Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France Read online

7. Décret portant réglementation de l’importation, de la fabrication, du commerce et de la détention des armes, Journal Officiel, 24 octobre 1935. The decree was widely publicized, for example, “Trois décrets-lois relatifs au maintien de l’ordre,” Le Figaro, October 24, 1935, 1; “Le commerce et le port des armes,” Le Figaro, October 24, 1935, 3; “Le décret-loi relatif au renforcement du maintien de l’ordre,” L’Homme Libre, October 24, 1935, 3; “Décret-loi relatif à l’importation et à la vente des armes,” L’Echo de Paris, October 24, 1935, 3.

  8. “Léon Bérard,” www.assemblee-nationale.fr/sycomore/_fiche_14-19.asp?num_dept=650.

  9. “Troisième République,” www.histoire-france-web.fr/republique_3/lebrun.htm.

  10. Article 1. Décret portant réglementation de l’importation, de la fabrication, du commerce et de la détention des armes, Journal Officiel, 24 octobre 1935.

  11. Barbier, Le délit, 104.

  12. Articles 2–8. J.O., 24 octobre 1935.

  13. Article 9. J.O., 24 octobre 1935.

  14. Article 10. J.O., 24 octobre 1935.

  15. “Le décret-loi relatif au renforcement du maintien de l’ordre,” L’Homme Libre, October 24, 1935, 3.

  16. J.O., 23 novembre 1935. See summary in Barbier, Le délit, 104–7.

  17. Articles 2–4. J.O., 24 octobre 1935.

  18. See summary in Barbier, Le délit, 104–07.

  19. Ian V. Hogg and John Weeks, Military Small Arms of the 20th Century (Northfield, IL: DBI Books, 1985), 128–29.

  20. J.O., January 16, 1936, cited in Barbier, Le délit, 100.

  21. 1ère séance du 6 décembre 1935, J.O. débats parlementaires, 7 décembre 1935, 2391.

  22. J.O. débats parlementaires, 7 décembre 1935, 2389–92 (comments of all four).

  23. Warner, Pierre Laval, 114–15.

  24. J.O., 12 janvier 1936.

  25. J.O., 12 janvier 1936.

  26. Warner, Pierre Laval, 128–29.

  27. Robert Soucy, French Fascism, 46–53.

  28. Dominique Venner, Les Armes de la Résistance (Paris: Pensée Moderne, 1976), 148, n.10.

  29. Commissariat de police de Sedan, 21 novembre, 1935. Archives des Ardennes, Fonds du Cabinet: Rapports des RG sur la situation générale du département, 1M14/3, Rapports mensuels décembre 1934–1935. Exécution de la circulaire du Ministre de l’Intérieur du 26 novembre1934.

  30. Commissariat de police de Givet, 21 novembre, 1935, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/3, Rapports mensuels décembre 1934–1935.

  31. Sous-Préfecture de Vouziers, 22 novembre, 1935, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/3, Rapports mensuels décembre 1934–1935.

  32. Commissariat de police de Charleville, 22 décembre, 1935, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/3, Rapports mensuels décembre 1934–1935.

  33. Commissariat de police de Mohon, 22 décembre, 1935, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/3, Rapports mensuels décembre 1934–1935.

  34. Le commissaire de police de Mohon, 22 janvier, 1936, Archives des Ardennes, Fonds du Cabinet: Rapports des RG sur la situation générale du département, 1M14/4, Rapports mensuels 1936.

  35. Le commissaire spécial de Charleville, 19 septembre, 1936, Archives des Ardennes, Fonds du Cabinet: Rapports des RG sur la situation générale du département, 1M14/4, Rapports mensuels 1936.

  36. Le commissaire spécial de Charleville, 18 octobre, 1936, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/4, Rapports mensuels 1936.

  37. Le commissaire de police de Mohon, 22 décembre, 1936, Archives des Ardennes, Fonds du Cabinet: Rapports des RG sur la situation générale du département, 1M14/4, Rapports mensuels 1936.

  38. Le commissaire de police de Sedan, 21 Mai, 1937, 20 septembre, 1937, and 20 Octobre, 1937, Archives des Ardennes, Fonds du Cabinet: Rapports des RG sur la situation générale du département, 1M14/5, Rapports mensuels 1937.

  39. Le commissaire spécial de Charleville, 21 décembre, 1937, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/5, Rapports mensuels 1937.

  40. Le commissaire spécial de Charleville, 21 janvier, 1938, Archives des Ardennes Fonds du Cabinet: Rapports des RG sur la situation générale du département, M14/6 Rapports mensuels 1938.

  41. Le commissaire spécial de Saint-Etienne, 23 février, 1938, Archives des Ardennes, M14/6, Rapports mensuels 1938.

  42. Le prefet des Ardennes, 29 mars, 1938, Archives des Ardennes, M14/6, Rapports mensuels 1938.

  43. Commissariat de police de Mézières, 22 avril, 1938, Archives des Ardennes, M14/6, Rapports mensuels 1938.

  44. Commissariat de police de Mohon, 21 juin, 1938, Archives des Ardennes, M14/6, Rapports mensuels 1938.

  45. Commissariat de police de Mohon, 21 novembre, 1938, Archives des Ardennes, M14/6, Rapports mensuels 1938.

  46. Commissariat de police de Mézières, 21 février, 1939, Archives des Ardennes, Fonds du Cabinet: Rapports des RG sur la situation générale du département, 1M14/7, Rapports mensuels janvier 1939 à avril 1940.

  47. Commissariat de police de Fumay, 24 mars, 1939, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/7, Rapports mensuels janvier 1939 à avril 1940.

  48. Commissariat de police de Mohon, 21 mars, 1939, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/7, Rapports mensuels janvier 1939 à avril 1940.

  49. Le prefet des Ardennes, 28 juillet, 1939, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/7, Rapports mensuels janvier 1939 à avril 1940.

  50. Commissariat de police de Mézières, 23 décembre, 1939, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/7, Rapports mensuels janvier 1939 à avril 1940.

  51. Commissariat de police de Mohon, 22 décembre, 1939, Archives des Ardennes, 1M14/7, Rapports mensuels janvier 1939 à avril 1940.

  52. Louis Maurice Charmeau, président de l’Union Départementale des Combattants Volontaires de la Résistance, Bordeaux, France, letter to author, June 10, 2003.

  53. See Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan (New York: Praeger, 1990), 1–6, 59–76.

  54. Halbrook, Gun Control in the Third Reich, Chapter 10.

  55. Schwab, Holocaust, 1. An example of a 6.35 mm revolver was the small Vélodog Francotte made in Liège, Belgium.

  56. Schwab, Holocaust, 75.

  57. Schwab, Holocaust, 3, 5.

  58. See Friedrich Karl Kaul, Der Fall des Herschel Grynszpan (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1965), 8–9; Vincent C. Frank, “Neuer Blick auf die Reichskristallnacht,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 4, 1998, www.hagalil.com/archiv/98/11/pogrom.htm.

  59. LICA magazine article “The Truth Behind the Assassination,” Le Droit de Vivre [The Right to Live], cited in Schwab, Holocaust, 41.

  60. Venner, Armes de la Résistance, 148, n.10.

  61. Décret-loi du 18 avril 1939 fixant le régime des matériels de guerre, armes et munitions, J.O., 13 juin 1939, 7463–7466. The same law with amendments through 1992 may be viewed at www.securite-sanitaire.org/anciensite/armesafeu/d180439.htm.

  62. Décret-loi du 18 avril 1939, J.O., 13 juin 1939, 7463–7466, articles 1 and 2.

  63. Décret-loi du 18 avril 1939, J.O., 13 juin 1939, 7463–7466, article 15.

  64. Décret-loi du 18 avril 1939, J.O., 13 juin 1939, 7463–7466, article 2.

  65. Venner, Armes de la Résistance, 147.

  66. Venner, Armes de la Résistance, 147–48.

  3

  Blitzkrieg, Defeat, and Twenty-Four Hours to Turn in Your Gun or Be Shot

  IT WAS NOT yet France’s turn, but Hitler and his henchmen were devising what would become a familiar policy of occupation. Czechoslovakia was abandoned by England and France, whose ambassadors agreed with Hitler in the Munich Agreement of September 1938 to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. Police and the Gestapo swiftly moved in, decreeing that “to prevent misuse of arms on the part of ‘Marxist elements,’ all weapons held by the civil population were required to be surrendered immediately. The only arms-bearers in the Sudetenland will be the army, the police and the Elite Guard members while on active service.”1

  As part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I, what became Czechoslovakia in 1918 had been governed by the Austrian Fire
arms Act, which required a permit, renewable every three years, to possess a firearm. A local district office administered the law, and its records of firearms licenses constituted a registration system.2 The Nazis could thereby readily identify gun owners.

  The Dominos Start to Fall

  That was just the beginning. In the wee hours of the morning of March 15, 1939, Hitler intimidated Dr. Emil Hácha, president of Czechoslovakia, into agreeing that his country would become a protectorate of the Reich. Hácha ordered his military forces to disarm and not resist.3 The London Times reported:

  Immediately a proclamation, bordered in red and bearing the German eagle and swastika which is now familiar to every Czech town and village, was posted on the hoarding. Under this proclamation no one was allowed in the streets after 8 p.m….; all popular gatherings were forbidden; and weapons, munitions, and wireless sets were ordered to be surrendered immediately. Disobedience of these orders, the proclamation ended, would be severely punished under military law.4

  It is still generally remembered today that, on the first day of the occupation, the Nazis put up posters in every town ordering the inhabitants to surrender all firearms, including hunting guns. The penalty for disobedience was death. The Nazis were able to use local and central registration records of firearms owners and hunters to execute the decree. Lists of potential dissidents and other suspects were already prepared, and those people disappeared immediately.5

  In Prague, motorized units descended to conduct house searches for weapons, leading to numerous arrests.6 “Inside the Rathaus citizens complied with a military order requiring them to surrender all armaments. Revolvers, old muskets and antique weapons of all sorts were carted into the building and turned over to the authorities, who gave receipts in return.”7

  Suspicious that many firearms had not been surrendered, in August the protectorate again ordered that they be turned in, threatening the death penalty for those who did not comply.8 A revolt erupted the following month. People who did not own any firearms were said to have somehow armed themselves. In Prague, female workers reportedly attacked some Germans with poles with nails sticking out. Numerous executions ensued in the brutal repression that followed.9

  Hitler launched World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. The blitzkrieg overwhelmed the Polish army in short order as it awaited help from its supposed allies, Britain and France. The most brutal occupation followed with the expected decree from the military commanders, enforced with the most severe punishment: don’t be in the street after six o’clock, turn in all of your weapons, and don’t carry metal objects which could be used to injure or kill.10

  Simha Rotem, who was Jewish and who would later join the Resistance, recalled that the Germans “searched from house to house, from apartment to apartment, and naturally did not neglect the Jews. Under the pretext of looking for weapons, they searched our house thoroughly, even rummaging in the oven.”11 Josef Sadowski, an American citizen who returned to his native country of Poland, was executed in Warsaw after a court martial convicted him of “having concealed a considerable quantity of arms and ammunition in violation of German regulations.”12

  France and Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, but they waged only a Phoney War, as they never took action. Since Hitler and Stalin were now pals, the Communist parties in Europe endorsed the Russo-German pact. The French Communist press advocated defeatism and disobedience to orders in the French military, and was banned by the French government.13

  The Führer’s Orders

  But Hitler was planning his next move, this time against the West. Blitzkrieg was repeatedly ordered but then canceled due to bad weather. As part of the planning, on November 14, 1939, Army Group Command B issued orders for the administration of territories to be occupied in the future.14 That included Belgium and Holland, despite Hitler’s feigned promises to respect their neutrality and the references in the orders strictly to respect international law.

  The first item regarding decrees to be imposed read: “The appeal of the Führer to the population and the decree by the Army High Command regarding weapons possession in the occupied territory will be made known by way of proclamations put up on walls when the troops invade.” The local commanders would proclaim where firearms were required to be turned in, after which they would have to be secured or destroyed.

  The directive distinguished guerrillas from uniformed soldiers, from militia members who wear insignia and carry arms openly, and even from people in a not yet occupied territory who resist on their own initiative, carry arms openly, and observe the laws and customs of war. If a guerrilla was captured, he would be judged by a summary court-martial and sentenced to death. A sample judgment form recited that on a certain date the defendant shot at German troops with a firearm and was therefore sentenced to death as a guerrilla. It ended that the judgment had to be executed immediately by shooting the defendant.

