The Last Battle (9 page)
Authors: Stephen Harding
But Schloss Itter had not been converted into a high-security prison in order to house just Daladier, Gamelin, and Jouhaux. The bureaucrats at Dachau intended to fill as many of the cells as possible, and over time the Tyrolean castle welcomed an additional fifteen “honor” prisoners, each with his or her own story.
PAUL REYNAUD, MAY 12, 1943
We can only imagine the depth of Édouard Daladier’s dismay when, just ten days after his own arrival at Schloss Itter, one of his most bitter political enemies literally turned up on his doorstep. He would soon find that Paul Reynaud’s journey to the fortress in Tyrol had in some ways been even more difficult that his own.
Right up until his June 16, 1940, resignation as prime minister following the success of Germany’s attack on France, Reynaud had been following a carefully charted path to the pinnacle of French politics. Born in southeast France in 1878, he’d studied law expressly to prepare himself for a life in politics. His plans were only temporarily interrupted by World War I, in which he saw army service. In 1919 he won election to the Chamber of Deputies, where he aligned himself with the center-right Democratic Alliance Party. Reynaud held several cabinet posts under various premiers, and in April 1938 he became Daladier’s minister of justice. When the latter resigned on March 19, 1940, Reynaud became premier.
His elevation came less than eight weeks before Germany launched Case Yellow, the first phase of its invasion of France and the Low Countries, on
May 10. Like most of his countrymen, Reynaud was stunned by the rapidity of the German advance and by the failure of his nation’s armed forces—and the British Expeditionary Force—to mount an effective defense. Convinced that General Maurice Gamelin was incapable of reversing France’s military fortunes, on May 18 Reynaud replaced him with General Maxime Weygand. That same day Reynaud brought the eighty-four-year-old World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain into the government as minister of state.
The military and political changes could not stop the Nazi juggernaut, however, especially after the Germans launched Case Red, the second phase of their assault, on June 5. After flanking the Maginot Line, the Wehrmacht was slowed only occasionally by successive defensive lines set up by the overwhelmed Weygand. Reynaud and his government left Paris on June 10 for Tours and, ultimately, Bordeaux. German troops occupied the undefended capital on June 14.
Though Reynaud was convinced France could carry on the fight from its North African colonies, the pressure on him to surrender was intense—and much of it came from his mistress, the allegedly pro-German countess Hélène de Portes.
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When his cabinet voted on June 15 to ask Germany for peace terms, Reynaud resigned and was replaced by Pétain, who immediately announced his intention to seek an armistice.
Reynaud and de Portes stayed in Bordeaux until after the June 22 signing of the armistice and then left for Reynaud’s summer home on the Mediterranean coast. On June 28 their car left the road and hit a tree; de Portes died instantly, and Reynaud suffered a serious concussion. During his recovery at a hospital in Montpellier, German troops occupied northern France, and the Pétain-led government in Vichy proclaimed the elderly marshal “head of state” and replaced the Third Republic with an increasingly fascist regime only too willing to be Berlin’s lapdog. Pétain announced his intention to try members of the former government for their betrayal of France, and on September 6, 1940, agents of the Sûreté took Reynaud into custody.
Pétain ultimately decided that Reynaud and Mandel would not be part of the show trial and ordered them to remain imprisoned at the Fort du Portalet. They stayed there for just over a year, mostly in solitary confinement. Though cheered by visits from his adult daughter, Colette Reynaud Dernis, and his private secretary, twenty-eight-year-old Christiane Mabire, Reynaud knew that Vichy would turn him over to the Germans. That day
came on November 20, 1942, when he and Mandel were transported to Berlin. The two Frenchmen were separated, and Reynaud was driven to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg.
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Reynaud spent five months in isolation at Sachsenhausen. In February 1943 he discovered that Mandel was being held in a nearby cell. The two were able to steal a few moments of whispered conversation when one or the other was taken to the shower room. Those moments with Mandel came to a halt in mid-March, when Reynaud was taken to a section of Sachsenhausen known as “the Bunker” and installed in a large hut surrounded by a high-voltage fence. After a few weeks in his new quarters, he was joined by the tennis player and former Vichy official Jean Borotra.
On May 10 the two men were told to pack their few belongings, and within hours they were on the road, headed south toward Austria. When he stepped from the staff car in Schloss Itter’s front courtyard, Reynaud was shocked to see Daladier and Gamelin—both of whom he’d assumed had been executed after the Riom show trial—and Jouhaux, whom he’d known before the war. Looking around at his new home, Reynaud found it far more acceptable than his previous prison. As he later recalled, “Daladier, Jouhaux, and Gamelin had been there for some days. I fear that I must have shocked them when I cried out: ‘This is paradise!’”
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It was an exclamation he’d come to regret.
JEAN BOROTRA, MAY 12, 1943
Though Borotra’s initial impression of Schloss Itter was more restrained than Reynaud’s, he, too, found the castle a vast improvement over Sachsenhausen. And for the tall, lanky tennis star—a man for whom daily strenuous physical activity was as necessary as food and water—the most appealing aspect of this new prison was the pathway that encompassed the rear courtyard just inside its surrounding wall. Borotra realized that if his captors allowed him to run several circuits every day he would soon be back in the superlative physical condition that would be necessary if he was to attempt what he thought constantly about: escape.
Fitness had been a key aspect of Borotra’s life virtually from the day of his birth on August 13, 1898.
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Born into a Basque family near Biarritz, he grew up walking the mountainous landscape of France’s border with Spain. At fourteen he discovered tennis while spending the summer of 1912
in England. Fast, agile, and competitive, Borotra took to the sport immediately, though the outbreak of world war brought a temporary halt to his development as a tennis player.
Deeply patriotic, Borotra enlisted in September 1916. As a fit and obviously well-educated young man—he was fluent in Spanish, German, and English as well as French—Borotra was trained as an artillery officer. Following his commissioning in April 1917, he saw extensive combat, won the Croix de guerre, and ended the war as a battery commander. Upon his release from active duty in 1919, he returned to school, graduating with degrees in engineering and law.
Borotra continued playing tennis and began winning tournaments throughout France. His highly athletic style—lightening-fast volleys and crushing overhead smashes intermingled with almost balletic leaps and spins—earned him the nickname “the Bounding Basque,” and he quickly became a crowd-pleasing favorite. And the crowds soon became international, as Borotra began representing both himself and his country in matches worldwide. By the late 1920s he’d won singles and doubles titles in most of the world’s top championships, including Wimbledon.
His athletic success did not keep Borotra from looking for opportunities in the business world. He realized that professional tennis wouldn’t provide a living wage and in 1923 secured a position as an engineer with a Paris-based firm. Over the next seventeen years his language skills, charm, social connections, business acumen, and celebrity allowed him to build a successful career as an international salesman. And by scheduling his international business trips to coincide with the major tennis tournaments, he was able to simultaneously pursue both his chosen careers.
Borotra also found time for politics. In the late 1920s he joined the Croix de feu (“Cross of Fire”), a far-right veterans’ group led by Colonel François de La Rocque. Borotra admired the organization’s espousal of a moral, Roman Catholic France, and his celebrity status was a boon to the group’s recruiting efforts. When in 1936 de La Rocque transformed the Croix de feu into a somewhat more moderate political party called the Parti Social Français (PSF), Borotra remained a loyal member. In 1931 he met de La Rocque’s chief of information, Edmond Barrachin, and his English wife. Borotra was smitten with the immensely attractive Madame Barrachin, and the tennis star was widely assumed to be the cause for her 1934 divorce. She and Borotra were married in 1937 and had one son, Yves.
