The Resistance
Page 17
In June 1942 all Jews in the Occupied Zone over six years old were ordered to wear a yellow Star of David marked with the word Juif and were subject to curfew; in July they were banned from public places – cinemas, main roads, libraries, parks and gardens, phone boxes, cafés and restaurants, swimming pools, etc. – and had to ride in the last carriage of the Métro. In Paris the population seems to have gone out of their way to express their solidarity with the Jews, and some young people even wore yellow stars with their own slogans (‘Breton’, ‘Aryan’, ‘Honorary Jew’). This touched the Jewish population, and made the growing horror slightly less appalling. In July 1942, Hélène Berr, a twenty-one-year-old Jewish Parisienne, wrote in her diary:
And then there’s the sympathy of people in the street, on the Métro. Men and women look at you with such goodness that it fills your heart with inexpressible feeling. There’s the awareness of being above the brutes who make you suffer, and at one with real men and women. As the misfortunes are heaped up, this connection deepens. Superficial distinctions of race, religion and social class are no longer the issue – I never thought they were – there is unity against evil, and communion in suffering.395
Nevertheless, these empathetic gestures had no effect on the full horror of the Holocaust. On 16 and 17 July 1942 one of the most infamous events of the whole Occupation occurred in Paris. Under the command of René Bousquet, the Parisian police force rounded up 3,031 Jewish men, 5,802 women and 4,051 children from Paris. Around half of these – 6,900 – were herded into the Vélodrome d’Hiver or ‘Vél’ d’Hiv’, a covered cycling stadium in the fifteenth arrondissement, where they were held for several days with virtually no food or water, before being sent to internment camps in Drancy, Pithiviers or Beaune-la-Rolande. From there, the convoys began to rattle their way to Auschwitz, at the rate of nearly one a week. During the Occupation, a total of 75,721 Jews were deported from France. Only one in thirty returned.396 Seven months later, the appalling scene was repeated, this time in Marseilles, where on 22 and 23 January 1943 6,000 people were arrested in an ‘anti-Resistance raid’, and nearly 800 Jews were deported to Sobibor extermination camp. The operation was again commanded by René Bousquet.397
Sometimes, the arrest of Jews had a veneer of good manners, but it was always terrifying and devastating for all those concerned. On 1 August 1942, fourteen-year-old Renée Ferdinand-Dreyfus witnessed her father, Jacques, a civil servant who had won the Légion d’Honneur, being taken from their house in Montfort-l’Amaury, a small village about forty kilometres west of Paris. As she wrote in her diary:
At about 7, I was sewing with Geneviève. I stepped into the garden and saw two gendarmes. I asked them what they wanted and they said, ‘Mr Dreyfus knows what it’s about.’ That made me terribly anxious, and I went running upstairs where I found my aunt Chevrillon looking so anguished (I will never forget the look in her eyes) that I understood. In our room, Alice and Claudine were crying. ‘You know,’ Alice told me, ‘they’re taking Daddy.’ His suitcase was packed and he left with the gendarmes. He will leave at dawn tomorrow for Drancy. We all went to the gendarmerie to say good-bye to him.398
Jacques Ferdinand-Dreyfus was deported to Auschwitz on 31 July 1943; his family never saw him again.
