Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 (22 page)

One incident provided an experimental dry run. After an attack by partisans on German personnel at Rouen in January 1943, the Gestapo issued orders that all Jews were to be vacated from the Department of Seine-Inférieure and sent at once to Drancy. This operation, with the assistance of the French police, was declared by the Sipo-SD to be “a complete success”—despite the fact that “the overwhelming majority of the population” deplored it.
²¹
Admittedly, as ever, there were other problems of a more practical sort. In addition to the “stiffening political situation,” meaning Vichy's reluctance to approve the detention and deportation of French Jews, there was still confusion about segregating Jews from hostages and other prisoners. The sheer amount of paperwork was immense, more than administrators could manage. Furthermore, Drancy was chaotic and overcrowded, its contingent of condemned cellmates numbering over 4,000 in mid-February 1943. Sanitary conditions there correspondingly worsened, resulting in increased illness, epidemics, and deaths among the captives.
²²

Perhaps Vichy's objections had some effect, but not enough to alter significantly the sordid events in progress. Pleas by Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval were always couched in a fawning rhetoric of loyalty, as when they registered stubborn opposition to German arrests of French Jews on humanitarian grounds “without wanting thereby to express a philo-Semitism.” Carl Oberg responded to this disclaimer by declaring that henceforth the deportations “will be accomplished with the exclusive participation of German police forces.” Knochen confessed more realistically to Adolf Eichmann that in light of French recalcitrance and the Paris Gestapo's shortage of personnel, a total
Entjudung
of France could “scarcely be accomplished” within the near future. And by 1944, that was the only future that mattered.
²³

Nevertheless, “it should and must be achieved,” said Röthke. By “it” he unambiguously meant the export of all Jews, foreign and French, to concentration camps in the East or to their country of origin. He had little use for Laval's incessant whining, as he saw it, because “the order of the Führer about the Final Solution of the Jewish question in all of Europe is clearly established.” Earlier, the Germans had agreed that the entire operation would be gradual, beginning with enemy and alien Jews. But now the time had come to put Nazi racial theory into practice. The trains must continue to roll.
²⁴
And so they did. How nearly was the Gestapo's ambition realized? By Röthke's count, 52,000 Jews had departed from Drancy by August 1943, leaving 70,000 in the former Occupied Zone (of which 60,000 resided in Greater Paris) and 200,000 in the rest of France. Contemporary French statistics (probably somewhat inflated) set the number of deported Jews at 57,000 by the outset of 1944, 72,000 by 1 May, and 81,000 before late July. Whatever the exact count of deportations, the German Occupation will forever stand accused of sharing a major responsibility for the slaughter of innocent humanity on a large scale.
²⁵

It seems altogether fitting to conclude this analysis of the third phase of the Occupation by offering a comment here on one of the most controversial issues arising from this period—the role of the French. It is perfectly clear, first of all, that the once fashionable view that virtually the entire nation embraced resistance, in body or spirit, will no longer do. That self-serving concept was laid to rest decades ago. Yet the opposite proposition—that most of the French were cowardly and collaborationist until the last moment of their liberation—also does not accord well with the evidence. It is more than an obvious exercise in triangulation to conclude that the complicated reality lay somewhere in between. True, the great bulk of the population, particularly in Paris, remained passive and stoic throughout the Occupation. Also true, the French police usually complied with German objectives, including the programs of forced labor and Aryanization, roundups and razzias, the detention of Communists, and the deportation of Jews. The stated rationale was always the same: if nothing was done by the French, matters would be left open to far more outrageous action by German military authorities and the Gestapo. The same was true of the bureaucracy. Cooperation with the Occupation could plausibly be seen as a prophylactic measure, a way to protect the populace from the worst consequences of the French defeat in 1940 and the long agony of living under the domination of a foreign power. This attitude was sanctioned and indeed encouraged by Pétain, Laval, and the entire Vichy regime. Responsibility for the death of tens of thousands of Jews deported from France cannot therefore be ascribed to a few rotten apples at the Prefecture of Police. It must be traced to the top.

If these observations verge on the self-evident, they need to be plainly stated, just as it has been necessary to cite in detail the documentation on which they are based. Less patent are some of the nuances and questions that must be added and that can gain a clear profile only from a careful study of administrative records left from the Occupation. One such consideration, often too little appreciated by those who have most harshly condemned French collaboration, was the constant and close supervision maintained by German authorities over their counterparts in Paris. If a relatively moderate stance characterized the military correctness of Otto and Heinrich von Stülpnagel, Werner Best, Elmar Michel, Hans Speidel, and others in the Hotel Majestic, the tone of the Occupation was nonetheless increasingly determined by Nazi zealots like Carl Oberg, Fritz Sauckel, Theodor Dannecker, and Heinz Röthke. Under these circumstances, there was precious little that French functionaries in Paris could do to defend their autonomy. In most instances, the sole possible course for them was delay, and delay they frequently did. It is only fair to judge that the tepid attitude of many bureaucrats and ordinary citizens—aside from the heroic resistance of a few—was one of the reasons why many French Jews had their lives and their property saved. Consequently, the Final Solution in France fell far short of the Third Reich's worst intentions.

That being said, two further observations require a place here. First, one must ask whether political and popular reluctance to do German bidding was the single explanation for the survival of a majority of French Jews. The answer is certainly no. In an important sense, time simply ran out for the Occupation. Nazi Germany's ultimate aspiration to remove every last Jew from France was beyond doubt. But the approaching military struggle on the Continent presented endless complications. In addition to the effects of Allied bombing and local acts of sabotage, the French infrastructure of industry and energy was badly overstretched. Bureaucratic confusion was endemic, and, as this study has amply demonstrated, the turf wars and internal conflicts among German administrative bodies never ceased. One must also include the small and often short-lived resistance groups, usually headquartered in Paris during the final phase of the Occupation, and the covert assistance offered to Jews by ordinary French citizens (many of them not Jewish) throughout the war years. These factors cannot be precisely weighed, of course, but the cumulative debilitating result was undoubtedly to create more and more physical difficulties for the hectic effort to apprehend, assemble, and transport Jews from France across the European heartland. By 1944, the killing machine was broken and beyond repair.
²⁶

Finally, a hypothetical question is in order. What if Pétain and his entourage in Vichy, as well as lesser lights in Paris like René Bousquet and Joseph Darnand, had simply refused to cooperate with the Germans? Would the consequences actually have been far worse, as they claimed? This investigation suggests the contrary. From the beginning of the Occupation, and ever more acutely toward its end, both the military administration and the Gestapo suffered from a shortage of personnel in France. They themselves recognized that without the active and willing collaboration of French functionaries and police, it would have been impossible to approach even remotely the goals and quotas that were demanded from Berlin. This problem visibly worsened following the Operation Torch landing, once the Germans were obliged to occupy all of France and no relief from manpower shortages could be expected after the fall of Stalingrad and the invasion of Italy. That the Nazis were able to sustain some remnant of their racial program under such trying conditions was possible only because others were induced or compelled to remain their helpers.
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PART IV

P
ULLING
O
UT

(June–August 1944)

Chapter 16

T
HE
T
WILIGHT
W
EEKS

0
nce the Allied armies had secured a foothold on the French mainland, the days of the Occupation were clearly numbered. Everyone knew it, although few Germans stationed in Paris were as yet prepared to admit openly the obvious and painful truth. Nevertheless, as the final weeks passed—especially after the Allied military breakout from the Normandy peninsula at the end of July 1944—pressing realities had to be met and necessary consequences faced.

At first, little changed outwardly in Paris. Whatever the surface appearance, however, within the Hotel Majestic a heightened tension was palpable. MBF headquarters there was immediately placed on high alert. Orders from Heinrich von Stülpnagel were that all members of his military administration were to be at the ready, day and night, “with weapon in hand.” Officers at every rank were to obey instructions with strictness and to assure “ruthless execution” of them in contacts with the French population.
¹
Freiherr von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, Ernst Schaumburg's replacement as the Commandant of Greater Paris, grandly announced that the struggle for Europe had begun in earnest and that “the fate of Greater Germany” now hung in the balance. It would be the German objective to defend the capital city and thus to sustain Occupation authorities in their function “as long as possible.”
²
Yet at the same time, Stülpnagel's emissaries were scouting eastern France for a suitable site for withdrawal in the event of a “special case” (
Sonderfall
), a typical euphemism for the fall of Paris to invading forces. By mid-July, contingency plans had been drafted, and the decision had been made to fall back to St. Dié and the nearby village of Fraize in the Vosges. When need be, the Occupation stood ready to depart.
³

Such was the setting for the often recounted events of 20 July 1944, when the failure of a plot against Hitler's life trumped a successful military coup in Paris. Shortly after the event, Carl Oberg wrote an account of how his office was invaded that evening by ten armed men, led by Major General Walther Brehmer, and he was whisked away to the Hotel Continental. There, along with other SS officers and Nazi Party leaders, he was informed by Commandant Boineburg of the plot and confined under armed guard. Oberg was then taken to the Hotel Raphael (next to the Majestic), where a confrontation took place with Stülpnagel and his adjutant Caesar von Hofacker, a cousin of Hitler's putative assassin, Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who had earlier phoned from Berlin with the mistaken report that Hitler was dead.
⁴
By now the news was out: the Führer lived. After a stiff meeting at the bar of the Raphael, in the presence of Ambassador Otto Abetz, Stülpnagel was led off and bundled into the backseat of a limousine heading toward Berlin. On the way, at Verdun, he attempted suicide by a pistol shot to the head, succeeding only in blinding himself. Suffering and helpless, he was transported to Berlin where he was mercilessly hanged on a meat hook. Writing about this gruesome episode in retrospect, Werner Best could not find high words of praise for the part of his martyred former chief, suggesting that Stülpnagel had not actually been among the true and persistent resisters against Nazi rule in Paris and that he had taken sides with them only when that seemed the sole way to maintain his command. If so, one can only say that he paid dearly for his wavering allegiance to the Third Reich.
⁵

These internal affairs of the German military regime, however dramatic, had little impact on public life in Paris. The capital remained eerily quiet, like a crocodile sunning on a rock, ready to snap. The calm can partly be explained by admonitions against a premature uprising from both American General Eisenhower and, speaking via Radio London to his growing legion of followers, General de Gaulle. The Communists also observed a prudent silence, preparing for an insurrection without the widespread popular support to provoke one. June and July saw a few wildcat strikes but no general movement of revolt among the ranks of labor. While rail traffic was severely disrupted in surrounding areas, Parisian metros continued to circulate within the city, albeit with reduced schedules. The entire civic transport system had to be closed by 10:20 PM, meaning that the last metro left its end station at 9:45.
⁶

Strangely, even as Allied armies began to besiege all of western France, the Germans made a strenuous effort to nourish the cultural life of Paris. The Propaganda Section proudly announced ninety-one concerts in June. State theaters were still operating throughout the week, with smaller private theaters presenting events on weekends. During the fierce battle in Normandy, for the edification of arms workers, the Palais de Chaillot managed to mount a Labiche comedy and a production of
La Traviata
. Art auctions went on at the Hôtel Drouot, where a Matisse painting sold for 428,000 francs and a Bonnard canvas for 305,000 francs. Painting exhibits, such as the “Salon des Tuileries” at the Palais de Tokyo, were displayed to large crowds. As late as the last day of July, a new show of watercolors opened at the Paris Orangerie. Meanwhile, although reduced from four to two a week, daily programs continued at Paris racetracks. One would scarcely have guessed that a liberating army would enter the city within barely a fortnight.
⁷

At the same time, under “the necessary pressure” by German authorities to meet their demands, the French bureaucracy carried on. Contrary to expectations, as the MBF's administrative staff commented in mid-July, since the invasion there had been no spike in resistance activity in Paris, and therefore harsher measures of repression were not required. Those measures seemed rigid enough as things were. Sipo-SD statistics recorded hundreds of arrests in the Paris region: nearly 400 by the Germans from 30 June to 14 July (of which 51 were identified as “terrorists”), plus another 46 apprehended by French police. It is worth noting that, throughout this period, the action of French law enforcement was far more restrained than that of the Gestapo. Although personnel checks in the street and neighborhood sweeps, under German supervision, were conducted by French officers, it was indicative that police recruitment had fallen off and that frequent reports of defections among rural gendarmes were reaching Paris.
⁸

Acts of sabotage and aerial bombardments were unrelenting in the Paris region without touching the inner city. One count in mid-June listed altogether more than 8,000 casualties in the northern zone of Occupation, whereas the toll for central Paris was 16. The western suburbs fared less well. One June attack resulted in 18 dead and 30 wounded in the vicinity of Versailles, Saint Cyr, and Orsay.
⁹
Sabotage, besides cutting rail connections, particularly affected phone services and electrical power cables. These, in turn, restricted factories and business firms and thereby created—for the first time since 1940—unemployment. One striking difference from the beginning of the Occupation, however, was the absence of a mass exodus from the capital. Instead, refugees were “streaming” into Paris in search of a safe haven.
¹⁰

Not before the end of July did Paris begin to shut down. Because of the electricity shortage, cinemas were forced to close. To the consternation of the Communists, there was nevertheless no uprising or general strike, despite production slowdowns and increasing attacks on German military personnel, usually followed by retaliation in the form of hostage-taking and executions. It was also hunting season for
miliciens
and other members of the MO, who suffered losses by assassination, of which Joseph Darnand's propaganda head, Philippe Henriot, was the most prominent victim. Unsurprisingly, this round of random violence and repression, spinning out of control, produced serious friction among the French. More than once, street clashes broke out between the Milice and police. If it is too much to speak of an incipient civil war, by early August the steaming cauldron of conflict between those willing to preserve a semblance of public order and those seeking to destroy it had reached a boiling point. Paris, as one German military report compellingly described it, had become a scene of “complete confusion.”
¹¹

Before shifting the focus, another matter must be mentioned. As conditions worsened, the gloves of repression came off. Fed by rumors of armed conspiracies and planned terrorist attacks, cases of torture became more common. Too unbearable to be recounted but too alarming to leave aside, this hidden chapter of the Occupation has been preserved by classified photographs now housed in the French Archives Nationales. It was also briefly but graphically revealed years later during the 1954 trial of Carl Oberg, when the presiding judge quietly read aloud terse charges of “eyes and genital parts ripped out, fingers cut off with a kitchen knife and a hammer, etc.” In the courtroom, the transcript reads, “women cry, even among journalists.” Enough said.
¹²

Parisians noticed particularly the simultaneous collapse of the French economy, for it was they who suffered most from it. Because of continuous bombings, “virtually without pause,” Paris became isolated. Besides the growing scarcity of foodstuffs, the lagging availability of coal and therefore electricity meant ineluctable cutbacks and layoffs. Even the arms industry was hindered “to the greatest extent.”
¹³
Precisely how much loss of productivity occurred was difficult to determine. Estimates depended on the location and perspective of observers as well as the object or objects of their attention. The post-invasion deficit of industry was variously indicated as 25 percent, 33 percent, 45 percent, 50 percent, or 70 percent—as so often, not an exact science. By mid-July, the conclusion within the German military administration was unambiguously depressing. According to the MBF's Administrative Section, the entire French economy was “badly crippled.” Reports from the Economic Section were still more negative: the economic trajectory of France was downward, and “the curve is steeply declining.”
¹⁴

One confirmation of distress was a redistribution of the labor market. Within a week after the Normandy incursion, work on the Atlantic Wall ceased. Since the system of coastal fortifications had already been breached at a central point, there was no sense in further reinforcing the flanks. Instead, units of the Organisation Todt were to be redeployed to assist in repairing bombing damage.
¹⁵
Otherwise, labor was now generally underutilized as more businesses and factories closed or operated on reduced schedules in order to conserve energy. Those considered essential for the war effort, thus classified as
Rüstungs-Betriebe
, were functioning at most on a five-day week, others but two or three days; and many of them stayed open only three hours per day.
¹⁶
Closings, as noted, created unemployment for the first time in four years, yet the movement of labor to the Reich was halted. Even if workers could be recruited, they could not be efficiently transported. On 6 July 1944, Fritz Sauckel finally confessed the full extent of his failure to the Führer. During the first half of the year, out of a quota of a half million, barely 40,000 French laborers had actually signed up for transfer to Germany, most of them coerced into doing so. All but disintegrated, the STO was therefore abruptly disbanded.
¹⁷
Ten days later, a conference on the European labor situation was convened at the Wartburg in southern Germany, where Sauckel emitted his last hurrah. In a passionate speech he warned that a Bolshevik victory would bring “the destruction of our culture and the elimination of the white race.” He conceded that the shortfall of his most recent recruitment effort was “a huge slap” to the face of the Third Reich, but he nonetheless expressed supreme confidence that “we can win the war, and we will win the war.” In a more subdued tone, another speaker remarked simply that there had been “virtually no results” from France.
¹⁸

For obvious reasons, the best criterion for assessing the deteriorating economic circumstances was the fate of the French National Railway Company, which found itself in dire straits. With its installations and rolling stock the target of incessant Allied air raids, the SNCF was meanwhile harassed daily by Occupation authorities to ensure both the provisioning of Paris and the swift flow of men and materiel necessary for the military campaign in progress. Whereas the main concern of French officials was the former, the Haupt-Verkehrs-Direktion (HVD) headquartered in Paris made it clear that all military requirements must have absolute priority and be enforced “even with a certain brutality.” That did not bode well for Paris.
¹⁹
Moreover, negotiations over the daily operation of railroads were complicated by an undisguised mutual distrust between SNCF and HVD. Immediately after D-Day, just as they had long foreseen, Gestapo forces arrested a number of SNCF managers, including Pierre-Eugène Fournier, the president of its Administrative Council, and (not for the first time) several lower employees and workers. This rapid pre-emptory move gave the Germans a heavy club with which to thwart any possible strike attempts by French
cheminots
. After some hard bargaining, an accommodation was reached. In return for promises to keep the trains running with “the same energy and courage” as before, Fournier and fifty members of the SNCF staff were released.
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