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As if sport, business, and family did not keep him busy enough, Borotra also remained a reserve officer. His unit—5th Squadron, 232nd Divisional Heavy Artillery Regiment—was mobilized a few weeks before Germany’s invasion of Poland. He and his men first saw combat on the Lorraine front but by June 16 had been cut off and completely surrounded. The following day Pétain told the nation of his intention to seek an armistice, an announcement that convinced Borotra he should escape to England to carry on the fight. When the 5th Squadron surrendered to the Germans, Borotra slipped off and made his way toward the French lines in the rugged Massif Central. He ultimately joined forces with a young French air force pilot who had access to a small civilian aircraft, and the two agreed to set off on their clandestine cross-Channel flight on the night of July 3.
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Borotra’s escape to England never took place. Hours before the flight was to begin, Radio France announced that Britain’s Royal Navy had attacked French warships in Algeria, an assault that killed more than 1,200 French sailors. Borotra understood the reason for the British strike—to prevent the warships from falling under German control—but was outraged by the destruction meted out by the Royal Navy in an unprovoked surprise attack. He decided to stay in France—though his wife and son were in London—and was determined to do whatever he could for his country. Unfortunately, Borotra’s patriotism and his respect for, and admiration of, both Maxime Weygand and Phillipe Pétain soon led the tennis star to make the worst decision of his life.
Upon Vichy’s 1940 creation, the minister of youth and family affairs, Basque right-winger Jean Ybarnegaray, asked Borotra to become commissioner for sports and help “morally re-educate” France’s young people, to make them “better equipped for life and better prepared to answer all the calls”
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their nation might address to them. Though Borotra’s politics were not as conservative as his own, Ybarnegaray felt his fellow PSF member would be the ideal choice for the new post. Though Borotra expressed his misgivings about the job, on July 20 he assumed the post of director of the Commission of General Education and Sports.
Over the following twenty-one months the Bounding Basque sought to implement a national program to improve the physical and moral health of France’s young people. But despite his zeal for the job and his status as a Vichy official, Borotra refused to be a lapdog for the Germans. Soon after the Nazis conducted their first roundup of Parisian Jews in
August 1941, he banned all French sports organizations from competing against German teams.
Borotra’s lack of enthusiasm for the collaborationist policies of the Pétain regime and his disdain for the Nazis soon drew official attention. In early April 1942 he was summoned to the German embassy in Paris, where a functionary demanded that Borotra publicly announce his support for collaboration with Germany and exclude “undesirables” from all French sports. The tennis legend refused, adding that it was his job to bring France’s young people together through sports, regardless of their race, religion, or politics. The German warned Borotra that he’d better change his tune or he’d suffer the consequences. Borotra refused to bow to German pressure, and on April 19, 1942, the Germans forced Vichy to fire him.
Borotra went back to work, but over the following months he decided to leave France and join the Allied forces. On November 22, 1942, he went to Paris’s Gare d’Austerlitz intending to take a train south and cross into Spain on foot. Unfortunately, Borotra had told friends of his plan, and, as he was about to board his train, he was arrested by Gestapo agents.
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After questioning in Paris Borotra was taken to Berlin and from there to Sachsenhausen. He was kept in solitary in the same cell block as Reynaud and Mandel, though he was unaware of their presence. In late April 1943 he was moved to the Bunker, where Reynaud was already in residence. The two men had known each other for years but, given their differing politics, were not friends. That changed over the weeks they spent together in the Bunker, and on the eve of their departure for Schloss Itter Reynaud recorded in his diary that Borotra had become “an excellent companion.”
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Borotra’s first impression of Itter improved considerably when he realized that the rear courtyard would offer him the chance to run. Though still in good physical condition—especially for a man of forty-five—Borotra knew he would have to be far more fit if he were to have any hope of achieving what he’d dreamed about since the moment of his arrest: freedom.
AUGUSTA BRUCHLEN, JUNE 19, 1943
While Borotra hoped to escape from Schloss Itter, Augusta Bruchlen had done all she could to get into the fortress. From the moment she’d learned that Léon Jouhaux had been moved to the castle, she’d lobbied the German authorities to allow her to join him. She knew he was ailing physically and
emotionally, and she was convinced that without her presence he would not survive his incarceration. She was determined that Jouhaux, the man she’d loved for many years, would not die in a German prison.