The Vél’ d’Hiv round-up was soon a cause célèbre for the Resistance. An article in Défense de la France described the horror, detailing the conditions inside the Vél’ d’Hiv, including graphic descriptions of children being taken from their mothers. You can almost feel the author’s pen trembling with rage:
The odious yellow star had already shown that German domination is taking us rapidly back to the darkest days of the barbarism of the Middle Ages . . . With the latest measures taken against the Jews, we are sinking even lower. Those who have ordered these measures are forever condemned in the eyes of all human and divine justice . . . We hesitate to use the term bestiality, because a beast does not separate a female from its babies. This is a case of human intelligence entirely in the service of Evil, using all its resources to aid the global triumph of evil, of cruelty, of filth.399
Although no one realized that virtually all of these people were going to their deaths, the danger was obvious, and over the next few months the plight of the Jews became a recurring topic for the Resistance. On 13 September Moulin wrote to London: ‘The arrests of foreign Jews and their handing-over to the Germans and the repulsive measures taken with regard to Jewish children, initially unknown to the general public, are beginning to raise public opposition.’400
The Resistance, too, began to change. When Henri Frenay began the movement that eventually turned into Combat, he was deeply tainted by the casual, corrosive anti-Semitism of the French right wing. In October 1942, in an article entitled ‘The Jews, Our Brothers’, Combat showed quite how much the Resistance as a whole, and Frenay’s movement in particular, had altered:
Foreign Jews, the vanguard of French Jews and indeed, quite simply, of the French, victims of Hitlerian persecution, are experiencing a painful martyrdom. Their martyrdom and their persecution make them more dear to us. All those who suffer at the hands of the Germans, be they Jews or not, be they Communists or not, are our brothers. Their German or French butchers will one day be brought to account . . . There is no Jewish racial problem, no question of Jewish ‘blood’, for the simple reason that the supposed ‘Jewish race’ is, as all serious ethnologists recognize, as mixed as the French ‘race’ or the German ‘race’ . . . This Jewish community is a constituent component of the French national community, just like all the other religious, cultural or regional communities.401
One of the most moving expressions of this realization of the full horror of anti-Semitism was a series of powerful pamphlets, focusing solely on the fate of the Jews. One of these brochures, duplicated in about 10,000 copies in Paris and subsequently printed in Lyons, Nice, Toulouse and Grenoble, reproduced a letter thrown from one of the trains going from Drancy to Auschwitz at the end of July 1942. It was written by a woman, Sarah, and was addressed to the concierge of her apartment block in Paris, who was looking after Sarah’s two children:
Épernay, 27-7-42
I do not know if this letter will get to you. We are in a cattle-wagon. Everything has been taken from us, even the most essential toilet items. For a three-day journey we have hardly any bread, and a tiny supply of water. We have to go to the toilet on the floor, men and women, with no privacy. One woman is dead. When she was dying I called for help. She could have been saved. But the wagons are sealed and no help came. Now we have to put up with the smell of death. We are threatened with being beaten and shot. My sister and I are keeping up each other’s morale and we still have hope. Kisses to you all – the children, the family and our friends. Sarah.402
It is not known what happened to Sarah or her children.
*
During these tragic events, London was focused on abstract and petty squabbles that nonetheless had a direct effect on the Resistance. The military and financial resources that the British were prepared to send to France depended in part on their perception of the Free French. Relations between the British government and de Gaulle were fluctuating, to say the least. In June 1942 Churchill publicly praised the action of Free French troops led by General Koenig at Bir Hakeim in the Syrian desert, where they resisted Rommel’s Afrika Korps ‘with the utmost gallantry’.403 In a private conversation with de Gaulle he said Bir Hakeim was ‘one of the finest feats of arms in this war’.404
A few weeks earlier the Allies had shown a less positive view of the Free French when their troops invaded French Madagascar without even informing de Gaulle, and decided to leave the Vichy governor in charge of the island. De Gaulle was furious, and rightly questioned the attitude of the Allies – and in particular of the Americans. After a month of rows and bitter reproaches, during which de Gaulle threatened to take all his people off to Moscow, and even told his closest aids that ‘The Free French adventure is over’, Churchill once again
managed to placate de Gaulle. Nevertheless, the tensions with the Allies remained and would grow as the prospect of an Allied invasion of France came closer.405
In these circumstances, de Gaulle realized that he had to strengthen his influence over the Resistance, and especially over its left wing. The growing importance of the Resistance was shown by the widespread demonstrations that took place in the Non-Occupied Zone on 14 July 1942, following calls made on the BBC and initiated by Moulin. Towns like Grenoble, Limoges, Chambéry, Nice, Montpellier and Toulon all saw crowds of several thousand protesters, singing the ‘Marseillaise’ and showing their opposition to Vichy.
The two largest demonstrations took place in Lyons and Marseilles. In Lyons, 100,000 people marched around the town for five hours before clashing with the police. In Marseilles the demonstration was equally large, but less peaceful: fascists opened fire on the demonstration and killed six people. Despite this tragedy, the day was an incredible success, surpassing even the May Day demonstrations, and showed that the Resistance had real popular support.406 Two days later, however, Vichy and the Nazis made it clear that they had no intention of changing their policies in the slightest, and launched their round-up of the Jews.
Part of the reason for the growing influence of the Resistance was that Pineau’s long discussions with de Gaulle had paid off. As luck would have it, de Gaulle’s ‘social’ declaration was broadcast the day after Laval declared he wanted the victory of Germany and announced that French workers would go to work in Nazi Germany in return for the liberation of a few French prisoners of war. This heightened version of collaboration contrasted with de Gaulle’s speech, which promised a national assembly elected by the whole population (including women’s suffrage for the first time), stated his support for democracy and for the first time used the Republican slogan Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!
These gestures did not satisfy everyone in the Resistance, however. Pineau’s comrades in Libération-Nord were furious when the BBC claimed that all the Resistance movements backed de Gaulle’s declaration, when in fact they were less than impressed by parts of it. Others were more open in voicing their doubts. Le Franc-Tireur loyally reproduced de Gaulle’s declaration, but added a warning for the future:
We have previously stated, and we repeat it here, that we are entirely with General de Gaulle in his struggle to liberate the country; but we will be against him once liberation has occurred if, against all his previous declarations, he considered setting up a dictatorship which we would not be any better able to accept from a General than we have been from a Marshal.407
The underlying tension between de Gaulle and the Resistance was set out in that article. De Gaulle had tried to ignore the Resistance, but it had proved itself to be far more important than he imagined. To increase his influence over the Resistance, he had taken a political step towards its ideas, but that might not prove enough.
6
United, Divided, Betrayed
At ten o’clock in the morning of 17 April 1942, a group of army officers walked nonchalantly along the parapet of the rocky fortress of Koenigstein, high above the river Elbe, deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Koenigstein was a prison, and they were prisoners. When the coast was clear, one of them brought out a long cable, tied it to a metal bar in the rock and gave the other end to a dapper, grey-haired man in his early sixties, who was sitting on the parapet with his legs hanging over the edge. As he held tight on to the cable, his comrades slowly lowered him into the void. Once he reached the bottom, the cable was hauled back up and General Henri Giraud of the French army, imprisoned since the fall of France, picked up his walking stick and shuffled into the undergrowth.408
Giraud’s dramatic escape had been planned for over a year by Vichy Intelligence in cooperation with his wife – the plans had been transmitted to Giraud using a subtle code in her letters, while the cable had been carefully hidden in four cans of tinned ham.409 Hitler took the breakout as a personal affront, and called on Giraud – who had allegedly promised not to escape – to surrender immediately. But by the time ‘wanted’ posters were plastered all over Germany, Giraud had safely reappeared in Vichy France, to a huge fanfare of publicity and the intense embarrassment of Pétain and Laval. Giraud became a hero: ordinary French people were overjoyed that the Führer’s nose had been put out of joint, while important sections of the French army, uncomfortable with collaboration but too rigid and disciplined to follow de Gaulle, felt that here was a leader who could save their honour. Despite German protests, there was no question of handing Giraud back to the Nazis. The British were equally excited and asked Giraud to come to London. MI6 telegrammed Marie-Madeleine Fourcade’s ALLIANCE intelligence circuit:
HAVE LEARNED HEROIC ESCAPE OF GENERAL GIRAUD STOP . . . WOULD BE MOST HAPPY IF YOU WOULD AGREE TO CONTACT HIM TO DISCOVER HIS INTENTIONS STOP WOULD HE SERVE AGAIN STOP IF SO WHERE STOP410
Fourcade did as she was asked, but her agent reported that Giraud had no intention of going to London. On the other hand, if the British would kindly supply Giraud with money and material help, and put him in contact with the various Resistance groups in Occupied Europe, the General was prepared to become leader of the European Resistance. London’s reaction is not recorded.
The Resistance, too, soon discovered that Giraud had a very inflated view of his own role. In summer 1942 Claude Bourdet of Combat was sent to persuade Giraud to join the Free French. He explained the role and structure of the Resistance organizations in some detail; in response, Giraud gave a long, condescending account of the various ‘cards’ he claimed to hold – the French army, the Resistance and, of course, the ‘tiny’ Free French armed forces. All of these, proclaimed Giraud, were elements he would deploy as he saw fit, in his role as the leader of the European Resistance. Amazed, Bourdet took his leave. François de Menthon had a similar experience when he asked Giraud what he thought about the social issues being raised by the Resistance, which had begun to influence de Gaulle. The General smiled:
Social questions are irrelevant. Believe me, I know. When I was governor of Metz there were some major movements among the workers, some strikes. I posted machine guns at each corner of the city and things settled down pretty sharpish.411
The differences between Giraud and the Free French were soon common knowledge. On 20 May Bernard Pierquin, a Parisian medical student, wrote in his diary: ‘Giraud’s refusal to join de Gaulle in London is worrying. It appears that the two men cannot stand each other, either militarily or politically. This will continue.’412 Pierquin was right. The conflict between Giraud and de Gaulle, played off against the background of manoeuvres and disputes with the Allies, in particular with the United States, lasted over a year.
Sensing how the war would be won, Giraud wanted to work with the Americans, and by July he was in discussions about the planned Allied invasion of North Africa (Operation TORCH).413 The USA was attracted to Giraud because he was not de Gaulle, whom they loathed and distrusted because he was so independent and obdurate, and because they hoped that the French army’s support for Giraud would ensure the success of the invasion. If Giraud was involved in the action, the Allies reasoned, the Vichy troops in the region might be persuaded not to fight.
But Giraud proved just as unrealistic in his dealings with the Americans as he had been with the British and with the Resistance. First he demanded complete control of the operation, then he insisted that the US delay the operation so that an Allied bridgehead could be established on the French Mediterranean coast. Finally, he wanted to be told of the launch date ten days in advance.414 Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who had to transmit Giraud’s demands, described them as ‘a sort of strategic delirium’.415 The Americans apparently agreed with her. Giraud’s dreams were simply brushed aside – they would humour their stooge only so much and they would not give way on any of these points. They were, however, quite happy to agree to his insistence that the Free French should not be involved at all.416
At the beginning of November
Giraud was brought out of France on a British submarine, through the work of the ALLIANCE circuit. But a terrible price was paid – while ALLIANCE transmitted information about Giraud to London, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade and the whole ALLIANCE leadership were arrested. Then a chance event led the Americans to change their plans, and Giraud’s importance began to fade.417 When Operation TORCH began early in the morning of 8 November, Admiral Darlan, the head of Vichy armed forces, was in Algiers visiting his sick son. Contacted by the Americans, he responded positively, making it plain that he was open to discussions with the Allies. Darlan was a far bigger fish than Giraud, and the Americans decided to make the Vichy admiral their ally.418 Giraud, sidelined, sat out the invasion in Gibraltar.
Operation TORCH was the first indication that the Allies could turn the tables on Hitler. Over 100,000 American and British troops and 100 ships took part in the invasion, which involved a massive parachute drop and five simultaneous amphibious landings along nearly 1,000 miles of the North African coastline. In Algiers, right-wing Giraudist army officers (including Emmanuel d’Astier’s brother), together with civilian members of Combat, led an uprising to help the operation, but the seizure of the city was still a bloody affair. Throughout French North Africa, Vichy forces fought back against what they saw as an invasion, not liberation. But Darlan played his role to perfection, persuading his men to surrender, and within three days the fighting was over. With US backing, Darlan, the man who had been Pétain’s heir apparent, the enthusiastic leader of Vichy’s anti-Semitic and profoundly reactionary ‘National Revolution’, was now in charge of French North Africa. For years, the US had been hoping to persuade Vichy to change its politics and join the Allies. The second half of their hopes had now been partly fulfilled; the first half no longer seemed to matter.