Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France Read online

  Regulations on Arms Possession in the Occupied Zone25

  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.

  The bottom part of the poster, threatening the death penalty for violation, is not shown. Why show that part, given that the happy citizens wave as the artillery and infantry roll through the streets? Scenes then switch to onslaughts against Dutch and Belgian soldiers, and the Führer’s message that this great war heralds the thousand-year Reich. A patriotic song mixed with the images and music of artillery barrages, Luftwaffe bombings, and tank assaults compose the Wagnerian grand finale.

  Jack van der Geest, a young Dutchman at the time, described how a German convoy of tanks and trucks entered his town. Some soldiers raided the food shops, while others took over government offices and radio stations. He wrote:

  The soldiers confiscated all our guns. It wasn’t hard to do. By a Dutch law passed in 1938, gun owners had to register their weapons at City Hall. The Queen had left the list behind in her rush to safety.

  Our own weapons were taken away late that Thursday afternoon. A knock sounded on our apartment door…. When Ma opened the door, we stared right into the barrel of a machine gun. A second soldier held a list which indicated the registration numbers of the guns each family possessed. I got our two weapons and handed them over without a word. People who were unable or unwilling to turn over their weapons were immediately dragged to the street and shot. We heard intermittent gunfire all evening. From our window I saw bloody bodies lying in the street where soldiers left them as a reminder that they meant business.26

  Holland capitulated on May 14 following the indiscriminate bombing of Rotterdam. The Germans broke through at Sedan, rushing through France. On May 26, the British Expeditionary Force and other Allied troops were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. Belgium surrendered the next day.

  In the onslaught, when Wehrmacht troops prevailed, the first order of business was to set up the Kommandantur, the German commander’s office, and to search for and seize arms. The Völkische Beobachter, Hitler’s newspaper, provided this explanation:

  Right after the occupation forces have moved on and the enemy forces have pulled back, the headquarters arrive. The field police is deployed, clears the area of criminal elements that are potentially still present or of snipers, establishes what booty was left behind, searches apartments and other buildings for weapons or explosives located there, closes off areas that are dangerous because of unsafe buildings or blind shells and in particular makes sure that easily recognizable road signs are set up in central locations.27

  In June, as the French army retreated and the occupation expanded, Wehrmacht soldiers pasted large posters at major intersections. In the left column, in small print, were meticulous explanations designed to regulate conformity of the army of occupation and the population to the international law standards of the Hague Convention. In the right column, in large characters, appeared what has been called “the major focus of the army of occupation: arms.”28 Issued on June 20, the order stated:

  All firearms, munitions, hand grenades, explosives and other war matériel must be immediately surrendered.

  The surrender must be made within 24 hours at the nearest office of the headquarters of the line or the stage [l’état-major de ligne ou d’étape]. Mayors will have full responsibility for its immediate execution.

  Anyone who, contrary to this decree, possesses firearms, munitions, hand grenades, explosives and other war matériel will be punished with either death or hard labor.

  Anyone who commits acts of violence against the German army or its members in the occupied territory will be punished with death.

  This decree does not apply to keepsake arms without practical use. Hunting guns must be delivered to the responsible mayor for safekeeping under the designation of the owner’s name, profession, and address. Anyone who disregards this act of surrender is guilty of sabotage and will be punished with death.29

  The decree was signed by the commander in chief of the army. It recognized a provision of the Hague Convention as applied to French soldiers by imposing the death penalty for violent resistance only in the occupied territory, not territory where combat continued. However, nothing in the Hague Convention explicitly authorized the death penalty for civilians who merely possessed arms without using them in any manner for resistance. Surrendering hunting guns and recording the owners’ identities implied that they would be kept safely and returned after the war, which would turn out to be a false inducement. No reference was made to other civilian arms, which presumably would be confiscated by the Wehrmacht as spoils of war, even though they were private property.

  Surrendering Guns

  Northern and eastern parts of France occupied by Germany in 1914 had been subjected to similar confiscations, and the firearms were never returned. Now, firearms were surrendered en masse in the town halls, police stations, and the Kommandanturen. They were not labeled by owners, who received no receipts, other than in Paris and a few other localities. Given the threat of capital punishment, there was no time to do so.30 Many would not have left their identities for fear of being identified as a gun owner who could be accused of not surrendering all of their firearms.

  But those who had registered their arms would be known to the authorities. To be sure, as seen earlier regarding experiences in the Ardennes, admonitions to register only had mixed results. As for those who had done so, some French police were already cooperating with the Germans. In Charleville, in June, the Germans enlisted a former police officer to run the police station, and he would spend the next year helping to discover and arrest escaped prisoners of war and members of intelligence networks.31 He would have been fully cognizant of the need to conduct the far easier task of opening the files with the gun registration records.

  The turning in of hunting guns at a town hall is shown in a rare photograph.32 In the foreground, a French man shoulders a long-barreled gun as he walks and talks with another shouldering a double-barreled shotgun and carrying a bag perhaps filled with ammunition. A German soldier watches them intently. A dozen more soldiers with helmets and gear mill around near a troop transport truck, with no apparent concern. Another group of soldiers looking relaxed sit or stand on some stairs in the direction of where the French are walking. No danger is expected from a couple of complacent French citizens coming to turn in their hunting guns.

  There is no way to know how many French people owned firearms or how many they owned before the war, how many turned in all of their firearms during the occupation, how many turned in some but not all, and how many turned in none. While German situation reports often included numbers of firearms turned in and seized, it would be impossible to construct an accurate summary. Members of resistance groups would later complain of the shortage of arms, but prewar French law had banned firearms that would have been more useful for military purposes and no certain data exists on the numbers confiscated during the occupation, except to say that they were extraordinarily numerous.

  The following personal accounts by people who became members of resistance groups reflect their observations that many did not turn in their firearms, implying the guns were for potential resistance, and their attitude that some who did turn in their arms were “cowards.” An obvious reason exists for these impressions or biases. I solicited responses from then-elderly people who were veterans of the Resistance and members of their latter-day organizations. It would have been impossible to ask for information from people who identified as complacent or collaborationist. Needless to say, they had no association to keep their spirit alive after the liberation.
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  Yves Lenogré witnessed the surrender of arms in 1940, and would later become a member of both the FFC (Forces Françaises Combattantes, or Fighting French Forces) and the FFL (Forces Françaises Libres, or Free French Forces). Responding to my questionnaire to organizations of veterans of the Resistance in 2000, he wrote:33

  I noticed your announcement in issue #308 of our magazine France Libre [Free France]. I can tell you what I remember of the disarmament of civilians by the occupying forces in 1940. I was young then, but I knew that according to the decree-law of 1936, the Third French Republic prohibited the possession of arms of the first class, including of course rifles, pistols, revolvers, and other arms that were part of the regulatory equipment of armies around the world.34 This therefore did indeed contribute to a significant restriction in the possession of arms.

  At that time, I lived in Quimperlé, in Brittany, which would become, in the next few years, a forbidden area, and of strategic importance with the construction of a submarine base in Lorient 15 km from us as the crow flies, and of the construction of the Lann Bihoué airport. It would become the future Luftwaffe center for observation and attack raids on the Allied convoys. This meant a huge military presence by the occupying forces. This, therefore, was our geographic location, part of the important section of territory dedicated to the future battle of the Atlantic.

  According to my memories, the Feldgendarmerie [German military police], most likely under the watch of the Abwehr [German military intelligence service] attached to the armies, presided over operations to disarm civilians. After the formal notice to surrender arms was announced on posters and in newspapers, it took place in a big room of the courthouse. It seems to me that there was not a great number of Feldengendarmes present. There were also a few French gendarmes to set up the lists.

  I could see that all hunting guns had to be turned in. There probably were guns of great value (some with flint and fulminate cap), all with black powder. I remember a Chassepot rifle from 1870, an old-fashioned arm indeed, but one that was loaded through the breech, with black powder.35 I also saw different pistols, some of which were French small calibers from 1892,36 and possibly some Browning automatics of varied calibers. There were also many bayonet sabers and varied daggers. All these made up a very diverse group of items, a little like a fair with a lot of curious objects, nothing very dangerous. Only the hunting guns could be of a certain danger.

  I am telling you this, because I accompanied my mother to this depot to turn in a 6 mm single-shot rifle, an arm of little effect.

  I don’t have to tell you that in the stupor caused by our defeat, the manner in which the Werhmacht carried out this confiscation was only a small operation of little importance, since many citizens were taking great efforts to grease their arms and hide them in safe places. My father did so for his long 7 mm MAB 1938,37 and a Model 35 6 mm automatic.38 My father eventually registered at the BCRA (Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action, or Central Bureau of Information and Action), taking my mother and myself into the resistance movement for the Cohors-Asturies network, in 1943 and ’44.39

  Pierre Michel, born in 1922, was a student in Paris when the occupation began. From 1942–44, he was in charge of an information network in Normandy, went to Great Britain, and parachuted back into France three times. He would attend the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr (ESM, or Special Military School of Saint-Cyr), France’s preeminent military academy, and become a general.40

  General Michel recalled that prewar French law made it difficult for civilians to obtain firearms. They mostly had hunting weapons in great numbers, but also souvenirs (mostly handguns) from the Great War, target arms in clubs, and arms obtained for professional reasons. He estimated that about 715,000 hunting arms were surrendered to the Germans, but many arms were hidden, often buried in yards, in oiled wraps.

