When Paris Went Dark (39 page)

The flyer’s rhetoric pleads for recognition that the Germans had been valiant stewards of Paris since 1940, that they still have the best interests of the beautiful capital at heart, and that, should chaos ensue, Parisians will regret the absence of such a strict but respectful authority. Few readers of this flyer knew the drama that was then ensuing among General von Choltitz, diplomats, Resistance leaders, and an adamant Hitler, who was insisting that the city’s bridges and other architectural monuments be destroyed. One order from Berlin demanded that “the severest measures [be used] upon the first indication of an uprising, such as demolition of residential housing blocks [and] public executions.”
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The Parisian answer had been to barricade the streets and snipe at the retreating enemy, something that had definitely not occurred in the confused days of June 1940. The Occupation had come a long way from Hitler’s parting monologue on the steps of Sacré-Coeur, just four years previously.

“They are getting nearer, those dear ‘they,’ ” wrote young Benoîte Groult in her diary on August 15, 1944, and later on August 19: “ ‘They’ are still here, but the other ‘they’ still haven’t arrived.” She noticed a wary anticipation as Parisians walked through the late daylight: “An operetta atmosphere, with a foretaste of tragedy.”
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For the Parisian, these must have been deeply harrowing days. Transportation was interrupted, as was electricity. People still lined up at food stores, but shipments to and through the city were almost ended. Young armed strangers were appearing in every neighborhood; tracts were being glued to walls; the Germans themselves seemed in constant movement, though at the same time directionless. Rumor was becoming—tentatively—fact.

The most serious threat for the Germans was the combined Anglo-American force moving quickly from the Normandy front toward Paris. Von Choltitz had arranged a brief truce with some leaders of the Resistance while the Germans sped up their plans to evacuate the city. But when Colonel Rol asked for an insurrection to begin on August 19, Parisians turned to their historical memory to call
“Tous aux barricades!”
(Everyone to the barricades!). For the first time since 1871, streets and intersections were blocked by Parisians. Colonel Rol had distributed a new call to arms: “Organize yourselves neighborhood by neighborhood. Overwhelm the Germans and take their arms. Free Great Paris, the cradle of France! Avenge your martyred sons and brothers. Avenge the heroes who have fallen for… the freedom of our Fatherland.… Choose as your motto:
A BOCHE
[Kraut]
FOR EACH OF US
. No quarter for these murderers! Forward! Vive la France!”
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Hundreds of barricades popped up almost overnight, manned—and womanned—by neighborhood residents, played on by children, and generally left abandoned at night, during blackouts. Everything was used for the barricades: kiosks, cobblestones, downed trees, burned-out automobiles, old bicycles, street urinals, benches, and tree grilles. Films show women and men and children digging up cobblestones and
macadam and relaying them to each other in long lines to build an improvised rampart across the wide boulevards that Napoleon III’s Paris prefect, Baron Haussmann, had created in the nineteenth century in order to make such structures difficult to construct. Thousands of sandbags, likely taken from former German strongpoints and protected monuments, served to close bridges across the Seine. Those who were at the barricades were dressed in street clothes, uniforms, and even shorts. Some had red scarves around their necks, reminding each other of the color worn by the Communards in 1870. They were armed, barely, with pistols or old rifles; some had helmets, but most did not.

“To the barricades!”
(© LAPI / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)

Other curious Parisians—observers, not participants—surrounded the barricades; there was a general sense of novelty, even gaiety, until the rattle of a machine gun or the appearance of a German tank or armored car chased everyone into a nearby apartment building or café. Children were everywhere; school was out, and nothing was more fun than seeing one’s parents act like youngsters at play. “Public buildings,
the Sorbonne, hospitals enthusiastically raised the tricolor. Telephone calls spread the marvelous news from one end of Paris to the other; Champagne was brought out… saved for this wonderful day.”
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The military effectiveness of the barricades was rudimentary, but their presence was a sign to everyone, including the tense Wehrmacht troops, that control of the city was changing hands.

The major questions then became which of the anti-German forces would take over the city and how quickly and effectively the Wehrmacht could evacuate from Paris. The Germans still maintained order, even directing traffic at major crossroads and making threatening gestures at those who booed them or brandished a French flag. But the bloodiest forty-eight hours remained to be played out. Raoul Nordling, the Swedish consul, was desperately visiting prisons, trying to save thousands of French political prisoners from being deported or, worse, just shot. Already news had reached Paris that the Nazi commander of the major prison in Caen had executed all his prisoners, even those held for minor infractions or still under investigation. At the same time, von Choltitz was attempting to put up the strongest possible resistance so that he could retire from the city with honor. And both sides were undisciplined, with communications constantly interrupted and everyone hoping to have the last shot at saving the honor of the city or that of the German army. Chaos had to prevail, bloody chaos, and it did, until the morning of August 25. Soon the holiday air that had first surrounded the establishment of the barricades dissipated; defenders began to fall as the Germans finally reacted with deadly force. Groups of the FFI began to appear less cocky as more combatants and passersby fell under the crossfire of the undisciplined opponents. Brave citizens put on Red Cross armbands and ran under fire to rescue those who had fallen. Confusion reigned as Resistance newspapers began to appear with contradictory headlines:
PARIS IS FREE OF GERMAN FILTH!
;
PARIS IS NOT YET LIBERATED!

Still, thousands of retreating, disoriented, frightened, and angry Germans remained within and just outside Paris. Many were isolated from their units, standing guard over an installation or a building that their headquarters had long forgotten. Without uninterrupted
communication, they were targets for roving bands of insurgents. Jean Guéhenno remarked in his journal:

A documentary made from moving images shot clandestinely during the last days of the Occupation shows the strange atmosphere that reigned during these last two weeks.
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Pedestrians and Parisians on their bikes nonchalantly pass roving tanks, armored cars, and troop carriers as the Germans appear to be deciding how to defend the city. We see a beautiful city, under bright August skies, indulgently waiting for the moment of liberation. Astute editing suddenly introduces gunfire and scenes of the haphazard fighting that goes on in neighborhood after neighborhood. Every type of French citizen appears to participate: teenagers, men, women, poor and wealthy, old and young. But it is especially the moment of the young—sometimes the too young. Jacques Yonnet, in his memoir, described a corpse he glimpsed on the street: “I saw a body [picked] up at Les Halles—a kid in short [pants], fifteen years old at most. He’d attacked a
Boche
truck that was flying a white flag. The kid was armed with a… pistol with a mother-of-pearl grip, a 1924 ladies’ handbag accessory. The real criminals weren’t in the [German] truck.”
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The real criminals, Yonnet implied, were those who had ordered this
mobilisation générale
of civilians to confront a still
venomous German presence. Debate would continue well after the war about whether the insurrection had been foolhardy or even necessary.

The film shows in detail the arrival of the French Second Armored Division and its US-uniformed soldiers, American-made tanks, and Jeeps. (For some viewers around the world, it appeared that the Americans were the first to enter Paris, but it was a French division, outfitted in American gear.) Images reveal a strange combination of slowly advancing troops surrounded by applauding Parisians in their everyday clothes. It is as if they are at some theme park where the insurrection of Paris is being reenacted; shots are heard, but smiles are everywhere. Soldiers are crouching, checking out apartment windows and balconies, while residents are casually leaning in doorways, smoking, gossiping, and watching. One old gentleman actually claps his hands in applause as soldiers dodge sniper fire. Had Parisians become inured to the sounds of battle and commotion over the past week of the insurrection, or were they just oblivious to the dangers of urban street fighting? What remains unclear is how much of the continuing violence was a result of the actions of French people who were still pro-Vichy and anti-Resistance and how much was the response of German regulars. The so-called Radio Concierge network (concierges passing along news and gossip) continued to function, and word of the advancing Allies was shouted from loge to loge along the streets of both banks of the Seine. Loudspeakers, mounted on trucks and cars, passed by announcing the cease-fire that von Choltitz had agreed to, but it appeared that neither side was willing to stop firing, at least intermittently, on the other.

Erratic activities by both the FFI and the Wehrmacht made walking to work or going to the hospital or even going to church a dangerous activity. In her short history of the Liberation, the archivist Edith Thomas said that going from the Left Bank to the Right Bank for a meeting was like a trek to a remote land. She felt like “a Sioux” moving cautiously in an unfamiliar forest as she passed FFI barricades and roving German tanks. When she ran from doorway to doorway, apartment residents asked if she had news from up the street or around the corner, “as if I had just come from a long voyage.”
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Thomas would eventually get access to the many orders that Colonel Rol had distributed throughout the city—through radio broadcasts, posters on thousands of walls, loudspeakers, and leaflets thrown from fast-moving cars—and they would reveal how well organized, finally, the Resistance had become. Seeking to unite the irregulars with his own well-led cadres, Rol even sent out runners—especially teenage girls and boys—to stand in the crowds that surrounded the posters and listen for those who expressed an interest in joining the fighting. After the gawkers had moved on, the youngsters would follow them around the corner to tell them how they might join up.

Still, most of the fighting was dispersed and only intermittently planned:

Our nervous friend Pablo Picasso ventured out of his apartment in the 6th arrondissement, after the insurrection had begun, and took up residence on the Île Saint-Louis with his former mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, and her daughter by him, Maya. His then companion, Françoise Gilot, described his anxiety: