Eleven Days in August

by Matthew Cobb

  3 The Gaullist forces went through several different name changes during the war; I have preferred to use their first, widely known name, ‘the Free French’, even though strictly speaking this is an anachronism for the period covered here.

  4 The shooting of German soldiers in the Paris region was largely the work of the Communist Party, which had something to prove: for the first year of the occupation it did not call for resistance because the Soviet Union – the source of its political inspiration and outlook – was then in an alliance with Germany. Only after Hitler attacked the USSR in June 1941 did the communists change their line and become an important component of the Paris Resistance. Their influence grew when they began shooting German soldiers, a campaign that attracted the admiration of some Parisians, but which had catastrophic consequences. The Germans responded by taking hundreds of French people hostage – many of them communists – and executing them in retaliation for the few dozen Germans who were shot by the communist fighters. The Germans eventually wiped out most of the armed groups in Paris and the Communist Party changed its tactics – no German soldiers were killed in the Paris region during the first six months of 1944. Cobb (2009a).

  5 For the collapse of the SOE circuit (‘PROSPER’) see Cobb (2009a), pp. 195–7 and 363–5, and Suttill & Foot (2011). There was a US-backed sabotage mission early in 1944, when the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS – the forerunner of the CIA) sent a group called VARLIN into Paris ‘to work with the CGT in directing sabotage and psychological warfare among French laborers being deported to Germany’ (OSS War Diary 3:208). VARLIN was part of the Labor Desk project that involved sending German communists into Nazi Germany (Persico, 1979). VARLIN sabotaged the SKF ball-bearing factory at Ivry, a massive art deco tomb-like building, setting fire to 6000 litres of petrol, destroying vital electrical equipment and damaging key parts of the production line (Granet 1961, p. 264). But that was more or less the end of their activity – they had no radio operator and spent much of the period up until mid-August without contact or instructions. Shortly before the Paris insurrection broke out, members of SOE and the Resistance who could have played a vital role in the fighting were deported to Buchenwald concentration camp from the Gare de l’Est. The deportees included Stéphane Hessel, ‘Tommy’ Yeo-Thomas, Maurice Southgate, Harry Peulevé, Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo (Seaman, 1997). Perrin (2008) includes a list of many of the prisoners, drawn up by Yeo-Thomas (pp. 138–9). Stéphane Hessel’s account of this part of his wartime experience states that the train left the Gare du Nord (AN 72AJ/231/II/8, p. 12).

  6 One set of voices is largely absent – that of those ultra-conservative supporters of Pétain, the ‘ordinary collaborators’. The views of those Parisians, who must have numbered tens of thousands, have left little trace in the historical record. If they wrote diaries – and scores of them must have done so – their writings have not surfaced in the archives, nor have they been published. Families may well be keeping them hidden, out of embarrassment or shame. This is frustrating in that the irrational fears of the passive Pétain supporters, who were so important in providing the occupation with some kind of social base, were part of the political tapestry of Paris during the liberation.

  7 Each year around 15 August, the Parisian swifts leave on their long southward migration. Their evocative cries would have been absent from most of the period described here.

  PRELUDE

  1 Pierquin (1983), pp. 119–120.

  2 Florentin (1997), pp. 293–6; Middlebrook & Everitt (1985), p. 496.

  3 Guéhenno (2002), p. 405.

  4 Auroy (2008), pp. 296–7.

  5 Grunberg’s remarkable diary was recently discovered (Grunberg, 2001). Grunberg’s apartment is next to the L’Harmattan bookshop, well known to Parisian book-buyers.

  6 All distances and orientations are approximate, and are given as the crow flies. Distances to and from Paris are given to the edge of the city.

  7 Grunberg (2001), p. 299.

  8 Fabre-Luce (1947), p. 607.

  9 AN 72AJ/62/IV/1, p. 75

  10 Florentin (1997), p. 296.

  11 Pétain’s speech at the Hôtel de Ville can be seen in Claude Chabrol’s documentary The Eye of Vichy (1993). The approximate figure of 10,000 is obtained by a sampling head-count of a photograph of the crowd (see Plate 1). If those on the rue de Rivoli and the avenue Victoria, also visible on the photograph, are added, at most around 15,000 people appear to have attended. This corresponds with the estimate made at the time by Maurice Toesca, the principal private secretary of the Prefect of Police. Shortly afterwards, Marcel Déat claimed that a million Parisians had fêted Pétain (see The Eye of Vichy).

  12 Cointet (2001), p. 269.

  13 Grunberg (2001), p. 300.

  CHAPTER 1

  1 Groult & Groult (1965), pp. 293–4.

  2 Cordier (1999), p. 272; Crémieux-Brilhac (2010), p. 275.

  3 Mahuzier (1961); see the plate opposite p. 209.

  4 Mahuzier (1961), pp. 158–68. The 21-minute documentary was eventually released in 1945 under the title ‘Réseau X’, and was presented in competition at the first Cannes Film Festival in 1946. It is available in the Gaumont archives under reference EXTMAH 4500ATFDOC00016 (www.gaumontpathearchives.com). Because of the progress of the Allied invasion, the three men could not escape from France; they remained in Paris until it was liberated.

  5 The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, ruled that although de Gaulle should be treated with utmost courtesy, he would not be allowed to hold any public meetings or to gather crowds in the street (Amouroux, 1988, p. 547).

  6 The warmth expressed by the traditionally reserved population of Normandy moved de Gaulle’s aide, Hettier de Boislambert, who was from the region: ‘Our walk in Bayeux took on a triumphal air. Everyone knew the General was there, everyone wanted to acclaim him, to see him, to touch him. As a Normandy man, I was amazed by this enthusiasm, which was more typical of the south of the country.’ Amouroux (1988), p. 551, n. 2.

  7 Chaban’s promotion was announced in a message on 30 June 1944. AN 72AJ/235/III/449.

  8 Cobb (2009a).

  9 Crémieux-Brilhac (2001), p. 1255.

  10 Two months earlier he had written: ‘the liberation of the country must be the work of the French people, led by the fighters of the Resistance, grouped together in the FFI. This liberation must be obtained by a country-wide insurrection.’ (Granet, 1964, p. 159). See also the undated Projet de manifeste de ‘Ceux de la Résistance’ in Granet (1964), pp. 271–3. In apparently authoritative contemporary and modern sources, de Vogüé’s name is spelt in various ways – Vogüé, Vogüe and Vogué. I have adopted de Vogüé.

  11 Massiet (1945), p. 85. In April 1944, the FFI in the Paris region claimed only 155 of its men were armed (Rol-Tanguy & Bourderon, 1994, p. 76).

  12 Lefaucheux was a leader of the right-wing Resistance group, l’Organisation Civile et Militaire (OCM). Political leaders could also be leaders of the umbrella armed group, the FFI.

  13 ‘Rol’ was the name of one of Tanguy’s International Brigade comrades who was killed in fighting in the Sierra Caballes (Roy, 1944, p. 114).

  14 Even though no more than 25 per cent of the Communist Party armed group FTP fighters were card-carrying communists, the organisation still followed the Communist Party lead (Tillon, 1972, p. 241; Granet, 1964, p. 220, n. 5). Full details of FFI composition are given in Massiet (1945), pp. 72–-85. See Buton (1993), p. 125, for details of FTP. Bourderon (2006), p. 190, points out that claims about the size of the FTP are ‘unverifiable’. The FTP was officially known as the Franc-Tireurs et Partisans Français, but was more widely known by its three-letter initials.

  15 All details of FFI structure from Massiet (1945), pp. 24–5.

  16 The Socialist Party had secretly decided to oppose the slogan of a ‘national insurrection’ because it might play into the hands of the communists (AN 72AJ/236/I/5/44).

  17 The building is now the headquarters of the Socia
list Party. The reports given by the policemen are partially reproduced in Bourget (1984). On 22 September 1944 Charles Gonard (‘Morlot’) published a description in the Resistance newspaper Action (Kriegel-Valrimont, 1964, pp. 239–43); many years later he provided a second account (Noguères & Degliame-Fouché, 1981, pp. 187–90). There are insignificant differences of detail between the two versions (for example, in one version Madame Henriot is completely silent, in the other she screamed). It has been stated that the Resistance men were dressed in Milice uniforms (e.g. Cobb, 2009a, p. 281). This was not the case (Noguères & Degliame-Fouché, 1981, p. 189). Mea culpa.

  18 Although it has been claimed that COMAC gave citations to the men involved in the operation (Crémieux-Brilhac, 1976, p. 78), this was not officialised after the war as Henriot’s assassination was seen as a political act rather than a military one (Amouroux, 1988, p. 420, n. 1). Despite a campaign by the Milice to find those responsible and the promise of a 20 million-franc reward, only one of the sixteen men involved was caught. Betrayed by a friend, petty thief and part-time résistant Pierre Desmoulins was lured into a trap and was shot by the police (Bourget, 1984, pp. 133–7).

  19 Henriot broadcast each day at 12:40 and again at 19:40. In the period 7 February–3 April, Henriot made eighty broadcasts; together with repeats he appeared ninety-five times in a mere fifty-six days. Crémieux-Brilhac (1976), p. 54. Henriot gained a misplaced reputation for straight-talking. In fact, his speeches were no different from the rest of collaborationist propaganda – as well as pouring bile on the Allies, the Resistance and the Free French, he repeated the usual fetid fascist fantasies; one of his regular targets was ‘the diabolical plot of the plutocrats of the City of London and the Judeo-Bolsheviks of Eastern Europe’ (Crémieux-Brilhac, 2001, p. 1066). A report to the Free French in Algiers admitted that ‘his broadcasts provoke admiration or anger, but never indifference’ (Crémieux-Brilhac, 2001, p. 1066). Jean Guéhenno described Henriot’s tone in his diary: ‘In Henriot, Vichy, hypocrisy and treason found their voice; a solid, sneering, nasal voice.’ (Guéhenno, 2002, p. 421.)

  20 Grunberg (2001), p. 318. Henriot’s final broadcast, made the night before he was assassinated, was prophetic: ‘Am I expected to be impressed by the threats of . . . machine-gun bullets that have already killed so many of my friends and comrades? If I was going to be affected by this kind of talk, I would have kept quiet long ago. Insult me, pour your self-proclaimed outrage on my head. I will not reply. If there is to be blood between us, it is you that will have spilt it.’ (Bourget, 1984, p. 119.) COMAC had floated the project of kidnapping Henriot earlier in the year, with the subsequent support of the CNR. (Debû-Bridel, 1978, pp. 69–73.) Marcel Degliame-Fouché, who was in overall charge of the operation, claimed that he first had the idea of ‘neutralising’ Henriot, in 1942, on overhearing conversations in a train following one of Henriot’s early broadcasts. The first request for help from London was made in January 1944 (Noguères & Degliame-Fouché, 1981, p. 187). In May 1944, Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac heard the head of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) French Section, Maurice Buckmaster, discussing Henriot with two Free French Intelligence Service members: ‘Kidnap him, and I’ll sort out the transport to London,’ said Buckmaster (Crémieux-Brilhac, 2001, p. 1066).

  21 Luneau (2005), p. 278. Laval’s lachrymose commentary can be found in Bourget (1984), p. 127, together with the responses of various collaborationists.

  22 Rebatet (1976), p. 172.

  23 Amouroux (1988), p. 421, presents an analysis of the extensive mail interceptions carried out by Vichy. Of 10,528 letters that were intercepted between 29 June and 4 July 1944 in the Aude département in the south-east Pyrenees, only 287 (2.7 per cent) mentioned Henriot’s assassination – the overwhelming majority of these (271) were sympathetic to Henriot. The Aude may not have been typical of France, and, given it was known that Vichy intercepted the post, it might have been unwise to express support for Henriot’s assassination.

  24 Grunberg (2001), p. 318. Similar views were expressed by a range of people. Jacques Bardoux, a minor collaborationist politician, wrote in his diary that most of the people he talked to were less affected than he had expected, while his newspaper seller merely said, ‘That’s one less snake!’ Bardoux (1958), p. 280. Charles Braibant wrote: ‘Philippe Henriot had a striking eloquence and did a great deal of harm. The patriots who killed him have rendered a huge service to the country. He got what he deserved.’ Braibant (1945), p. 501. Two policemen were overheard talking in the Métro: ‘That’s one down – it’s the beginning,’ said one; his colleague replied, ‘It was nicely done – it must have been one of us who did it.’ (Bourget, 1984, pp. 128–9.) The nosy eavesdropper was Max Knipping, head of Vichy’s fascist Milice in the northern zone, who zealously took down their police numbers and sent the information to the Prefect of Police, demanding disciplinary action. According to Monniot (1965), p. 83, a policeman named Poulain killed Henriot; see Bourget (1984), pp. 137–9 for an examination of this unlikely claim.

  25 Grunberg (2001), p. 318. Speaking on the BBC, Jean-Jacques Mayoux said, ‘We refuse to hide our joy at his expiration’ (Crémieux-Brilhac, 1976, p. 78). According to Goebbels, ‘It is not France that is in mourning, but the whole of Europe, to which Henriot had devoted the whole of his life in his struggle for liberty.’ (Giolitto, 2002, p. 319.) Jean Guéhenno acerbically remarked over a month later: ‘Every evening, the German propaganda machine resuscitates Henriot . . . Every evening, at 10:15 precisely, he is called from beyond the grave and made to sound off one of his old broadcasts and to remind us of our European duties. He is a servile ghost . . . but if German propaganda is reduced to mobilising ghosts, that’s a good thing. However, Je suis partout [a collaborationist newspaper] is worried: apparently the discs are wearing out incredibly quickly, and unless there’s some technical breakthrough, this “great voice that saves France” will, in a very short time, be silenced forever.’ Guéhenno (2002), p. 427.

  26 There was a series of squabbles over the organisation of the funeral, between the Germans and French fascists on the one hand and the Paris municipal and police collaborators on the other; these were indicative of the growing stresses within the forces of collaboration. See Bourget (1984), pp. 129–33 for an exhaustive account. Although collaborationists queued up to pay their respects to Henriot at the Hôtel de Ville, not everyone was so enthusiastic. Police psychiatrist Dr Michel Laurent – or Laurent Michel; accounts vary – saw a grief-stricken old lady crying in the queue. Unable to restrain himself, the doctor hissed at her, ‘Don’t forget he was a well-known traitor!’ A few minutes later he was arrested by the Milice, having been denounced by the old lady. For two days Dr Laurent was questioned, beaten, threatened with a gun at his temple, stripped and stabbed with scissors.

  27 Including in Lyons, Toulouse, Grenoble and Mâcon. Two weeks earlier, the Milice had murdered the left-wing one-time Minister of Education, Jean Zay (Giolitto, 2002, pp. 331–8).

  28 Favreau (1996), pp. 471–9 and Giolitto (2002), pp. 338–52, describe Mandel’s final days. For accounts of the post-liberation trials of his murderers and those implicated, see Giolitto (2002), pp. 356–9 and Favreau (1996), pp. 484–93.

  29 Favreau (1996), p. 476.

  30 Cobb (2009a), pp. 79–87.

  31 Calvès (1984), pp. 98–9. Yves Cazaux recorded the assassination of Barthélemy in his diary, simply noting that the dead man had pursued ‘the closest collaboration with the Occupant’ (Cazaux, 1975, p. 61).

  32 Cazaux (1975), p. 64.

  33 Martens & Nagel (2006), p. 517.

  34 Cazaux (1975), p. 62. Denis (1963), pp. 92–3, claims that the government changed its mind at the last minute and that 14 July was not in fact a holiday. This seems to be based on a misreading of the CPL minutes of 18 July (Denis, 1963, p. 214); the last-minute decision was to make the day a holiday.

  35 Auroy (2008), pp. 312–315. The week before, the Comité Parisien de la Libération (CPL) had serious
ly discussed the possibility of evacuating all women and children from the city, due to the severe food shortages, even though no one could say where the hundreds of thousands of evacuees would go. Although the discussion was inconclusive (broadly speaking the right-wing members were for evacuation, the left-wing members were against), the very fact that the CPL took seriously such a far-fetched proposal indicates the extremity of the situation. See the minutes of the thirtieth meeting of the CPL, 7 July 1944, in Denis (1963), pp. 211–213.

  36 The assassination of Barthélemy and the attack on two German soldiers at Thiais appear to have been the result of this instruction. The CPL was following the lead of the national Resistance leadership, which had called for ‘A 14 July of struggle’. For the CNR’s decision and its call, see Debû-Bridel (1978), pp. 141–2 and pp. 266–8. See also Noguères & Degliame-Fouché (1981), pp. 259–60. The CPL resolution is reproduced in Denis (1963), pp. 167–9. At the end of July ‘Colonel Fabien’ (Pierre Georges), a 25-year-old veteran of the Spanish Civil War and of the armed struggle against the Germans, wrote a letter to his comrades in the Communist Party’s armed wing, the Franc-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), calling for revenge attacks following the execution of three of their young comrades: