Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 (17 page)

How did the Germans stationed in Paris respond to a truth that could be neither spoken nor hidden? A good starting point for an answer to that question is 19 August 1943. On that day, doing his duty to the end, Knochen drafted two memoranda shortly before his final departure from SS headquarters in the Avenue Foch. They presented, rather than a rhetorical farewell, a dry analysis of what to expect. In the first memo, he warned that the French police were “less than ever” to be counted on “in case of a crisis.” Instead, it must be feared that, in the event of an invasion of France, they would conspire to stab German troops in the back—and that they would likely do so in spite of the fact that they were currently aiding the Occupation in tracking down Communists.
¹⁹
The second long memo from Knochen's office, on twenty-one single-spaced typed pages, expanded and explained the first. Since late 1942, there had been an evident shift of popular support from the Communist leadership to the “national resistance,” meaning the Gaullists, and it was “beyond doubt that even in the upper echelons of the police there continues to be sympathy with that movement.” Indeed, in support of it, the staff of the Paris Prefecture of Police had become “predominantly anti-German.” An
Ernstfall
was therefore sure to present an acute danger if large, organized, and armed French police squads fell under the influence of invaders. Neither they nor the French people in general were likely to see a future in collaboration with Germany. Although Knochen thereupon disappeared, his parting shot enunciated the themes that were to resound again and again in German reports from Paris stretching into 1944.
²⁰

Besides these concerns about the reliability of the French police and other French officials, Occupation authorities had to protect their own forces. Air raid drills, already begun in 1942, became more frequent and strict. The administration made clear that this was not child's play. For failing to observe regulations promptly during one drill, sixty German soldiers were sentenced to a brief jail term at the Fresnes prison.
²¹
Meanwhile, gas masks were checked and rechecked. Blood types were gathered and recorded. And reams of documents were shredded to clean out office files, a practice begun in 1940 that was now expedited.
²²
Most conspicuous of all, a large concrete bunker, to which access was determined by rank, was erected adjacent to the Hotel Majestic. Only officers with special passes were allowed on the upper floors of the bunker. Candles were distributed in case of an electric power outage. Military personnel at the Majestic were instructed to deposit one small piece of luggage with essentials in the bunker, ready to go.
²³
All of this activity was devoted to a single objective—to keep the military administration functioning in Paris up to “the last possible point in time.”
²⁴
Yet no decisive military action was forthcoming in 1943, and the long period of waiting was wearing on everyone's nerves. Stülpnagel had to worry about defeatism, weakening discipline, and alcoholism among the troops.
²⁵
Consequently, there was more than enough time to think the unthinkable. What, one officer at the Majestic wondered, would come of the Occupation “if the military situation should be definitively decided against us?” He was not alone in having no answer. His personal recommendation was not to waste time with military preparations to defend Paris at a moment (February 1944) when the war might still be won. It would be sufficient to devote one Sunday a month to practice grenade throwing and rifle shooting at a firing range.
²⁶
Such an attitude well expressed a palpable sense of helplessness that overcame the Occupation as the spring of 1944 arrived. An
Ernstfall
could not be averted; it could only be faced and dealt with by measures that were incapable of altering the outcome. For his part, Stülpnagel issued orders emphasizing that all papers to be destroyed should be
completely
burned. Paris was becoming a city of courtyard bonfires.
²⁷

Enter Joseph Darnand. Reorganization of the French police in the wake of the Oberg-Bousquet agreements in late 1942 was accompanied, on the fringes, by a shake-up of the Légion des combattants, a Pétainist veterans—organization agitating on behalf of the Vichy government. Dissatisfaction with this effort provoked the formation in January 1943 of a more highly motivated offspring, the Service d’Ordre Légionnaire (SOL), of which Laval anointed Darnand as leader. When René Bousquet then proved in Oberg's judgment to be inadequate to the task—and when German confidence in the loyalty of the French police began to evaporate in 1943—Darnand was asked in July to head the Milice Française, a cadre of paramilitary militia groups of several thousand men, fanatics all, who constituted the backbone of the so-called Maintien de l’Ordre (MO). By joining the Waffen-SS in August, hence donning a German uniform and swearing an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, Darnand won German confidence and, as Secretary General of the MO, replaced Bousquet as the main law enforcement officer in all of France. As one Occupation official commented, “under German pressure” Darnand thereby became the most powerful French police chief since Joseph Fouché during the Napoleonic era.
²⁸

This maneuvering in high places requires mention here because it occurred at a time when, in Stülpnagel's opinion, the French regime in Vichy was displaying “practically no leadership” and administrative initiative was correspondingly declining. Darnand's Milice was called upon to fill that gap, and, despite German misgivings about allowing an unduly potent police presence in France, the military administration accepted it.
²⁹
As Paris awaited a full-scale Allied assault on the European Continent, therefore, the question of collaboration was being sharpened to its finest point: would the French, as some had in North Africa, actually fight beside their German comrades to stave off an invasion of the mother country? Both sides were uncertain.

Chapter 12

A P
OLICE
S
TATE

T
he shortage of personnel for policing France became a more pressing and acute problem for the Occupation once the Germans took charge of all the territory south of the demarcation line. Such insufficiency proved to be an intractable handicap that crippled the military administration to the end. The result was an increased pressure for the
Verstaatlichung
of the French police, that is, the creation of a united, more efficient national organization under a single command that could be held responsible for cooperation and discipline. This necessity, for that is what it was, explained the growing prominence of René Bousquet and then Joseph Darnand. However, despite their avowed willingness to collaborate, and notwithstanding repeatedly codified formal agreements, a satisfactory solution was not found. Ultimately, the tenure of Carl Oberg in managing police affairs—like that of Fritz Sauckel in recruiting French labor—must therefore be considered a disappointment for the German cause.

Stability in law enforcement was never achieved. Recurrent attempts to reform the existing French police structure were accompanied by a constant accumulation of ever more perplexing responsibilities that were assigned to it. In addition to the routine duties of keeping public order, the French were expected to perform tasks such as arresting those who evaded or shirked required labor service, breaking up strikes “by all available means,” guarding utilities and railway installations, assisting in the roundup of Jews, and sealing off the porous Franco-Spanish frontier. These daunting German demands inevitably provoked tensions between occupiers and occupied, of which four were conspicuous.
¹

The independence of the French police was supposedly guaranteed by agreements between Oberg and Bousquet, in return for which the latter's minions would display greater alacrity in executing orders from the Germans. This arrangement, as Bousquet remarked, was intended to end the “paralysis” in the previous phases of the Occupation and to provide a new impulse for the French to manage their internal affairs. In reference to a bomb attack on the Canebière in Marseille in mid-April 1943, one of Bousquet's staff begged him to press Oberg for further assurances that “the autonomy of the French police will be respected.” Meeting with Oberg on the following day, Bousquet did so and was rewarded with a positive response.
²
Yet in practice the principle of autonomous action by the French remained ambiguous and was frequently undercut. Some assigned tasks were frankly disagreeable and therefore reluctantly fulfilled. One of them, for example, was chasing down workers on furlough from their labor service in Germany who decided to disappear rather than return. Another was performing guard duty at isolated posts, especially for prolonged stretches at night. And, to be considered later, there was obvious reluctance by Paris police officials, prompted by the Vichy regime, to authorize the apprehension of French Jews for deportation, although the evidence is indisputable that they did so when closely supervised by the Gestapo. Such reservations were matched by the tendency of German security forces to seize the initiative whenever it suited them (or when the French were slow to comply) by conducting house searches, interrogations, arrests, and trial proceedings that could lead to internment or a death penalty.
³

Closely related was the question of custody. It was first raised by rare instances when a parachutist—either a downed RAF pilot or possibly a clandestine Resistance fighter—was captured. The Germans regarded this as strictly a military matter properly left to them. But the French sometimes hesitated to cede custody with its potentially lethal consequences.
⁴
The issue proved to be much larger, a particularly juicy apple of discord. Generally compliant as he was, Bousquet was nonetheless keen to limit German jurisdiction. His policy was, for instance, not to turn over custody of any prisoners detained merely for spreading political propaganda. Oberg was willing to grant that those arrested by French police should ordinarily be tried in French courts, except when individuals were accused of perpetrating attacks on German civilian or military personnel.
⁵
Fine distinctions were not in vogue with the Gestapo, however, and disputes predictably arose. When Helmut Knochen insisted on taking custody of several suspects after an attack in August 1943, a French chief of police countered by criticizing the German practice of seizing French prisoners, trying, and executing them—with a “regrettable influence” on police morale.
⁶
Sharp disagreements of this sort came to a head in December 1943 after a German soldier was assassinated and six persons were promptly taken into custody by the French police. When the police refused to surrender the men to the Sicherheitsdienst, on the grounds that they were being held in a detention center outside of police control, Oberg personally intervened. The six were brought to the Gestapo.
⁷
This altercation was one of the reasons that Bousquet was replaced by Darnand, under whom the custody issue became less of an irritant, although he too did not escape an Oberg reprimand. On one occasion Darnand even suggested releasing 500 “terrorists” to the Germans in order to alleviate crowding in Lyon prisons, but he specified that they should be sent to labor details in Germany rather than being tried by German military tribunals.
⁸
This suggestion was exceptional; more usual, in cases of doubt, was procrastination. One official explained that “within the French police there exists hostility toward the Germans and against members of political parties that collaborate with them.” Although hypothetically “inadmissible,” the refusal to give up custody of elements of the opposition remained a vexing and unresolved aspect of the Occupation.
⁹

