Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France Read online

  The French leadership in London thought the random shooting of German soldiers to be premature. Charles de Gaulle broadcast from BBC on October 23 that, as the aggressors, “Germans should be killed by Frenchmen…. Those of them who now fall under the rifle, the revolver or the knife of patriots precede the others in death only a little.” However, tactics must be followed in war, and thus “my orders to those in occupied territory are not to kill Germans there openly. This for one reason only: that it is, at present, too easy for the enemy to retaliate by massacring our fighters, now, for the time being, disarmed.” The time for attack would come when the forces were ready.89

  More Executions and Looting of Arms

  Executions for possession of weapons continued on an almost daily basis. Stülpnagel issued an Avis on October 23 that Pierre Lerein from Floirac (Gironde) was executed that day for possession of arms and explosives. Le Matin could not resist condemning such people and finding their execution to be just.90 The next day saw another Stülpnagel Avis announcing the execution of the following people for possession of arms and ammunition: Roger Jean Bonnand from Paris, Paul Grossin from Mitry-Mory (Seine-et-Marne), and Hubert Sibille from Cornimont (Vosges). Le Matin again had this tongue-lashing: “They were keeping arms, why? There are people who foolishly or deliberately hide arsenals at home…. Anyone in possession of a pistol or a gun can only be looked at as a potential assassin. And expect the most serious sanctions.91

  The Vichy government negotiated three and four-day extensions of the next hostage execution dates for the attacks in Nantes and Bordeaux respectively. It was said to be doubling its efforts to apprehend the assassins and save the lives of hostages.92 In Bordeaux, the mayor and town council issued calls to help search for the guilty parties.93 After some French people provided information that narrowed the scope of the search for the Nantes and Bordeaux attackers, and refused the financial award, Stülpnagel decided that any of their parents held as prisoners of war in Germany could return to France, and would consider release of other family members.94

  Stülpnagel then declared a grace period on the executions to allow the people to assist the investigations. He was pleased to inform Vichy that the Führer agreed, thus allowing the French to help apprehend the assassins.95

  Meanwhile, the confiscation of usable arms continued unabated, with nuances. An order from the district headquarters (Kreiskommandantur) in Lunéville on October 28 required the surrender of all rifles, carbines, hunting firearms, pistols, revolvers, other firearms, and sidearms (bayonets and swords) produced in 1870 or later. It exempted arms produced before 1870, together with all other slashing and thrusting weapons, regardless of date of manufacture. The owner of each exempted weapon was required to have paperwork confirming that the item need not be surrendered.96 The Germans did not want to fool with arms that would be useless for resistance.

  However, looting the good stuff could continue. The head of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) in Berlin issued an order on October 28 that no compensation would be paid for hunting guns confiscated from private citizens in France and Belgium. The excuse was that neither France nor Belgium reimbursed Germans for hunting guns confiscated during the occupation of the Rhineland after World War I.97 While it is difficult to believe that these post–World War I confiscations remotely compared to those in World War II, this was no more than a justification for massive looting of firearms from private citizens in violation of international law.

  In the German perspective, plundering public and private property was revenge for the reparations Germany had to pay France based on the Versailles Treaty following the Great War. Requiring the French to pay occupation costs and the confiscation of art, firearms, and everything of value that was not nailed down (and much that was nailed down) seemed like just retribution. Besides, in the Führer’s view, the deutsches Volk (German people) were entitled to the world’s riches.

  Among the great quantity of arms surrendered in Dijon, the seat of District C, as a result of the recent decree, was a cannon manufactured in 1864 in Saint-Étienne. Turned in by an anonymous collector, it weighed 187 kilos and had a barrel 3.6 meters long nine centimeters in diameter.98

  “Based on latest deadline imposed, large numbers of weapons were surrendered or thrown away everywhere,” noted the MBF. Measures against Gaullist and Communist organizations as well as individuals possessing weapons were successful, particularly because of effective participation by the French authorities. Some sixty-four French were sentenced to death for resistance activities, violent crime, and illegal weapons possession.99

  Appended to the report was data for September 13–November 12 showing 870 instances of illegal weapons possession compared to 716 for the previous period. Confiscated weapons included 55 machine guns, 7,313 rifles, 6,764 pistols, 6,532 hunting guns, 425,692 rounds of hunting ammunition, and 445,673 rounds of other ammunition.100

  Incentives for denunciations paid off. Two prisoners of war were released after their relatives acted as informants regarding the Nantes and Bordeaux attacks.101 Three railroad workers were paid for preventing sabotage of the railroad by an explosion.102

  In Vichy France, sentences were reported for distribution of tracts and for Communist cells. Police in Clermont-Ferrand conducted a vast operation resulting in thirty arrests and the seizure of duplicating equipment, typewriters, paper and ink, six automatic pistols, and alleged Communist and Masonic literature.103

  In view of increased communist activity, MBF staff considered whether to ban slashing and thrusting weapons (Hieb- und Stosswaffen). A prohibition was considered unwarranted in that it was difficult to distinguish such a weapon and a simple pocket knife; there had been only one attack on a German soldier with a slashing weapon, and in raids, no one in the street was found to carry such a weapon.104

  Hunting guns were another matter. A mid-November report from District B noted the surrender of large numbers as a result of the new deadline, although results varied from department to department, perhaps because the prefects did not all issue the same orders to the police. The success of the action proved that it was correct, as it enhanced the security of the occupying forces.105 For the previous two months, over 1,500 hunting guns, around 300 rifles, 1,000 handguns, and 20 cane guns were turned in. House searches conducted in the investigation of the murder of a Captain Marquardt netted 17 persons found in possession of weapons, mostly hunting rifles, and they were handed over to the military courts for prosecution. French gendarmes discovered a weapons cache in Plessé, in the Nantes area.106

  A District B court sentenced a Mr. Cautret to death for aiding the enemy and added a year of prison for not surrendering ammunition, and then executed him. Besides distributing anti-German flyers, he was apprehended in Saint-Nazaire with several small bags of lead, 65 finished hunting cartridges, and an additional 30 cartridges. The same court sentenced Fleurimond Royer to death for failing to surrender ammunition, firearms, and military gear. He too was executed.107

  France was awash in arms being hidden, surrendered, and confiscated, but members of the emerging Resistance could never find enough. Défense de la France, an underground newspaper established by students in Paris, implored, “[O]btain firearms; someone will know how to find them. Each should know how to use a revolver, a rifle, a submachine-gun, a light machine gun, a machine gun…. The day will come.”108

  On November 18, Paris police announced the arrest of terrorists responsible for recent attacks. Numerous searches netted arms along with just one man (another was dead) and a woman, who admitted to having sabotaged railroads and factories and to the arson of farms. The police and the gendarmerie pursued a fugitive considered armed and dangerous who escaped.109

  “A new armed attack on Boulevard Magenta,” noted Jean Guéhenno in his diary on December 3. “A German officer killed. Now it’s the turn of the 10th arrondissement to be punished. And all Paris is threatened with the most vigorus reprisals if we do not denounce the guilty part
ies before December 10.”110

  On November 27, MBF Stülpnagel ordered that all confiscated weapons, except hunting arms surrendered pursuant to the recent decree, had to be transferred immediately to the Wehrmacht’s collection area in Versailles. That included all rifles and pistols, regardless of kind, caliber, or state of repair.111 Two weeks later, he issued a report, signed by Dr. Werner Best, that large numbers of French civilians surrendered arms without the risk of punishment pursuant to the October 9 decree.112 The results were as follows:

  The above did not include arms surrendered in Greater Paris because the numbers were too great, but they included: 12 trucks with guns of all kinds and calibers; 3 trucks with pistols; 2 trucks with ammunition, powder, and explosives; and 9 trucks with sidearms. While they were still being counted, the confiscated weapons from Greater Paris included: 4,100 hunting guns; 150,000 rounds of hunting ammunition; 3,000,000 cartridge cases; 350 kg of shot; 1,600 Tesching (parlor) rifles; 317 barrels for double-barreled shotguns; 162 shoulder stocks; and 170,000 rounds of parlor rifle ammunition. The French police had not yet finished their delivery of weapons surrendered in Paris. It was estimated that this represented only half of the surrendered weapons.

  The civilian population left some previously unsurrendered military weapons and pistols in the vicinity of mayors’ offices and police stations, the above report continued. Apparently the proclamation published in the press about the weapons surrender had indicated freedom from punishment only for hunting guns, weapons parts, and damaged or destroyed weapons, but not for usable weapons. District of Bordeaux therefore inquired whether people surrendering usable military weapons should be prosecuted by a military court. While this was seen as contrary to the intent of the measure to give people a last chance to surrender weapons of any kind, the report concluded that the command staff division would have to decide the issue.

  The above amnesty to surrender arms theoretically began on October 9 when it was decreed, but it was apparently not published widely until October 15, and it closed on October 25. It is thus likely that most of the weapons were turned in during the final ten days of the period.

  While actual figures will never be known, the Saint-Hubert-Club de France estimated that through the end of 1941, 700,000 civilian firearms had been surrendered, of which 100,000 had been sent to Germany.113

  The Night and Fog Decree

  Meanwhile, on December 7—the same day as the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor—Hitler issued the Night and Fog (Nacht und Nebel) Decree. OKW Chief of Staff and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel explained, “In the eyes of Hitler, punishing crimes with prison sentences … is a sign of weakness. An effective and enduring deterrence can only be had through death sentences and equally far-reaching measures, measures that leave the relatives and public uncertain over the fate of the perpetrator. Deportation to Germany also serves this purpose.”114

  To be sure, many of the condemned continued to be identified in the newspapers. Just a day after the above decree, the commander of Greater Paris announced that the following Parisians had been sentenced to death and executed for possession of arms and ammunition: Joseph Brunet, Albert Antoine, Louis Buchmann, and Marcel-Auguste de Priou.115

  On December 10, the general secretary of the Vichy government announced that attacks against the occupation forces endangered France, and thus new edicts had been issued to repress the foreign paratroopers, Communists, and Jews who were responsible. Foreigners who committed crimes would be subject to court martial and execution. Jews would be placed in work camps or concentration camps. Communists would be arrested, as had some 13,000 in the last six weeks in the free zone.116

  A plea to the people of Paris was issued to condemn recent attacks against the Wehrmacht. It was signed by Fernand de Brinon, the French ambassador to the Germans in the occupied territory; the prefect and general secretaries of the Seine department; and the bishop and archbishop of Paris.117

  “The firing squads are in action again,” wrote Guéhenno in his diary on December 12. “Eleven people in Brest the day before yesterday, five Parisians yesterday.”118 That was followed by the execution for arms possession of Henri Jahier from Drancy and Auguste Lemaire from Fontenay-aux-Roses,119 and of Mohamed Bounaceur (also spelled ben Naceur) of Ivry.120

  A Crime not to Denounce?

  Denunciations had always been grist for the execution mill, but now the time had come to make it a crime not to denounce. Informing on one’s neighbors was the subject of a decree issued on December 27: “Whosoever may have knowledge that arms are in the possession or keeping of an unauthorized person or persons is obliged to declare that at the nearest police headquarters.” In the post-war Nuremberg trials, French prosecutor Charles Dubost stated that “in their determination to impose their reign of terror the Germans resorted to means which revolt the conscience of decent people. Of these means one of the most repugnant is the call for informers.”121 While the penalty for failure to inform was unclear, in the coming year the death penalty was debated as the ultimate sanction.