  Asked whether he was aware of people who possessed firearms in violation of the German decrees, he replied, “Yes, my parents—as an instinctive reaction against the occupying forces, in the hope they could use them someday. People hid their arms in varied caches depending on whether they lived in the city or the countryside.”

  “Only the Cowards Complied”

  Louis Charmeau, born in 1923, lived in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France, which would be divided between the occupied zone and Vichy France during the war. Regarding the German decree to surrender firearms, he said, “Few were turned in to the Kommandatur…. Only the cowards complied.” In the department of Saône-et-Loire where he lived, houses were not searched for arms except upon denunciations. What about the fact that the Germans had access to French police records of licenses for firearms? “Of course, but a good hunter owns more than one arm. So … [h]e would turn one in, and, if possible, make it unusable or damage it with acid.”41

  Asked if he was aware of people who possessed firearms in violation of the German occupation decrees, Charmeau replied, “Yes. Why? Just as a reaction against the ban…. Underground caches were numerous, well protected in the countryside, where it was much easier to find many possible hiding places. Many [guns] were not turned in.” But the consequences could be severe: “Persons who owned weapons from the 1914–18 World War could get in trouble … usually they were deported or taken hostage in the event of serious sabotages.” Yet, he added, “One of my friends in 1941 was reported and shot after he flaunted a revolver while in town—it was more an act of defiance than of patriotism.”

  André Marchiset was born in 1925 at Raddon in the Haute-Saône department, located east of Paris, near the German border. In 1940, he was a pharmaceutical assistant in nearby Villersexel. He recalled the orders to surrender firearms: “These decrees were not taken all that seriously. At this time, in 1940, the Germans behaved properly, which was not the case later on. Those who obeyed these decrees were cowards, in my opinion.”42

  However, he added, “A few hunters had several guns; they never handed over the best one.” Others did not comply at all. “My father, a brigadier for the forestry department, supervised six wardens. None of them turned in his revolver to the Germans.” The types of arms kept by civilians and by members of the Resistance included 6.35 and 7.65 mm revolvers, hunting guns, and military rifles from the Great War.

  A Defeatist Mentality

  French authorities acted as agents of the Wehrmacht to discourage resistance and confiscate firearms. Bernard Lecornu, the prefect for Châteaubriant in northwest France, was confronted by an old colonel, the president of the local veterans group, who demanded, “Do you have arms to distribute to us? Not only that, but you will bring your hunting guns and will block the road with plows, tractors, and all of the heavy obstacles that you can find.” Lecornu objected, “But we will be considered illegal snipers (francs-tireurs)!” The colonel replied, “No, because we will prepare armbands for you!”43 If captured, francs-tireurs could be shot on the spot, while uniformed soldiers were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war. Whether armbands would have sufficed was problematic.

  The prefect thought resistance to be laughable. Instead, he busied himself facilitating a smooth occupation, seeing to the quartering of the troops, putting up signs, coordinating the movement of vehicles and pedestrians, blacking out windows and lights, banning gatherings, enforcing curfews, and—naturally—administering the confiscation of hunting guns.44

  Variations of the Nazi gun decrees would be made throughout the years of occupation. One such poster is on display today at the Museum of the Order of the Liberation in Paris.45 Unlike the above decree, this version adds radio transmitters to the list of verboten objects, and does not exempt keepsake arms or provide that hunting guns would be tagged with the owner’s identity:

  Decree Concerning the Possession of Arms and Radio Transmitters in the Occupied Territories

  1. All firearms and all sorts of munitions, hand grenades, explosives and other war matériel must be surrendered immediately.

  Delivery must
take place within 24 hours to the closest Kommandantur [German commander’s office] unless other arrangements have been made. Mayors will be held strictly responsible for the execution of this order. The [German] troop commanders may allow exceptions.

  2. Anyone found in possession of firearms, munitions, hand grenades, or other war matériel will be sentenced to death or forced labor or in lesser cases prison.

  3. Anyone in possession of a radio or a radio transmitter must surrender it to the closest German military authority.

  4. All those who would disobey this order or would commit any act of violence in the occupied lands against the German army or against any of its troops will be condemned to death.

  The Commander in Chief of the Army

  This poster is relatively small and may not have been sufficiently conspicuous to be seen. It has no information on the time or even date of its issuance. The French would have had no idea when the twenty-four-hour clock started ticking—a firearm surrendered a day or even an hour late would have subjected its possessor to the death penalty. To be sure, in this early period of total French defeat before a resistance movement was organized, the threat of the death penalty was more bark than bite, carried out more often to frighten gun owners into submission than to execute them.

  Hiding Guns

  While many complied with the orders of the German authorities, others hid their arms for multiple reasons. Besides those contemplating resistance, these recalcitrant gun owners were attached to their property, which had value for collecting and for hunting. They buried guns in gardens, and concealed them ingeniously behind cupboards and under sheds.46 Historian Henri Michel noted: