“Hitler is your greatest ally, Sir,” replied Chet Hansen.
“Yes,” replied Bradley, ponderingly. “Perhaps he is.”53
The following day Bradley outlined his plan to US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau: “This is an opportunity that comes to a commander not more than once in a century. We’re about to destroy an entire hostile army. If the other fellow will only press his attack here at Mortain for another forty-eight hours, he’ll give us time to close at Argentan and there completely destroy him. He’ll have nothing left with which to oppose us. We’ll go all the way from here to the German border.”54
On briefing Montgomery, the Americans were pleased to find him more flexible than usual, even boasting that Crerar’s Canadian First Army would reach the notional meeting point at Argentan before Patton. Bradley, however, doubted that Canadian First Army would perform that well. General Simonds’ Canadian II Corps was tasked with leading the southward attack but his Canadian 4th Armoured Division and Polish 1st Armoured Division, while undoubtedly brave, were inexperienced, frequently making the error of not bypassing enemy strongpoints.55
Leclerc recognised such errors as a risk when leading the 2e DB to their first “rude entry” on the battlefield. Fairly or unfairly, however, Bradley had acquired the impression that Leclerc was “notoriously undisciplined” and only interested in liberating Paris. Had Bradley known that Leclerc’s wallet contained his appointment as “Interim Military Governor” of Paris, he might have shown the mettlesome Frenchman more understanding.56
Leclerc met Patton on 8 August, requesting a combat mission as soon as possible. Paul de Langlade wrote that Leclerc knew that most of the 2e DB had barely rested for three days while marching south from Vesly. But uppermost in Leclerc’s mind was their burning desire to experience their first battle. Besides, it seemed pointless, “having forged this magnificent tool (cet outil magnifique)”, not to let them take their chance against the enemy.57
The 2e DB’s transfer to General Wade Haislip’s XV Corps was confirmed later that day and Girard drove Leclerc and Alain de Boissieu over to Haislip’s HQ. After explaining that XV Corps would drive south to Le Mans, Haislip outlined the details for the subsequent thrust north on the axis Alençon-Argentan. On discovering that the US 5th Armored Division would advance on the 2e DB’s east flank, therefore closer to Paris. Leclerc protested. “But the jovial General Haislip,” Boissieu later wrote, “not yet being familiar with Leclerc, refused to change orders already issued by his staff and which he had already signed.”58
As a countryman Leclerc instinctively understood the ground they were operating in. He knew the roads and how fast a modern army could proceed along them. Seeing the route north to Alençon and beyond, he knew what it would be like going there, how the Germans would defend it, and he was already considering how to keep the bilan des pertes—his losses—to a minimum.
Since his family was involved in forestry, Leclerc also eyed apprehensively the sprawling Forêt d’Écouves north of Alençon. If it was a working forest, and it would be, it would offer defending troops plentiful cover. There would be tracks, clearings and ditches intersecting the planted areas and running alongside the roads, where men could hide with rifles, machine-guns and panzerfausts. In its clearings would be brilliant sunshine while, even in daylight, its thickets would be dark as night.
Haislip had given Leclerc a mission where the 2e DB stood an excellent chance of being chewed up. The US 5th Armored may have had the Forêt de Perseigne across its northward route to close the pocket, but it was smaller than the Forêt d’Écouves, straddled fewer main roads and offered the enemy less cover. Leclerc wanted to please the charming, francophile Wade Haislip, but also to get the 2e DB through Alençon and north of the Forêt d’Écouves as cost-effectively as possible.