  Official reports for roughly the final two months of 1941 reveal a still disobedient element of the French population who refused to surrender arms and an ever more deadly, repressive occupation policy. Conditions were deteriorating, according to the Council of the Higher Military Court in northwestern France, which had good cooperation from the French judicial authorities. Offenses punished by death were on the rise, including aiding the enemy, weapons possession, dissemination of anti-German flyers, sabotage, and attacks against members of the Wehrmacht. A Gaullist student group whose members had arms and engaged in espionage had been broken up. Food shortages prompted hunting offenses by poachers.122

  As the year drew to a close, despite all of the efforts to eradicate French gun ownership, the task appeared impossible. District B reported numerous incidents of weapons possession for the two-month period beginning November 16. To be sure, the October 9 amnesty had netted 426 hunting guns and rifles, 84 revolvers, and some 20,000 rounds of ammunition. But arrests, proceedings, and executions for weapons possession went on and on. For that offense, a municipal worker from the town of L’Huisserie was executed and a sixty-seven-year-old estate owner was sentenced to six months in prison, while in Chailland three were arrested for weapons possession and a municipal worker and a woman were arrested for aiding and abetting weapons possession. The military court at Le Mans sentenced six and dismissed charges against eleven. In Tours, eight were sentenced and one was awaiting sentencing for possession of a machine gun with 2 full magazines, 2 French rifles, 178 rounds of carbine ammunition, and 5 sidearms.123

  Besides two arrests in the district of Pontivy, testimony of a poacher in a murder trial led to nine additional arrests for illegal arms. Four old rifles and two pistols were found there, probably thrown away by their owners. And in Nantes, a harness maker named Fleurimond Royer of Saint-Marie had been arrested on November 11, sentenced on December 2, and executed on December 17, 1941. This timeline may have reflected how long it took to try and extract information on other people who possessed firearms.

  The above report ended ominously but tellingly: “Illegal weapons possession still represents the core of criminal activities of the French. It appears almost impossible to get rid of it.”

  1. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 95 (entry dated June 22, 1941).

  2. Laub, After the Fall, 112.

  3. Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 229.

  4. Nuremberg Document 221-L, in U.S. Department of State, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945. Series D (1937–1945): The War Years (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 13:149–56.

  5. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 99 (entry dated July 11, 1941).

  6. de Beauvoir, Prime of Life, 618.

  7. BA/MA, RW 35/1207, Lagebericht für den Zeitraum vom 15. Mai bis 15. Juli 1941, Chef der Militärverwaltung A, 20. Juli 1941.

  8. BA/MA, RW 35/1263, Lage- und Tätigkeitsbericht für die
Zeit vom 12. Mai bis 11. Juli 1941, Militärverwaltungsbezirk B, Tgb. Nr. 2508/41, 17. Juli 1941.

  9. BA/MA, RW 35/1263, Lagebericht des Militärverwaltungsbezirks B für die Zeit vom 11. Juni bis 10. Juli 1941. 19. Juli 1941.

  10. BA/MA, RW 35/1262, Chef des Militärverwaltungsbezirks B, 2. August 1941, Besondere Anordnung Nr. 406.

  11. Mitchell, Nazi Paris, 59.

  12. Laub, After the Fall, 217.

  13. Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, 118.

  14. On the attack and its aftermath, see Jean-Marc Berlière and Franck Liaigre, Le Sang des communistes: Les Bataillons de la jeunesse dans la lutte armée, automne 1941 (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 97–99; Laub, After the Fall, 114–15; Russell Miller, The Resistance: World War II (Chicago: Time-Life Books Inc., 1985), 76, 227–30; Matthew Cobb, The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis (London: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 77.

  15. Porter, Uncensored France, 238–39; Eric Conan, “Jean-Pierre Ingrand: Les regrets d’un serviteur de Vichy,” L’Express, August 8, 1991, www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/les-regrets-d-un-serviteur-de-vichy_492450.html (accessed October 25, 2017); Laub, After the Fall, 115–18.

  16. Porter, Uncensored France, 72–74.

  17. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 108–09 (entry dated August 21, 1941).

  18. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 108–09 (entry dated August 21, 1941). It is unclear why quotation marks were used in the above passage.