Liberation of Paris : How Eisenhower, De Gaulle, and Von Choltitz Saved the City of Light (9781501164941)

by Smith, Jean Edward

  The combination of the police strike and the Allied advance quickly changed the mood in Paris. The Germans stood by and watched it happen. Von Choltitz believed it was better to have the police on strike, but still politically neutral, than push them into the Resistance. And without the police, the citizens of Paris became nervous. Was their absence the beginning of anarchy and revolution? Rol and the PCF hoped so. The Germans for their part hoped that the police were just balking at plans to disarm them—an order that could be rectified. Collaborationists were particularly worried because their protection was disappearing. And the police played their cards close to their chest. Although they refused to go to work, they also were careful not to engage in any anti-German activities so long as the Germans didn’t try to disarm them.

  The police strike motivated others. On August 16, workers for Paris’s subway, the Métro, the telephone and telegraph company, and the railroad went on strike. These strikes hit the Germans more than the Parisians since the Métro and railroads were being used almost exclusively by the German occupying authority. But when postal workers went out on strike the next day, Parisians felt the impact. Meanwhile, Allied forces continued their advance. On August 19, Patton’s forces reached the Seine, just thirty-five miles west of Paris. “I pissed in the Seine this morning,” the general told Omar Bradley.13

  De Gaulle and the Free French leadership were keenly aware of the need to control any Paris insurrection. In early August, de Gaulle had dispatched Charles Luizet to Paris to take control of the Paris police on behalf of the Provisional Government. Luizet had been a roommate of General Leclerc at the Saint-Cyr military academy, where he studied under de Gaulle. He had joined the Free French in July 1940 and had been the head of Free French intelligence operations in North Africa. When Corsica was liberated in 1943, Luizet was appointed the prefect. De Gaulle recognized the importance of being in control of the police before the Allies arrived in Paris. He gave Luizet a written order from the Provisional Government appointing him the prefect of police and told him to get to Paris as soon as possible. Luizet left Corsica on August 2, but after a tortuous trip did not arrive in Paris until the 17th, only to find that the police were on strike.

  Luizet met immediately with Parodi and Chaban-Delmas, who were skeptical both of the strike and of a possible insurrection. Luizet disagreed. With Allied forces close by, he believed the strike by Paris police was the first step in the insurrection. If the Gaullists did not move quickly to gain control, then Rol and the FFI would. As Luizet saw it, he and Parodi and Chaban-Delmas had to move quickly to establish control over the police force. Above all, they had to beat Rol and the FFI in doing so.

  Working through the Honneur de la Police and the Police et Patrie, Luizet organized the forcible takeover of the préfecture de police on the morning of August 19. At six that morning, a young policeman climbed on top of a car in the préfecture’s courtyard and shouted, “In the name of General de Gaulle and the Provisional Government of the French Republic, I take possession of the Préfecture de Police.” At the same time, some fifteen hundred to two thousand policemen waiting outside rushed into the courtyard and began singing La Marseillaise. There was no resistance. The tricolor was raised above the building, and the insurrection had begun.

  Luizet was sitting on the terrace at the café Les Deux Magots sipping a cup of coffee when a black police car drove up and a policeman approached. “Monsieur le Prefect, the Prefecture is taken. It is now under your orders. Your car awaits.”14 Luizet stepped into the second car and drove off to his new position as the head of the Paris police department. His plan had worked perfectly. The Gaullists had taken control of the Paris police and had done so bloodlessly.

  Rol was taken by surprise. Riding his bicycle along the quai to his headquarters in the 19th Arrondissemement, he heard the Marseillaise from the préfecture. Curious about the singing, Rol rode to the building and tried to enter, but was rebuffed by the guards. Going to a nearby garage, he changed into his Spanish Civil War uniform, which he had carried with him, and returned. He was greeted with a salute and escorted upstairs, where he met with the new Comité de la Libération de la Police. After a brief discussion, the police agreed to wear an FFI armband to show they were part of the Paris Resistance, and Rol was driven by the police to his headquarters.

  That afternoon the leaders of the Resistance met to weigh the pros and cons of launching the insurrection. Parodi accused the Communists of beginning the revolt prematurely. André Tollet, the senior Communist present, pointed out that if the insurrection had begun, it was because of the Gaullist seizure of police headquarters. Eventually, the heated discussion became practical and the two sides came together. Using the authority entrusted to him by de Gaulle, Parodi issued orders for the mobilization of all Resistance members eighteen to fifty years old. He also placed all Resistance fighters under Rol and the FFI. Better unity than division. Rol had the necessary command structure to handle the insurrection, and it was best to join forces. The orders concluded with the words “Vive de Gaulle. Vive la France.” Both sides had come together. “If I have made a mistake,” said Parodi, “I shall have a lifetime to regret it in the ruins of Paris.”15

  While the Resistance leaders were meeting, the situation at the préfecture de police had turned ugly. German forces, including tanks and armored vehicles, had the building surrounded, and had begun a limited attack, but held off on a full-fledged assault. The iron entrance to the préfecture doors had been blown off, but the tanks had stopped short of trying to enter. Inside the préfecture, there was a growing recognition that if the Germans launched a full attack, they would prevail. One policeman called his wife. “This is all going badly. We will probably never see each other again.”16 And the police also found themselves short of ammunition.

  Into the breach stepped Raoul Nordling, who correctly feared the massacre of the police inside the building if the Germans launched a major attack. In the afternoon Nordling went to the préfecture and spoke with Luizet. The two agreed that Nordling should see von Choltitz and try to work out a truce. Nordling immediately went to see von Choltitz at the Hotel Meurice. The meeting proved decisive. It was clear that von Choltitz did not want the fighting to escalate, but at the same time needed assurance that the violence would end. “It is against my men they shoot,” he told Nordling.17 Nordling pointed out that the FFI was primarily involved in fighting the Vichy forces and that the Germans were in the middle. Von Choltitz by this point knew the German army was on its way east, and that Paris could not be defended. He did not want to destroy the city, but needed a truce so that his forces would be preserved. Nordling left the meeting convinced that he could work out a truce that would end the fighting at the préfecture.

  For the next several hours, Nordling negotiated with von Choltitz and Luizet by telephone. By 9 p.m. he had the terms in place. Von Choltitz would recognize the FFI as regular combatants, and agreed that the Germans would not fire on any building that was occupied by the police or the Resistance. In return, the French agreed not to attack any German installation or disrupt the movement of German troops through the city. For Nordling, it was an amazing diplomatic achievement. Not only had he saved the lives of the police officers in the préfecture and the buildings from destruction, but the truce also recognized the FFI as a legitimate negotiating partner. Von Choltitz faced the danger that if the truce became widely known, he could be relieved of command and arrested for negotiating with the enemy without approval from higher authority. For that reason the truce was not broadcast over the radio, but rather was announced by printed notices and loudspeaker trucks that moved through the city.

  The truce saved the police, but was not universally respected. Neither the FFI nor the SS recognized it, and both remained in action. Rol especially was against it. “As long as the Germans are in Paris,” he said, “it is our duty to fight them.”18 The Communists also rejected it. Said André Tollet, “The enemy is on the run. Why accept a truce? We have nothing to gain
.”19 But the Gaullists were very much in favor. Chaban-Delmas understood that disagreement over the truce might split the Resistance, but thought it would give several more days for the Allies to get to Paris, when the Resistance could prevail. Unlike Rol, he recognized that the Germans could crush the Resistance if they decided to do so.

  Sunday, August 20, was relatively quiet. There was minor fighting in the Latin Quarter, but for the most part it was a normal Sunday. One exception was the seizure of the Hôtel de Ville, the traditional seat of the Paris government, by a small group of policemen led by Leo Hamm, editor of the clandestine newspaper Combat. The prefect was arrested, as was Mayor Pierre Taittinger and the entire Paris City Council. But thus far, the casualties of the revolt had been relatively low. The best estimates are that 231 Frenchmen had been killed and some 800 wounded. German losses were somewhat fewer. The Gaullists now held not only the préfecture de police, but the Hôtel de Ville as well. With the truce in effect, Gaullists would move to occupy the various ministries of the French government. As one scholar of the period has written, “It was a coup within a coup.”20 While Rol and the FFI engaged in various street battles throughout the city, the Gaullists seized the major government installations.

  L’Hôtel de Ville

  One of the most significant was the Hôtel Matignon, the official residence of the French prime minister and the Paris headquarters of Pierre Laval. Parodi decided to occupy it to give status and prestige to the Gaullist movement. On the spur of the moment, he sent his young assistant Yves Morandat and his secretary Claire Walborn to do the job. If there is opposition, said Parodi, leave the area immediately. “If there is opposition,” Morandat replied, “I’ll leave in a coffin.”21

  Not being Parisians, Morandat and Walborn did not know where the Hôtel Matignon was, and after bumbling their way around Paris on bicycles, they eventually came to it on the Rue de Varenne, across the Seine and deep on the Left Bank. Wearing the tricolor armbands of the FFI, they approached the heavily guarded entrance and told the sentry they had come to see the commander. They were escorted past more than a hundred guards in crisp black uniforms in the courtyard. “What do you want?” asked the commander.

  “I have come to occupy these premises in the name of the Provisional Government of the French Republic,” Morandat replied.

  The commander called the guard to attention. “At your orders,” he said. “I have always been a firm republican.”22 Laval had departed Paris several days before, and the Hôtel Matignon became a seat of de Gaulle’s government.

  Later that day, Parodi presided over a meeting of de Gaulle’s ministers in the office of the prime minister—an office Laval had used the week before. The meeting dealt with the food problem in Paris, unemployment, and the need to establish order in the city. No decisions were made, but the fact that the ministers of the Provisional Government were meeting in Paris was widely noted. Paris newspapers carried the story and overwhelmingly announced their support. That was important because the Gaullists needed public support, particularly from the left. Rol and the FFI said nothing. That too was significant. They did not endorse, but they did not oppose. They were focused on fighting the Germans, not on seizing power.

  And the fighting on the streets of Paris continued, as the FFI and the SS continued to ignore the truce. At Rol’s urging, the people of Paris took to the streets and began constructing barricades. Chaban-Delmas and the Gaullists went along, because the truce with von Choltitz said nothing about barricades. And barricades were a distinct feature of Paris’s history. The revolutions of 1789 and 1848 had featured Paris barricades, and they were memorialized in Les Miserables, Victor Hugo’s novel of the failed 1832 revolution. Within two days, some four hundred street barricades had been constructed. Most were built with paving stones from the roads, buttressed by disabled vehicles, felled trees, and sandbags. The barricades served no useful military purpose. If the Germans wished, they could have destroyed them with a couple of 88 mm shells. But they had an important symbolic value. They encouraged Parisians—male and female, young and old—to take part in the Resistance, as well as suggesting that the people of Paris controlled the streets. For the first time in four years, the people of the city were coming together. One Parisian noted that the barricades were not really aimed at the Germans but were “a matter between us and our long humiliation.”23

  And just as von Choltitz had done, many in the Resistance now looked for Allied intervention. Dr. Robert Monod, a leading Paris physician, devised a plan to seek help. On August 20, Monod wrote, “We have to prepare for a German offensive. Tomorrow the battle will resume and be much more violent.”24 Monod thought the Germans were using the truce to prepare for a major attack and that what the Resistance needed most was the arrival of Allied soldiers. Monod wrote to Colonel Rol outlining a plan to move through German lines and urge the Americans to come as soon as possible. Monod suggested that he could handle the mission but he needed help. At 6 p.m. on the 20th, Rol’s chief of staff, Major Roger Cocteau, codename Gallois, appeared at Monod’s apartment and said that Rol agreed with the idea, and that he, Gallois, was going to accompany Monod. Gallois spoke English fluently, and ironically he and Monod were old friends. But there was a problem. Rol wanted the mission to ask the Americans to drop weapons for the Resistance. According to Gallois, Rol believed that the Americans could not get to Paris in time to help, and that the Parisians needed to liberate themselves.

  Monod and Gallois left Paris at five the next morning, August 21. As a surgeon Monod had access to gasoline and a pass to allow passage through German lines. The cover story was that they were going to a hospital in Saint Nom de Bretéche, a small village close to the front lines. Monod had attended patients there previously, and Gallois would pose as his male nurse. The route to the village was circuitous, and on the way Monod convinced Gallois that what was needed was not weapons but Allied forces. At the hospital, they met an FFI contact codenamed Georges who agreed to take Gallois to the Americans. Monod did not accompany Gallois further and returned to his duties in Paris.

  Georges drove Gallois to the front lines, where the opposing troops were not far apart. Gallois crawled through the woods where the Germans were dug in. He believed they saw him but did not fire on him because they did not want to attract American attention. He crossed into American lines at roughly 7:30 p.m. on August 21. The American soldiers were dumbfounded. After a brief exchange he was driven in a jeep to regimental headquarters, where he was interrogated extensively by Colonel Robert Powell, who spoke French and specialized in the French Resistance. After several hours of intense interrogation the colonel was satisfied Gallois was who he said he was, and he was whisked off for another lengthy jeep ride to Third Army headquarters. By then it was after midnight, and Gallois was interrogated once again, this time by Colonel Harold Lyon, the commander of the T-Force General Bradley had established to move into Paris and secure scientific and industrial targets quickly if the situation required it. Lyon was also satisfied Gallois was credible. As he summarized it, Gallois had provided five important pieces of information: the Paris police were on strike; barricades were being constructed throughout the city; the FFI was in control of many areas; the German high command had agreed to a truce; and the truce would expire shortly. Colonel Lyon concluded that the situation in Paris “was an opportunity which the Allies had to take advantage of immediately.”25

  It was now 1:30 a.m. on August 22, and Gallois was exceedingly tired. But the staff at Third Army headquarters thought the situation required action. General Patton was awakened and soon came in to see Gallois. “O.K. I’m listening. What’s your story?” he asked. Gallois repeated his story as carefully as he could. When he finished, Patton replied: “You are a soldier, and I’m a soldier. I’m going to answer you as a soldier.” He said the answer was no, for three reasons. The Allies, said Patton, were “destroying Germans, not capturing capitals”; the Resistance had started the insurrection without orders; and the Allies, who were
short of gasoline, could not “accept the moral responsibility of feeding the city.”26 Patton continued:

  You ought to know that our operations at this moment were not conceived lightly. We are obliged to follow our plans to the letter and not even a fortuitous or unexpected event like this one can change these plans, even if the event is of such extraordinary importance. Our objective is Berlin and we want to end this war as quickly as possible. The immediate capture of Paris is not part of the plan…. You should have waited for orders from Allied headquarters before launching an insurrection and not taken the initiative yourselves.27

  Patton shook Gallois’s hand and left the room. Gallois was crestfallen. It was, he said later, the most depressing moment in his life. He was “in a state of emotional collapse.”28 Suddenly Patton returned. He was carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses. He offered a stunned Gallois a toast to victory. After drinking it down, he said to Gallois, “Are you ready to take a long voyage?”29 There was another general, Patton said, whom Gallois should see. Patton had had a change of heart. At 3:30 a.m. Gallois got into a jeep and was driven off. Patton had arranged for him to see General Bradley.

   VI

  Eisenhower Changes Plans