Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944 (25 page)

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PPENDIX

Classified French Police Files at the
Archives Nationales in Paris

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fter some initial discouragement and considerable delay, I was finally able to obtain special authorizations (
dérogations
) to consult several restricted cartons housed in the series F
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(Police Générale) of the Archives Nationales (AN).

It goes without saying that the period of the Occupation produced raw feelings and deep animosities during as well as following the war years. Although the number of persons involved is still in dispute, there was unquestionably a significant purge of French collaborationists after the Liberation. We have those unforgettable photos of women with their heads shaved, Pierre Laval on trial, and the pathetic figure of Marshal Pétain at the end—eclipsed only by the indelible image of General de Gaulle and other Resistance leaders triumphantly descending the Champs-Élysées. Winners and losers were caught up together in this emotional maelstrom, and it is not surprising that some public officials and professional archivists felt a need thereafter to allow justice to take its course without undue public exposure beyond the courtroom. That, presumably, explains the existence of the classified files and the lengths to which a researcher must go to obtain access to them.

But what do they actually contain? Only a partial answer to that question is currently possible, pending an overdue blanket declassification of the documents at issue. Fortunately, the present administrative regime of the AN has of late been increasingly forthcoming, and I especially want to thank Mme. la Directrice Martine de Boisdeffre, M. Christian Oppetit, and Mlle. Emilie Charrier for their cooperation in allowing me to examine some of the material that appeared relevant for the preparation of this study.
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Most of the contents of these cartons, let it be said at once, date from the post-war years, making it all the more appropriate to comment on them in the appendix of a work that is otherwise based almost entirely on evidence contemporary with the Occupation period itself. Only a sparse few original documents, or copies of them, are to be found that can be securely dated before August 1944—and they, virtually without exception, can only confirm data and observations already available in unclassified police reports. There is consequently no obvious reason to maintain restrictions on these records.

A few examples may suffice to make the point. One memorandum dated 12 February 1943 removes doubt (but was there any?) regarding the attitude of the SS in Paris about the so-called Jewish question. Writing to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) in Berlin, Helmut Knochen reiterates his intention, on orders from Adolf Eichmann, to “evacuate” all Jews in France to the East. More than a year after the infamous Wannsee Conference had adopted the Final Solution, this directive could hardly have occasioned a surprise in the RSHA. Yet two of Knochen's comments are worth noting for the record. He confirms Pétain's stubborn opposition to the deportation of French Jews, and he pointedly criticizes René Bousquet's attempts to hinder German efforts. We see laid out here, in other words, the context of Bousquet's replacement by Joseph Darnand, in his role as commander of the Milice, to be head of the Maintien de l’Ordre (MO). Knochen also emphasizes to his superiors the acute shortage of German administrative personnel in France after the Allied landing of November 1942 in North Africa. To ensure the enforcement of Nazi racial policy in all of the occupied territory after the disappearance of the demarcation line, therefore, “the deployment of French police is imperative.” The collaboration of the MO with the Gestapo, in short, had clearly become an urgent necessity for the Germans.
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Another memo from January 1944 attempts to tabulate the results of that collaboration. Therewith Ambassador Otto Abetz sends to Berlin four lists of “preventive” arrests in Paris. Among them one finds the names of various French administrators, prefects,
inspecteurs des finances
, professors, and assorted intellectuals who had become persons of interest “for Gaullist, Marxist, and other activity hostile to the Reich.” According to Abetz, during 1943 alone, such apprehensions by the Germans totaled nearly 35,000 French citizens, while the French police had rounded up more than 9,000. Among these “dissidents,” who were “justifiably suspected,” appeared the names of celebrities such as Louis Aragon, Bernard Faÿ (curiously), Robert d’Harcourt, Louis Madelin, Jean Monnet, and Pierre Renouvin. The memo continues: “Whenever any concrete elements of suspicion existed, even of minor importance,” it was standard procedure to make an immediate arrest. No wonder that the prisons became filled to overflowing and that the fear of disappearing into
Nacht und Nebel
correspondingly grew.
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Otherwise, these files reveal little from contemporary sources beyond routine police reports and records. Some clusters of documents concern French political leaders and organizations, such as, for example, Colonel François de la Rocque and the Parti Social Français. Another lesser figure who emerges here is Roland Krug von Nidda, the German diplomatic representative at Vichy, whose daily contacts with Pétain's government there provided much fodder for the mills of collaboration. A curiosity item is the large dossier on Winston Churchill, whose movements were closely followed by French police starting in the war years. Not only his visit to Paris in 1945 was documented, but also his stays in the late 1940s at French spas like Aix-les-Bains, Aix-en-Provence, and Antibes, as well as Monte Carlo. Particular attention was devoted to his repeated vacations in the early 1950s at Cap d—Ail on the estate of Lord Beaverbrook (alternately misspelled “Beaverbrock” or “Baeverbrook”). Perhaps some future biographer of Churchill may find this trivia noteworthy.
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The real interest of the classified police files of the AN lies not in any of the above but in the post-war investigations of prominent German officials of the Occupation who were eventually brought to trial. Three stand out: Otto Abetz, Helmut Knochen, and Carl Oberg. After being arrested, each was brought back to Paris and interrogated at length by officers of the French Sûreté Nationale in preparation for an appearance before a court of law. Transcripts of these closed sessions have all the interest of an autopsy being performed before our eyes. Obviously, they must be treated with the utmost caution by historians, who cannot fail to detect a common denominator of attempted self-exculpation by the Germans.
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It is difficult to determine which of the three testimonies is the most disingenuous. The statements made by Abetz cover a wide range of topics, including his activity between the wars with the Comité Franco-Allemand, associations with the Nazi Party, propaganda and press actions by the Paris Embassy, confiscation of art treasures, deportations and labor conscription, and relations with political personalities, such as Édouard Herriot, Paul Reynaud, and Jean Luchaire. None is more revealing, however, than Abetz's declarations about the Jewish question, regarding which he denies any direct activity—even when confronted with accusations by one of his underlings at the Paris Embassy, Carltheo Zeitschel, that he was instrumental in the formulation and execution of German racial policy. That charge was “completely false,” Abetz categorically states: “I never transmitted any suggestion whatever on the Jewish question to Ribbentrop, to Himmler, or to anyone whomever.” Zeitschel's allegations were therefore “absurd,” Abetz claims, since as Ambassador he had “no competence at all concerning the regulation of Jewish questions in France.” Abetz thus presents himself as an innocent bystander, a faithful supporter of Franco-German cooperation, and a calm voice of reason in the face of Nazi fanaticism. Anyone who has carefully read the account in this volume, among many others, must respond to Abetz's auto-justification with frank skepticism. The contemporary evidence of the Occupation patently contradicts his version of events, leaving no doubt about his deep involvement with the persecution and elimination of thousands of Jews.
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The case of Oberg was of a different sort. Arrested by the Americans in the Tyrol after the war, incarcerated at Baden Baden, and then transferred to Paris (whence he had fled on 18 August 1944), Oberg was widely and publicly condemned from the outset as the “butcher of Paris,” directly responsible as he was for mass deportations, massacres like Oradour-sur-Glane, destruction with heavy casualties of the Old Port at Marseille, and countless expeditions against the
maquis
throughout France. As chief of the SS in Paris and head of the Gestapo there, Oberg could scarcely deny the counts against him. But he could attempt to mitigate their impact by shifting a large portion of malfeasance onto the French. With an undeniable shortage of personnel, he claimed, it was manifestly impossible for the Germans to do more than oversee from afar police actions that were of necessity conducted mainly by the French. This was the entire sense of his agreements with René Bousquet, and only Bousquet's failure to maintain sufficient initiative by the French police led Oberg to propose replacing him at the end of 1943 with Joseph Darnand, “who inspired my complete confidence.” And so on. Oberg's depiction of his own ineffectuality because of the sheer lack of numbers did not represent much of a defense, and, when tried in post-war years, it did nothing to quiet the clamor for his head in the French press.
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More problematic was the interrogation of Knochen. Also arrested by the Americans in January 1946, he was initially confined at Dachau before being brought back that November to Paris, where he was interviewed by the Sûreté and then held at the prison of Cherche-Midi pending further investigation. When questioned about his responsibilities as second-in-command of the Gestapo in Paris, specifically regarding the treatment of prisoners, Knochen replied flatly: “I knew nothing of tortures.” Of course, it was known that there were some instances of “enhanced interrogation” (
verschärfte Vernehmung
) of a captive, which meant that “one could strike him, reduce his rations.” But Knochen denied that he had ever witnessed such a procedure and assumed that it remained within proper bounds. He did admit that he had heard about sessions of “waterboarding” (
baignoires
), but he was unaware that any deaths resulted from them. “For the first time, I heard mention of torture at the Nuremberg trials, and I was very astonished by it.” To this statement Knochen added: “I cannot understand how my services could employ such procedures of torture without my being informed.” Historians may be excused for sharing Knochen's lack of comprehension, since the notion that a Gestapo chief in Paris during more than three years of the Nazi Occupation had no knowledge whatever of torture inflicted by his own men strains credulity beyond the breaking point. If there is a semantic problem at issue—is simulated drowning not a torture and is “enhanced interrogation” not a euphemism?—it pales before the awful reality that took place night after night in the cellars of Paris detention centers.
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One question received extensive and yet inconclusive treatment in the immediate post-war period. How many civilians were executed by the Germans in France? A department-by-department survey of that issue was conducted by the Sûreté in the spring of 1947. The statistical findings were as follows:

These figures were reviewed by a second survey in 1952, which concluded that the most recent estimates reached about 5,000 greater than the earlier figure, that is, more than 30,000 in total. The truth, naturally, is that we shall never know the precise number and that historians will forever puzzle over the many contingencies and contradictions.
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Finally, several references to General Dietrich von Choltitz deserve our attention. Because he was in some sense a hero of the Liberation, his declarations were far less controversial than the others and were openly reported in the public forum, for instance, in a 1949 article in
Le Figaro
, “Why I Did Not Destroy Paris in 1944.” Comfortably retired in Freiburg-im-Breisgau at the time, Choltitz could reflect on the tumultuous events of August 1944 and recall that at a critical moment he conferred with Abetz, who was fully in agreement that the beautiful French capital city, where he had so long resided, should not be damaged. Make of this testimony what we will, it serves as a useful reminder that guilt and blame come in degrees, and that the historian is always on the side of complexity.
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