Das Reich (8 page)

But to the Free French, the role of Resistance on D-Day was not a mere matter of military judgment: it was the critical moment in the resurrection of France. The overwhelming concern of De Gaulle’s staff was to ensure the liberation of the largest possible area of their country as rapidly as possible. They were deeply dismayed by the great Allied transport bombing programme. The lawyer Marcel Brault, alias Jérôme, who came to London from the
Rhône Valley early in 1944 and played a leading role in persuading the Prime Minister to reinforce the Resistance, wrote in February:

Colonel Passy was among the pessimists about the real prospects of a mass uprising in France on D-Day. But many others among De Gaulle’s men had a spectacular vision of open insurrection in southern and central France, where the Germans were thinly spread and great tracts of broken country lent themselves readily to guerilla warfare. There was discussion of possible Resistance ‘redoubts’ in which great masses of
maquisards
might assemble, and to which they might withdraw if they were driven back on to the defensive by German counter-attacks. Although all these misconceived notions were finally quashed, one of the most serious errors of omission in the weeks before D-Day was that
résistants
were not discouraged with nearly sufficient force from concentrating in arms when the Action Messages came. Some groups were even left by London and Algiers with a clear idea that they were expected to gather
en masse
. This confusion in high places was caused by doubt about just what would happen when the Action Messages were sent. It was indirectly responsible for the tragedies of the Vercors, the Glières and several lesser slaughters inflicted upon
résistants
.

On 7 May 1944 Churchill cabled President Roosevelt:

The President disagreed, and the Allied military commanders almost unanimously followed him. A senior British staff officer scribbled upon the Free French blueprint for Resistance and D-Day:

The Allied air assault on the French transport system continued until and after D-Day on the ‘worst case’ assumption, that Resistance could contribute nothing to the dislocation of the communications. Between 9 February and 6 June 75,000 tons of bombs were dropped in 21,949 sorties by Bomber Command and the USAAF. The overwhelming consensus at SHAEF was that, when Resistance mobilized, its men should remain in small groups, and at all costs avoid concentrating in large bodies that invited German attack. However, the Allied commanders were obviously content to approve any Resistance plan that did not increase their commitment, and promised to cause difficulty to the Germans. The Free French had devoted enormous labour to compiling detailed plans for the destruction of key rail, road and telecommunications links on D-Day – Plans
Vert
,
Tortue
and
Violet
, in which both RF and F Sections had become deeply involved. SHAEF accepted these, on the basis that they cost nothing.

At a meeting at Special Forces headquarters on 20 May, Allied policy crystallized thus:

An SFHQ memorandum of 4 June said: ‘It cannot be foreseen how Resistance will react to Overlord. It is clear that we must, generally speaking, reinforce where Resistance is most strong. Our policy will therefore be largely opportunist.’

One critical dilemma was unresolved until the last moment: whether to attempt a selective mobilization of Resistance, sparing those areas most remote from and irrelevant to the Normandy battle from the inevitable consequences of German counter-attack. The overwhelming conclusion was that it was neither desirable nor possible to restrain whole areas of France from taking part at the great moment: ‘In view of the fact that the spirit of Resistance groups throughout France is keyed up to a high pitch, and that a wave of patriotic enthusiasm is likely to sweep the country on D-Day, it is considered that any restraint placed on certain areas of organized Resistance on D-Day would only meet with partial success.’

Thus it was agreed that at the moment of the landings, all the
résistants
of France would be called to arms. Beyond the practical difficulties of restraining them, it was vital to keep the Germans in doubt for every possible day about the prospect of further
Allied landings. Colonel Barry of SOE said: ‘We were, in an absolutely hard-headed way, sacrificing Frenchmen to that purpose.’ The Allied staffs expected that any benefits from Resistance would continue at best for a few days. ‘It is probable that action . . . will be taken for a few days, after which stores and enthusiasm will begin to run low unless further instructions, backed by supplies, are speedily issued,’ ran an SFHQ memorandum. By the end of May, there were believed to be around half a million active
résistants
in France. Of these, 10,000 were estimated to be already armed by RF Section in Region R5 – comprising the Dordogne, Corrèze, Haute-Vienne and Creuse – the principal battleground of the Das Reich, and some 9,000 in R4, south-westwards from the Lot; 16,000 men in R4 and 2,500 men in R5 were believed to be already armed by F Section. According to SFHQ figures, 75,975 Sten guns, 27,025 pistols, 9,420 rifles, 2,538 Brens, anti-tank rifles and bazookas, 285,660 grenades and 183 tons of explosives and ammunition had been dropped to the Resistance, of which a significant but unknown proportion had been unrecovered by reception committees or lost to the Germans. There was a chronic shortage of ammunition of all types. Most
résistants
possessed two, three, sometimes only a single magazine for their arms, and there were few reserves. They had no heavy weapons beyond a few bazookas, despite constant pleading from the bigger groups in the field. But there were excellent reasons for this. Heavy weapons required training and transport, to neither of which most
maquisards
had access. To be effective, they required stocks of ammunition which it would have been immensely difficult to drop and handle on the ground. The other serious obstacle to any complex or coordinated manoeuvre by large groups of
maquisards
was the complete absence of short-range radios.