Nothing reinforced de Gaulle’s agenda more forcefully in Leclerc’s mind than the arrival of Colonel Pierre Billotte to command the division’s third battlegroup. For Billotte it was something of a reunion; he knew Jacques Branet and Alain de Boissieu from Russia. Furthermore, in 1940, as Captain de Hauteclocque, operations officer of General Buisson’s 3rd Division Cuirassé, Leclerc had given Billotte his final orders before the fateful engagement where he was captured after his Char B was knocked out.59
After explaining the Alençon operation, Leclerc led Billotte into the mess tent. De Gaulle, Leclerc explained as they ate, had consigned the 2e DB to American command for operational purposes only and on the express condition that it should be in a fit state to liberate Paris when the time came. But Leclerc reserved the right to withdraw it from operations if it was misused, as he regarded himself as accountable foremost to de Gaulle’s provisional government. Billotte wrote: “The Americans understand nothing of important dispositions in the matter of sovereignty and the French political plan, which is a little complex for them. This can only result in difficulties.” The two Frenchmen concluded that they faced potentially irreconcilable difficulties with the Americans, but that if they had to choose between obeying the Allies or de Gaulle, they would obey de Gaulle. “Easier said than done for a soldier in the line of fire,” wrote Billotte.60
Billotte set off to find GT V’s HQ where he informed Colonel Warabiot that he was taking over and that Warabiot would command the 501e RCC. Sadly, this perpetuated the command problems in that battlegroup. The 501e RCC was the 2e DB’s only tank regiment composed of Gaullistes de la première heure, a source of immense pride, whereas Warabiot had been Vichyste until 1942. All four company commanders, Buis, Branet, Gavardie and Witasse, confronted Warabiot, politely declaring that it was inappropriate for him to lead them. Although Billotte understood the deep comradeship among early Free Frenchmen, he regarded their revolt as insubordination and Warabiot remained in command. Otherwise Billotte’s battlegroup contained a surprising mix; his operations officer was Leclerc’s Saint-Cyr petit-co—classmate—and former Vichyste cavalry officer Jean Fanneau de la Horie. Contrastingly, his infantry battalion consisted of Joseph Putz’s mainly Spanish 3/RMT.61
ACTING ON BEHALF OF A POLITICAL DETAINEE, Nordling was driven in his car through the German Embassy’s Rue de Lille gates. The guards saluted him but, on this occasion, a German military policeman brusquely gestured Nordling’s car to one side. An impressive Wehrmacht staff car had arrived shortly before, from which alighted a German general. “How very Prussian,” Nordling thought, noticing the German’s pursed lips and deliberate movements.
“Who’s that?” asked Nordling.
“That’s General von Choltitz,” the Feldgendarme replied. “The new commander of Gross-Paris.”62
At that stage, however, the fate of Paris had not become Nordling’s concern. He reckoned that over ten thousand political prisoners remained in the city’s jails and holding centres around les environs. The Swede also knew that, when the Allies approached Caen, the Germans had shot around ninety prisoners in the town’s jail irrespective of their gender, age or alleged offences.63
Around Paris hundreds of prisoners were held at Pantin and Compiègne awaiting transport to concentration camps. In the protracted negotiations he needed to undertake, Nordling needed every friendly face he could find. The Viennese aristocrat Erich von Posch-Pastor, despite his youth, was well-established in Paris. An intelligent man who also spoke a few languages, Posch-Pastor was, like Robert Wallraf, a Sonderführer—a “special” or project leader—which gave him great flexibility, meaning that Nordling could call him whenever he liked. Though uninterested in politics, Posch-Pastor was an anti-Nazi, albeit uninvolved in 20 July.64
The previous spring, when one of Nordling’s French friends was arrested, Posch-Pastor helped enthusiastically without needing to be begged or bribed. It later became clear to Nordling that Posch-Pastor had an equally anti-Nazi, kind and helpful senior called Major Émil ‘Bobby’ Bender. Initially Nordling described Bender as one of those “innumerable and mysterious personages who gathered around the Occupation authorities”. Unsure whether Bender was G
erman or another disaffected Austrian, or which ministry paid his salary, Nordling accepted Bender as part of the Nazis’ Paris administration, even though he always wore civilian clothing. Of elegant physique, Bender was about fifty, silver haired with well-chiselled features and a youthful countenance. He spoke good, slightly accented French and his conversation was usually pleasant, as though he was a private individual who happened to have a little influence.65
In fact Bender was a businessman and reserve officer of the Abwehr’s counter-espionage office based at the Hôtel Lutetia on the Boulevard de Raspail. His papers gave him sufficient authority to brush off unwelcome Gestapo involvement; Nordling even believed that Bender ran multiple identities like several shadier Germans operating in the half-light of Parisian espionage.66
During the winter of 1943–1944, while still dominating mainland Europe, the Germans were more merciful. Now, with so much going against them, they brutally brushed aside anyone making the slightest intercession from humanitarian motives. As the Allies advanced into France’s interior, and collabos packed their bags, the Teutonic conquerors of 1940 “seemed less and less sure of themselves”. But Nordling knew that the time had arrived when “I must place my cards on the table, and if one spoke frankly and directly with the Germans it should certainly be possible—I was deeply convinced of this—to save the lives of five to ten thousand innocents.”67
LECLERC PIVOTED THE 2e DB AT LA-CHAPELLE-SAINT-AUBIN north of Le Mans, ready to turn northeast towards Alençon. As usual the locals were thrilled to see French troops in their village. First Leclerc was offered a chair to sit on; next a table and a vase of flowers was placed beside it. So another villager suggested that he might as well sit outside the village café. But Leclerc graciously pointed out that he was not on holiday; a reality the villagers grasped once his Shermans rumbled along the narrow road, each slowing a track to turn, coating charming dwellings in fine dust.68 General Haislip arrived to watch progress, all smiles and bonhomie, only suggesting that the 2e DB should pull out their red aerial recognition panels to prevent Allied fighter bombers from attacking them.69
Both the 2e DB and the US 5th Armored Division were converging on the village of Tulagne, the junction of four roads never designed to take a single armoured division. Under such circumstances it was hard to prevent the 2e DB’s battlegroups and sub-groups from getting muddled up, let alone having their vehicles stuck in US 5th Armored’s bottlenecks. Eventually everything was sorted out and Sub-group Massu advanced through Souligné along similar routes to Normandy’s bocage country; tight lanes with high-banked hedges covered with summer foliage. Around 2pm the inevitable happened: one of Massu’s Stuarts was destroyed by a German flamethrower at a crossroads. Soon afterwards, four Shermans were destroyed, occasioning the deaths of popular lieutenants Zagrodski and d’Arcangue.70 When Captain Langlois de Bazillac’s 6e Compagnie met strong German resistance near the bridge of La Saunerie, a brutal exchange followed with a counterattack by German Panzer-Grenadiers being beaten off. The 2e DB was facing elements of the 9th Panzer Division, an Austrian cavalry formation and the 116th Panzer Division, known as the “greyhounds”. They were guarding the German Seventh Army’s southern flank.
Leclerc’s philosophy since desert raiding days was that tough opposition should be bypassed, isolated and then suppressed by artillery. Irritated at so many battlegroups getting held up, Leclerc let rip at Alain de Boissieu: “Understand this, Boissieu, this division is the biggest disillusion of my life. In Morocco and England I thought I had in my hands a wonderful unit and eh bien! I haven’t. It’s just wind and currents of air.”71
The only mid-rank officer performing as Leclerc wished that afternoon was the 12e Cuirassiers’ Captain de Laittre. In textbook manouevres his Stuarts found gaps in the enemy line and forged through while Laittre passed coordinates of enemy strongpoints to the artillery. Sadly de Laittre was killed that same afternoon, bringing the 12e Cuirassiers to a virtual standstill.72
Leclerc’s disappointment was mollified by a visit from the 5th Armored Division’s chief of staff who confirmed that his own division was facing similar difficulties; the bocage-style countryside favoured defence and made it difficult to move. Even so, Leclerc told both Langlade and Dio that their battlegroups needed to get a move on. Being held in reserve, Billotte’s group avoided le Patron’s criticism but, as a fellow “Russian”, Boissieu was sent to explain Leclerc’s viewpoint.
After their first real day of armoured warfare, Girard ambled down to the riverbank and plunged his head into the cool water. Refreshed, he sat up, looking at a meadow whose grass appeared vivid emerald in the fading light. Then a few divisional water tankers drove up to the river’s edge to replenish, ending his brief reverie.73
AS THE ALLIED FOOTHOLD IN NORTHERN FRANCE grew ever larger, lorry loads of fresh German troops drove through Paris to the front, while ambulances of wounded and exhausted soldiers travelled the other way. Did any one dare to think that the once proud Wehrmacht that had marched from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs Élysées every day for four years and two months was being reduced to a shadow of its former self? As tensions and liberation hopes rose, shortages in the shops were becoming acute.
In this atmosphere, Nordling strove to impress upon Otto Abetz that something should be done about political prisoners and the appalling conditions in the transit camps where they were held pending transport. Abetz passed Nordling to a junior official called Hoffman who treated Nordling amiably enough. But Nordling’s descriptions of how these prsioners were herded onto cattle trucks left young Hoffman serenely unmoved.
“Given the actual state of things,” Nordling remarked urbanely, “every abuse of power by the German authorities can only worsen their situation. Equally, every gesture of humanity on their part will be to their credit.”74
But Hoffman had no authority to agree to anything. Meanwhile, at the Hôtel Matignon, Abetz confered with Pierre Laval who now treated him with the disdain of a disappointed schoolmaster.
“My dear Ambassador,” said Laval. “The Americans will soon be in Paris. Is your army going to make a fight of it? Have they the means? Are they mad enough to transform Paris into a battlefield?”
“No, Monsieur President,” replied Abetz. “Given the state of its forces, the Wehrmacht is not capable of defending Paris.”
“In that case,” said Laval, “don’t uselessly turn our capital into a landscape of ruins. Declare Paris an ‘open city’ like we did in June 1940.”
“For that, I would have to refer to Berlin,” replied Abetz.
“Refer, refer, dear Abetz,” said Laval. “Don’t think in terms of this only being a military problem, but also a political problem. Who is going to take power in Paris once the Americans get here? Have you thought? General de Gaulle and his provisional government? The interior resistance which is dominated by Communists?” Laval stood back, gauging Abetz’s reactions to what he was saying. “Or a legal government, with the agreement of the British and Americans, to succeed my own government?”
“For my part the third eventuality looks like the least worst option,” said Abetz.
“I was sure, dear Abetz, of your perspicacity,” replied Laval. “In my opinion you need firstly to declare Paris and Versailles an ‘open city’; secondly you should allow me to reconvene the National Assembly at Versailles—and for that I have absolute need of Edouard Herriot whom you are holding under house arrest near Nancy. Thirdly, you should allow Marshal Pétain to come to Paris. What do you think?”
“I must consult Berlin,” replied Abetz.
“Do so quickly,” said Laval. “It’s essential to have a decision within twenty-four hours. It’s necessary to avoid civil war and other mess. Later, both the French and the Germans will thank you.”
Abetz promised to report back the following day. For his part, Laval thought he could congratulate himself.75
NORDLING HAD MAINTAINED CONNECTIONS with the French Resistance since 1943, when the internation
al lawyer, Maitre Mettetal, introduced him to Parisian financier Alexandre de Saint-Phalle. Hence, it was to Saint-Phalle that Nordling referred his concerns over political prisoners awaiting deportation. De Gaulle’s provisional government in Algiers was anxious that these prisoners were the very people post-war France would need.
Would it be acceptable to the provisional government, Nordling wondered, for these prisoners to be handed over to a neutral power like the Red Cross to be transported to more comfortable internment in Switzerland for the remainder of the war? German guards could remain until French ones could replace them, and the arrangement would then fall within the guidelines of the Hague Convention. Matters were becoming increasingly urgent. Saint-Phalle was bicycling across central Paris bringing Nordling news of further arrests.76
After consulting the Resistance and Swiss Consul René Naville, Nordling sent another note to the German Embassy drawing attention to Germany’s sinking reputation over human rights, hoping that someone working under Abetz might be concerned for his country’s image in the post-Hitlerian world. Encountering Hoffman again, Nordling was told emphatically that Abetz was virtually powerless in Paris and that he should direct his pleas to SS General Carl Oberg and then to Himmler.
“Then it will be too late to do what needs to be done,” sighed Nordling.
“Do you really think things are moving so fast?” Hoffman replied, appearing anxious.77
Nordling also managed to see Laval, who was preoccupied with reconvening the National Assembly and saving Vichy’s image before retribution arrived. Aside from Laval’s last desperate efforts, Nordling found the atmosphere inside the Hôtel Matignon highly optimistic, as though liberation might not entail a bloodbath for collabos after all.78
11 August 1944
ON 11 AUGUST NORDLING WAS VISITED by the distraught wife of the principal of the École Normale Supérieure, whose husband had been arrested by the Gestapo for refusing to denounce résistants among his students. Although this was just another incident, Nordling decided it justified a call to Otto Abetz, to whom he had not spoken for twenty-four hours.
Paris '44: The City of Light Redeemed Page 18
