Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France Read online

  74. See “La détention des canons d’armes de chasse n’est pas interdite,” Le Matin, July 22, 1943, 2; “La détention des canons d’armes de chasse,” Le Matin, July 23, 1943.

  75. Frenay, Night Will End, 284.

  76. Frenay, Night Will End, 290, 297.

  77. BA/MA, RH 36/190: Bericht des Stabsfeldwebels der Feldgendarmerie in Troyes betreffend Waffenfund, 8. August 1943.

  78. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Brief der Kontrollinspektion der DWStK, Kontrollabteilung, Az. Privatwaffen, Nr. 861/43, an den deutschen General des Oberbefehlshabers West in Vichy, 24. Mai 1943.

  79. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Brief des Oberbefehlshabers West, Oberkommando Heeresgruppe D, Arbeitsstab Frankreich, Gruppe Wehrmacht Nr. 1745/43 an den Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD im Bereich des Militärbefehlshabers in Frankreich, 25. September 1943.

  80. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Übersetzung eines Briefes des Regierungschefs, Ministers, Staatssekretärs des Inneren an die Herren Regionalpräfekten des unbesetzten Gebietes, 3. Dezember 1943.

  81. Oberg à Bousquet, Au sujet de l’amnistie concernant les armes du 16 aout 1943, 10 novembre 1943. Armes, matériel de guerre, 16W87, Archives de la Marne, Reims.

  82. Bousquet à Prefects, No. 493 Pol. Cab. Cire, 22 novembre 1943. Armes, matériel de guerre, 16W87, Archives de la Marne, Reims.

  83. Mitchell, Nazi Paris, 102.

  84. Philippe Burrin, France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: The New Press, 1993), 443–44.

  85. Telegram dated September 11, 1943, in Neal H. Peterson ed., From Hitler’s Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945 (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 123.

  86. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 217 (entry dated October 4, 1943).

  87. Cobb, The Resistance, 197.

  88. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 217.

  89. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 221–22 (entry dated November 3, 1943).

  90. Berr, Journal, 169 (entry dated October 25, 1943).

  91. Berr, Journal, 202 (entry dated November 9, 1943).

  92. Berr, Journal, 229 (entry dated December 13, 1943).

  93. “Consignes en cas de Débarquement,” Combat, n° 47, 1er septembre 1943; “La Seule Attitude Possible Sera la Resistance Acharnee,” Défense de la France, N° 40, 25 octobre 1943, reprinted in Le Journal Défense de la France (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), 216.

  94. “Des jeunes s’arment pour la libération,” Combat, n°53, décembre 1943.

  95. “The Resistance Front,” Combat, no. 53, quoted in Frenay, Night Will End, 323.

  96. de Bénouville, Unknown Warriors, 365, appendix 5.

  97. Frenay, Night Will End, 310–11.

  98. BA/MA, RW 35/26, Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Abteilung Ia, Nr. 220/44 g.Kdos., Einsatzbericht für die Monate November und Dezember 1943, 15. Januar 1944.

  99. Berr, Journal, 242 (entry dated January 13, 1944).

  100. Berr, Journal, 263, 272.

  101. Défense de la France, N° 43, 15 janvier 1944, reprinted in Le Journal Défense de la France (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), 238.

  102. Le Journal Défense de la France, 249, n.1 (editor’s comment).

  103. See Peter Lieb, Vercors 1944: Resistance in the French Alps (Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing, 2012).

  104. Telegram to London, dated January 31, 1944, in Peterson, From Hitler’s Doorstep, 209.

  105. Colonel Henry Dutailly, “Les armes des Maquis Haut-Marnais,” Revue de la société des amis du musée de l’armée, n° 109, juin 1995, 20–22.

  106. de Gaulle, War Memoirs, 588–89.

  107. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 239–40.

  108. Cobb, The Resistance, 243, 237–38.

  109. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 245–46.

  110. Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 248–49.

  111. BA/MA, RW 35/30, Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Abteilung Ia, Nr. 1160/44 g.Kdos., Einsatzbericht für die Monate Januar und Februar 1944, 15. März 1944.

  112. BA/MA, RH 34/3 Standortkommandantur Angers, Standortbefehle, 13. Dezember 1943 bis 28. Februar 1944.

  113. BA/MA, RH 34/3, Standortbefehl No. 10 der Standortkommandatur Angers, 21. Februar 1944.

  114. BA/MA, RW 35/297, Der Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Lagebericht über Verwaltung und Wirtschaft Januar bis März 1944, mit Anlagen.

  115. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Übersetzung eines Briefes des Generals und Staatssekretärs in Vichy, der mit den Beziehungen zu der deutschen Kommandostelle beauftragt war, 9. März 1944.

  116. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Brief des deutschen Generals des Oberbefehlshabers West in Vichy an den Kommandanten des Heeresgebietes Südfrankreich, 9. März 1944.

  117. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Brief des Kommandanten des Heeresgebietes Südfrankreich, Lyon, an den deutschen General des Oberbefehlshabers West, 2. April 1944.

  118. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Übersetzung eines Briefes des Generals und Staatssekretärs in Vichy, der mit den Beziehungen zu der deutschen Kommandostelle beauftragt war, 29. April 1944.

  119. BA/MA, RH 31/29, Übersetzung eines Briefes des Generals und Staatssekretärs in Vichy, der mit den Beziehungen zu der deutschen Kommandostelle beauftragt war, 12. Mai 1944.

  120. Laub, After the Fall, 292.

  121. Meyer, Die deutsche Besatzung, Chapter 7.

  122. Frenay, Night Will End, 329, 332.

  123. de Beauvoir, Prime of Life, 683–84.

  124. BA/MA, RH 19IV/178, Oberbefehlshaber West, Besondere Anordnungen für die Berforgung, 3. Juni 1944.

  125. “Contre la terreur nazie,” Combat, organe du mouvement de libération nationale, n°56, avril 1944.

  8

  Liberation

  ON JUNE 5, 1944, the BBC broadcast coded messages to the Resistance to carry out sabotage and armed attacks that night to assist the D-Day invasion that would begin the next morning. Maquis in the Vercors, Mont Mouchet, and Limousin attacked two Wehrmacht divisions.1 Open resistance by fighters donning the FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur, or French Forces of the Interior) armband replaced underground resistance. Sabotage of the rail system supplemented Allied arial attacks to impede German troop transports sent to meet the Allies in battle.2

  In the coming days, with Wehrmacht forces rushing to defend the Atlantic Wall against the Allied onslaught, Resistance forces struck, liberating parts of France. The Germans fought back bitterly, wiping out FFI forces, executing prisoners, and massacring civilians in the area.

  “Oradour-sur-Glane. That was the pretty name of a little village near Limoges,” wrote Jean Guéhenno. “A German officer was killed there…. They razed the village and machine-gunned the assembled population until no one was breathing or screaming anymore.”3 Numerically, this massacre of 642 men, women, and children on June 10 was the worst German atrocity of its kind committed in Western Europe during the entire war. Troops of Der Führer Regiment of the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division, Das Reich, avenged the killing of Wehrmacht soldiers by Resistance fighters by shooting all the men in the village and, after forcing all the women and children into the church, setting fire to the church and burning them alive.4

  The Waffen-SS commander in charge, Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, reported that his unit “occupied the village and immediately conducted an intensive search of the houses…. [L]arge quantities of weapons and ammunition were found. Therefore, all the men of the village were shot, who were surely Maquisards.” He added that while the women and children were locked into the church and the village set on fire, hidden ammunition in most houses and in the church’s roof caused the burning to death of the women and children in the church.5

  However, witnesses later testified in war crimes trials that no evidence existed of arms or ammunition in the village.6 A participant in the massacre, Untersturmführer Heinz Barth, testified at his trial in 1983 that no arms, ammunition, or explosives were discovered at the village.7

>   The same day as the above, the Wehrmacht attacked some 2,500 Maquisards at Mont Mouchet in the forested Auvergne region. The Germans conquered the area within three days, killing 125 partisans. While the Maquis were defeated, this illustrated how they helped to tie up German forces. “The Resistance rose up too soon and the repression is appalling,” opined Guéhenno.8

  On July 21, the Germans committed 10,000 troops to attack the Maquisards in the mountainous Vercors, in the Grenoble region. US Flying Fortresses had parachuted 1,700 rifles and 1,400 Sten guns to them, but half the fighters were still unarmed, and they received no heavy weapons. After several days of fighting, SS troops landed in gliders to turn the tide in the Germans’ favor. While 500 Maquisards and civilians were killed, many escaped to fight another day.9

  In the Vercors and in the Tarentaise, the FFI forces prematurely attacked and sought to defend against superior, better trained and equipped German forces, instead of engaging in hit-and-run guerilla tactics. They could not hold the territory they liberated. Still, notes historian Peter Lieb, “the FFI in the Alps helped the Allied troops to pave the ground for the liberation of their country on a tactical level by delivering invaluable intelligence, carrying out diversionary attacks, and cutting the German lines of retreat.”10

  In this period, American operatives were seeking to procure arms in Switzerland for the Resistance. OSS operative Allen Dulles reported from Bern, “We now have the chance to obtain a number of modern arms by completely legitimate means, ostensibly for storing here but actually we intend to use them chiefly in French and Italian Maquis, especially to arm escapees and internees who have come back….” He added that codename “520” (U.S. Brigadier General Barnwell Legge, who was the military attaché to Switzerland) “can legitimately and openly buy a number of arms, after which, with his assistance, I can get them out.”11

  By now, the Germans began to mistrust the French police with whom they had previously collaborated so closely. Garrison headquarters Limoges, on July 18, reported that the higher SS and police leaders ordered that seized and confiscated arms held by the French police be surrendered to the German order police (Ordnungspolizei). Some of these weapons held by French police had been stolen by terrorists. To prevent these incidents, such arms were to be turned in to the nearest SD or Wehrmacht department.12

  Indeed, some French police were joining the Resistance. The Communist journal En avant decried the lack of weapons but urged resourcefulness in obtaining revolvers, rifles, and hunting guns to be used to attack and disarm Germans. It added, “There are many policemen and gendarmes who have decided to contribute their arms or to join the ranks of our militias. We must denounce those who keep their weapons and refuse to distribute them to those who fight to wipe out the boches and assume the liberation of our homeland.”13

  The Anti-Hitler Conspiracy in the Wehrmacht

  By this point, Wehrmacht officers at the highest level were conspiring to assassinate Hitler. On July 20, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb under a table right by the Führer at Wolf’s Lair, excused himself, heard it explode, flew back to Berlin, and set the coup d’état in motion. But fate intervened—someone moved the briefcase with the bomb over where a portion of the table shielded the blast and Hitler survived.14

  Exposed to constant shelling and bomb attacks from both sides since D-Day, Normandy resident Marie-Louise Osmont heard the news and wrote in her diary: “Dynamite attack against Hitler, who is burned and shaken up … an indication of disintegration. Speech by the Führer—police measures. May this first crack be followed by a collapse that would stop this war, which is going to destroy everything in France.”15

  None other than Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel led the plot in Paris. He directed Wehrmacht troops to arrest SS personnel, including Karl Oberg, the senior SS and police leader. But news arrived that fate saved the Führer, and the conspiracy collapsed. Implicated in the plot, Stülpnagel was ordered to Berlin. Along the way, he shot himself in the head, but survived, only to be tried by the people’s court and hung with piano wire. Hitler enjoyed himself watching films of the conspirators’ hangings.16

  Uprising in Paris

  But the days of the occupation of Paris were numbered. On August 15, the Paris police went on strike to protest the disarming of police in the suburbs. On the 19th, insurrection broke out. Policemen joined with hundreds of armed civilians to seize the prefecture of police, located just across from Notre Dame. A detachment of the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (FFI) fired on a German convoy on the Pont Neuf. German vehicles were set on fire, barricades went up, and government offices were seized.17

  Original film footage shows the street fighting, with snipers shooting Germans and seizing their rifles and citizens building barricades.18 Jean Galtier-Boissière, a participant, noted that “one comes home to lunch carrying one’s rifle; the whole neighborhood is at the windows to have a look and to applaud; the milkman, the greengrocer, and the man in the bistro won’t chalk anything up on the slate [keep a tab].”19 Photographs of the struggle depict civilians with revolvers (even the obsolete model 1873), semiautomatic pistols, and rifles shooting from buildings or at the barricades. As usual, insufficient arms inhibited the struggle.20

  Jean Guéhenno saw two German sentries on the bridge of the rue Manin: “With their grenades in their belt, their submachine guns in their hands, they were terrified, waiting for an inevitable death—the passerby with an indifferent air who would fire a revolver at them through his pocket almost at point-blank range.” When he passed by again later, the soldiers were dead. Guéhenno almost felt sorry for them, but resisted: “All my heart is with those boys of Paris who are fighting almost without weapons, and my pity is reserved for them.”21

  Some 20,000 German soldiers remained in Paris, along with 80 Panzers and 60 pieces of artillery. They were arrayed against partisans armed with an estimated 600 handguns and an unknown number armed with who knows what.22 De Gaulle wrote that the partisans numbered some 25,000 armed men of autonomous groups operating in the neighborhoods, unsubordinated to hierarchal orders from above.23

  Simone de Beauvoir described FFI ambushes on August 21: “Men were hidden behind the balustrades along the quais, … and there were more in the neighboring apartment blocks, and yet more in the Place Saint-Michel, on the steps leading down to the Métro station.” She saw two German soldiers drive by and be killed twenty yards later. “F.F.I. men cycled up and down the quais asking invisible combatants if they had enough ammunition.” The FFI had also taken over the printing presses and newspaper offices, allowing Combat and Libération to be sold in the streets. Every time armored cars left the Sénat, they were greeted with a hail of bullets.24 The Sénat was housed in the Luxembourg Palace, which was a German strong point for defending Paris.

  On August 22, as described by Jean Guéhenno, “[t]he town halls of each arrondissement and the ministries were occupied by the FFI and Vichy vanished like a puff of smoke. The Germans no longer control life in Paris. They only hold the points where they have dug in. There is fighting all over. Place de la République, Place du Panthéon, on the Île de la Cité, and in front of the Senate.” “They’re fighting all over Paris this morning,” continued Guéhenno the next day. “The Resistance had occupied the Grand Palais and the Germans attacked and set fire to it.”25

  Wanting to continue the fight against major German forces, the Allied Command had opposed diverting forces to Paris, but that became politically impossible. The French 2nd Armored Division, consisting of 16,000 soldiers and 200 tanks, was sent to help, arriving on the 24th and 25th and being joined by an American infantry division. German forces put up a violent resistance but were overcome.26

  On the morning of the 24th, Guéhenno continued, “American radio was announcing yesterday that the FFI had liberated Paris, and this morning that General Leclerc entered the city at the head of his army.” But he considered the actual facts to be far broader, in that “Paris is no longer accepting German contro
l: it has given itself free institutions, and that simple affirmation is being paid for every minute with a great deal of blood.” Fighting continued at the Île de la Cité, on rue Manin, and at the Porte des Lilas. “They’re building barricades that they don’t have the weapons to hold.”27 De Gaulle verified that “since morning, groups of partisans with only the most meager weapons had bravely assisted the regular troops in mopping up the nests of German resistance.”28

  General Dietrich von Choltitz had assumed his post as the commander of Greater Paris on August 9, 1944, with orders not to surrender Paris without the Führer’s directive.29 When the occupation began to collapse, Hitler ordered him to torch the city. To his credit, Choltitz refused to carry out the order and capitulated on the 25th. The ordeal is depicted in the book and film Is Paris Burning? (Paris brûle-t-il?).30

  An estimated two thousand Parisians, eight hundred FFI and police, and more than one hundred Free French and American soldiers died to liberate Paris.31 As Guéhenno concluded his diary, “Freedom—France is beginning again.”32

  Toward Victory

  The liberation of Paris was only another step toward victory. The continuing struggle involved both great and small incidents, leading to both triumph and tragedy. In a letter to me, Marcel Demnet related how, in the evening of August 15 in Vierzon, two German soldiers, quartered in the Château of the rue Etienne-Dolet, quietly talked over a bottle of wine at the Café de l’Eglise.33 Two FFI Maquis entered the café and sat down. They hatched a plan to retrieve their guns from their car, then to pretend being cooks who would serve the Germans, then seize their arms and take them prisoner. The plan worked.

  The following day, after searches for the two missing soldiers proved unsuccessful, the Germans rounded up several citizens of Vierzon. After identities were checked, all were released except four who were kept as hostages. They were taken away by the Gestapo in cars in the direction of Bourges, a nearby town. The hostages included Madame Rolland, mother of the cafe’s owner; Madeleine Chantelat, her employee; Alice Curdled, café manager; and Camille Lurat, a bus driver. They simply vanished. Post-war research revealed nothing of their fate. Of the two Maquis who captured the Germans, Charles Hemel was caught and executed, the other one escaped.