Yet even with hindsight, it is difficult to fault the attitudes or the conduct of those in London who were responsible for organizing Resistance for D-Day. SOE and the Free French, concerned with supporting Resistance, had done everything possible with the resources they were granted. The Allied commanders charged
with responsibility for Overlord were also eminently reasonable. Despite the claims of enthusiasts, a guerilla struggle in a major international war must always be a campaign on the margin. If the likely contribution of guerillas to victory is doubtful, then so also must be the resources expended upon them. General De Gaulle’s preoccupation with restoring the soul of France could only be courteously acknowledged at SHAEF. In the spring of 1944 it would have been unthinkable, indeed hopelessly irresponsible, to cancel or curtail the transport bombing offensive which cost 12,000 French and Belgian civilian lives, in favour of reliance on the Resistance.

If there was a failure, it was in frankness towards the networks in the field. Inevitably,
résistants
were given an exaggerated notion of the importance of their role in the attack on communications. But it was less necessary that most were allowed to believe that Liberation would inexorably follow invasion within weeks, if not days; and that the creation of Resistance armies would be rewarded from London by massive supplies of arms and ammunition, probably also by reinforcements of regular parachutists.

SHAEF confidently expected that the Germans would throw every man, tank and gun they could bring to bear into the struggle to defeat the Allied armies on the beaches of Normandy. To any commander with a clear grasp of strategy, this was the overwhelming priority. Fundamentally it could not matter to the Germans what Resistance achieved in the Vercors, the Dordogne, or other areas remote from the north coast. Any insurrection could be crushed at leisure once the Allies were thrown back into the sea. If they secured a lodgement, then the loss of southern France scarcely mattered. The simple truth was that French Resistance was strongest in areas that strategically mattered least to the Germans – the Massif Central, the south-west, the Dordogne, the Corrèze and the Haute-Vienne. An important SHAEF paper of 28 February 1944 assumed that in their response to the Allied landings, ‘. . . the Germans will ignore local Resistance’. This was a fundamental – albeit perfectly rational – misjudgment
of German thinking. Hitler’s obsession with retaining every foot of his empire once again betrayed him. The Germans would deploy resources to repress Resistance on a scale the Allies had never conceived possible. In the first, vital days after the Allied landings, the German struggle to hold France against Frenchmen employed forces – above all, the 2nd SS Panzer Division – that could have made a vital contribution on the battlefield in Normandy. There are many tales of tragedy, reckless error and even absurdity among
résistants
in the chapters that follow. It must never be forgotten that the Germans’ response was absurd only in its cost to their battle for France.

Few of the British and French agents parachuted into France fired a shot in anger during the battles of June 1944. Their names will seldom recur during the story of the Das Reich’s march through their sectors. But to understand what Resistance was on D-Day, and how it came to be what it was, it is essential to know something of the men and women who made it possible. For thousands of
résistants
taking up their Sten guns and their gammon bombs and embarking upon open warfare, D-Day was a beginning. But for the agents of SOE and De Gaulle’s BCRA, it was the flowering of four years’ labour, the end of the most difficult and nerve-racking period of Resistance. The British agent George Hiller exulted in the sense of release that D-Day brought: ‘The beauty of life, the joys of spring, the stream of men and cars, the relief of being armed.’

Hiller was French Section’s officer in the Lot, the region dominated by high limestone plateaux thick with scrub oak and sheep grazing that lies between the Dordogne and the Tarn, on the Das Reich division’s direct route north. With his twenty-one-year-old wireless operator, Cyril Watney, he had been parachuted into France in January 1944 to make contact with a socialist Resistance organization named the Groupes Vény. Its tentacles were reported to extend through southern France from Marseille and Toulouse to the Lot and Limoges. Hiller’s business was first to assess their potential, then to organize and arm the
résaux
– the networks – in the Lot.

He was born in Paris, the son of an English father and French mother, educated at
lycées
in Paris and London, then at Exeter
College, Oxford. He had planned a career as a diplomat when the war intervened. Like a significant number of future French Section recruits, in 1939 he was a near-pacifist, and he joined the medical corps because he disliked the idea of killing people. Only in 1942 did he modify his opinions sufficiently to pass through Sandhurst and become an army officer. Then SOE’s recruiters found him. He told his parents that he was being posted to the Middle East, but on the night of 7 January 1944, at the age of twenty-eight, this highly intelligent, sensitive, rather reserved young man landed near Quatre Routes high in the hills of the Lot to begin his career as a secret agent.