Eleven Days in August
Page 51
26 Nordling (2002), p. 90. There is no mention of Nordling and the prisoners in Abetz’s memoirs (Abetz, 1953), or in a recent study of the German ambassador’s role (Lambauer, 2001). The university professor was the head of the Ecole Normale Supérieure.
27 Naville (1950a).
28 AN 72AJ/235/II/284.
29 Kriegel-Valrimont (1964) p. 78; AN 72AJ/45/I/5A, p. 8.
30 Bardoux (1958), p. 334. Bardoux’s self-serving diary contains an extremely detailed account of these futile manoeuvres, and inadvertently shows the extent to which the collaborationist politicians were out of touch with political and military reality, as well as being fatally compromised on the moral plane.
31 For complex ideological reasons relating to the political position of the capital, Paris did not have a mayor from 1794 to 1977, apart from during the revolutions of 1848 and 1870–1. The current system began in 1977, with the election of Jacques Chirac.
32 A week earlier, the Vichy government had banned the anti-Semitic newspaper Je Suis Partout because of its abusive attacks on Laval.
33 Bourget (1984), p. 217.
34 Brissaud (1965), pp. 234–8.
35 Institut Hoover (1958), p. 1071. The idea was apparently floated in a conversation with Georges Bidault, who allegedly supported it, but thought that Laval would never agree.
36 Brissaud (1965), pp. 242–3. Although Dulles’ reports to OSS headquarters about his conversations with Enfière do not contain any such statement (Petersen, 1996, p. 334) that does not mean that he did not say such a thing. The long-standing antipathy felt by the US administration towards de Gaulle and the Free French, and the profound illusions the US had held for much of the war about Vichy coming over to the Allied side, all suggest that the US might indeed have favoured such a transitional government. The assumption that the US would be open to Laval’s scheme was widespread on both sides of the political and military divide. De Gaulle believed it after the war – he gives a detailed account of these manoeuvres in his war memoirs (de Gaulle, 1956, p. 290). The fascist collaborator Marcel Déat was certain that Laval intended to do a deal with the Americans, and he in turn became determined to scupper it, by whatever means necessary – see the letter by the collaborationist Georges Albertini in Institut Hoover (1958), p. 1294. For a discussion of these events from the US point of view, see Glass (2009).
37 Institut Hoover (1958), p. 1040.
38 Details from Taittinger (1948), pp. 153–4 and Cazaux (1975), p. 129. Cazaux’s contemporaneous diary entry gives the time of Herriot’s arrival as 08:30, but confirms the dressing-gown detail.
39 Auphan carried a letter containing Pétain’s instructions; he was to find a solution ‘in order to avoid a civil war and to reconcile all French men and women of good faith’, but above all to ensure that ‘the principle of legitimacy that I represent should be safeguarded’ (Dansette, 1946, pp. 109–110). The very idea that de Gaulle, or the Resistance, would ever consider that Vichy represented any kind of legitimacy indicates either that the old man’s advisors were completely deluded, or that they were telling him what he wanted to hear. Furthermore, talk of ‘avoiding a civil war’ was hard to take seriously from the man who had allowed the fascist Milice to wage a de facto civil war against the Resistance.
40 Dansette (1946), pp. 109–110. This message was allegedly sent with the help of a senior member of the Resistance. There is no trace of Auphan’s message to Algiers in the archive of cables sent from France (AN 72AJ/235/II). On 15 August, Parodi cabled Algiers and simply stated, ‘Both Laval and Pétain’s entourage are trying to enter into contact with the Delegation’ (AN 72AJ/235/II/290). De Gaulle received the letter after the liberation of Paris, viewing it with as much scorn as could be expected (de Gaulle, 1956, pp. 319–21).
41 AN 72AJ/235/II/253–4, AN 72AJ/235/II/266–7.
42 AN 72AJ/235/III/503–4.
43 Drieu La Rochelle (1992), p. 416.
44 Drieu La Rochelle (1992), p. 421; he describes his day in a later diary entry for 15 October.
45 Her diary was initially published under the pseudonym C. de Saint-Pierre (1945). The diary was begun on 10 August, but the entries for the first two days were written on 12 August (de Saint-Pierre, 1945, p. 9).
46 de Saint-Pierre (1945), p. 11.
47 Kent (1947), pp. 195–7.
48 de Saint-Pierre (1945), p. 16.
49 de Saint-Pierre (1951), p. 77.
50 Lewis (1991).
51 On the handwritten cover page of Hooker’s SOE personnel file (NA HS 9/739/6), his first name appears to be ‘Ivar’, and this is the name that is given in the National Archives index. Subsequent pages of the file make clear that he was in fact called Ivor.
52 OSS War Diary 4:768.
53 OSS War Diary 4:772.
54 SUSSEX involved dropping small teams of British, French and US agents behind German lines to collect intelligence and guide parachute drops to the Resistance (Lorain, 1983, pp. 97–9). By D-Day there were seventeen SUSSEX groups, including one in Vincennes to the south-east of Paris. ‘The presence of teams in Paris constituted a great risk . . . Most of the material passed through Paris. It was carried by truck from the dropping field. The greatest complications were found in despatching men and material from Paris to their various destinations.’ OSS War Diary 3:144. The two cafés were at 8 rue Tournefort, just behind the Pantheon, and at 5 rue du Faubourg-Montmartre in the 9th arrondissement. The rue Tournefort café was owned by Madame Andrée Goubillon and in 1944 sheltered a total of twenty-one SUSSEX agents and their equipment, also serving as a ‘letter box’ for Allied communications (Cleveland-Peck, 2000, p. 5). After the war, the café was renamed Le Café du Réseau Sussex; it is now a restaurant and there is a plaque on the building commemorating Madame Goubillon’s activity. OSS War Diary 3:236 reproduces her citation for the US Medal for Merit. Madame Goubillon’s name is heavily redacted in the archive, indicating that such matters were still sensitive when it was released. The rue du Faubourg-Montmartre café was run by Marguerite Kiel. It is still there, but there is no indication of its historic role. Madame Kiel sheltered thirteen agents and their equipment, including radios and weapons, in the period up to August 1944. Madame Kiel’s name in the OSS War Diary (3:236) is too heavily redacted to read, beyond the fact that her first name began with ‘M’; Funk (1994), p. 228 and p. 235, n. 6, provides the details (see also AN 72 AJ/232/III/5, p. 9 and Jeffery, 2010, p. 651). Kiel was also awarded the Medal for Merit. After the war, Kenneth Cohen of MI6, joint founder of the SUSSEX missions, wrote a piece of doggerel which ridiculed the process by which the UK Foreign Office awarded medals to these women. Although Jeanette Guyot (a French officer, who was part of SUSSEX) was given an OBE, Goubillon and Kiel were given the lesser award of a British Empire Medal, because MI6 had not provided evidence that they had sufficient social standing to deserve an OBE:
How do you feel
About Marguerite Kiel?
Can Andrée Goubillon
Dance the cotillion?
At what social summit
Stands Mlle Jeanette?
Their assets, their accents, their undies laid bare,
Then, only then can we apportion the share:
B.E.M.s may be spared for intelligence chores
But O.B.E.s are reserved for the silkiest drawers. (Jeffery, 2010, p. 651)
55 The fullest description of JADE-AMICOL can be found in Paillat & Boulnois (1989), pp. 611–49. See also Funk (1994), p. 227. Keun was captured by the Germans in June 1944. Jeffery (2010) does not mention Ollivier; he does mention the circuit and Keun in passing, but not his fate (p. 530).
56 Fourcade was in fact her married name after the war; her name at the time was Méric. Her memoirs have been published in English, but in a truncated translation – Fourcade (1972 and 1973). With around 5000 agents, ALLIANCE provided invaluable information on the situation inside France, including detailed descriptions of the German V-weapons. For a copy of one of the ALLIANCE reports on the V2, see Bro
wn (1988), pp. 782–3.
57 Verity (2000), p. 208.
58 Fourcade (1973), pp. 329–45. This is a substantially truncated translation; see Fourcade (1972), pp. 252–81.
59 Fourcade (1972), pp. 280–1.
60 Verity (2000), p. 206.
61 Rajsfus (1996); Dreyfus & Gensburger (2003), p. 242. Gensburger (2005) examines how the Parisian camps were ‘forgotten’ after the war. It has been suggested – for example in W. G. Sebald’s work Austerlitz (Sebald, 2001, pp. 401–3) that the Austerlitz camp was located on the site of what is now the Bibliothèque nationale de France. This is not the case; the two warehouses were much closer to the Métro line at boulevard Vincent Auriol. The location is now the site of an apartment block. See for example blog.bnf.fr/lecteurs/index.php/2010/08/02/la-bnf-a-lemplacement-dun-ancien-camp-nazi/ [accessed July 2012].
62 This was the story that was subsequently dramatised in the film The Train (1964), directed by John Frankenheimer. The cases of artworks had been prepared by Rose Valland, a conservator at the Musée du Jeu de Paume. For full details, see Rayssac (2008).
63 On 5 August, the internees from Bassano were returned to Drancy, where they waited for the next convoy to be assembled. On 12 August, both Lévitan and Austerlitz were shut down in those dramatic early morning raids. Even so, Möbel Aktion continued: later on the same day, a whole Jewish-owned building on the rue Erlanger in the 16th arrondissement was ransacked. A car and two lorries were required to carry off the contents. Dreyfus & Gensburger (2003), p. 243.
64 Dreyfus & Gensburger (2003), p. 257.
65 de Saint-Pierre (1945), p. 23.
66 de Saint-Pierre (1945), p. 24.
67 Massu (1969), pp. 138–40; Bergot (1980), p. 96.
68 de Boissieu (1981), p. 244.
69 Blumenson (1998).
70 Speidel (1971), p. 135. Von Choltitz (1969), p. 121 recalled there were two meetings, on 13 and 15 August. Lieutenant-General Bodo Zimmerman states there was one meeting ‘On 14 or 15 Aug 44’ (B-308, p. 142), and gives some details (e.g. with regard to the destruction of bridges) that were not known on 14 August, but were on 15 August, which is when von Choltitz recalls they were discussed. I have assumed that there were two meetings, on 14 and 15 August.
71 B-308, pp. 143–4.
72 B-308, p. 144.
73 Message from Abetz to Grand, 14 August 1944. Obtained by OSS spy ‘George Wood’ (Fritz Kolbe) in Berlin, and transmitted from Berne by Allen Dulles on 18 August 1944 (Petersen, 1996, pp. 371–2). For the amazing work of Fritz Kolbe, see Delattre (2006).
74 BAM VV, 14.8.
75 For the resolution, plus Valrimont’s satisfied summary, see Kriegel-Valrimont (1964), pp. 170–1.
76 Wieviorka (1994), p. 143.
77 For discussions of the role of the police in the Resistance, see Anonymous (1965), Chevandier (2008), Kitson (1995) and Rudolph (2010).
78 Lefranc (1965), p. 109. The suburbs were Saint-Denis, Courbevoie and Asnières. Lefranc gives a slightly different version of this story in Breton (1964), pp. 36–41. The transcription of Emile Hennequin’s telegram in Dupuy (1945) suggests there were only two police stations involved (p. 4). Dansette (1946) states that only Asnières and Saint-Denis were disarmed, and provides an unsourced description of the events in Saint-Denis, suggesting that it was indeed all a misunderstanding by a local German patrol (p. 156).
79 Dansette (1946), p. 156.
80 BAM VV, 13.8. Veau’s diary was originally written ‘hour by hour on small pieces of paper’; the fair copy in the Bibliothèque de l’Académie de Medicine (BAM) in Paris contains transcriptions of these entries, interspersed with clearly identified subsequent clarifications. There is a typewritten version of the diary in the Archives Nationales (AN 72AJ/62/II/2), but it is not clear which parts are contemporaneous and which are subsequent additions. I have therefore referred to the BAM version. Yves Cazaux heard of the police action but in the early evening could see no evidence of it – there seemed to be just as many uniformed policemen guarding public buildings. By this stage, the protest was over (Cazaux, 1975, p. 128).
81 Dupuy (1945), p. 4.
82 Institut Hoover (1958), p. 615.
83 Rol also sensed that the stakes were getting higher by the hour. He contacted the Front National leader in charge of work with the gendarmes in the Paris region, and the two men agreed that they would argue for gendarmes to go on strike by refusing to carry out duties in uniform, and if possible, to join the FFI, taking their arms and equipment with them. Bourderon (2004), p. 364. The ‘Note de Service’ containing these orders is reproduced in Crémieux (1971), pp. 147–8.
84 After agreeing to the strike, they had talked to Henri Ribière, of their parent Resistance organisation, Libération-Nord. Ribière was less than enthusiastic about the proposed strike: like Parodi, Chaban and many of the non-communist leaders of the Resistance, he was paralysed by the prospect of reprisals. Ribière was also concerned that this was an initiative that came from the Front National, and that his men might thereby be caught up in a communist manoeuvre. Details that follow are from Bourderon (2004), Dansette (1946) and Lefranc (1965).
85 Dupuy (1945), p. 5. Ironically, this chimed with the view from the other side of the barricades: the collaborationist Prefect of Police, Amédée Bussière, had got wind of the threatened action and had written to every Paris policeman explaining the risks they ran if they went on strike.
86 Lefranc (1965), p. 111 reproduces a copy of a document that purports to be the original strike ‘order’. However, this document, dated 13 August, is signed by all three organisations and contains the precise address where the meeting of the Front National took place the previous day. The date/signature combination is simply wrong, while the inclusion of the address seems impossible. The same text – but without the address or date – is given in Dansette (1946), p. 480, together with the FFI declaration (pp. 479–80). For a discussion of the significance of the strike ‘order’ (‘ordre de grève’) rather than a strike call (‘mot d’ordre de grève’) see Chevandier (2008). Monniot (1965) suggests the meeting of the three Resistance groups took place on the 13th, but this is clearly an error.
87 Dansette (1946), pp. 479–80.
88 Denis (1963), p. 174.
89 Kriegel-Valrimont (1964), p. 178; Bourderon (2004), p. 364. For Dufresne’s own account of his arguments with Colonel Lizé of the FFI, see Massiet (1945), pp. 62–4.
90 Mesnil-Amar (2009), pp. 78–9.
CHAPTER 4
1 Cumberlege (1946), pp. 185–6.
2 All details from Mitcham (2007), pp. 161–76 and Zaloga (2009).
3 The road gives stupendous views of the surrounding countryside; the villages are beautiful and welcoming. It is one of my favourite parts of the world.
4 Warlimont (1964), p. 451.
5 After Action Report, p. 33; Renoult & West (2008), pp. 102–104.
6 Blumenson (1998).
7 Cazaux (1975), p. 130.
8 Boegner (1992), p. 279.
9 AN 72AJ/71/IX/17, p. 3; AN 72AJ/62/I/6, p. 1.
10 Cazaux (1975), p. 131.
11 Tuffrau (2002), p. 73.
12 AN 72AJ/71/IX/17, p. 3.
13 The strike figures are given in AN 72 AJ/71/IX/5, p. 5.
14 All details from Dupuy (1945), pp. 5–7.
15 This is the telling title of an article by the historian of the French police, Jean-Marc Berlière (1994). For analyses of the strike, see Chevandier (2008) and Kitson (1995).
16 AN 72AJ/235/II/291.
17 See transcripts of conversations between General Bridoux and Laval in Institut Hoover (1958), pp. 1700–1701.
18 Dansette (1946), p. 108; Institut Hoover (1958), p. 1075.
19 AN 72AJ/235/II/289.
20 Rol-Tanguy & Bourderon (1994), p. 191.
21 Bourderon (2004), p. 367.
22 Tillon (1977), p. 390; Tillon (1972), p. 234, n. 1.
23 Amouroux (1988), p. 624.
24 AN 72AJ/234/VI/24, p. 3.
25 ML C-K.
26 Reproduction of article from Paris-Soir (15 August 1944), in ANACR (n.d.), p. 2. In Aujourd’hui (15 August 1944), the headline read: ‘An appeal to Parisians to maintain order and food supplies. Any attempt at insurrection will be brutally repressed’ (see reproduction in Conte, 1984, p. 16).
27 Cazaux (1975), pp. 131–2.
28 Bourget (1984), p. 213; von Choltitz (1969), p. 219.
29 Von Choltitz (1969), p. 212.
30 B-308, p. 143.
31 NA GRGG 183, p. 3.
32 For an intriguing but inconclusive examination of whether von Kluge was really in contact with the Allies, see Brown (1988), pp. 609–610. When asked whether he thought von Kluge was a traitor, Goering evaded the question (ETHINT 30, p. 6).
33 Carell (1962), p. 259. According to Speidel (1971), p. 134, this episode took place on 12 August. However, Walter Warlimont, who was present in Rastenburg at the time, places it on 15 August (Warlimont, 1964, p. 450).
34 Cazaux (1975), p. 132.
35 AN 72AJ/234/VI/24, p. 1.
36 Grunberg (2001), p. 335.
37 Boegner (1992), pp. 279–80.
38 Pastor Marc Boegner, who was in touch with all the goings-on in the highest circles of what remained of the French government, wrote in his diary on 16 August: ‘With the full knowledge of the Germans, officers of the Intelligence Service and American Officers are negotiating with Laval and others.’ (Boegner, 1992, p. 280.) This rumour was repeated by the usually reliable Adrien Dansette in his history of the liberation of Paris: ‘[Laval] even negotiated with the Americans. On either 15 or 16 August, he met with two American emissaries. He outlined his twin projects – one with Pétain, the other without . . . he asked them to let General Eisenhower know his proposals.’ (Dansette, 1946, p. 112). There is no evidence for such a meeting. Most tellingly, in Laval’s self-serving ‘diary’ (Laval, 1948), written while he was in prison, Laval made no mention of any such meeting. If it had indeed occurred he surely would have described it.