortly after the closure of the Billancourt plant.

  The other focus for retribution was the Paris Métro company, which had slavishly ensured that collaboration in the capital went smoothly, creating a dedicated police service in the Métro to stop people defacing German posters, and setting aside vehicles for use by the German troops in the period following D-Day. Following a proposal by Léo Hamon at one of the last meetings of the CPL, the Métro company was taken under state control, although the wealthy shareholders, who had happily trousered the profits from the company’s collaborationist activities, were all generously compensated.95 The resultant organisation – the RATP – still runs the Paris Métro and many other urban transport systems around the world.

  With the Germans gone and the collaborationist factory managers either arrested or having fled, workers in the engineering factories of the Paris region – in particular the aeronautical industry – stepped into the void and carried out their own economic épuration. A number of factory committees sprang up and took control of workplaces across the Paris region, organising supplies and production, showing a glimmer of what could have emerged from the chaos of the collapse of the occupation. But as August turned into September, it became clear that there would be no second Paris Commune. The Communist Party – the main force within the working class – did not encourage the creation of factory committees, while the mass of the population were either unaware of the possibility of taking control of their workplace, or were simply uninterested in the prospect. With Communist Party and FTP leader Charles Tillon as Minister for Air, the government was ideally positioned to ride out the minor wave of occupations that continued until the end of the year, and in 1945 the committees were given a neutered, legal form, in the shape of the Comités d’entreprise which still play an important role in the running of French companies.96

  The failure of the épuration to deal with most cases of economic collaboration, coupled with the impression that the new regime did not seem to represent much of a change compared with the pre-war Third Republic, led many people to become disillusioned. In 1945 the Trotskyist Fourth International furiously complained about the outcome of the ‘so-called “insurrection” in which so many young workers sacrificed themselves’.97 While such a criticism might be expected from revolutionaries, at the end of the 1950s René Hostache, a historian who was highly sympathetic to de Gaulle, recognised that ‘the collapse of Vichy provided an important opportunity to thoroughly renew the political and social regime in France, but it was passed over. Even today, many people are still bitter about this aborted revolution.’98

  During September and October, the tension increased between the government and the Parisian Resistance. With the FFI effectively fused with the Free French Army, de Gaulle’s desire to remove any vestige of a ‘parallel power’ was focused on disbanding the remaining armed groups – now known as the Gardes Patriotiques – and on rendering the CPL powerless.99 This was not simply de Gaulle’s view – the government included two Communist Party ministers (Charles Tillon and François Billoux) as well as Georges Bidault, and they all went along with the policy, despite the som
etimes half-hearted opposition of both the Resistance organisations (the CNR and CPL) and the Communist Party. Eventually, on 28 October, the Council of Ministers ordered the Gardes to be disbanded: ‘The Council of Ministers pays homage to the service that these groups gave during the insurrectional period. But the insurrectional period is over. It is now solely the responsibility of the government and its representatives to ensure administrative and police powers, following the laws of the Republic.’100

  Although there were protests from the CNR and some of the Resistance newspapers, there was no real opposition to the dissolution of the final armed vestige of the insurrection, and the Paris police were able to regain their position of undisputed power. There were some minor hiccoughs – on 2 November the police stopped a Gardes Patriotiques van containing a ton of ammunition, while Commander Gerl of the Gardes refused to hand over his weapons to the Police Commissioner of the 13th arrondissement, saying he was determined ‘to retain them by any means necessary to save the nation and ourselves’.101 On the whole, however, the relative ease with which the Resistance gave up its arms and any semblance of political power showed that the Paris insurrection was finally over.102

  *

  For many people, the liberation of Paris was the high point of their lives, and it was hard to imagine that anything could surpass those moments. On 15 September, Jean Galtier-Boissière went for a drink at Aux Deux Magots with ‘Z’, a friend whom he had not seen since the beginning of the war. During their conversation, Z revealed that throughout the occupation he had been hiding in Paris, working for the Resistance. For four years it had been as though he had been living in the pages of a thriller. In the early autumn sunshine, Z turned to his friend and asked wistfully: ‘What the hell am I going to do now?’103

  Two people who had probably had enough of adventure were Marie-Hélène and Pierre Lefaucheux. Pierre was deported to Buchenwald on the 15 August train from Pantin; Marie-Hélène had been a member of the CPL throughout the insurrection. On 27 August Marie-Hélène decided her work in Paris was over, and recommenced her audacious attempt to rescue her husband from the clutches of the Nazis. Driving in a car borrowed from the Red Cross, she travelled eastwards and was soon in the midst of the Allied advance and then, in the early evening, she was behind the German lines. Her rapid and trouble-free progress gives some indication of the total collapse of the German front, as soldiers fled from the onrushing Allied armies. In Nancy, Marie-Hélène met Molinari, the Italian boss of a road-haulage company. One of Molinari’s close friends – an Italian anti-fascist – had been deported to Buchenwald. Molinari put Lefaucheux in contact with von Else, a Gestapo man in Nancy who had previously helped get a parcel to Molinari’s friend. She could hardly believe her luck.

  On 29 August, Hélène met the Gestapo agent – ‘a young man, thin, with dark eyes and glasses, who looked slow and stupid’ – and pleaded with him to provide her with papers so she could visit her husband in Germany. Amazingly, von Else first issued an order releasing both Pierre and Molinari’s friend into the custody of the Nancy Gestapo, and then, two days later, agreed to accompany Lefaucheux and Molinari all the way to Buchenwald, to ensure that the order was carried out. Von Else was not politically sympathetic, nor did he want a bribe, but Molinari’s promise of a car and petrol to enable the German and his family to escape the imminent collapse of the occupation of France could not have been unwelcome.

  Caught up in the chaos of the fleeing German Army, the ill-matched trio – Molinari, Marie-Hélène and von Else – drove along the motorway past Mannheim and Frankfurt, which to Marie-Hélène’s gratification were badly damaged by Allied bombing raids. Late in the morning of 3 September, they arrived at the outskirts of Buchenwald. Parts of the camp were smouldering, having been hit by Allied bombs during a raid on a nearby factory a few days earlier.104 For four hours Marie-Hélène waited by the barbed wire fence, wracked with impatience and anxiety, imagining all the awful possibilities – perhaps Pierre was already dead, shot by the Germans or killed in the bombing raid. Eventually, von Else came out of the camp, accompanied by ‘a tall, thin tramp’ with a shaved head. It was Pierre. He got into the car, Marie-Hélène simply asked, ‘Hello, how are you?’ and they drove off. By 04:00 the next morning they were in Metz, where they parted company with their Gestapo saviour.

  Word of Pierre Lefaucheux’s amazing escape soon got around. René Courtin wrote in his diary: ‘Clearly, his wife is one of the most remarkable people in the Resistance . . . The story is even more amazing than I could have imagined and shows that to the fearless, nothing is impossible.’105 Once they were back in Paris, on 5 September, Marie Hélène telephoned Claire Girard, the young woman she had met at Antheuil-Saâcy station less than three weeks earlier, to announce her joyous news. Claire’s mother answered the phone; Claire was dead. She had been executed in the tiny village of Courdimanche to the north-west of Paris on 27 August, the day Marie-Hélène left the city.106

  Epilogue

  Mythification

  Howard C. Rice, an American academic in Paris, writes in January 1945: ‘In France, more than in any other country, the popular imagination transforms the present into history with extraordinary rapidity. Events and collective experiences are miraculously crystallised into symbolic dates and emotion-laden myths. Already “La Libération” is such a myth . . . it would seem that French thinking must, in order to face the future, first review and digest the recent past.’1

  As soon as the battle of Paris ended, the battle for history began. Keenly aware that those days of August represented a dramatic new page in the history of the city, and a decisive moment in the liberation of France, participants in and observers of the events began to assemble their views, to impose their vision of what had happened. The tumultuous history of France plays a key role in the country’s culture, and the rapidity with which this major event was examined, re-examined and turned into urban, cultural and intellectual artefacts is quite remarkable. Almost immediately, the battles of the liberation wrote themselves onto the face of Paris. Within six weeks, the names of eighteen Parisian streets were changed to commemorate those who died in the insurrection, or who were Resistance fighters.2 The Lycée Rollin in the 9th arrondissement was renamed ‘Lycée Jacques Decour’ after a teacher who had been shot for giving out leaflets to German troops in 1942.3 Plaques were placed on the walls of buildings to commemorate the dead, replacing the informal tributes that had appeared in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection. There are hundreds of these plaques scattered around the main sites where fighting took place, many still garlanded with flowers on the anniversary of the death they commemorate.4 Equally emotive but less obvious are the scars of battle that have been left unrepaired on the main public buildings – the Préfecture, the Ecole Militaire, the buildings around the Jardin du Luxembourg, the walls of the Tuileries, and elsewhere.

  The images of the liberation – the sun, the cheering crowds, the gallant FFI fighters, the bronzed men of the 2e DB – became fixed in the popular imagination through a series of books and magazines and also by a major exhibition of photographs which ran from November to December 1944.5 For children there were comics describing the battles in and around Paris, and printed cardboard sheets featuring cut-out figures (de Gaulle, FFI fighters, Leclerc Division soldiers) that could be displayed against an appropriate backdrop (the Arc de Triomphe, a barricade, a Parisian street). A flood of diaries and memoirs was published, culminating in Adrien Dansette’s 1946 Histoire de la libération de Paris, a remarkable piece of contemporary history that is still valuable today. The French Government got involved, producing a photo-filled English-language booklet describing the insurrection. The booklet was widely circulated, even among the US armed forces.6 Over the next six decades, the torrent continued, backed up by special issues of magazines, TV programmes and, most recently, DVDs, often driven by the rhythm of anniversaries.

  In October 1944, the Provisional Government set up the Commission pour l’Histoire de l�
�Occupation et de la Libération de la France, to gather material – documents, artefacts and eye-witness accounts – dealing with the war years in France, and including a major section on the liberation of Paris.7 This material was eventually placed in the Archives Nationales; much later it was digitised and is now available on the Internet.8 1994 saw the creation in Paris of a single-site pair of museums, one devoted to the Leclerc Division and the liberation, the other to Jean Moulin, the rather clumsily titled Musée du Général Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris – Musée Jean Moulin. Displays and exhibitions in the city have recently reinforced this systematic memorialisation of the liberation, most recently an exhibit at the Hôtel de Ville based on an appeal for hitherto unseen documents from Parisians themselves.9 In 1994, during the fiftieth anniversary celebrations, there was a massive open-air son et lumière piece of theatre, stretching over four kilometres and with hundreds of participants and period vehicles, finishing in front of the Hôtel de Ville.

  Probably the most influential portrayal of the liberation was the documentary film La Libération de Paris, made during the insurrection by cineastes from the Comité de Libération du Cinéma Français, which was hastily edited in the days following the German surrender and was first shown in Paris on 29 August.10 Over the next few months, over half the adult population of the capital would see the film, as would hundreds of thousands of spectators all over the world. Thirty-two minutes long, the film portrays the insurrection with amazing power. Through the spoken commentary and the choice of shots, the city becomes a living being, the central participant. Like the best documentaries, the film gives the viewer the overwhelming impression of actually being there, of seeing it like it was. But, like any film, it is constructed – some sequences were included, others were omitted; they were assembled in a particular order, to tell a particular story.11 As the film-makers were creating the documentary – choosing which scenes to record, and then choosing which scenes to include – they avoided controversial issues. There is no reference to the cease-fire; the Allies are reduced to a walk-on role in the shape of an American soldier with a charmingly comic French accent; there is no footage of the shootings at Concorde or Notre Dame, nor any scenes of head-shaving. Some events that were filmed – such as the killing of the four German soldiers by the Arc de Triomphe on 25 August – were not included in the documentary, but have since resurfaced; others, such as the cease-fire being announced, have disappeared without trace.12