“Field Marshal, until now it was a military funeral without honors. It now may be one with military honors.”17
Two days later Kluge convened a meeting of military commanders at his headquarters to transmit the Führer’s order for a scorched-earth policy in Paris. The plan was presented by General Blumentritt, who said it was “strategically essential.” If Paris’s industry was not crippled, it could be turned against Germany in a matter of weeks. That included the city’s gas, electricity, and water systems. On the other hand, “setting the population into turmoil and paralyzing the city” would slow the Allied advance. Von Choltitz was not surprised. Blumentritt was simply putting Hitler’s orders into effect. But von Choltitz objected to the timing. He told the meeting he was interested in defending Paris, not destroying it. The time to put Blumentritt’s program into effect was when they were abandoning the city. Launching the program prematurely would throw thousands of factory workers into the hands of the Resistance. And besides, “German soldiers drink water, too.”18
Von Choltitz carried the day. But the victory was brief. Just before he was relieved by Hitler, Kluge ordered von Choltitz to commence the demolition of the bridges in Paris. “The situation had turned dramatic,” said von Choltitz. The Allies were advancing. Von Choltitz said the information he had was that they would surround the city for safekeeping. “What value would the detonation have? I also needed the bridges myself to move troops within the city. And finally, what a barbaric order I was asked to execute.”19
Von Choltitz told higher headquarters that he could not blow up the bridges since he did not have the explosives or the men to implant them. At Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, chief of operations Alfred Jodl responded by assigning a veteran engineer unit with explosives to do the job. The unit was commanded by Captain Werner Ebernach, an old friend of von Choltitz from before the war. In 1936 at army maneuvers in Gimna, Saxony, Ebernach had blown up two bridges across the Mulde River, which von Choltitz had seen. Now he had been ordered to destroy all sixty-five of Paris’s bridges. “Go ahead into the preparations,” von Choltitz told him. “But do not detonate anything without my personal approval. The Seine is not the Mulde and Paris is not Gimna. We have the whole world watching us here, not just a handful of generals.”20
As von Choltitz expressed it,
It was my responsibility to maintain order with the available troops and to facilitate the withdrawal of troops passing through the city. Whether blowing up the bridges was part of this responsibility was entirely my decision. It made my situation more difficult. Beyond my military consideration it was my firm intent to protect the civilian population and their beautiful city. Both motives, different in their intent, were part of my concept of being a soldier. They pointed in the same direction: I had to do everything possible to avoid the destruction of Paris.21
On August 16, von Choltitz was called on by Paris officials in his office at the Meurice. The officials were concerned about the explosives that had been planted not only in the bridges, but also in the walls of power plants, telephone exchanges, electricity works, and gas installations. It was obvious that they would be set off when the Germans withdrew. They appealed to von Choltitz to spare the facilities.
“I allowed these gentlemen to speak and was deeply impressed by their civility, intelligence, and courage,” said von Choltitz. “In the end, I rose from my seat and told them that fate had made us neighbors and that we would stay that way. The war had brought an endless tragedy and that I had no desire to burden our nations with more of it. I would order that the installations they were concerned about not be destroyed.”22
There was one condition. French officials should maintain order in the city, said von Choltitz, and he would remove the explosives. And he did. At von Choltitz’s order, explosives were removed from the power plants, gas installations, and telephone exchanges. Afterward the French commented on von Choltitz’s moderation and the total absence of the brutality his predecessors had shown.23
Von Choltitz was surprised on August 17 when Field Marshal Walther Model suddenly appeared in his office. Model and von Choltitz knew each other from the Russian front, and Model had just arrived after a thirty-six-hour trip. Model told von Choltitz that he had come to replace Kluge, who had just been relieved. Von Choltitz asked Model whether Kluge had known about the July 20 plot. Model nodded. “In this moment I realized the depth of the tragedy playing out here. Field Marshal von Kluge was on his way to the gallows.”
“I studied Model’s face intently,” said von Choltitz.
I believe that he knew he was faced with a painful task. The Field Marshal was a brave and determined soldier; a man who often with his small plane landed in the middle of fighting troops in order to give the necessary instructions. Now he had been named the commander of the army group and the Normandy front. I told him about the situation in Paris and what I was doing. He appeared to agree. At least he did not say anything to the contrary. I did not mention the order to blow up the bridges. The often injured general appeared so tired after his trip, I didn’t feel I should discuss difficult questions with him. After a frugal lunch, he departed for his headquarters. I never saw him again.24
Model would kill himself in Germany in April 1945.
Von Choltitz also intervened to prevent the execution of thousands of prisoners held by the SS and Gestapo in concentration camps and prisons around the city. Two days after ordering the explosives removed, he was called on by the Swedish consul general in Paris, Raoul Nordling, who raised the question of the political prisoners held in the city. He told von Choltitz he was afraid the SS would use the German pullout from the city as an excuse to execute the prisoners. Von Choltitz later described Nordling as “a brave representative of humanity.”25
Raoul Nordling
As they were discussing the issue, General Carl Oberg, head of the SS in France, arrived and said he had been ordered to evacuate the prisons and camps. After he departed, von Choltitz asked Nordling for his opinion. Nordling said he thought it was of “the utmost importance to prevent the massacre of the prisoners.”26 Von Choltitz agreed but said the prisoners were not his responsibility and he could not discharge them. They belonged to the military commander in France, whose office was in the Majestic Hotel. He gave Nordling a letter urging the prisoners’ release and told him to take it to a Major Huhm at the Majestic. “But you had better hurry,” von Choltitz told him. “Major Huhm leaves Paris at noon.”27
At the Majestic, Huhm met Nordling immediately and, after looking at von Choltitz’s letter, agreed to cooperate. A contract was drawn up providing for the transfer of the prisoners, camps, and hospitals to Nordling assisted by the Red Cross.28 In return, five German POWs would be released for every prisoner let go, but as Huhm said, “it’s only a formality.” Nordling returned the contract to von Choltitz, who immediately signed it. More than three thousand prisoners were quickly released into Nordling’s custody from five prisons, three camps, and three hospitals. At one camp, the SS commander refused to comply, and von Choltitz sent his ranking staff officer, Colonel Heigen, to enforce the order. At another, 850 prisoners had already been loaded on a train, but a German general at a suburban station who received a copy of the contract ordered the prisoners’ release. When Heinrich Himmler heard about the arrangement, he did his best to overrule von Choltitz, but by then it was too late. With the Gestapo in retreat, there was nothing he could do.
Von Choltitz also did his best to keep Paris supplied. As he expressed it, “Paris had no coal, the Metro had stopped running, and electricity was only available for a few hours each day. I worried much about providing for the four-and-a-half million inhabitants…. I decided to feed the population using the army’s provisions. But this proved difficult. While some parts of the city were completely quiet, other parts were upset in anger. I could understand all this, but it certainly made the distribution of food more difficult.”29
As the Allies approached, the Resistance in Paris
became bolder. On August 19, three thousand members of the Paris police switched sides and took control of the préfecture (police headquarters) and adjoining buildings near Notre-Dame. Von Choltitz responded carefully. He dispatched a few troops and a few tanks to isolate the préfecture, but declined to storm the building—which he easily could have done. Instead, he discussed the situation with Nordling, who had come to his office. “I released prisoners, and what happened? Terrorists took the Prefecture, and they are shooting just under my windows…. I have to maintain order, and I will maintain order. I will destroy the Prefecture.” But then von Choltitz paused. “I was at Stalingrad. Since then I have done nothing but maneuver to avoid encirclement. Retreat after retreat, defeat after defeat. And here I am now in Paris. What will happen to this marvelous city?”30
Nordling responded quickly. “If you destroy the Prefecture, you will also destroy Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle. And to what end?” Nordling urged von Choltitz to think about the future, about what future historians might write about the destruction of Paris.31
Von Choltitz was moved. “If there were only leaders among the insurgents, we could find a modus vivendi, but with whom am I supposed to negotiate?”32 Nordling once again sprang into action. Shortly after eight that evening he was in the préfecture laying out the terms of a truce. Von Choltitz, he told the leadership of the insurrection, was ready to recognize the combatants in the préfecture de police as the civil authority responsible for Paris, to treat those captured as prisoners of war, to respect all the local occupied administrations, and to aid in supplying food and water to Paris, all on the condition that the truce be respected.
For the Resistance, the offer was a godsend. They were virtually out of ammunition, and the Germans could storm the préfecture almost at will. At 9 p.m. on August 19, the leaders of the Resistance accepted von Choltitz’s offer in principle. The truce had been agreed on. Working it out in practice would take effort, and it would never fully succeed. But for the moment peace had been restored in Paris, and the destruction of its historic buildings had been avoided.
That same day von Choltitz had been visited by three SS officers from Berlin. They had come to Paris on Hitler’s orders, they told him, to remove the Bayeux Tapestry from the Louvre and take it to Berlin. The tapestry is an enormous embroidered cloth that depicts the Battle of Hastings. Von Choltitz had been told the night before by the local SS commander that the men would be coming, and had agreed with the German army’s art curator in Paris that they would lose the keys to the Louvre. But that was not necessary. Much of the Louvre was now under the control of the Resistance. Von Choltitz told the visitors it would not be a problem. He could provide them with weapons and they could force their way in. “Surely, you’ll manage to fetch the tapestry from the cellar, it’s a trifling job… for the Führer’s best soldiers.”33 The SS men were startled. They had not expected to have to fight for the tapestry, and were unprepared. After brief reflection they told von Choltitz they didn’t believe the tapestry was in the Louvre and returned to Berlin.
German troops in Paris, August 1944
The truce Nordling had negotiated was not totally successful. Communist resistance fighters refused to accept it, and so did the SS. But those were exceptions. For the most part the truce held. Under its terms, German battle troops moving eastward through Paris would use the outer boulevards and avoid the center of the city. The Resistance (FFI) members were recognized as soldiers and treated according to the laws of war. At 2 p.m. on August 20, the Resistance began the circulation throughout Paris of the following notice:
In light of the German High Command’s agreement to refrain from attacking public buildings occupied by French troops and to treat French prisoners in accordance with the laws of war, the Provisional Government of the French Republic and the National Committee of Liberation ask you to cease firing on the occupiers until Paris has been completely evacuated. The greatest calm is recommended and the population is urged to avoid the streets.34
Von Choltitz did not want the truce announced over the radio because he believed it would get back to Hitler’s headquarters. Instead, German military vehicles and French police cars drove through the city with loudspeakers announcing it. The Paris préfecture de police, speaking for the Provisional Government of the French Republic, also ordered a suspension of arms. Parisians were overwhelmingly delighted and welcomed the truce warmly. French flags were displayed throughout the city, there was dancing in the streets, and stores and cafés remained open.
On August 20, Hitler issued an order to Field Marshal Model that German forces were to hold fast at the Seine and that Paris was to become the Schwerpunkt (strong point) of the defense line. “The Paris bridgehead is to be held at all costs, if necessary without regard to the destruction of the city.”35 Model had been in command only three days, but he realized that Hitler’s order would mean the final defeat of the German army in France and would open the door for the Allies to advance into Germany. He replied that he could hold Paris with two hundred thousand more troops and six additional Panzer divisions. But without them he was withdrawing behind the city and would try to form a battle line on the Marne and the Somme. “Tell the Führer that I know what I am doing,” he told an incredulous General Alfred Jodl, at Hitler’s headquarters.36 On August 20, Model ordered the German First Army and Fifth Panzer Army to evacuate their positions in front of Paris, cross the Seine over the bridges that still existed in the city, and move north. The defense of Paris would be left to von Choltitz.
But the peace in Paris was shaky. It was aided slightly on the 21st when German soldiers captured three of the leaders of the Resistance, including Alexandre Parodi, de Gaulle’s minister in Paris. The three were brought to von Choltitz’s office in the Hotel Meurice, and von Choltitz impressed on them the importance of maintaining the truce. If fighting broke out again, the consequences would be tragic, he said.
Parodi replied that he too wanted peace and order in the city. But he said, “You, General, command an army. You give orders and your men obey. The Resistance is made up of many movements, and I do not control them all.”37 Von Choltitz understood, but hoped something could come from the meeting. He ordered the three men released to Nordling’s custody, and they luckily avoided being killed by the SS, which was waiting for them on the street outside von Choltitz’s office.
Von Choltitz recognized that his days in Paris were numbered. Model had withdrawn the forces in front of the city, and the Resistance was growing bolder. On the night of August 21 von Choltitz wrote to his wife, Uberta, in Baden-Baden: “Our task is hard and our days grow difficult. I try always to do my duty, and must often ask God to help me find the paths on which it lies.” He asked Uberta if their four-month-old son, Timo, had started to cut his teeth, and told her to kiss their daughters for him. “They must be proud of their father, no matter what the future holds.”38 Von Choltitz gave the letter to his cousin Adolf von Carlowitz, who was leaving Paris to return to Germany.
The next day von Choltitz met again with Nordling, over drinks in von Choltitz’s office. “Don’t tell the English, but I’m going to have a whisky,” said von Choltitz. After swallowing the whisky in one gulp, von Choltitz began the conversation. “Your truce, Herr Counsel General, doesn’t seem to be working very well.” Von Choltitz said the three prisoners he had released had done nothing to improve the truce, and the insurrection was growing.
Nordling was briefly taken aback. There was only one person the Resistance really obeyed and that was General de Gaulle, he said. But de Gaulle was not in Paris. He was probably with the Allies in Normandy.
“Why doesn’t someone go to see him?” asked von Choltitz.
Nordling was struck by von Choltitz’s directness. Would he authorize someone to pass through German lines to see the Allies?
“Why not?” von Choltitz replied.
Nordling responded as von Choltitz hoped he would. As a diplomat, he was prepared to take on the mission to the Allies if
he had a valid pass.
Von Choltitz nodded. He then laid on his desk the orders he had received both from Berlin and from Model to begin the destruction of Paris. He told Nordling that despite the orders he had tried to effect a truce, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that the truce had failed. Very soon, he said, he was going to have to carry out the orders he had been given or he would be relieved. The only thing that would prevent that would be rapid arrival of the Allies in Paris.
“You must realize that my behavior in telling you this could be interpreted as treason, because what I am really doing is asking the Allies to help me.”
Nordling was overwhelmed by what von Choltitz was saying. And he realized that his own words to the Allies might not be enough to convince them of what von Choltitz had just said. So he asked von Choltitz for a document he could give the Allies.
Von Choltitz declined. “I could not possibly put what I have just said on paper.” But he then wrote out in longhand a statement that would permit Nordling to pass through German lines: “The Commanding General of Greater Paris authorizes the Consul General of Sweden R. Nordling to leave Paris and its line of defense.” He also said that if Nordling had difficulty getting through German lines to call him and he would repeat the instructions over the telephone.
Nordling agreed to try. Von Choltitz was visibly relieved. He had found a way to warn the Allies of the danger hanging over Paris, and tell them that the road to the city was open. How long it would remain open was impossible to tell, and if the Allies didn’t come soon, he would have to take the action ordered and destroy the city.
Liberation of Paris : How Eisenhower, De Gaulle, and Von Choltitz Saved the City of Light (9781501164941) Page 7