  While the above reflected the international law of war, the same rules would later be applied to civilians who were not guerrillas for mere possession of firearms. The proclamations posted on walls during the invasion in 1940 announced the death penalty for any person who did not surrender all firearms within twenty-four hours. International law and the Hague Convention allowed an army of occupation to exercise sovereign authority, but it did not explicitly countenance the execution of a farmer for having a shotgun to control predators or an urbanite for having an old revolver in the attic.

  Orders issued for Army Group A on December 20, 1939, concerned possession of weapons in the territories to be occupied.15 For Luxembourg, the decree on weapons would not be published unless needed, with the intent that the population could keep their arms. In Belgium, unusable weapons kept as souvenirs would not have to be turned in, but hunting guns would need to be tagged with the owner’s identity and turned over to the mayor for safekeeping. Troop leaders could allow ethnic Germans to keep their weapons.

  “The Führer has given the order to cross Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg in order to gain final victory over our enemies England and France,” stated Army Group Command B on January 15, 1940. “Any kind of resistance, even the armed resistance of the civilian population, must be broken with armed force.” It repeated earlier jargon about “the appeal of the Führer and the decree about weapons possession,” which had been distributed to all the army commands. As before, hunting guns had to be turned in to the mayors for safekeeping.16

  A directive issued on April 3 by the Army High Command, General Staff, detailed how the military administration would issue decrees by wall posters, newspapers, and broadcast on a variety of subjects, including the introduction of German criminal law, distribution of food, prohibition of price increases, and possession of arms.17

  A directive by Army Group A, issued on April 9, stated that in Belgium, unusable weapons kept as souvenirs need not be turned in. Hunting rifles had to be marked with the owner’s name, profession, and residence, and turned over to the mayor who was responsible for their safekeeping. That would leave the option later to return the weapons in general or in individual cases to their owners if the owners’ behavior and the general situation allowed. Further, if the population did not resist, police, customs, and forest service officers could serve with firearms, which could be confiscated and then returned. Finally, troop leaders were authorized to let ethnic Germans keep their firearms.18

  On April 9, 1940, the Wehrmacht occupied Denmark and invaded Norway. Denmark capitulated immediately. The German weekly news showed Danish police surrendering their arms, taking an oath to obey the Germans, and then the arms being given back to the police.

  In Norway, the German High Command ordered that civilians surrender all weapons and threatened that civilians found with weapons or instigating resistance would be shot on the spot. Despite such measures, guerrilla war began to spread.19 In one incident, marksmen from a local rifle club beat back German paratroopers. An attempt to mobilize the weak military forces collapsed when the Ge
rmans seized the weapons depots before arms could be distributed to the Norwegian soldiers; reservists and volunteers were turned away because there were no arms to give them.20 A British expeditionary force with some French support briefly sought to intervene, but quickly withdrew without materially helping the Norwegians. Norway would surrender on June 10.21

  It would next be France’s turn.

  Posters for the Blitzkrieg

  On May 10, Germany launched its blitzkrieg attack on France, avoiding the Maginot Line and crashing through Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The military forces of these three neutral countries were quickly crushed, and the German Wehrmacht soon penetrated France. The Germans came with a supply of posters with proclamations and regulations that they nailed up on entering the towns and villages. Most prominent was a poster threatening the civilians with the death penalty unless they immediately surrendered all firearms and radio transmitters. It was dubbed the Decree of May 10, 1940, on the Possession of Arms in the Occupied Territory, and it stated:22

  1. All firearms and ammunition, hand grenades, explosive devices and other war matériel are to be surrendered.

  The delivery must take place within 24 hours at the nearest German military administrative headquarters or garrison, provided that other special arrangements have not been made. The mayors (heads of the district councils) must accept full responsibility for complete implementation. Commanding officers are authorized to approve exceptions.

  2. Anyone who, contrary to this decree, possesses firearms, munitions, hand grenades, explosives and other war matériel will be sentenced to death or forced labor or in lesser cases to prison.

  3. Anyone who commits any acts of violence whatsoever against the German army or its members will be punished with death.

  The Commander in Chief of the Army23

  The incredible victories were vividly depicted on the silver screen, with all the embellishments of Goebbels’s propaganda, in the German Weekly Newsreel (Die Deutsche Wochenschau) for May 15.24 In the newsreel, the instant Wehrmacht troops and tanks cross a border and enter a town, soldiers nail up a poster about two and a half by three feet feet in size. The camera scans the top of the double-columned poster, written in German on the left and Flemish on the right, with an eagle and swastika in the middle: