The Last Battle (11 page)

While it can be said that the actions of Weygand and other armistice-minded French leaders saved their nation from further destruction and allowed half the country to remain unoccupied—at least initially—it is also obvious why many on both sides of the Channel considered France’s capitulation to be premature. Nor is it difficult to understand how Weygand’s participation in the Vichy government appeared to many as collaboration with the Germans, though the general later explained that he was simply attempting to preserve as much of the nation’s military power as possible in order to fight “another day.”

In September 1940 Weygand became commander in chief of French forces in Africa, but the perception in both Vichy and Berlin that the general was not a wholehearted team player ultimately led to his downfall. On November 17, 1941, he was recalled to France and removed from his position at the Germans’ insistence. Weygand and his wife retired to the south of France, where the general set about writing his memoirs. But following the November 1942 Allied landings in North Africa and Germany’s subsequent invasion of unoccupied France, Hitler ordered Weygand’s arrest.

Taken into custody on November 12, Weygand was in Germany within days. He was ultimately moved to Schloss Garlitz, a VIP prison southwest of Hamburg. In January 1943 his wife was allowed to join him, and the couple settled into a relatively comfortable routine. That routine was disrupted on December 2, 1943, when the Weygands were told to pack their belongings. Three days later they walked through Schloss Itter’s front gate, to be greeted by Reynaud’s purposely audible mutterings.

MICHEL CLEMENCEAU, JANUARY 9, 1944

New prisoners next arrived at Schloss Itter on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of a heavy snowfall. The swirling flakes blotted out the view of the surrounding alps and muted the engine noise of the car that had transported Michel Clemenceau, François de La Rocque, and Wimmer from Wörgl’s train station to the castle’s front courtyard.

Reynaud and Borotra—both of whom were acquainted with the new guests—braved the snow to greet the men.
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They were stunned, however,
by de La Rocque’s haggard appearance. Barely fifty-nine, he looked twenty years older and was having difficulty standing. The seventy-one-year-old Clemenceau, on the other hand, seemed to be both healthy and fascinated by his new surroundings. As he shook hands with Reynaud, Clemenceau smiled slightly and said, “So, Paul, another adventure, eh?”
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That Clemenceau could describe imprisonment in an Austrian castle as an “adventure” says much about his earlier life. Born November 24, 1873, in France’s Pays-de-la-Loire region, he was the third child of physician-turned-politician Georges Clemenceau. Something of a hellion in his youth, Michel bounced from school to school in Paris until his exasperated father—who would ultimately twice be France’s prime minister—finally had enough and packed his fifteen-year-old wild child off to study with a tutor in Zurich. The boy soon settled down and in 1894 graduated from the Swiss city’s Agronomy Institute with an engineering degree and a remarkable fluency in German.

With lucrative interests in a variety of businesses, by 1914 the forty-one-year-old Michel Clemenceau seemed set to enjoy his early middle age—but then he became one of the millions of Frenchmen called up as World War I loomed. On August 21, 1914, his unit encountered a formation of German lancers; Lieutenant Clemenceau was hit by a bullet from an enemy’s pistol but managed to kill the man before losing consciousness. After an extended convalescence Clemenceau was promoted to captain, and he finished the war as a decorated battalion commander.

By the late 1930s Clemenceau was a prosperous entrepreneur with his hand in a variety of profitable businesses. Following Germany’s September 1, 1939, invasion of Poland, the sixty-five-year-old volunteered for military service. Clemenceau’s distinguished World War I record and political connections won him a major’s commission despite his age, and he was assigned to the army’s foreign-intelligence branch, the Deuxième Bureau.
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Briefly detained by the Germans following France’s surrender, he was released and returned to Paris.

Though a longtime admirer of Pétain, Clemenceau opposed the aged general’s collaboration with the Germans, and his views drew the attention of the Gestapo. In November 1940 Clemenceau convinced his wife to leave France for America, but he stayed. His political connections kept him safe from official retribution until May 1943, when Gestapo agents arrested him. He spent several months in French prisons, and, on August 31, 1943, he
was transferred to Schloss Eisenberg, a castle-turned-VIP prison in Czechoslovakia. Clemenceau held up well despite poor food and spartan conditions; unlike de La Rocque, he maintained a relatively optimistic attitude throughout his imprisonment. He was therefore able to accept the sudden transfer to Schloss Itter with a calm self-possession that prompted Reynaud to note that Clemenceau’s arrival brought the castle’s other VIP prisoners “the reassurance of his unshakable confidence.”
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Sadly, Clemenceau’s traveling companion, de La Rocque, could boast neither health, nor self-confidence, nor optimism.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCQUE, JANUARY 9, 1944

While Reynaud and Borotra were stunned by de La Rocque’s appearance upon his arrival at Schloss Itter, they were even more shocked that he was a prisoner of the Germans.

Until his arrest ten months earlier de La Rocque had been a member of the Vichy government, a confidant of Pétain, and a man widely viewed both at home and abroad as one of France’s leading fascists. While the fact that someone with de La Rocque’s right-wing credentials could so quickly fall from political grace certainly surprised both Reynaud and Borotra, they would have been thunderstruck to learn that de La Rocque was also the head of a resistance movement that funneled information to Britain’s intelligence service.

Born October 6, 1885, in Lorient, Annet-Marie-Jean-François de La Rocque de Sévérac was the scion of one of France’s noble families and, according to one biographer,
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the hereditary viscount of Chateaubriand. The young man attended St. Cyr military academy and in 1907 was commissioned a lieutenant of cavalry. In North Africa he commanded a mounted company that saw action against Moroccan guerillas. Severely wounded during a 1916 battle with insurgents, he refused medical attention and continued to lead his unit until a relief force arrived.

Cited for bravery and promoted, de La Rocque returned to France for convalescence. Once again fit, he was assigned to an infantry unit and spent the remainder of World War I on the Western Front. Twice promoted and much decorated, he ended the war as a lieutenant colonel. Upon his retirement from the army in 1928, he was lauded as a highly effective leader concerned with the welfare of his troops.

Given his strict Catholicism, aristocratic lineage, and intense patriotism, it’s no surprise that de La Rocque’s postwar politics veered toward the right. At thirty-eight he became the vice president of the extreme right-wing Croix de feu veterans’ group, which advocated the replacement of France’s admittedly chaotic form of parliamentary government with an authoritarian regime that would emphasize the “traditional French values” of work, family, and country.

As an articulate and decorated former soldier, de La Rocque soon became the Croix de feu’s primary public spokesman, and in 1931 he became its president. Under his leadership the group’s ranks swelled, and he was courted by every important right-wing politician in France. In 1936 the nation voted into office the broad left-wing coalition known as the Popular Front, and one of the new government’s first acts was to outlaw the various right-wing organizations. De La Rocque shrewdly responded to the threat by transforming his group into a political party, the PSF, and announcing he would work within the very parliamentary system he had long criticized.

De La Rocque’s decision to renounce the violent overthrow of the government put him at odds with other, overtly fascist groups. He was also excoriated by those organizations for his opposition to Germany’s increasing military might and expansionist policies, as well as for his support for the modernization of France’s armed forces. Right-wing and authoritarian de La Rocque might have been, but he also remembered the carnage France had endured at Germany’s hands in World War I.

When war erupted in 1939, de La Rocque called for all PSF members to rally to the nation’s defense. Even when it became obvious that the German blitzkrieg would result in a French defeat, de La Rocque opposed any armistice or outright surrender. But following France’s fall, he concluded that Pétain was the only man capable of providing France with the postarmistice leadership and stability the nation so desperately needed. De La Rocque threw his support—and that of his PSF—behind Pétain’s government. Nevertheless, de La Rocque’s subsequent refusal to subjugate the PSF to Vichy’s planned single-party system outraged the regime, and, as early as September 1940, he was telling his followers to respect Pétain but display “absolute reserve” toward the Vichy government.
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While de La Rocque remained politically active in Vichy, his increasing ambivalence about the regime trumped his respect for Pétain. Moreover, de La Rocque’s belief that Germany was France’s “ancestral enemy,”
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coupled with his distaste for the Nazis, led him to be outspoken about his opposition
to collaboration, and even before the Germans’ November 1942 takeover of unoccupied France, de La Rocque had openly declared “no collaboration under the occupation.”
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Given de La Rocque’s dislike of Germany and less than wholehearted support for Vichy—and his politically savvy preference for keeping his options open—it’s no surprise that he established a clandestine relationship with the Allied intelligence services. While some sources
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indicate that he first began gathering information of potential value to the Allies in the summer of 1940, it was not until February 1942 that de La Rocque established contact with the Madrid-based Réseau Alibi, or Alibi Network, which had agents throughout France and reported directly to Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

De La Rocque formalized the ad hoc intelligence-gathering effort he’d been leading and transformed it into an Alibi subnetwork known as the Réseau Klan (Klan Network), which used the PSF’s social-services operations as a cover for intelligence gathering. While the extent and value of the information provided to the SIS by the Klan Network remains difficult to judge, there is no doubt that de La Rocque—a man maligned both during and after the war as a fascist collaborator—knowingly endangered himself, his family, and his followers to pass intelligence to the Allies.

De La Rocque’s leadership of the Klan Network ended on March 9, 1943, when Gestapo agents dragged him from his home in Clermont-Ferrand. The PSF leader was held briefly in a local jail and then transferred to Fresnes Prison. Kept in solitary confinement in a cramped and filthy cell, he was denied the medications he’d been taking since being wounded in 1916, and his health quickly declined. Things did not improve following his August 31, 1943, transfer—along with Michel Clemenceau and others—to Schloss Eisenberg in Czechoslovakia. Indeed, so ill was de La Rocque that he was unconscious for much of the car journey that carried him and Clemenceau to Schloss Itter.

Though the Tyrolean fortress was still a prison, transfer to the castle—with its vastly better food and living conditions—would ultimately help save the PSF leader’s life.

MARIE-AGNÈS AND ALFRED CAILLIAU, APRIL 13, 1945

The final prisoners to arrive at Schloss Itter were not incarcerated because of their own importance, but—as with Marcel Granger—simply
because of a family relationship to someone in whom the Nazis were especially interested. In the Cailliaus’ case, that someone was Marie-Agnès Cailliau’s younger brother, Free French general Charles de Gaulle.

Born May 27, 1899, in Paris, Marie-Agnès was the second child—and only daughter—of Henri and Jeanne de Gaulle. Her father imbued his five children with an intense Roman Catholicism and a love for French history and culture, and Marie-Agnès—eighteen months older than Charles—was throughout her life “an ardent patriot and fervent Christian.”
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After World War I Marie-Agnès and her Belgian husband, engineer Alfred Cailliau, settled in a suburb of Le Havre on the Normandy coast. Over the years the couple prospered, raising six sons and a daughter. Unfortunately, a resurgent Germany eventually cast a pall over the Cailliaus’ life; four of their sons—Joseph, Michel, Henri, and Charles—fought the invading Wehrmacht in 1940. Joseph and Henri escaped to England to join the Free French effort, Michel was captured and sent to a POW camp in Germany, and twenty-four-year-old Charles was killed.
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A fifth son, eighteen-year-old Pierre, ultimately made his way to Algeria and joined the Free French.

Understandably devastated by the death of one son and the uncertain fates of four others, Alfred and Marie-Agnès Cailliau did what they could to ensure the safety of their sixth son, ten-year-old Denys.
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The Cailliaus moved in with their daughter, Marie-Thérèse, and her husband in the town of Roche-la-Molière, some thirty-five miles southwest of Lyon. When the area became part of Vichy, the Cailliaus stayed, renting a house in nearby Saint-Étienne. And they might have lived out the remainder of the war there in comfortable obscurity, had it not been for their son Michel’s March 1942 escape from German captivity and their own desire to resist the occupiers of their beloved France.

During his time in the POW camp Michel Cailliau had joined the National Movement of Prisoners of War and Deportees, a fledgling resistance movement. Though not members of Michel’s growing network, Alfred and Marie-Agnès hid documents and kept Michel informed about the activities of local German units. The elderly couple continued their low-level resistance work through the winter of 1942, and in April of the following year they moved back to northern France. The couple and their son Denys moved in with Alfred’s sister, Madeleine, in a village southwest of Rouen. They had only been in their new home a few days, however, when disaster struck.