A third sore point was a continuing lack of adequate armament. Bousquet's chief assistant in Paris, Jean Leguay, cited an immediate need—in view of the fact that French police were “practically disarmed”—for 6,000 revolvers in addition to some automatic weapons. The problem was that equipment and munitions depots remained “totally under German control” and that any such requests were “purposeless” without Oberg's prior approval.
¹⁰
In general, the Germans were notably unresponsive to inquiries about increasing the French police force and arming it. A few weapons were parceled out, but not many. For all of France, according to one official reckoning in September 1943, the police possessed 564 rifles, 291 submachine guns, and 66 machine guns. Paris police did receive generous allotments of pistols (but with only five or six cartridges each), yet no machine guns or “modern weapons,” as the Prefect of Police complained, in spite of “more and more numerous” terrorist attacks in the capital city. Especially police stations were being assaulted “with an unbelievable audacity” by well-armed gangs. Consequently, unless they were better equipped to meet the rising tide of violence, the police were sure to face insurmountable difficulties in the maintenance of public order.
¹¹

Finally, as mentioned, the Germans agreed with Darnand to permit the creation of the Milice, a uniformed and armed paramilitary force that engendered further controversies. The painful strain on German tolerance began with the Milice's predecessors, the Légion des combattants and the even more unruly and militant Service d’Ordre Légionnaire (SOL). Considering themselves outside of and superior to the regular police, legionnaires repeatedly provoked scuffles with them in the streets of Paris. In these melees, the Germans often found themselves in an uncomfortable posture as arbiters, thereby risking the appearance of permissiveness regarding public disorder if they failed to clamp down on the Légion.
¹²
Embarrassment with this circumstance facilitated the emergence of Darnand, who promised to implement greater discipline as well as stricter repression in return for a strengthened and armed Milice. One potentially important result was a shake-up of French administration in January 1944, as a result of which seven new regional prefects and twenty new departmental prefects were appointed to serve under Darnand's aegis. These novitiate functionaries, with “sharp and constant” German supervision, were to help energize police cadres throughout France.
¹³
Whether such measures actually succeeded in that purpose is altogether dubious. By 1944, in the midst of a “crisis of recruitment,” the reliability of the French police was seriously placed into question by the Occupation. Whereas police officials—notably, the so-called Brigades Spéciales—had usually been cooperative in tracking and apprehending Communists, they were far less willing to administer harsh treatment when it came to the “national resistance,” essentially meaning the militant Gaullist cells that now became increasingly involved in overt anti-German activities. A lesser, albeit also troubling, development was a series of attacks by men impersonating police officers, whose uniforms could apparently be obtained on the black market.
¹⁴
Both Darnand and Heinrich von Stülpnagel spoke of a gathering “banditry” that must be repressed, but the Milice proved to be insufficient in halting the gradual erosion of public tranquility. Thus, Darnand's policy of law enforcement,
maintien de l’ordre
, scarcely merited that description by the summer of 1944.
¹⁵

As the Occupation's confidence in the French police noticeably waned, the banner of the Gestapo was unfurled, and the aggressive behavior of German security forces markedly increased after the Allied invasion of North Africa. Although they cannot be tabulated without bothersome lacunae, statistics in Sipo-SD files showed a proliferation of arrests in Paris by German police agents: 79 from 26 November to 9 December 1942; 167 in the latter half of January 1943; 277 a month later in February; and 453 during a comparable period in July. Their French counterparts were greatly disturbed by what one police memo called “massive arrests in all classes of society,” claiming in November 1943 that the Germans had apprehended 8,000 persons since the beginning of the year. Moreover, in all, the French estimated that 120,000 of their citizens had passed through German jails and camps since the onset of the Occupation. These round numbers do not inspire trust in their precision, but there is no doubt that the Gestapo was doing more than its part, as Bousquet observed, to meet “the wave of terrorism that is rolling over our country” with “cold and implacable determination.”
¹⁶
Meanwhile, French police activity must have seemed rather modest by comparison. The Prefecture of Police boasted that it had detained more than 9,000 persons in the Paris region since the beginning of July 1940 (3,877 imprisonments plus 5,234 other arrests, to be exact).
¹⁷
But Gestapo records during the first four months of 1944 put the matter into better perspective, as the following calculations reveal.

Source: AN Paris, F
⁷
, 15142

It may appear inadmissible to speak of a German gulag in France, but that term is neither anachronistic nor altogether inappropriate. Alone in Greater Paris there were six prisons (Fresnes, La Santé, La Roquette, Cherche-Midi, Les Tourelles, and Romainville) in full use, in addition to three prison camps (Drancy, Gare d’Austerlitz, and a
camp de la folie
for the mentally afflicted at Nanterre)—not to mention nearby Compiègne or the two accessible compounds, serving as reservoirs, at Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret.
¹⁸
A definitive census of the ceaselessly shifting population incarcerated in those institutions is well out of reach. Records kept by French police officials were very incomplete, perhaps because they were particularly eager to deny their own excesses and to leave that reputation to the Germans. Besides, the French were more worried about procedures than numbers. At the beginning of 1944, one police memorandum (for internal consumption) castigated Gestapo officers for “the brutality of their methods,” which seemed out of scale with the offenses committed. Furthermore, there was evidence of “arbitrary cruelty,” doubtless an oblique reference to torture, a word no one dared to declare. Manifestly, it was the intention of the Occupation to intimidate the majority of the population, which, though obliged to bow before such force, was “separating itself definitively from any idea of collaboration.”
¹⁹