[thread=96121]Discussion thread[/thread]
Sources:
"Is Paris Burning?" By Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.
"World War II in Europe: The Final Year" By Charles F. Brower, Roosevelt Study Center.
"World War II: A Statistical Survey"
"A Soldier's Story," General Omar N. Bradley.
Setton, Kenneth M., "900 Years Ago: the Norman Conquest", National Geographic Magazine (August 1966): 206–251.
"Is Paris burning?"
"Yes, my fuehrer."
On August 7, 1944, Wehrmacht Generalleutenant Dietrich von Choltitz arrived in Rastenburg, East Prussia, site of Adolf Hitler's Wolfshanze, "Wolf's Lair." From the complex in East Prussia, the elderly former corporal of the German Army commanded millions of soldiers spread across a continent. Though the territory commanded by his armies had shrunk drastically in the last two years, Hitler still commanded most of the continent. But now, sixty miles from the front, the faint sound of guns could be heard at Rastenburg. Hitler's empire was slowly crumbling.
Even at such a late date, many in the German Army still believed in victory. Drawn by the charisma of Hitler and their belief in German superiority, they held hopes that somehow, Germany could still emerge victorious despite the encroaching Allies. Von Choltitz was one of those men, though in the last few months, his belief had begun to falter slightly. Three weeks prior to Choltitz's arrival in Rastenburg, a group of German Army generals had conspired to assassinate Hitler prior to launching a coup that would allow Germany to make an honorable peace. Though von Stauffenberg's bomb succeeded in wrecking an aboveground building in the Wolfshanze, Hitler was uninjured and the coup was foiled.
One of the most prominent generals involved in the coup attempt had been Karl Heinrich von Stulpnagel, commander of German Army forces in France. Upon Stulpnagel's arrest in the wake of the coup attempt, his subordinate, General Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, in charge of the defense of Paris, came under increased scrutiny. Neither Hitler nor the top OKW generals who remained after the coup held Boineburg-Lengsfeld in high esteem. He was a rear-echelon commander, who had held sway over garrison commands almost since the fall of France in June, 1940. Both Hitler and his generals believed it was time for a new commander as Paris moved from a comfortable garrison to the penultimate front line.
Enter Dietrich von Choltitz. As a Lieutenant Colonel, he had been the first man out of the door as German paratroopers attacked Rotterdam on May 10, 1940. His forces assaulted the airbases around the city, but heavy resistance kept them from penetrating the downtown districts. Choltitz ordered a Luftwaffe air strike to attack the central portion of the city to sow panic and open an opportunity for his soldiers. Shortly before the air strike arrived, the Dutch defending the city surrendered. Choltitz failed to cancel the strike, which burned down hundreds of buildings and killed over 1,000 civilians. When asked why he didn't cancel the strike, he answered, "They resisted. It was an important lesson." The next year, Choltitz supervised the capture of Lwow in the opening days of Operation Barbarossa. When the civilian population rose against the Germans, he ordered most of the city razed. Early the next year, he supervised the capture of Sebastopol on the Black Sea, and issued orders that no special consideration was made for civilian casualties if it were to cause undue harm to Wehrmacht soldiers. As German soldiers retreated in the face of the Red Army, he was made commander of Army Group Center's scorched earth tactics. As he later confessed to a Swedish ambassador in Paris, "Since Sebastopol, it has been my fate to cover the retreat of our armies and destroy the cities behind them."
Choltitz gained a reputation as an officer who never failed to follow orders, who was a tenacious defender and attacker, and who was utterly loyal to Germany. In the wake of the July 20 coup attempt, that last characteristic was as important as any other to Hitler. Upon his arrival in Rastenburg, Choltitz was stripped of his belt, sidearm, and had all his personal belonging searched intensively by Hitler's SS guards. This was nothing special — it was the normal procedure since July 20, even for a senior general in the German Army. Choltitz was ushered into Hitler's meeting room, and the two began an in-depth discussion of the defense of Paris. "Paris," Hitler said, gesturing at a map, "is the heart of France. He who holds Paris holds France, and any general who defends the city must be as steadfast as if he were defending Berlin itself. Are you such a man?"
Choltitz answered in the affirmative, and was then subjected to two hours of lecturing by Hitler, who covered virtually everything from the creation of the Nazi Party to the recent coup attempt against him. Though Hitler's hand had been shaking and he had given the impression of an elderly man on his last legs at the start of the talk, he warmed to his subject and by the time he was finishing, he was in rare form and Choltitz felt far more confident about the state of the country than he had been when he entered. At the conclusion of Hitler's harangue, he reminded Choltitz, "You will stamp out without pity any uprising of the civilian population, any act of terrorism, or any act of sabotage against German forces. For that, Herr General" Hitler continued, "you will receive from me any support you need." With that, Choltitz was confirmed as the new commander of Gross Paris, and was entrusted with all the authority of the commander of a city under siege. Four hours later, he boarded a train heading west.
At the same time, several hundred miles to the west, General Dwight David Eisenhower was also debating the future of Paris. At the time of the discussion, American forces were only just breaking free of Normandy, thrusting south of Avranches as they executed Operation Cobra, the breakout from the Normandy beachhead, a plan that would ultimately result in the encirclement of more than 150,000 German soldiers in the Falaise Pocket. That event was almost a month in the future, but Eisenhower already had his eyes and thoughts moving eastward. In the top-secret report "Post-Neptune Operations Section II — Crossing of the Seine and the Capture of Paris", Eisenhower's plan was set forth.
After the encirclement and reduction of German forces in the Falaise Pocket, Allied forces would split into two main groups for the march eastward. Montgomery's 21st Army Group would cross the Lower Seine between the Oise River and the English Channel, capturing Le Havre and threatening the V-1 and V-2 launching sites in the Pas de Calais — the reduction of which was a political priority. Meanwhile, Bradley's 12th Army Group (containing Patton's Third Army) would strike east, crossing the Seine at Melun, south of Paris, before driving northeast to Reims. There, Bradley's forces would wheel westward to meet Montgomery's forces, which would have turned eastward at Amiens. Above all, Eisenhower wanted to keep his tanks rolling in the open terrain of central France and avoid becoming bogged down in street fighting in Paris. Eisenhower correctly believed Paris would be heavily defended by the German Army, and wanted to avoid Paris becoming a Western Stalingrad. Only when Paris was surrounded would a gradual approach into the city begin, after the Germans had been weakened by a starvation of supplies. The encirclement would also — Eisenhower believed — have the effect of avoiding undue harm to the civilian population of the city. A siege might result in a German surrender without the need for a battle, as was then taking place in Brest and Lorient.
One lesser-known consideration by Eisenhower in the decision to avoid Paris in the short term was his fear of supply drain that Paris would become in the event of its liberation. At the time of Eisenhower's decision, Cherbourg was the sole major supply port open to the Western Allies, and though the capture of Antwerp, Le Havre, Brest, and ports in southern France were forecast to alleviate any potential supply problems, the needs of Paris itself also posed a major problem. A study by Allied analysts predicted that in the event of Paris's liberation, a supply effort equivalent to that needed to supply eight divisions would be needed to keep the city functioning. At the time, Eisenhower had just 37 divisions deployed in France, and the long-term supply picture looked questionable if any additional burden — such as the liberation of Paris — was added. For the time being, Eisenhower decided, the liberation of Paris would have to wait. To effect Eisenhower's plan, SHAEF parachuted several French operatives into Paris with instructions that the Resistance was not to begin any general uprising until after the encirclement.
As we know, things did not go according to plan.
In Algiers, General Charles de Gaulle, the then-leader of Free French forces, schemed. He feared (correctly, as it turned out) that the American Department of State and the British government were maneuvering the situation in France to ensure his position would be quietly shuffled off to the side following the liberation of Paris and the establishment of a new French government. Though he is less regarded than former French Prime Minister Pierre Koenig, Charles De Gaulle was perhaps the best-known French leader of the war at that time. In the wake of the surrender of the pre-war French government in June 1940 and the establishment of Vichy, De Gaulle was the most prominent member of the French military to advocate continued resistance. Thanks to British support and that of several of France's African colonies, he gradually built a base of support and began leading the military liberation of French overseas colonies. At first, he fought against Vichy forces in central Africa. Later, Gaullist forces fought Vichyite troops in Syria during one of the bloodiest bouts of fighting in the Middle East during the Second World War. By 1944, he had become secure enough to begin thinking about the post-war situation, which he believed should be in his control. Naturally, the other Allies differed, but De Gaulle was determined that no trace of AMGOT (Allied Military Government in Occupied Territories) exist in France. Post-liberation, the French government should begin and end with him, he thought.
There were two threats to that view. First was Allied meddling, but De Gaulle felt he could control that problem through diplomacy and by using Free French elements in the Allied armies to exert influence. The second, and far more pressing problem, was the existence of the large communist element in the Resistance. At the time of the Normandy invasion, the French Resistance was composed roughly 50/50 of Free French of the Interior (FFI) and of communist fighters. The FFI was concentrated mostly in the countryside, while the communist fighters were more numerous in the cities, particularly in Paris. So concerned was De Gaulle about communists gaining influence that he ordered a halt to weapons drops around Paris on June 14, for fear that the communists were taking too many of the weapons intended for the FFI. He estimated that Paris itself contained roughly 25,000 communist Resistance members. In reality, the number was half again that total.
By early August, De Gaulle had become convinced that Paris must be liberated as soon as possible by the Allies in order that he might establish his government in Paris and forestall a potential communist-led uprising. If the Allied armies could reach Paris before a general uprising, the communists would drastically lose influence in favor of his own organized Free French soldiers. The Paris communists themselves were just as determined to dominate the post-war picture. Famously, Henri Tanguy, leader of the Paris communists and better known as "Colonel Rol," famously declared, "Paris is worth 200,000 dead."
***
General Choltitz arrived in Paris on August 9. During his dinner with the outgoing commander of "Gross Paris," Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, he found the defenses of the city utterly inadequate. The city contained fewer than 20,000 German soldiers, and most of those were clerks, garrison troopers, or prison guards. There were fewer than 10,000 actual combat soldiers in the city, and most of them were simply recuperating from the fighting in the West. Both Boineburg-Lengsfeld and Choltitz disliked each other immediately. Choltitz believed Boineburg-Lengsfeld's plans to construct a "Boineburg Line" of defenses to the west of the city to be utterly impractical given the forces available and to be the product of a garrison mindset, while Boineburg-Lengsfeld believed Choltitz to be a fanatical "true Nazi." Fortunately for each man, Boineburg-Lengsfeld left the city the next day. Choltitz's first action as commander was to set up his headquarters in the Hotel Meurice, just north of the Seine River and northwest of the Louvre.
On Sunday, August 13, Choltitz had his first meeting with the commander of German forces in the west, Gunther von Kluge. Kluge was busy deciphering the disaster in the Falaise Pocket and desperately trying to extract some measure of success from the catastrophe, but he still managed to spare two hours for discussion with Choltitz. He explained that the latest intelligence estimates indicated that the Allies would outflank the city. Kluge agreed that by standing and defending Paris, Choltitz would force the Allies to invest armor to dislodge him, thus aiding the whole situation in the West. Both men agreed that just three divisions would be sufficient to force the Allies into a street-by-street advance for up to a month. When Choltitz requested three divisions for the defense of the city, however, Kluge replied that all available forces were currently needed to help shore up the front, which was virtually nonexistent due to the Falaise disaster. It would take time to transfer divisions from the 19-division-strong Fifteenth Army, which was only now being freed from defending the Pas de Calais, where the German high command had expected a second Allied invasion. After a lunch in which Choltitz again tried to pry divisions free for Paris (he succeeded in acquiring only two regiments), he returned to the Hotel Meurice. Along the way, he and the rest of the population of Paris heard guns in the distance for the first time. The front was approaching.
That same day, Kluge ordered the disarmament of the French police in order to prevent them from rushing to the aid of any prospective uprising. Over 20,000 weapons were seized. In response, the police went on strike, beginning the next day. To prevent the populace from taking advantage of the police's weakness, Choltitz staged the largest German military parade since 1940 through the streets of Paris. It was to be a show of force, demonstrating to the populace that Choltitz took his job seriously and give the impression that any uprising would be dealt with harshly, regardless of any approach by the Allies. Choltitz, who had dressed in civilian clothes and mingled with the unknowing crowd in order to gain an impression of how well the demonstration worked, was sharply put off when he ran across group after group of Parisians jeering and joking about the marching Germans.
As German soldiers paraded through Paris, in Rastenburg, Hitler again went off on one of his increasingly frequent tangents. Although he had been on a "good" day when Choltitz visited, Hitler's emotional instability and weak-mindedness had grown sharply since the July 20 assassination attempt. During a briefing on the situation in France, he exploded and demanded to know where the Wehrmacht's enormous 600mm "Karl" mortar was. The mortar, which had been built for siege warfare and successfully employed at Brest-Litovsk, Sebastopol, and Stalingrad, was found after eight hours in a warehouse in Berlin. At Hitler's order, the enormous tracked mortar — a smaller cousin of the enormous "Dora" railway gun — was loaded aboard its special railcar and put on a train to Paris. Accompanying it was a trainload of the mortar's ton-and-a-half ammunition. As Hitler ranted, he explained in no uncertain terms that if the Parisians would not be cowed by the German military, they would be cowed by ton-and-a-half shells destroying Parisian city blocks one at a time. Hitler's advisers told him it would take eight days for the mortar to arrive in Paris.
In Paris, as Hitler demanded yet another tool for the destruction of the city, Colonel Rol was developing yet another tool. Meeting with the leader of the communist resistance in the striking police department, he worked out plans to ensure that the city's 20,000-strong police department would be sure to follow his commands when the inevitable time to overthrow the Germans arrived.
***
The next day, August 15, General Choltitz was again summoned to von Kluge's headquarters. In the briefing, Kluge's chief of staff, Gunther Blumentritt outlined Kluge's plan for a limited scorched earth policy in Paris. The plan detailed the systematic destruction of Paris' gas plant, electric power stations, and water facilities. Blumentritt elaborated that the plan would be crucial to slowing the Allied advance by forcing the Allies to divert needed military aid to sustain the city after liberation. To Choltitz, the presentation was very dry, very professional, and completely at odds with the emotional, yet inspiring, tirade launched by Hitler in Rastenburg the week prior. It was also not surprising. In addition to Hitler's informal "suggestion" to not let the Allies capture Paris intact, Choltitz had received an order from the German high command calling for the "destruction or total paralysis" of the Paris industrial infrastructure in order to prevent it from being turned against Germany after the Allied capture of the city.
Choltitz didn't object to the plan's scope. Indeed, the destruction of Paris' infrastructure was only natural to someone who had supervised similar plans (albeit on a smaller scale) on the Eastern front. Choltitz's only objection came in regards to the timing of the plan's implementation. How, he asked, was he to defend the city if his soldiers had no water to drink? In addition, launching the plan prematurely would throw thousands of jobless factory workers into the hands of the Resistance, making Choltitz's job of maintaining order all the harder. Kluge listened to the arguments put forth by both Choltitz and his chief of staff, but decided to side with Choltitz for the time being. That did not mean that preparations could not be made, however. When Choltitz returned to the Hotel Meurice, he took four demolitions experts with him. Installed in the fourth floor of the hotel, armed with plans of every factory in the region, and given two staff cars for transportation, they promised Choltitz they could come up with a plan to "paralyze Paris' industry for more than six months."
Even as the demolitions experts began drafting their plans in the Hotel Meurice, the men of the 813th Engineer Company were busy mining the 45 Seine River bridges between the suburbs of Le Pecq in the west to Choisy in the east. Their destruction would be almost as large an architectural catastrophe as the demolition of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. The pont Alexandre III was a national monument; the pont de la Concorde contained stones from the Bastille, demolished during the French Revolution; and portions of the pont de la Tournelle dated to 1369. Regardless of their historical or economic significance — they tied the two halves of Paris together — all were being mined for demolition by the men of the 813th Engineer Company. The head of the company, Captain Werner Ebernach, was a longtime acquaintance of General Choltitz. Together, they had served in Germany prior to the outbreak of war. Now, they would be working to bring the war to its bitter end.
As Ebernach delivered his report on the bridge mining to Choltitz, the general received two disturbing reports. The first dealt with the ongoing police strike. The second indicated that eight German soldiers had been killed in the suburb of Aubervillers. It was the Resistance's first major strike against the occupiers of Paris, and it was no doubt generated by the worsening conditions for Paris' civilian population. Even with the front lines more than fifty miles away, Paris was already suffering shortages that went above and beyond the normal wartime rationing. Meat had virtually disappeared from the city, and newspapers carried recipes for making turnips and radishes — the staples of the civilian diet — more palatable. In a small notice at the bottom of the shrinking newspapers — paper shortages were beginning to bite even harder — there was an advertisement for the newspapers' most popular use — rolling cigarettes.
***
On August 16, Choltitz ordered the evacuation of all non-essential German soldiers from the city. A vast column soon developed leading out of the city to the east, containing tens of thousands of garrison clerks, troops on leave, political workers, and German civilians. Thousands of French collaborators, seeing the way the wind was blowing, also decided to leave. Just as many stayed, however, believing the promises that "we will be back by Christmas." Those who stayed soon had cause to regret their decision. Still, the exodus was not as vast as it might have been. General Choltitz took the opportunity to create several scratch companies from the more capable soldiers planning to depart. Over their objections, cooks, clerks, aides, and other men who hadn't fired a weapon in all their years of service were handed a rifle and began drilling under the harsh eyes of the SS brigade in the capital, which Choltitz had assigned the task — partly to keep them out of the way. Even to someone who still believed Hitler's message with only a shadow of a doubt, the fanaticism of the SS and SD was frightening.
That same morning, as Choltitz gave orders to create the scratch companies, Captain Ebernach made a discovery that would allow for the demolition of most of Paris' pre-war landmarks. In a blocked-off automobile tunnel in the suburb of Saint-Cloud, Ebernach discovered a massive factory, codenamed Pliz, that even at that late date, was turning out torpedoes for the Kriegsmarine's submarines. Though the sea war had largely died down after the U-boat losses of 1943, the factory had kept on turning out torpedoes. When Allied aerial attack severed the rail lines between Paris and the U-boat pens along the coast, the factory workers merely began stockpiling their finished product in the tunnel alongside their underground assembly line. By the time Ebernach arrived, over 500 torpedoes were stacked neatly in the tunnel. They were stored fully assembled in their metal racks, only requiring the insertion of detonators (kept handily nearby) to be complete. As Ebernach toured the factory, he remarked, "My God! With these torpedoes, we could blow up half the bridges in the world!" Ebernach officially claimed the torpedoes in Choltitz's name, and hurried back to the Hotel Meurice.
In the afternoon, Choltitz took Ebernach's news of the find in stride. He was busy formulating a defense plan for the city, which he outlined to his assembled staff. The initial plan was an ambitious one. Discarding the 10-mile-long "Boineburg Line", he drew a 60-mile-long arc beginning at the town of Poissy on the Seine, south through St.-Cyr, Palaiseau, east to Vilenevue-le-Roi, and north to Ormesson-sur-Marne. To defend this enormous distance, he had just the 10,000 men of Lt. Colonel Hubertus von Aulock. To bolster that strength, Choltitz ordered Paris' dozens of 88mm Flak guns taken down from their air defense positions in the city and emplaced along the line. That move had been suggested by the commander of the 11th Paratrooper Regiment, which was part of the defenses of the city. In addition, Choltitz informed the men present that he had been promised reinforcements by both Kluge and the Fuhrer himself. All went away from the meeting with much to do and little time in which to accomplish it before the Allies arrived.
The civilian situation continued to deteriorate rapidly. Postal workers joined the police strike, paralyzing mail service and communications (the postal service was also in charge of the telephone exchanges). Although German forces quickly took over the telephone exchanges, mail services would not be restored to the surviving portions of the city until just before Christmas. The Resistance was dealt a setback when 35 resistance members were captured by the Gestapo in the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the west side of the city. All 35 men were executed on the spot by machinegun fire and grenades. There is some question as to whether Choltitz himself ordered the execution. Due to his later death and the destruction of most records during the fighting for the city, it is unlikely whether a command link will ever be discovered. Regardless of who ordered the executions, they nonetheless marked the first shots fired in the open war between German soldiers and the Paris resistance. Though the deaths of the 35 pale in comparison to later atrocities, the site of their deaths is today marked by an enormous monument commemorating the tens of thousands of Resistance deaths suffered during the liberation of the city.
***
On the morning of the 17th, General Alfred Jodl, Hitler's closest military adviser, telephoned General Choltitz, asking if the demolitions ordered in the city of Paris had begun. Taken somewhat aback, Choltitz replied that the demolitions experts had only just arrived in the city and that he was reluctant to begin actual demolitions until such time as they would not adversely affect his troops defending the city. "I was ordered to defend the city first, and destroy it only if necessary," Choltitz said. Jodl replied that he was "extremely disappointed" and that "the Fuhrer is growing impatient." Choltitz replied by saying that the beginnings of demolitions would "set the city up in arms," and that he was waiting for further reinforcements before beginning the task. He concluded by saying that thus far, "the Parisians haven't dared to move."
In Algiers, one particular Frenchman was planning to move. General Charles De Gaulle, having been fully informed of Eisenhower's plan to bypass Paris, made up his mind to transfer his command and government to France immediately. By arriving on French soil as soon as possible, he would be able to force Eisenhower's hand, even if it meant something as drastic as ordering the French Second Armored Division to advance on Paris alone and liberate it in the name of his government. His mind made up, the leader of the Free French began making plans for the move to France. Resistance leaders in and around Paris received radioed orders to be ready for a very important visitor in the immediate future.
German soldiers across the city began to emplace demolition charges. From the Palais du Luxembourg, where SS men worked to mine the basement of the palace, to the Chamber of Deputies and the Quai d'Orsay (home of the French Foreign Office), German soldiers maneuvered boxes of explosives, unrolled spools of wire, and connected blasting caps to batteries. At 19 Avenue d'Ivry, the Panhard factory turning out parts for V-2 rockets was mined. The giant Siemens-Westinghouse electronics complex in Fontainebleau and other sites around the city suffered the same fate. On the Rue Saint-Amande, the 112th Signal Regiment wired Paris' central telephone office for demolition. Since June 1940, the office's trunk lines and teletypes had directed German operations from Norway to the Spanish border as well as handling domestic traffic within the city. The city's second telephone center, under Napoleon's Tomb at Les Invalides, was also wired for demolition.
But for all the preparations, the man who would order the switches pressed, General Choltitz, had not yet decided when the dire minute would arrive. Until the population of Paris rose against the occupiers, as he knew it would any day now (the rising tide of Resistance actions pointed that way), he would give the general population of the city reason to join the Resistance. In addition, the four demolitions experts were still busy developing plans for the destruction of other factories around the city. As charges were emplaced at the Palais du Luxembourg, the experts visited the Renault auto works, the Bleriot aircraft factory, and four other factories. Though no units were yet available to begin placing charges, the experts' blueprints were becoming marked with red Xs where explosives were to be placed. As soon as the first round of charges was set, those factories would be taken care of.
Choltitz was also busy with other tasks during the day. Swedish Consul-General Raoul Nordling had been pestering Choltitz for a meeting for several days. After hearing Nordling's offer to be an intermediary for a potential prisoner exchange between the Allies and Germany, Choltitz rejected the idea out of hand. He had no interest in releasing the three thousand political prisoners in Paris jails, not when the Resistance was threatening an uprising and when Hitler had been so determined to defend the city. His job would be difficult enough without an additional three thousand guns against him. Nordling did extract a promise from Choltitz that he would not issue the order for prisoner executions in the event of an uprising. That did not, of course, mean SS soldiers couldn't act outside Choltitz's orders.
After Nordling was escorted out, Pierre Charles Taittinger, the Vichy mayor of Paris, was escorted in. Taittinger had heard of Choltitz's plan to demolish much of the city in preparation for its defense, and was stunned. This man, he thought, was preparing to destroy Paris as if it were just another village in the Ukraine. Choltitz believed Taittinger had Resistance connections, and wanted to impress into the man a fear of German authority. He pointed at a scale map of the city. "Suppose a bullet is fired at one of my soldiers, here on the avenue de l'Opera. I would burn down every building in the block and shoot all the inhabitants." Taittinger was shocked, but the emotion with which Choltitz had pronounced the words caused a coughing fit in the dry air. Seizing the opportunity, Taittinger escorted the general to a window overlooking the Tuileries. "Often," Taittinger said, "it is given to a general to destroy, rarely to preserve. Imagine that one day it may be given to you to stand on this balcony again, as a tourist, to look once more on these monuments and remember that you preserved them as a gift for all humanity." For a moment, Choltitz stood, taking in the view of the Louvre, the green gardens, and the place de la Concorde. He then turned to Taittinger. "You are a good advocate for Paris, Mr. Taittinger," he said. "You have done your duty well. And likewise I, as a German general, must do mine." He then turned and went back to planning the destruction of the city.
Less than one hour after resuming work, Choltitz was interrupted yet again. This time, it was the new commander of the Western front, Walther Model. As it turned out, shortly after his meeting with Choltitz on the 15th, von Kluge had been recalled to Berlin after a connection was found between him and the July 20 plotters. Little more than 12 hours later, he was dead, having committed suicide. Field Marshal Walther Model, former commander of the Ukrainian front, was picked to replace him. Choltitz saw Model as a devoted Nazi, but a man of unbending will and great personal courage. Despite these characteristics, Choltitz believed Model to possess poor judgment and thought him a poor commander. Nevertheless, this would turn out to be in Choltitz's advantage, as Model later sent reinforcements to Paris long after they should have been sent to defending other portions of France. That began on this, the first day of Model's command, when he detached a retreating regiment of the Fifteenth Army, which was hurriedly rushing eastward from its former position in the Pas de Calais.
Model spent most of his short initial meeting with Paris berating what he saw as a "disorganized" front, pointing out the long column of fleeing German noncombatants he had seen on the drive from Metz to Paris. Choltitz responded by laying out his plans for the city, including his intention to begin demolitions if and when the Resistance rose against German forces. This included his imagined (but not until then formulated) plan to use Parisian landmarks as hostages against the good behavior of the Resistance. Just as individual hostages had been taken in response to partisan attacks on the Eastern front, so too would hostages on a far grander scale be taken in Paris. Model gave his approval to the plan. "Believe me, Choltitz," he added, "what took us forty minutes in Kovel will take us forty hours in Paris. But when we are finished, this city will be destroyed."
At the same time, in another portion of the city, the demolition was already being completed. But not a demolition of structures — the demolition of human beings. As Model spoke, 1,482 Jewish citizens of Paris, emblazoned with yellow Star of David patches, were loaded in trains heading east, to concentration camps in Germany. Accompanying them were the SS guards who had maintained the Parisian prisons of the Final Solution in Paris. Considered noncombatants by the Wehrmacht, the SS commander of the prison only had to remove the final Jews from the city to balance his books. Also aboard the train were approximately 1,200 French political prisoners, crammed into every space imaginable in boxcars originally designed to hold horses. The train effectively emptied the Paris prisons, except for a few dozen criminals, who would later be executed during the Resistance uprising.
Ironically, the prisoners aboard the train fared far better than the average citizen of Paris. Near Nancy, the train was intercepted by a local Resistance cell that had failed to stop a similar train just three days prior. Warned by contacts in Paris, they were able to get into position and free the captives before melting into the local populace. They only had to hide for approximately three weeks before advancing Allied troops liberated the area.
As night fell in Paris, Pierre Laval, first and only prime minister of Vichy France, prepared to flee the Hotel de Matignon, the palace that served as "Government House" to the pre-war government. Laval himself was as much of a refugee as any in the city — he had occupied the palace since the Vichy government's independence had been dissolved by the Germans in November 1942. Since that time, he had governed as a figurehead, a mere cat's paw for the German authorities. On the night of the 18th, he left France forever, only returning during his perfunctory trial prior to his execution at the hands of the French government.
The story of the Hotel de Matignon can perhaps be taken as a metaphor for the story of Paris during the Liberation. After Pierre Étienne Flandin used it as his residence in 1935, it had been seized by a German officer during June 1940. In November, 1942, Laval used it as his residence until his flight. During the uprising, Resistance leader Yvon Morandat seized the building in the name of Charles De Gaulle. When De Gaulle failed to arrive in the city, the building was burnt to the ground as the Germans restored order. When the Allies entered the city, its ruins proved an excellent killing trap for German soldiers hunting Americans. Following the Liberation, the site was bulldozed and later served as grounds for a block of prefabricated concrete communal apartments constructed by the government. Today, following the collapse of the communist government, the site is home to one of Paris' largest shopping malls.
***
On the morning after Laval's departure, Friday, August 18, others were also at work preparing for what they saw as the inevitable. In a quiet upstairs apartment in one of the thousands of blocks across the city, one of the largest FFI cells in the region prepared a brief message to higher command in London:
PARIS SITUATION EXTREMELY TOUCHY, STRIKES OF POLICE, RAILROADS, POSTS AND DEVELOPING TENDENCIES TO GENERAL STRIKE. ALL CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR AN INSURRECTION HAVE BEEN REALIZED. LOCAL INCIDENTS, WHETHER SPONTANEOUS, PROVOKED BY ENEMY, OR EVEN IMPATIENT RESISTANCE GROUPS, WILL BE ENOUGH TO LEAD TO GRAVEST REPRISALS. GERMANS THREATEN DESTRUCTION OF MONUMENTS IN RETALIATION. SITUATION WORSENING WITH PARALYSIS PUBLIC UTILITIES: NO GAS, HOUR AND HALF ELECTRICITY DAILY, WATER LACKING IN SOME PARTS OF TOWN, FOOD SITUATION DISASTROUS, NECESSARY YOU INTERVENE WITH ALLIES TO DEMAND RAPID OCCUPATION PARIS, OFFICIALLY WARN POPULATION IN SHARPEST MOST PRECISE TERMS POSSIBLE VIA BBC TO AVOID NEW WARSAW.
That last threat, about creating a "new Warsaw," was the strongest possible example. Only a few weeks earlier, the Polish Home Army, spurred by the approach of the Red Army, had risen in revolt against the Nazi occupiers. As the Red Army, in a callous move designed to weed out those with the capability to resist its impending occupation, held back, the Germans crushed the revolt. Most of the city was leveled in the process, and the horrific story caused some in the Resistance to be more cautious than they otherwise might have been.
In the communist Resistance circles, however, there was much less willingness to be cautious. At 9 Rue d'Alsace, the members of the Comite Parisien de la Liberation were meeting to decide the fate of the city. Here was the cream of the crop of the communist resistance: Andre Tollet, the head of the committee, Colonel Rol, and many others. In the cramped, stiflingly hot confines of the building, the five men agreed to an armed uprising in the streets of Paris. Yes, Tollet agreed, there was enormous risk in acting so soon, but if they dithered, either the Gaullists, the Germans, or the Allies would render their group irrelevant. The Gaullists, if they acted first, would have the initiative in driving the uprising. If the Germans brought in more reinforcements, they would be able to crush any uprising with ease. That, of course, was only if the Allies didn't enter the city first — an event that, while joyous, would also render the committee null and void. Thus, they believed their course of action was clear. Only by acting first, and in unison, could they draw the FFI Resistance forces under the umbrella of the communist Resistance and install a government of their choosing before the Allies could do so for them. As they left, the orders would go out. The uprising would begin the next morning — without the FFI's knowledge. Only once it had begun would the FFI leadership be informed and forced to fall into line.
Throughout the day, the communists began to make preparations. Unbeknownst to Colonel Rol or Andre Tollet, the leadership of the Gaullist FFI Resistance was well aware of the communist plan due to a friendly communist member of the Resistance. Rather than confront the communists, the FFI decided to seize the initiative by staging an uprising before the communists could. According to the communist plan, the uprising would begin at 9 a.m. the next day. The FFI sent out messages to its various cells, telling them to be ready by 7 a.m. Messages had to be passed in the brief hours between discovery of the communist plan and that evening's curfew. Most important was the message sent to the ringleaders of the Gaullist Resistance in the striking police department. Because the communist Resistance members in the police had communications problems, the Gaullist ring was able to spread the word to most of the 20,000 members of the police, giving orders to meet at 7 a.m. at the Prefecture of Police, the city-within-a-city that not only contained the police department but also served as the administrative headquarters for most of the Seine département (the province then encompassing Paris) government.
As the plans went out, far to the south, Charles De Gaulle's Lockheed Lodestar, France, took off for the long, roundabout journey to France. The United States had supplied a longer-ranged B-17 for De Gaulle, but the aircraft overshot the runway in Algiers, damaging the aircraft's undercarriage. This fact, plus De Gaulle's belief that the United States could not be trusted, forced him to fly in his own aircraft. He would have to fly to Gibraltar, fuel the aircraft to its maximum capacity, then take the long trip across the Atlantic Ocean, over the Bay of Biscay, and around Brittany to reach Allied-held France. It was a terribly dangerous journey, but one he took willingly, believing that it was his only opportunity to bring about the postwar government he envisioned. His pilot, Captain Claude Guy, had grave misgivings about the flight, but De Gaulle went ahead, anyway. As the 18th turned into the 19th, the Lodestar was above Algiers, flying into history.
***
On the morning of the 19th, the day opened like any other. German soldiers cleared the streets as the night's curfew was lifted, housewives began queuing for their bread ration, and thousands of workers reported to their jobs. Thousands of other Parisian men and women, however, didn't go to their jobs. They picked up hidden weapons, readied white FFI armbands, and prepared to do battle. Thousands of striking policemen awoke, drank their ersatz coffee, bid adieu to their wives, and began traveling to the Prefecture of Police. Shortly before 7:00 a.m. the French tricolor was unfurled over the complex — the first time it had flown over a public building since 1940. Amedee Brussiere, the prefect of police who had presided over an empty building for four days, was shocked to hear a lone voice proclaiming, "In the name of the Republic and of Charles De Gaulle, I take possession of the Prefecture of Police." The man speaking those words was the Gaullist Yves Bayet. His voice was followed by thousands of others in belting out the "Marseillaise," as ironically, Colonel Rol bicycled nearby.
Attracted by the noise, Rol attempted to enter the building, but was turned back by the police. Furious at having been beaten to the punch in seizing the building, he hurried to pass the word to begin the insurrection. Before he could return and somehow wrest control of the police force from Bayet, however, Charles Luziet arrived. Luziet had been parachuted into France some weeks before at the orders of De Gaulle to serve as the Prefecture's first Prefect. His arrival in the city was just one small part of a Gaullist plan that had begun even before D-Day. DeGaulle had ordered emn loyal to him to parachute into occupied France prior to the Allied invasion and move into position to take over local government positions after liberation. Across France, Gaullists manuvered their way into resistance organizations, preparing to take over the jobs of mayor, police chief, and countless other jobs that would be crucial to DeGaulle taking command in France. Luziet's role in seizing command of the police department turned out to have a long-lasting effect on France after the uprising by keeping the police out of the hands of the Parisian communists, who were, at Rol's urging, hurriedly beginning the uprising in other portions of the city.
At the Prefecture of Police, the men who had seized the building prepared to repel the counterattack they knew would eventually come. Men readied firearms (many of them antiques) and readied themselves at windows. Frederic Joliot-Curie arrived with eight bottles of sulfuric acid and several pounds of potassium chlorate. Rolling up his sleeves, he began producing Molotov cocktails from the stores he had taken from the same laboratory in which his mother had discovered radium. Across the city, members of Rol's resistance cells performed the first stroke of the communist insurgency as they smashed the wiretapping equipment of the Germans at the telephone exchanges across the city. Above all, however, Resistance cells around the city began to execute their first order: A chacun son boche — to each his own German. German soldiers barracked in small groups at town homes around Paris found themselves rudely awakened by gunfire, or shot down in the streets by drive-by shootings from screeching motorcars. The first two hours were a confused swirl of action and reaction as Germans found themselves under fire from Resistance cells, seemingly from all corners. A German soldier, ducking into a nearby cafe or apartment for cover, might find himself soon under fire from a Resistance member inside the building who, despite having not been informed of the uprising, acted upon hearing the growing sound of gunfire in the city.
By 9 a.m., General Choltitz was coming to terms with the fact that this was not an isolated event. The fact that so many attacks had occurred almost simultaneously drove him to the correct belief that the uprising had to have been centrally coordinated. Meanwhile, in an apartment nearby, Alexandre Parodi, De Gaulle's highest-ranking representative in the city, gave his full approval to the Gaullist FFI to join the uprising. Though the Prefecture of Police had been seized by FFI soldiers warned of the communist uprising, the rest of the city's FFI had not been fully notified, due to the communist plan to take the lead in the uprising. But once Parodi's order had been passed through the telephone system (now secure with the destruction of the German wiretaps and the seizure of several exchanges), the FFI began to act on a large scale. Commando groups, each composed of Parisian Resistance members braced by one or three men parachuted into the city, began to seize city structures. All 20 of the arrondissement city halls were seized, as were police stations, public buildings, the post office, the slaughterhouse, the morgue, even the Comedie Francaise. Everywhere, the French Tricolor was pulled out of hiding or hastily improvised from bed sheets and hung from captured buildings. The strains of the Marseillaise could also be heard coming from virtually every captured building. In these, the first few hours of the uprising, the Resistance seemed to have gained the upper hand almost everywhere. At the Mairie (city hall) of the first arrondissement, directly next to the Louvre and only a few blocks from the Hotel Meurice, Resistance soldiers stormed the door and seized the building. At the Prefecture of Police, Luizet attempted to use the unfamiliar Prefect's switchboard, which was covered in blinking red lights signifying incoming calls. He pressed random buttons. From one, he heard a Resistance leader at the Mairie of Neuilly screaming for help. Another brought far better news. It was from Chartres, fifty miles distant, where the voice of the town's mayor could be heard, exclaiming that the Americans were driving through the town. Luizet barely had time to digest the information before an enormous explosion drew him from the switchboard. The Germans had begun to respond.
Outside the stone walls of the Prefecture, Sergeant Bernhard Blache of the 112th Signal Regiment ran for cover, away from the burning wreckage that had been the truck that had brought his platoon to the walls of the complex. Terrified, he hugged the ground behind a concrete planter, cowering and holding his rifle. All around, German soldiers — his friends — fell, dead or injured, from the rifles protruding from the smashed-out windows cut into the complex's stone walls. In shock, he saw a German officer's head "literally explode" and his body tumble to the asphalt. Peering up, he suddenly saw an arm swing out over a stone windowsill. Clutched in the hand at the end of the arm was a green bottle wrapped in a dirty towel. Beyond fear now, he sprang up and raced away from the building, toward the Pont-au-Change a hundred yards away. He zigged and zagged, barely sparing a glance at the puffs of smoke near his boots that signified near-misses by French bullets. Across the bridge, the scene was as if the war was in another universe. An old man with a black homburg walked his dog at the end of a leash. A middle-aged Frenchman struggled with the keys to his apartment as he exited his automobile. Enraged by the idyllic scene after so nearly escaping death, he gripped his rifle and forced the middle-aged man back into his automobile and forced him to drive to the Hotel Meurice. There, Blache stormed into the building, mindless of the shocked looks of the German officers, ran up the stairs, and smashed open the doors to the first room he saw and burst into the room beyond. "What are you waiting for, to send the tanks," he exclaimed. "They're cooking my men like sausages!"
***
It was now shortly after noon, and after confronting the furious sergeant, Choltitz began to address the problem in earnest. It was true that the situation was unlike anything he had faced before. Unlike in Russia, where he had faced an opponent engaged in hit-and-run tactics in the empty forests and steppe, here he had to deal with a crowded urban environment against an opponent engaged in a stand-up fight. Although that would seemingly play to German advantages in firepower and tactics, Choltitz had nothing approaching the manpower he had been able to call upon on the Eastern Front. Still, he could do something about that. A call to Field Marshal Model produced a harangue lasting about 30 minutes in which Choltitz was blamed for letting the situation get out of hand and for not taking adequate security precautions. Model decried the "Western Front incompetence," but Choltitz endured and, in the end, extracted a promise from Model for reinforcements. Though Choltitz was disappointed in not getting something more concrete from Model, the Field Marshal did make good on his promise, particularly after Hitler berated Model when the Field Marshal reported the situation in Paris. By the end of the day, elements of the 165th Reserve Division and the 158th Reserve Division began arriving in the city. The two divisions had already been detached from the Fifteenth and First Armies, respectively, in an effort to stop the Allies at the Seine. The other four were annihilated piecemeal by Allied air attack and encirclement as the rest of OB West retreated, but the 165th and 158th would make a good contribution to the defense of Paris long after the Allies had encircled the city.
That was still in the future, however, and Choltitz was not notified about their arrival until some of their officers literally marched into his headquarters. Because of this fact, Choltitz was forced to deal with the situation with the forces he had. More than 12,000 of the men under his command were deployed outside the city, along the 60-mile line he had decreed laid out to the south. What was left in the city were scatterings of the few non-combatant troops remaining, a limited Luftwaffe contingent, a handful of reserve regiments, and an SS contingent at the Prince Eugene barracks on the north bank of the Seine. His sole ace cards (in addition to the few available ground-attack aircraft of the Luftwaffe at Le Bourget) were the tanks of the 5th reserve regiment and the SS contingent. He knew the tanks were invulnerable to anything the partisans had with them. Only a well-placed Molotov could hurt them, and usually only at the cost of the thrower. With those facts in mind, he devised a tenuous plan to take back the city. The first element of the plan was the first lesson taught in military academies around the world — concentration of force. Spread across the entire city, facing each Resistance pocket separately, German soldiers would have a far harder time taking back the city than if they were massed before attack. Choltitz considered offering a cease-fire with the Resistance in order to better mass his forces before they attacked, but discarded the idea after a moment. It would go against his promise to Hitler to hold the city, and besides, would be seen by the Resistance as a sign they were winning. The second element of the plan involved cutting the city's communications. Resistance cells were using the Parisian telephone system to coordinate their attacks, with connections made through a handful of captured telephone exchanges. These would have to be captured and destroyed along with the exchanges already mined. Third, the line south of the city had to be held — with American soldiers less than 50 miles from the city, no German soldiers could be detached from the city's exterior defenses. Fourth, preference should be given to reducing the Resistance pockets south of the Seine, in order to secure the lines of communication and supply with the defensive line. The pockets on the north bank of the Seine, though more numerous than those on the south side of the city, lacked the strength to threaten communications to the west, and could be reduced at leisure. The fifth portion of the plan involved the preparations for reprisals against the French. Through loudspeakers positioned throughout the city (they had already been emplaced for propaganda purposes), Choltitz ordered that a broadcast be made indicating that if the Resistance did not surrender before midnight on the morning of the 20th, he would begin demolitions of Parisian buildings that had already been mined. Those surrendering would be granted free passage outside of the city, to Allied lines.
To effect the first portions of his plan, Choltitz ordered the massing of as many tanks from the 5th reserve regiment and the SS contingent as possible. Though the SS commander complained loudly, and said his troops were not subject to Wehrmacht orders, he eventually calmed and acquiesced to the "temporary" assumption of command by Choltitz. These would form the heart of the "fire brigade" he envisioned rushing from hotspot to hotspot, recapturing the city halls and other public buildings. It would take several hours to gather these tanks. In the meantime, Choltitz gathered the forces in the immediate vicinity of the Hotel Meurice. These consisted of three Panthers and about a company of infantry. They were ordered to recapture the city hall of the first arrondisement, then proceed to the Prefecture of Police (almost directly across the Seine on the Ile de la Cite) and recapture the complex. At 3 p.m., the scratch force arrived at the city hall. The first shots from the tanks blasted the building's iron doors, then shelled the windows from which firing was coming from. Inside the building, there was panic — the partisans had not brought any Molotov cocktails, and ammunition was running low. For 30 minutes, the firing continued, the wounded piling up in the halls. No medical supplies had been brought by the partisans who seized the building, and the misery of the injured was unimaginable, though it paled in comparison to the suffering later endured by many in the city. At approximately 3:35 p.m., the German captain outside demanded the building's surrender. The partisans shouted curses and refusals at him, but as one of the Panthers (perceiving that there was no threat from Molotov cocktails), charged the front door of the building, the firing began to die down. Improvised white flags began to wave from the building's windows, and the Germans began to take possession of the prisoners.
A handful of German soldiers themselves had been held as prisoners in the city hall, and were released unharmed by the partisans. Their survival mollified many of the Germans assaulting the building and who had wanted to kill the French prisoners on the spot. Instead, they were taken by truck to one of the German prisons in the city, beginning the process of filling the buildings that had been emptied on the 16th when noncombatant Germans (including prison guards) were evacuated. With the city hall recaptured, the Germans advanced across the bridge to the south and landed on the Ile de la Cite to recapture the Prefecture of Police. As they did so, distant explosions could be heard across the city, cutting through the sharp cracks of gunfire. Plumes of smoke began to arise from demolished telephone exchanges, where German explosives had virtually destroyed telephone communications within Paris. A handful were still in the hands of the Resistance, but by dusk, most were captured by the Germans and destroyed. With their destruction, over 90 percent of the telephones in Paris became useless. Only a few, connected by smaller switchboards, were still effective. Many of these were in city halls and police stations held by the Resistance, but they only connected to other city halls and police stations, by and large. This had a disastrous effect on the Resistance's ability to communicate quickly, and to a lesser extent, that of the Germans as well. The Germans, however, had a far larger number of radios in the city than did the Resistance, and many of the radios that the Resistance did have were unable to communicate with each other, having been dropped into the city with the intent of communicating with London only. Many of the FFI's vehicles — captured German trucks and cars crudely whitewashed with FFI or the symbol of the Free French — were impressed as messenger vehicles. As in Paris before the uprising, however, bicycles proved to be the most reliable method of transporting messengers.
Below Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides, the destruction of the secondary telephone exchange there was done with such force to damage or destroy many of the pillars holding up the central portion of the building. Throughout the afternoon, creaking and groaning noises echoed through the dome of Les Invalides and Napoleon's tomb could be seen to sway slightly. Late that night, the floor below the tomb gave way. Though the dome was unharmed, the enormous sarcophagus containing Napoleon's remains and the platform holding it up crashed through the floor. The sarcophagus bashed the marble sides of the dome, but still rested above the dome's "floor" due to the height of the platform that had crashed through the ceiling of the destroyed telephone exchange. This damage was rendered moot several days later when the dome itself was dynamited during Choltitz's reprisal campaign.
At 4:15 p.m., the three tanks and a company of infantry began crossing the exposed bridges to the Prefecture of Police. They began taking fire from the building, and, within the lengthening shadow of the Notre Dame Cathedral just 200 yards away, began to return it, shot for shot. The Panthers, as at the city hall, blasted the gate to the courtyard at the center of the building, then began firing at windows containing riflemen. In the building itself, there was panic. Men, first singly, then in increasing groups, began to flee to the Metro entrance within the building, hoping to flee for safety. There, however, they were stopped by one of their compatriots, who declared, "I will shoot the first man who passes me! Our only chance to survive ... is to win!" Ashamed and inspired, they returned to their positions and avoided a flight that could have allowed the Germans to carry the Prefecture even more quickly than the first arrondisement city hall. Those who returned to their stations quickly enough saw one of the Molotov cocktails manufactured by Joliot-Curie smash into the turret of one of the Panthers, setting the kit on the outside of the tank ablaze and immobilizing it after the fire dripped into the engine compartment. The other two tanks, fearing a similar fate, pulled back from the building, leaving the disheartened German infantry to continue a desultory fire at the encircled building.
When Choltitz heard of the tank's destruction, he ordered that the Prefecture be besieged by troops bolstered by another company from the 5th reserve regiment. It was now approaching 6 p.m., and Choltitz was reluctant to order a dusk assault on the building. Night would allow the partisans to approach his troops unseen, potentially exposing his tanks to further Molotov cocktail attacks from French partisans that had snuck closer than would be possible in daylight. Delaying the assault until morning would also allow Choltitz to organize dive-bomber strikes by the Luftwaffe, further opening the door for an assault. In the meantime, he ordered the tanks and infantry that had gathered at the Hotel Meurice to begin assaulting the city's post office and the town halls of the second and eighth arrondisements, all of which were located within 700 yards of the Hotel Meurice. Overwhelmed by the force of tanks and infantry Choltitz had gathered, the defenders of the three locations were either killed or surrendered by 7:45 p.m., approximately a quarter-hour before sunset. To Germans across the city — not all of whom had been able to or were ordered to gather at the Hotel Meurice — the night held wholly different terrors than the daytime, when the insurrection had begun unexpectedly. Most had, by the end of the day, gathered into their concrete strongpoints or at the very least, collected into groups large enough to beat off any attack. Despite this, most feared a sniper's bullet or silent knifing in the middle of the night. Few were able to sleep comfortably. By nightfall, Choltitz's forces had fully retaken most of the historic heart of the city north of the Seine, and had massed for the next day's combat. At 9 p.m., the first soldiers of the 165th and 158th reserve divisions began to arrive in the city. Choltitz ordered the 158th to help defend Le Bourget and Orly airfields, while the 165th was spread in the narrow pocket at the center of the city considered "safe" by Choltitz's staff.
Within the Prefecture of Police, the French men and women who had joined the insurrection feared what the next day would bring. Toward nightfall, their ammunition had begun to run low. Though some had been brought through the Metro tunnels, it was not nearly enough to fend off the assault all knew was coming in the morning. In the basement, Joliot-Curie discovered a gold mine: the accumulated champagne horde of the Vichy police. Dumping out the liquid into the drains of the basement, he and his assistants continued tirelessly making Molotovs for the defense. They would be needed, he knew.
***
Outside the city, people from East Prussia to Gibraltar had their attention drawn to the uprising. At the Wolf's Lair, Hitler was beyond furious at hearing of the uprising. He ordered that "all available reinforcements be put at the disposition of the commander of Gross Paris." He went even beyond that, ordering that Model join the First Army and Fifth Panzer Army into a fortified belt in front of Paris, then reinforce it with the Nineteenth Army, retreating from the southwest. Because of the situation on the ground, however, Model was unable to fulfill this order, as all three armies were by now rapidly falling back in the face of the Allied armies, which by now had fully digested the Falaise Pocket and were streaming eastward. Hitler raged at General Warlimont, overall commander of the Wehrmacht, asking him where the "Karl" mortar was. Informed that it had not yet crossed the French border due to Allied air attack, Hitler flew into a rage so profound that many in the bunker feared he would have a heart attack from apoplexy. Then, spinning on one of his mood swings, he ordered that a top priority movement be given to the 25th Panzer division and a scratch force of tanks collected from garrison duty in Denmark, which should move out of Denmark to reinforce Paris, moving by night to avoid Allied air attack. The 25th had been badly battered on the Eastern Front and had been sent to Denmark to reform and recuperate. This process was not yet complete when the order to move south came through. Though this force was mostly paper (neither the 25th or the various accompanying units had more than half their official strength in tanks or men), they represented a powerful addition to the garrison of Paris — if they could arrive before the Allies surrounded the city.
70 miles south-southwest, General Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, was trying to decide how exactly to best do that. On the night of the 19th, he gave the official orders to bypass Paris as his armies raced to reach the Rhine before the Germans could reinforce it. Two days before, SHAEF had informed him that his daily fuel allotment would be cut by 67,000 gallons after the capture of Paris in order to supply the city. That was enough fuel to move an entire corps 25 miles in a single day. Though Bradley heard reports of "some kind of civil disturbances in Paris," that day he was "determined we would not be dissuaded from our plan for bypassing Paris." That evening, the 313th U.S. Infantry Division crossed over a dam at Mantes-Gassicourt to become the first U.S. soldiers on the east bank of the Seine as part of the plan to bypass Paris.
To the south, General Charles De Gaulle's Lockheed Lodestar rumbled down the runway at Gibraltar. Loaded with 950 gallons of fuel — far more than its normal capacity — it rumbled into the air only after its pilot, Colonel Lionel de Marmier, had run up its engines to dangerously high levels and used every inch of the rocky runway. A second B-17 sent to Gibraltar to transport De Gaulle had arrived with tire problems, and De Gaulle, still fearing that the Americans were out to detour him from his destiny, insisted on using his own plane, ill-prepared or not. After struggling into the air, its course took it west, into the Atlantic, then north, and finally east, to a landing in Allied-held Normandy, from where De Gaulle would presumably lead the French Second Armored Division into the city. He would never arrive.
The disappearance of De Gaulle's Lodestar is one of the enduring mysteries of the Second World War. Built in 1939, the Lodestar was ill-equipped to make the long trip from Gibraltar to Normandy, particularly considering the need to fly across the Atlantic in order to avoid the possibility of interception by German aircraft. Despite that, it was loaded with more than enough fuel to make the voyage, and Colonel de Marmier was one of France's finest pilots. When De Gaulle's flight failed to arrive in Normandy on the 20th or 21st, it was imagined that he had been forced to land in southern England or along the French coast due to a lack of fuel. When no trace of his flight was found, an enormous search operation was launched, lasting nearly a month. The only trace of the aircraft found was a cushion that may or may not have come from the aircraft. The most popular theory regarding the disappearance is that the aircraft ran into storms or fog over the Atlantic, and was forced to ditch due to fuel exhaustion. The Lodestar was not considered a good aircraft for a water landing, and it is possible that the impact of the crash knocked the occupants unconscious, taking them to a watery grave. German interception is also a possibility, but by August 20, records indicate that there were no German aircraft along the entire French west coast, making this event unlikely. French conspiracy theorists like to put forward the idea that De Gaulle's aircraft was deliberately shot down by British or American aircraft so the Allies could institute an Allied military government in post-war France.
DeGaulle's disappearance also drew attention due to the fact that the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had also disappeared in an aircraft just three weeks prior to DeGaulle's death. Although a mystery at the time, the wreckage of Saint-Exupéry's aircraft has since been found by marine archaeologists and identified. Similar efforts have been made to search for DeGaulle's aircraft, but with no success. Regardless of De Gaulle's true fate, he was declared dead on September 21, just over a month from the date of his disappearance. During the first days of the uprising, however, no Parisians had any inkling of De Gaulle's fate, and the night of the 19th and the morning of the 20th was spent in anxious anticipation as Choltitz's threat of reprisals echoed through the streets and partisans readied ammunition for the next day's fighting.
***
As the sky brightened above Paris on the morning of the 20th, so too did the sounds of gunfire increase. From scattered shots at the first hint of twilight to the terrible ripping sound of MG-42s at first daylight, the din escalated until, by down, the capper was put on the crescendo. From the north, 27 Ju-87D Stuka dive-bombers flew above the Prefecture of Police prior to beginning their screaming dives upon the structure. They were the complete dive-bombing component of Luftflotte No. 3, the sole remaining component of the Luftwaffe that remained in central France. On August 18, Generaloberst Otto Dessloch had relieved the ineffectual Hugo Sperrle as commander of the Luftflotte with orders to get his aircraft into action over the Western front. Up to the early-morning hours of the 20th, Dessloch had been struggling with the problem of how exactly to do that without being swatted from the sky by overwhelming Allied air superiority. When Choltitz suggested action against the insurrection, Dessloch had embraced the idea. Though his pilots lacked adequate maps of the area, the imposing structure of the Prefecture would be impossible to miss, as would its position on the western end of the Ile de la Cite. Choltitz gave specific orders to Dessloch to avoid hitting the Cathedral of Notre Dame, just 200 yards away, for fear of further antagonizing the populace. Dessloch promised that he would make every effort to avoid the historic structure, but also warned that no guarantees could be made, particularly given the inexperienced nature of many of his replacement pilots.
Thus it was at 6:23 a.m. on the morning of the 20th — approximately 30 minutes after sunrise — that the Stukas struck first in the renewed attack on the Prefecture of Police. Screaming in from above, they delivered their loads almost precisely on target, blasting the top floors of the structure and killing many of the defenders. Owing to Dessloch's instructions to avoid Notre Dame at all costs, only one stick of bombs fell anywhere near the cathedral, and it only scarred the front of the structure, shattering some of the statues on its facade, but surprisingly leaving the stained glass windows on the front intact. Five minutes after the bombs landed on the Prefecture, the massed tanks of the SS contingent and the 5th reserve regiment, coupled with most of the soldiers of the 150th reserve regiment, streamed across the two bridges leading from the north bank of the Seine to the Prefecture. The shocked defenders of the building, having been blasted by the Stukas, could manage only desultory fire before the men of the 150th Reserve entered the building. There, the surviving defenders, having awakened to their peril, responded with ferocity amid the partially-destroyed ruins. As the infantry stormed the building itself, a handful of tanks blasted their way into the courtyard, incidentally cutting off the flood of defenders who, having had enough, were again trying to escape to the Metro station. Unfortunately for them, the German tankers took a dim view of this, and the retreating partisans were stopped by machinegun fire from the tanks. In the corridors, the fighting was ferocious, with Molotovs and grenades flying with abandon. In the confines of the courtyard, a partisan, carrying a Molotov in each hand, ran toward a German tank, setting it ablaze at the cost of his life. Despite such individual acts of gallantry, however, the French defense of the building was doomed. The defenders, after the previous day's action, were virtually out of ammunition, and the attack of the Stukas, combined with that of the tanks and the overwhelming infantry support, brought resistance to an end. Over 600 of the building's estimated 4,500 defenders were killed during the fight, with 73 Germans also losing their lives — almost as many as had been killed in the entire previous day's fighting combined. Over 1,000 partisans did escape before the German soldiers seized the Metro station, but approximately 2,900 FFI men soon found themselves in one of the German prisons scattered across the city.
At 10:45 a.m., Choltitz received the news of the Prefecture's capture with good humor. This was balanced by a report that no more than 50 partisans had taken his offer of pardon in exchange for their surrender. Choltitz was now faced with a dilemma. If he went through with his reprisals, as threatened, it could force the city into an even larger uprising. If, however, he did nothing, he might inspire the partisans to take even bolder action. In the end, he decided to issue orders for the demolition of several industrial plants around the city. Not all the mining was complete at the 200 factories scheduled for demolition, but Choltitz believed that by ordering the destruction of an even dozen of the factories, he could demonstrate his willingness to follow through on his warning while still demonstrating some control. He also ordered that the surrendered partisans be escorted through German lines, as promised. This would further demonstrate his mercy, he thought. Parisian partisans — FFI and communist alike — were not impressed by his action.
After allowing time for the force that had captured the Prefecture to regroup, Choltitz ordered it further south, onto the south bank of the Seine, to capture the Palais du Luxembourg and the fifth and sixth arrondisement city halls. It was now 1:00 p.m., and German soldiers begin running into growing numbers of barricades — hastily-constructed structures that blocked Parisian streets. As in 1871, when the Commune took over the city, the people of Paris began to take to the streets in a spontaneous show of support for the members of the Resistance who had been in it for years. By the end of the day, there were dozens. By the evening of the 21st, there were an estimated 500 in the city, constructed of everything from overturned cars to paving stones to — in the case of several Parisian theaters — the contents of the theaters' prop departments. In his attempt to frighten the populace into submission via reprisals and the use of the Luftwaffe, Choltitz had in fact angered the normal populace of Paris: the teachers, bakers, store owners and secretaries who, while not collaborating with the Germans, hadn't gone out of their way to resist, either. But with liberation apparently at hand, they took to the streets and, clutching weapons dating from the 18th century to some abandoned in 1940, began to fight back. The peak of the average citizens' involvement didn't come until the next day, however, and Choltitz, despite the rising tide of partisan action, felt confident enough to order portions of the 158th Reserve Division at Le Bourget to recapture the train stations and switching yards in the northwestern portion of the city. These had been seized by the FFI, and Choltitz needed them to funnel whatever reinforcements Model deemed fit to give him, as well as to provide for the shipment of prisoners to Germany. He knew that every mouth removed from the city would be one less that would draw on the city's limited stockpiles when the Allies finally encircled it. Choltitz had slightly more than 36,000 men to subdue a city of more than 3 million people. Adding to the problem was the fact that 16,000 of that total was deployed to the south, along the 60-mile long line he had decreed built to defend the city from the advancing Allies. Reinforcements would be desperately needed if any attempt was to be made to hold the city.
Sixty miles to the north, Field Marshal Model arrived at his new headquarters, utterly exhausted after a tour of the front — if the situation was even worthy of that name. All along the line, German soldiers were falling back, helpless in the face of the advancing Allied ground and air assault. Air attack destroyed German transport, and soldiers on foot were soon overrun by the mechanized and motorized Americans and British. Unlike the Wehrmacht, which still relied on horses for most of its transport, this Allied army was entirely motorized. The collapse and the situation he was facing was unlike anything he had faced on the Eastern front. It was ironic, he thought, that he should be sitting in the same bunker where Hitler planned Operation Sealion, his never-launched invasion of England, while now, four years later, Model should be facing an Allied attack that would bring the British to the German border. Still, he thought, there was hope. His first orders upon returning to his new headquarters (freshly moved from St.-Germain-en-Laye, directly west of Paris), were to order the evacuation of all German forces south of the Seine. These would be routed through Paris, and help with the defenses there, he decided. Paris would have to be the linchpin of any plan to delay the Allies. Hitler had decreed the city be held at all costs, and all things considered, the plan wasn't the worst possible idea. Holding Paris would force the Allies to invest the city, slowing their advance and allowing time for his mauled armies to regroup and launch counter-attacks, just as Hitler had ordered.
With a plan taking shape in his mind, he contacted Choltitz via telephone. It took nearly 45 minutes for a connection to be established, but this allowed Model to further refine his plan with his staff officers before communicating with Choltitz. He instructed Choltitz that Paris should be held at all costs and that he was planning to evacuate the four infantry divisions remaining south of the Seine through Paris. Furthermore, the rest of the remnants of the Seventh Army (which had been facing the Allies in Brittany and southern Normandy) would also be evacuated through the city. Portions would remain behind to bolster the city's defenses, aided by the arrival of the 25th Panzer division and a collection of scratch units, which, he informed Choltitz, were being redeployed from Denmark on the Fuhrer's orders. The city, he instructed, should be held at all costs in order to slow the Allied advance and force them to devote forces against it. Choltitz informed him of the growing problems with partisans in the city, and said that wide stretches of Paris had been "abandoned by German forces in an effort to protect critical installations." Model ordered that Choltitz continue with his reprisal campaign and suggested that driving some of the populace out of the city and into Allied lines might force the Allies to slow their advance in order to care for the refugees. Because no record of the telephone conversation exists today, historians have been unable to fully recreate the exact phrasing of this, or whether it was indeed an order, as most have suggested. Regardless of whether it was a suggestion or an order, Choltitz took it as an order, a fact that would have drastic consequences during the siege of the city during the fall. Choltitz and Model disconnected the conversation after approximately two hours, each feeling that the other was doing their utmost to help the other, and both came away satisfied. Unfortunately for Choltitz, however, little of Model's actions did any good. Such was the rapid pace of the Allied advance that the whole of the Seventh Army was trapped south of the Loire and forced to surrender. Of the four infantry divisions remaining on the south side of the Seine (the 158th and 165th had also been part of this force, but had been withdrawn ahead of the others), their fate was scarcely different. Barely 7,000 scattered, panicked men arrived in Paris from a total strength of over 35,000. The rest had been either captured or killed.
Barely had Choltitz finished his conversation with Model when the switchboard in the Hotel Meurice notified him that he had an incoming call from Rastenburg. Generaloberst Jodl, Hitler's right-hand military man, demanded to know why only twelve of the city's factories had thus far been demolished. The Fuehrer, he warned, was growing impatient. Had the experts from Berlin finished their work? he asked. Yes, Choltitz admitted, they had. In fact, the demolition plans for all 200 factories were located in a suite in an upstairs bedroom of the Meurice. The four demolitions experts, having been trapped in the city due to the uprising, were busy at work assisting with emplacing demolition charges on the Seine bridges. With that answer, Jodl demanded to know why the demolitions had not progressed further. It was, Choltitz answered again, due to the uprising. All available troops were needed to retake the city and quell the uprising. Furthermore, he answered, he was afraid that demolitions might further antagonize the populace. "The Fuhrer," Jodl responded, "does not care for the citizens of Paris. Antagonize them if you must, but whatever happens, the Fuhrer expects you to carry out the widest demolition possible in the area assigned to your command."
In Normandy, where late evening was beginning to fall along with the rain, General Eisenhower had just been informed that General De Gaulle's plane was overdue and that no contact with it had been made since it left Gibraltar. Worried, Eisenhower ordered that a search be begun for the General. It was possible, he replied, that De Gaulle had been forced to divert to another location for any number of reasons. With the order given, Eisenhower put the subject out of his mind — there was too much already to worry about. His armies were crossing the Seine, and preparing to thrust east and north. Montgomery was poised to strike toward the Pas de Calais and Antwerp, while Bradley was crossing the upper Seine and getting ready to race to the Rhine. There was much to be done, and as long as they stayed clear of Paris, Eisenhower figured, everything would fall into place.
As night fell on Paris and the second day of the insurrection came to an end, Colonel Rol's communist fighters exacted a bit of revenge for the Prefecture of Police. Attacking a convoy of German trucks with Molotovs, they managed to set four ablaze and brutally machine-gunned those who managed to escape the flames by jumping out of the truck beds. The 83 Germans killed were almost as many as had been killed during the entire day's fighting up to that point. Adding to the previous day's total, an estimated 337 Germans had been killed by nightfall. French casualties, while unknown, are estimated to have been in the thousands. Shortly after being informed of the convoy ambush, Choltitz was informed by an excited member of the SD that German soldiers had captured three important FFI officers with all their papers as they tried to drive through a German checkpoint. They hadn't even bothered to burn the papers, he exclaimed, thrilled with the success. He asked Choltitz what they should do with the men, given that they had been captured with weapons and were thus in violation of Choltitz's edict that any Frenchman captured with a firearm should be punished — with death. The other option was to hand the three men over to the SD, a fate, as Choltitz recorded in his diary, "not worthy of a dog." Instead, "shoot them" was his order. With that order, Alexandre Parodi, the highest-ranking member of the Gaullist resistance in the city, became one of its first casualties.
***
Shortly after midnight in the very early morning hours of August 21st, General Jacques Philippe Leclerc, commander of the French Second Armored Division, digested the news that Charles De Gaulle was missing. The word had been passed through the army's grapevine almost at the speed of light, and as a general commanding a division, he got the news even quicker than most. It was something that had kept him awake, even into this, the darkest morning he had ever known. De Gaulle and Leclerc had fought together from Cameroon in central Africa to now, almost the very doorstep of Paris. It was a "tragedy beyond tragedy" to lose him at the very moment of Paris' liberation, Leclerc thought. Still, he vowed, he had a duty perform, and though De Gaulle might be gone — he knew in his heart that De Gaulle was dead, even though officially, he was merely "overdue" — he would fulfill the promise he made in the sands of the Sahara to one day liberate Paris, even if it meant disobeying the orders of his corps commander, his army commander, that of General Bradley, General Eisenhower — even God himself. For the last four weeks, his fuel trucks had been secretly taking double rations. He had been slow in reporting destroyed vehicles. All this was to allow him to build up a supply of fuel "off the books," thus enabling the division to have the capability to sprint into Paris, if and when the opportunity arose. He vowed that he would seize that opportunity, and damn the consequences. For De Gaulle, for himself, and for Paris.
Also in the early-morning hours of the 21st, Colonel Rol took advantage of the relative safety the night provided by moving into a new underground headquarters. The capture and execution of Parodi — Rol had learned of the man's death shortly after midnight — put new impetus on the move. And so, Rol and his lieutenants crept through the sewers of Paris, through darkness even more total than that of the blacked-out city above. His destination was a station of the pumping authority, located 90 feet below the streets of the Monparnasse district. Though the Germans had retaken much of the historic central district, Rol was enormously satisfied with all that had been accomplished up to the morning of the 21st. The hospitals had been seized, most of the city halls still remained in FFI hands, the newspapers were rapidly turning out masses of propaganda and instructions on how to build barricades, make Molotov cocktails, and all the vital information needed to resist the Germans. Most of the city's train stations were in the hands of the partisans, and best of all, new barricades were being erected almost hourly. Rol calculated that these would do the best work in slowing the German tanks. But, he allowed, slowing them wasn't his goal — he wanted to retake the city, wresting it from German control. Barricades were not enough for that. He needed weapons: Bazookas, Gammon grenades, mortars, and explosives of all kinds. To do that, he needed to request assistance from the Allies. The trick was to do that without pushing them into invading the city themselves, something that would surely wreck the communists' plans to install a leftist government. Rol had sent a messenger through the German lines, but there was no guarantee that the man would arrive safely. He needed to send messages through the FFI radios, something that would have to be done quickly, before the Gaullists in charge of those radios recovered from the death of Parodi's command. He resolved that he would have trustworthy men and women in control of the radios by noon.
As it had the previous day, the sun brought increased fighting. The day did not begin as bloodily as the 20th, however — the fall of the Prefecture of Police removed the biggest single block of resistance against the German forces. But as Napoleon once said, "he who is strong everywhere is strong nowhere," and that statement was proved on the morning of the 21st. As Choltitz's massed soldiers and tanks had begun to recapture various public buildings across the city on the 19th and 20th, they began to lose the strength of numbers. Firepower is exponential — two men firing rifles is more than twice as effective as one man firing a rifle. And because the widespread nature of the insurrection forced Choltitz to detach units to protect buildings his "fire brigades" had seized, the effectiveness of those fire brigades dropped with every platoon forced to defend the shattered remains of a building. Choltitz's original plan to maintain a perimeter around the area of the city that had been cleared of FFI began to show cracks. In the morning, small numbers of FFI fighters managed to slip past the German perimeter around the historic core of Paris to snipe at officers and men along the Champs Elysses. In the north, the 158th Reserve Division, which had been battered by the Allies, ordered to retreat to Paris, then had its remaining strength spilt to cover the two Paris airfields, found its northern section stretched to the limit in order to recapture the train stations south of Le Bourget. It was not so much the resistance posed by the FFI — every time the Germans massed for an attack, or if they used tanks, they were successful. It was the fact that the FFI had numbers far beyond what the Germans could bring to bear. The barricades and their ability to draw everyday Parisians into the city made the situation even worse for the defending Germans.
By noon, Choltitz had even been informed of a series of desertions and surrenders, where disheartened Germans surrendered to FFI cells that promised to hide them and keep them safe until the Allies arrived in the city. These posed as great a threat to his ability to defend Paris as any of the FFI's actions. It was in this atmosphere that General Otto Dessloch, commander of Luftflotte 3, arrived at the Hotel Meurice. Dessloch was in high spirits — higher, at least than those of Choltitz — after his Stukas had helped smash the Prefecture of Police. It was then that he laid out his plan. The 150 aircraft of the Luftflotte in Paris would soon have to depart for safer airfields to the north and east. But before they left, Dessloch proposed an assault — not on the strongpoints of the FFI — but on the neighborhoods of northeast Paris. Dessloch traced a finger on a map he had brought for the purpose. From Montmartre east to Pantin, and from Buttes-Chaumont north to the empty stockyards of the porte de la Villette, the Luftflotte could engage in shuttle bombing from Le Bourget, barely five miles distant. The raid would create "a little Hamburg," snuffing out all resistance — and life — in the area, which housed approximately 700,000 Parisians. All that would be required of Choltitz and his men would be to evacuate the area, smash the water mains, and set flares for bomb aiming. This would, hopefully, quell the populace's willingness to resist as well as drawing down the stocks of weaponry at Le Bourget, all of which would need to be destroyed in any event. Choltitz was initially shocked by the man's savagery, but did not reject the plan out of hand. He had been enormously depressed about the chance of the Wehrmacht keeping the city from falling into French hands, but this was something else. He dismissed Dessloch without even a promise to keep the plan in mind. He was too taken aback.
On the other side of the Seine River, a half-dozen FFI radio operators were ordered to take a break. Their positions were replaced by other, fresher operators, who just happened to be communists. Most of the original operators were more than happy to take a temporary — or so they thought — break from the constant readiness the FFI radiomen maintained. The one man who did not feel a need to take a break was ordered to do so. Over the next few hours, each was suddenly awakened from a deep sleep and ordered into "emergency" action against the Germans. Though none were killed, they didn't manage to return to their radio sets for several days. In that time, the radios were manned by a steady stream of communist FFI agents. The tone of the messages sent to London during that time shifted. Instead of requesting an immediate advance to the city by Allied forces, the signals requested urgent air drops of weapons and ammunition. This request was bolstered by the arrival of Colonel Rol's messenger into the Allied lines, now just 30 miles distant from Paris at the town of Rambouillet. Ushered into the tent of General Bradley, he informed Bradley of the situation in the city, and, downplaying the seriousness of the partisans' position, said that all the FFI needed were steady drops of weapons and ammunition and they would be able to deliver a liberated Paris into Allied hands without the need of a single Allied soldier. Though of two minds about this (dreading the need to supply the liberated city, but relieved that no street fighting would be needed), Bradley agreed to pass the message on to Eisenhower in a strategy meeting scheduled for that evening.
***
In the afternoon of the 21st, the depressed Choltitz received an ear-blistering call from Field Marshal Model. Model berated Choltitz in the strongest possible terms for failing "to maintain order in the area to which you have been assigned," and for failing to hold the Seine River crossings to allow the passage of his retreating soldiers. Model was, in actuality, merely passing on the frustration he felt when faced with a hopeless situation on the Western front and from being squeezed from behind by Hitler, whose orders, issued hourly, sometimes countermanded each other and added confusion to an already chaotic and unstable situation. The sole bright spot was the situation in front of Paris, which had only reported "light enemy reconnaissance," and it was Model's fear of losing this sole bastion of stability that drove him into a fear-driven harangue. His final order to Choltitz was a stern warning to "restore order in the city at any price." Choltitz managed to prod Model into providing another half-division of reinforcements from the city, this time having them pried from the troops moving east from the Low Countries, and having been given his order, went about his duty with an air of fatalism. Casualties were mounting among the German soldiers (far higher among the FFI, but they had many more men to spare), and almost 100 had been killed by 3:00 p.m., nearly a third of the total killed in the first two days of fighting. SS tankers had resorted to tying captured Frenchmen to the turrets of their tanks in order to prevent attacks by Molotov cocktails. This tactic was effective, despite its barbarity, but no Wehrmacht tanker would dare use it. Choltitz convened a meeting of his staff officers, and they frantically attempted to come up with a plan to successfully bring the uprising to an end in a manner that would not critically weaken the defenses south of the city. In the end, they kept coming back to the plan of General Dessloch and the Luftwaffe. It would provide an immediate benefit, wipe out most of the resistance on the north bank of the Seine, and performed with other actions across the city, would surely clear the streets.
At 4 p.m., Choltitz gave the order for the Luftwaffe to begin planning the strike, with bombing to begin at 9 p.m. that evening. In addition to the bombing, Choltitz ordered that the first stage of the Seine bridges demolition plan be implemented. Most of the bridges across the Seine were to be dynamited, with only a few — under the secure guard of German soldiers — to be saved. Destroying the bridges would cut the city in two and destroy any ability for the FFI to reinforce effectively. Once resistance on the north side of the Seine was eliminated, Choltitz would give the order for all German forces on the north bank to move south and crush resistance there. The defenders could then begin to worry about the Allies without fearing attack from the FFI. In preparation for the air attack, the men of the 158th Reserve Division began to withdraw from the Gare du Nord and Gare de l'est, which they had retaken just 24 hours previously. In that time, however, dozens of barricades had sprung up around the two stations, and the men had a harder fight leaving than they had capturing the two buildings in the first place. Along the way, the disgruntled men followed the orders they had been given, throwing grenades down water mains, breaking pipes, and destroying hydrants. The FFI and citizens were so happy to see the Germans leave that they did not take the destruction as anything more than angry vandalism rather than the precursor to tragedy that it was.
In the central water distribution plants, the mains were shut at 8 p.m. Again, those in the area did not see this as anything other than a German attempt to harm the Resistance. Most attention in the city was focused on the Seine, where one after another, the bridges across the river were being destroyed. Eight were secured for use by German soldiers. Five of these lay in the central portion of the city, within the pocket considered relatively secure by virtue of the soldiers of the 165th Reserve Division who were holding the perimeter. At the Austerlitz and Tobelac bridges on the east side of the city, the FFI mounted a spirited resistance to German attempts to blow the bridges. Those two bridges were surrounded by over two dozen barricades, and the defenders had been forewarned by the blasts from bridges further west. When German engineers arrived, they were shot dead and their trucks set ablaze with Molotov cocktails. When tanks arrived a half-hour later, the defenders fought back with explosives taken from dead German engineers. At least three French fighters made suicidal charges with improvised satchel charges, disabling three Panthers. The German captain on the scene halted the fighting after the three tanks were disabled and night began to fall.
At 8:50, a second-hand report of activity at Le Bourget reached Colonel Rol in his headquarters below the streets of south Paris. By this time, it was far too late, even if Rol had believed it to be anything other than German preparations to evacuate the Luftwaffe contingent there. At 9:10 p.m., the first aircraft took off from Le Bourget. They didn't bother to form into groups — this was to be shuttle bombing. Just fly to the target, drop your bombs, land, rearm, fly again, drop and repeat. Because the target was so close, there wasn't even any need to refuel. All told, the 137 aircraft remaining at Le Bourget made 13 runs apiece, with some making 14 or 15 before the stockpiles of aerial weapons at Le Bourget were exhausted. By 4 a.m., all the aircraft had safely returned to Le Bourget and were being refueled prior to leaving France forever. By this time, the streets of northeastern Paris were ablaze. General Dessloch had wanted to create a "little Hamburg" in Paris, but even though the ultimate result fell far short of the destruction wrought in Hamburg, it was still the single largest destructive act on the Western front during the war. There were few incendiary bombs among those dropped on Paris, but the destruction was bad enough. For seven straight hours, at least ten German aircraft were in the air, raining high-explosive destruction on the city.
Not until 8 a.m. on the morning of the 22nd did Colonel Rol receive a report on what had happened, courtesy of a student who had been at one of the barricades on the district when the bombs began to fall. Taking cover in a gutter, 18-year-old Jacob Dévér had shielded his head with his arms as surrounding buildings crumbled. When fires started, he fled south and, exhausted, swam the Seine River to seek the safety of the southern bank. Spotted by a German patrol, he was forced to evade through the unfamiliar alleys and streets until being taken in by a sympathetic store owner. Finally, with the sun well in the sky, he reached Rol's underground headquarters. "We were smiling and confident," he recalled. "The Germans had evacuated the district and we had retaken the train stations. It seemed like they were giving up — a barricade two streets over from ours said they had captured two German soldiers and forced them to work improving the defense. Shortly after nine, we heard a low rumble in the air, coming from the northwest. We all looked up, thinking that it was the Allies, coming to drop supplies. When the bombs began to fall, it took us a moment to realize that we were under attack. By then, the explosions had begun, and everyone scattered. There being no trenches or basements nearby, I was forced to dive into the gutter, the filthy water and urine there staining my shirt and soaking me."
***
Dévér's story was like many others. Though few fires were started at first, those incendiaries that did fall found plenty of fuel from destroyed buildings. There was not enough wind nor enough incendiaries to create a firestorm, but plenty of fires were created by the few firebombs used and from incidental fires caused by destroyed lamps or stoves. A light southwest wind fortunately kept the fires away from the central portion of Paris — German soldiers had been ordered to create firebreaks if the blazes began to spread toward the central portion of the city — but this only drove the fire toward Montmartre. There, bands of citizen firefighters grouped together to create bucket brigades and create impromptu firebreaks. Their efforts were not enough to save the Basilique du Sacré Cœur from damage, but its scorched sides still stood when the Allies captured the hill in late October. Still, much of the artistic heart of the neighborhood was destroyed and the battle against the fires on the western edge of the bombed zone was the most intense. Throughout the entire bombed zone, the attitude was one of shock. Though the fires had spared much of the eastern portions of the bombed zone due to the wind and the ability of the Canal de l'Ourcq to provide firefighting water, almost no place in the northeastern portion of the city lacked bomb damage. An observer remarked, "It was as if the peak of the London Blitz had visited the city for one night." In the end, nearly 12,000 Parisians were killed by the attack, and almost 100,000 were made homeless. Their flight into the countryside — to the north, where they affected German transportation more than that of the Allies, at first — marked the beginning of the Paris refugee crisis.
On the morning of the 22nd, the Luftwaffe's bombing, though brutal, seemed to have accomplished its effect. The streets were mostly quiet for the first time since the beginning of the uprising. Most of the city, though not informed of what had happened overnight, had at least some inkling. The explosions of the bombs, coupled with the drone of aircraft engines, left few in doubt that Paris had taken a great blow from the air. Surprisingly, few believed that it had been the Allies, bombing rail connections in the city. As one man later said, "We believed that the Allies would never damage the City." The fear that the Germans had performed an enormous reprisal were confirmed when Parisians fleeing the affected arrondisements began to reach the southern portions of the city in late morning. Choltitz did his utmost to encourage that flight — if possible, to push the refugees outside the city and into the Allies. Loudspeaker-laden trucks roamed the streets, announcing that any Parisian who wished to leave the city to "avoid the further bombardment of resisting districts by the Luftwaffe." Ironically, Resistance newspapers did much to fan the flames of fear by describing in detail the horrific bombardment of the night before. When two regiments of the 165th Reserve Division moved from their position in the "Central Bastion," as the position along the Seine River was becoming known, to reoccupy the rail yards in the northeast of the city, no shots were fired at them. Instead, sullen Frenchmen and women merely lined the streets and watched them drive by. It took some hours before the lines had been cleared, but by evening, the first train loaded with French prisoners taken during the insurrection was heading east, to Germany.
Though Choltitz's barbarity had won the Germans a short reprieve, Colonel Rol was prepared to continue the fight, harder than ever. All that would be required was a resupply of weapons and munitions from London, and the Resistance would be back and a bigger threat to the Germans than ever. He had, through radio transmissions, received word that the Allies were secretly planning a drop of weapons into the city. Unbeknownst to Rol, General Pierre Koenig, head of the FFI, had ordered the drop be delayed for 24 hours. With De Gaulle missing and presumed dead, Koenig was under enormous stress. As one of the most senior Free French leaders remaining, he had none of the prestige of De Gaulle, and believed that the Free French desperately needed to make a statement if they intended to take the reins of the postwar government. Koenig had none of De Gaulle's drive to build a government entirely separate from the plan intended by the Allies, but he knew that the interests of France and her allies would not always dovetail so clearly as they did during the war. Creating a government free of Allied — and even more importantly, Communist — influence was of critical importance. He knew that any weapon drop would almost certainly benefit the communists more than his own Gaullist FFI members, particularly with De Gaulle's and Parodi's deaths. Secretly, he had radioed Leclerc in France, pleading with him to order the Second Armored Division to advance on the city as soon as possible. A swift liberation would allow he and others to install a Gaullist government of their own choosing, and not one of Allied or communist creation. But he could not hold off on the weapons drop forever. If Leclerc did not reach Paris before nightfall on the 23rd, he would be forced to order the drop, and damn the consequences.
In an apple orchard sixty miles of Paris, Leclerc received the covert plea with no small degree of torment. De Gaulle was almost certainly dead, no trace of him having been seen in over two days. At the cusp of what he believed would be his ultimate triumph, the fulfillment of his pledge to liberate Paris, it was being snatched away. Bradley had returned from the military conference with Eisenhower with orders for Leclerc's division to being advancing to the east — to the German border and away from Paris. Bradley had answered his question about the insurrection and the German bombing with a curt remark that the partisans "bore the responsibility for their failure to obey the order not to begin an uprising." Now Koenig wanted him to disobey orders and liberate the city on his own. In the end, it took him barely thirty minutes to make up his mind. The object of his dreams — Paris — would not be denied. The division would begin its advance at 5:30 a.m. the morning of the 23rd. But first, he had to distract his Allied liaison officers.
As night fell in Paris, General Choltitz emerged from the funk of the previous day. Despite all odds, his Luftwaffe gambit appeared to have worked. Just 20 German soldiers had been killed in the city, his troops had retaken the critical rail links, and all was well. The highlight of his evening came when four unfamiliar SS officers arrived at the Meurice. Choltitz believed them to be bringing reinforcements, but instead they had visited the city on orders from Heinrich Himmler, who had ordered them to recover the Bayeux Tapestry from the Louvre and take it to Germany before Paris was surrounded. Upon arriving at the museum, they had been fired upon by a section of FFI fighters. Choltitz was forced to pull together a group of infantry and an armored car to clear the enormous structure. When the German soldiers finally began searching the building in earnest, they were shocked to discover that most of the museum's art treasures had already been removed by the FFI. Hidden away in places of perceived safety, many would never be recovered. Fortunately for the SS men, the Bayeux Tapestry was one of the few items still remaining — no doubt due to its large size. They loaded it into their automobile and transported it to a salt mine in Germany, where it was recovered with thousands of other objets d'art at the end of the war. In Paris, meanwhile, art from the Louvre continues to be discovered behind walls and in odd places today. The most famous example, of course, was the rediscovery of the Mona Lisa in 1966, found behind a wall in a Parisian apartment when the owner was renovating the building. Despite successes like these, fewer than 3/5 of the pre-war art collection of the Louvre has been recovered. Many pieces are believed to have been destroyed in the liberation of the city, but some are believed to still hide in the nooks and crannies of Paris.
As the fighting in the Louvre was taking place, the enormous "Karl" mortar reached Soissons, 80 miles distant from Paris. This was its final stopping point before arriving in Paris on the early-morning hours of the 24th. In Metz, 188 miles from Paris, the tanks of the 25th Panzer division and associated formations continued their nighttime movement toward the city. Their arrival was less than 48 hours away — if Leclerc didn't arrive first.
***
Leclerc's tanks began moving shortly before dawn. To a modern observer, it seems difficult to imagine that a division consisting of hundreds of vehicles and thousands of men could move in secret, but this was an era before computer networks, before tanks featured aircraft-like friend-or-foe systems, and before constant communications kept commanders in touch at all hours of the day. By 7:30 a.m., virtually all the men of the division had been informed of their commander's plan and its illicit nature. Not a single one broke formation. All were veterans, part of a division whose fighters had seen combat since Free French soldiers marched across the Sahara to do battle against Vichy forces in French West Africa. Many were not from France at all — instead hailing from the colonies or even foreign countries like Mexico or Paraguay and most of those had never been to France before, let alone Paris. All were volunteers. And all shared a common devotion to the idea that France should be liberated and free. The key to all of this was Paris, and their drive toward the city could hardly be stopped by any orders from American commanders who knew nothing of their devotion. Due to Leclerc's foresight, the division didn't need to stop at any of the Allied fuel depots located behind the lines. They fueled instead from their own organic fuel trucks, which drove just behind the tanks and halftracks. Shortly after 9 a.m. on the morning of the 23rd, the BBC made the official announcement that General Charles De Gaulle, commander of the Free French, was missing and had been so since the 19th. News of this spread along the advancing division. By the time the unit reached Chartres, every man in the group knew it. To some, it lent a cold fury. To others, it disheartened them. Leclerc, near the head of the column, was disappointed at the spread of the news. Regardless of the effect it had, he knew it would serve as a distraction to his men, all of whom needed to have their minds clear for the battle ahead.
In Paris, the gunfire that had not appeared on the morning of the 22nd reappeared with a vengeance on the morning of the 23rd. By know, the FFI was running short of ammunition on a city-wide basis, but the bombing of the northeastern portion of the city had inspired a fearful resistance to the Germans. In places where German forces massed to drive out the FFI — as at the Grand Palais, where tanks set the building ablaze — the fear caused FFI fighters to become brittle in their fighting, fleeing at the first sign that the Germans were breaking through. On the south side of the city, soldiers succeeded in securing a highway corridor to the defensive line from the central bastion for the first time. This allowed for the stringing of landlines to replace the ineffective telephone system, allowing for better communication. To both General Choltitz and on the opposite side, Colonel Rol, it appeared that the Germans were slowly retaking the city despite the FFI's continued resistance. Rol continued his desperate pleas for an air drop of ammunition and weapons. These were his only hope. If Leclerc arrived with his division, it would mean an end to the communist resistance, De Gaulle or no De Gaulle.
At 8 a.m., Choltitz had received orders from Rastenburg via Field Marshal Model that instructed him to leave the city a "field of ruins" for the advancing Allies and make his stand among those ruins. Choltitz had already begun to implement those instructions, which were merely a reiteration of orders he had received over the previous days. As propaganda trucks announcing his "amnesty" for refugees filtered through the streets on the 22nd, their broadcasts stood as counterpoint to the loud bangs of factories being destroyed and the enormous plume of smoke that still hovered over the city from the Luftwaffe bombardment. Now, on the morning of the 23rd, the plume of smoke and the trucks had mostly vanished, but the explosions continued. Demolition teams, freed from being tied to the now-destroyed Seine bridges, implemented the destruction plans created by the four experts from Berlin. In addition, explosives continued to be laid at each of Paris' major landmarks. Each was given a flimsy military excuse for demolition — collapsing the Arc de Triomphe would clear fields of fire, while the destruction of the Eiffel tower would block the approaches to several destroyed Seine bridges — but even Choltitz was reluctant to push the plunger on historic landmarks. Still, to him, a line had been crossed and he was far more willing to execute the demolition plan than he had been just 24 hours prior.
At the Austerlitz and Tobelac bridges, fighting renewed after the brief calm of the 22nd. By 10 a.m., German tanks had blasted through the barricades guarding the two remaining Seine bridges not in German hands. Choltitz had forbade most major action in the city after the Luftwaffe bombardment in hopes that his restraint would allow time for the FFI to realize the hopelessness of the situation, rather than forcing them into a corner from which they would be forced to fight. When this failed to achieve the desired effect, he issued orders for the capture or destruction of FFI strongpoints across the city. At the two bridges, two more tanks were destroyed by Molotov cocktails, but both bridges fell to German explosives before noon. Similar scenes took place at city halls and public Paris buildings all across the city. Tanks were massed to blast the FFI from the buildings, and FFI fighters, their ammunition almost gone and lacking heavy weapons beyond Molotovs, were unable to resist for long. Some managed to escape into the warrens of the city. Others were captured and sent to German prisons, which were now bulging with captured Frenchmen, crammed into the most inhumane conditions imaginable, particularly for the wounded. Many were executed outright. To those in the prisons, who would later endure enormous hardships during the siege of the city or who were shipped to German concentration camps, those executed almost seemed to have gotten the better result.
In the city, few knew about Leclerc's approaching tanks. Only the few Gaullist FFI leaders remaining alive and able to communicate via radio had gotten the message. One of these men, Yvon Morandat, executed his orders to capture the Hotel de Matignon, home of France's prime ministers. Upon his arrival, the 400 Vichy policemen who had served as Pierre Laval's bodyguard surrendered to him despite the fact that he had come alone. Together, the four hundred secured the Matignon in the face of a German attack. This arrived in the evening, and German tanks set the palace ablaze. Morandat and the men defending the building refused to surrender, and died fighting while the building burned down around them.
By 6 p.m., Leclerc's division had reached Rambouillet, barely 30 miles from Paris. And all along the line, Allied commanders were searching for the French second armored division. Astonishingly, Leclerc's move had gone unnoticed until 11 a.m. by his liaison officers, who had enjoyed a good time put on by one of his officers. When Leclerc failed to arrive at a staff meeting at 1 p.m. and failed to answer a radio message, a frantic search began. Several times, elements of his division had been found by neighboring Allied forces, but by the time their messages were passed to corps command, the French had moved on. At Rambouillet, Leclerc desperately wanted to stop, regroup, and rest his division, which had been moving for over 12 hours now and had become badly strung out. But he knew that if he stopped, even for an instant longer than the refueling trucks demanded, the Allies would find a way to hand him an order in person. Then, he would be forced to ignore it and be promptly arrested. That could not be allowed, not until his division was engaged in combat with the Germans. Once combat was joined, he would have a ready-made excuse for avoiding further contact. He would have to gamble that the Allies would not force his troops back if he was about to break through to Paris. And so his division moved on through the growing darkness, not even slowing for the crowds of cheering, liberated French men and women who lined the streets of Rambouillet. Had he more time, Leclerc would have preferred to move the thrust of his attack further east. The direct line from Rambouillet to Paris ran through Versailles, and the latest intelligence before he began his move indicated the Germans had recently reinforced the area with more than 50 tanks. It would be like running a gauntlet, but he lacked the time to shift east.
Eisenhower and Bradley, in an emergency conference, debated what to do about the rogue general. Clearly, the first thing to do was to cut off all resupply to Leclerc's division in order to bring him to heel. This had already been effectively done due to his rapid advance. The second thing to do was to regain control of the division. To do that, they had to figure out what he was trying to do. "Isn't it obvious?" Patton, who had joined the meeting while it was in progress, said. "The crazy bastard is trying to liberate Paris all by himself." Messengers were sent via jeep to all likely routes Leclerc's division would have to take to reach the city. Shortly before Leclerc's tanks encountered the first Germans outside of St.-Cyr, a messenger from the V Corps caught up with him. This was Leclerc's moment to cross the Rubicon. To that point, all his actions had been covered by a thin veil of legitimacy. He could always deny receiving radio communications, or come up with other excuses for not halting. But now, reading the paper orders in his hand, he had to take the step from which there was no returning. He ordered the man detained until the attack had begun.
At 9:40 p.m., in the darkness of the evening of the 23rd, Leclerc's division began to engage the Germans outside of St.-Cyr. Paris' best chance for an early liberation had arrived.
***
St.-Cyr was well known in France and abroad as the site of the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, a highly regarded military academy founded by Napoleon in 1802. Following the surrender of France in June 1940, the academy laid dormant for four years, its buildings gathering dust and weeds. The school's teachers had moved to Vichy, then on to Free French-held Algeria, where they continued to instruct. Some of the men of the Second Armored Division had been students or teachers at the academy prior to its move south. Eight days previously, German soldiers had occupied the grounds of the school, transforming it into a strongpoint for the defense of Paris, part of the 60-mile-long line that Choltitz had ordered built. On the 20th, the Allies had bombed the town, part of the overall plan to cut road and rail links around Paris in preparation for its encirclement. Several of the 150-year-old buildings were damaged, but few Germans had been killed. As befitting its position on one of the direct roads leading to Paris, St.-Cyr was ably defended by a company of 17 heavy tanks (Panthers and Tigers) eight 88mm guns redeployed from the air defenses of Paris, and several companies of infantry, who had entrenched themselves in the village and in the stone-walled buildings of the school.
Leclerc's French Second Armored Division had its roots in the men who fought under Leclerc in Africa in 1941. In 1943, after the fall of North Africa, the division was reorganized along American lines and reformed as a light armored division. At the time of the opening of the Battle of St.-Cyr, the division boasted nearly 15,000 men, and despite losses incurred in Operation Cobra — the breakout from Normandy — boasted 197 tanks, 474 halftracks, 44 howitzers, and approximately 14,000 men. This was down from its original strength of 54 105mm howitzers, 263 medium tanks, and 501 half-tracks when it had embarked in Southampton in late July. The division's total strength was nearly as great as that of the entire German line defending Paris in the south. Choltitz could only bring to bear fewer than 20,000 men, 234 tanks, 378 artillery pieces (most were 88mm guns redeployed from Paris), and various other pieces of equipment. Countering the theoretical German numerical superiority was the fact that the Germans were forced to defend a 60-mile front. On their side, however, was the fact that Leclerc's division was badly strung out due to its rapid advance. Its men were exhausted after moving for more than 16 consecutive hours, and many of its vehicles had less than half a tank of gasoline remaining. Thus, when contact was made, Leclerc could only bring to bear a single tank battalion with no artillery support at first.
The Germans in St.-Cyr were astonished when the French arrived. Though reliable communications had been restored to the Hotel Meurice — radio signals had been prone to being jammed by the Allies — their intelligence had given them no forewarning about the Allied advance. Thus, the initial attack was a surprise, and the French nearly carried the defensive line in front of the town despite failing to mass their force. Several Shermans roamed through the streets of St.-Cyr, sowing confusion among the German defenders, and slowing the Nazi reaction to the attack. The shock and surprise nearly swept the Germans away. But the soldiers defending the town were veterans, and recovered quickly from their initial surprise in the darkness of the evening. The tanks that had broken through the line were hunted down by a couple of Tigers detached for that purpose, assisted by Panzerfaust-wielding infantry. Meanwhile, at the front, the gunners of the 88mm cannon had recovered from their surprise and fought back against the advancing French. Though the close range at first was to the French advantage, they hadn't had time to adequately deploy infantry cover, and German infantry soon surrounded and knocked out the halftracks and tanks that were threatening the line directly. By 11 p.m., the fight devolved into a long-range gunnery battle in the pitch darkness, neither side gaining an advantage. Leclerc arrived on the scene, and ordered a flanking maneuver around the village on both sides. This was performed quickly, and with skill, as by now, a second battalion had arrived and the division's artillery had begun shelling the town.
The German commander, within 20 minutes of the first attack, began screaming to Choltitz for help on the recently-laid telephone system that had replaced the now-destroyed civilian system barely 12 hours earlier. Choltitz, roused from slumber, feared that the assault was only the first portion of a larger Allied assault. Though intelligence estimates forwarded to him from Field Marshal Model had indicated the Allies were planning to encircle the city, he did not entirely trust those estimates. After all, the same intelligence officers had failed to detect the Allied invasion of Normandy, instead guessing that it would take place at the Pas de Calais. Because of this disbelief, he only ordered the reserves along the western portion of the defensive line to be put into the fight. Those along the eastern portion of the line would be warned to expect a potential attack in that sector as well. These included soldiers from the 158th Reserve Division, deployed at Orly Airfield. This was the largest single collection of German soldiers along the entire line, and although they lacked heavy armor, their numbers gave them a striking power unmatched among the German forces spread thin along the defensive line. Due to Choltitz's order, however, they remained in place as the defenders of St.-Cyr fought desperately, were outflanked, and surrounded.
Leclerc knew that time was rapidly running out and that despite his effort to involve the division in combat, representatives from V Corps were likely on their way to arrest him and relieve him of command. Any delays, even minor ones, could be fatal to his plan of liberating Paris before the Germans could destroy it further or the Allies fully bypass it. He ordered that the reconnaissance battalion speed onward past St.-Cyr on the road through Versailles to the loop in the Seine west of Fort d'Issy. That would take the division into the southern suburbs of Paris, and hopefully bring enough success to prod the army into giving him reinforcements enough to liberate the city entirely, resistance or not. Leclerc might have rested easier had he known that even then, at midnight on the morning of the 24th, the Allied command was still unsure about what to do as a response to his action. Leclerc's ignoring of orders had provoked a crisis of confidence among the Allied leadership. Bradley and Eisenhower both favored taking a hard line on the rogue commander, but Patton and Montgomery — united in one rare instance — favored giving Leclerc the support he needed to liberate the city. Eisenhower desperately wanted to consult with Churchill and Roosevelt, as this was as much of a political issue as a strategic one, but time was not on his side. With the arguments of both sides resonating in his mind, he ordered a compromise. If Leclerc could enter Paris proper, he would be given all the reinforcements needed to liberate the city immediately. If not, he would be arrested for disobeying orders, the Second Armored withdrawn from the city, and the original Allied plan continued. There would be no throwing good money after bad, Eisenhower assured the frustrated Bradley. If Leclerc were successful in taking Paris alone, he would have merely accelerated the plans of the Allied advance, not taken anything away. And if not, yes, the plight of the Parisians was terrific, but there was simply no getting around the cost it would take to liberate the city without a defense-weakening siege first. It was not a plan he enjoyed contemplating — particularly not with the consequences it entailed for the city's civilians — but it was simply the best of a bad set of options right then.
In Paris, Choltitz, too, was debating the best choice from among a series of bad options. By midnight, it had been more than two hours since the initial contact was made at St.-Cyr. Now, contact had been lost with that bastion — it was either cut off or fallen — and firing could be heard in Versailles, just outside the Paris city limits. The limited sector reinforcements were moving into blocking positions along the Versailles roads, and the tanks in the area already had good fields of fire, but would it be enough? He didn't think so. Glancing at the map, he again examined the forces along the eastern portion of the defensive line. There had been no contact, no firing at all along any portion of the line other than around St.-Cyr. Could he risk it? He would have to. He had already spread himself thin in the face of a numerically superior enemy — he now regretted ordering the defense of such a long line — and now he feared he was making the situation worse by preparing to devote his largest unengaged force to the one attack that had so far shown itself. If there was another, as yet undeveloped attack waiting to fall on the eastern portion of his line, moving his reserve out of position would be fatal. But he had no choice. There was no indication of such an attack developing, and he gave the order for the soldiers of the 158th Reserve Division to begin moving west from Orly. Few trucks were available, and local vehicles would have to be commandeered. That brought another question. If moving the 158th was the right move, would they even arrive in time? It was now 12:30 a.m. on the morning of the 24th.
***
In the dark streets of Versailles, not far from the centuries-old palace that gave the suburb its name, Colonel Von Aulock and the men of the 11th Paratrooper Regiment waited. Aulock, the overall commander of the defensive line, had rushed to the area upon hearing about the attack. Now, in Versailles, a position he had thought safely in the rear was about to come under direct attack. He hurriedly ordered the few 88mm guns available to be emplaced in the best positions available to cover the road from the southwest. Unfortunately, most of the city's 88mm guns had been spread along the entire 60-mile length of the defensive line, just as the soldiers had been. Only four 88s were in Versailles, and they were only present because the trucks transporting them to the line had broken down. At 12:30 a.m., Aulock's force engaged the reconnaissance battalion of the French Second Armored. Several French light tanks and half-tracks were destroyed, left burning in the street as the unit scattered. A running gun battle resulted as the French tried to simply filter through the winding streets of Versailles and drive past the Germans to reach Paris. Several companies did successfully escape the streets and reach the wooded parks east of town, but they were scattered and disorganized in the process. Furthermore, nearly 40 percent of the battalion didn't manage to escape the town, and as at St.-Cyr, became separated and defeated in detail by German infantry and tanks. This did have one favorable outcome for the French force — when the first of the division's main body of tanks reached Versailles at 2 a.m., the German defenders were themselves distracted by the reconnaissance unit's actions east of town.
Despite the continued fighting at St.-Cyr, which had now been encircled by the division, Leclerc's force managed to liberate the palace of Versailles at 2:45 a.m. despite losing several tanks and halftracks to Aulock. The losses didn't prevent the French from driving Aulock's force from the town of Versailles, either. Despite a 2.5:1 kill ratio for his tanks, he was forced to retreat to the north of the town shortly after 3:00 a.m. This retreat left Leclerc free to advance to the Boulogne loop of the Seine, which lies to the west of Paris proper. The reconnaissance battalion reached the suburb of Sevres and the banks of the Seine at 3:30 a.m. There, however, they were stymied by the fact that the Germans had blown the bridges across the river. Thus, the leading elements of the division were unable to advance into Boulogne-Billancourt, just to the east. Leclerc was buoyed by the fact that the Loire had been reached. At 4 a.m., he received further good news when word was received that the last German holdouts in St.-Cyr had surrendered. Outnumbered, running low on ammunition, and under fire from all sides, they had nevertheless extracted a surprisingly heavy toll on the French, and it wasn't until Leclerc's massed divisional artillery began to blast them from the stone-walled buildings of the military academy that they lost hope and surrendered. Several valuable hours had been lost to digging them out, but Leclerc hoped that they would not be in vain. He ordered the reconnaissance battalion to halt at Sevres until the strung-out division could be re-armed, re-fueled, rested a bit, and massed for the entry into Paris proper, something he hoped would take place that afternoon.
By 6 a.m. — sunrise — the reconnaissance battalion began to come under increasing fire from the west, where Choltitz had ordered elements of the 165th Division and portions of the city garrison to move south to confront the French before they could advance further. The Germans, dispirited after days of fighting hidden partisans, and believing the fall of the city to be had hand, made a few ineffectual attacks before halting their brief counterattack. Many of the ordinary German soldiers in the city, their commander's desire to fight on notwithstanding, had been demoralized by the rapid German retreat across France, the massive partisan uprising, and the increasing ration shortages caused by Allied bombardment. The approach of the French division was thus seen as the last straw, a chance to surrender and end the war quickly. When Choltitz received word of the desultory action at Sevres, he departed the Hotel Meurice for the neighborhood itself, where he vowed to take direct control of the action and thus boost morale directly. Arriving before 7 a.m., he used his seemingly inexhaustible store of energy rushing all along the hasty line, dodging occasional shots from the French reconnaissance soldiers who were at times just a few blocks away. With the German left anchored on the Seine, Choltitz organized a defensive position that the French could not budge until more soldiers arrived. He vowed that they would not get the chance.
***
Just after 9 a.m., 12 hours after the attack had begun and fully nine hours after Choltitz had given orders for its movement, the elements of the 158th division arrived in position opposite the vulnerable French left flank. From Velizy, south of Versailles, they attacked directly into the unsuspecting French. As Leclerc gave orders for his soldiers to redeploy and face the unexpected threat, which threatened to cut his lines of communication to Sevres, Von Aulock's force, having rallied after being driven from Versailles, counterattacked from Bougival, to the north of Versailles. Though Aulock was acting under no orders other than his own — having lost communication with Choltitz in the retreat from Versailles, his timely action forced Leclerc to address an attack that threatened to cut his overextended division in two. In many ways, Leclerc's success in breaking through the German line was his downfall. Denied reinforcements by a reluctant Allied command, and forced into an attack along a single line, Leclerc was thus vulnerable to counterattack, particularly given that his tired soldiers had been moving for over 30 consecutive hours and fighting for nearly half that time. His tanks and halftracks had not been given time to adequately refuel or rearm, and many were running low on both fuel and ammunition.
Faced with attacks on three sides, Leclerc gave the order for his division to pull back to St.-Cyr to regroup. They could refuel, rest, and rearm there, he knew, then punch through the remaining German resistance with no problem. The Germans were outgunned, he knew, and only the fact that he had been forced to rush into combat gave them the advantage. Despite his hopes, Leclerc would never get the chance. At 3 p.m., as he set up his headquarters in St.-Cyr, he was arrested by officers from V Corps. The second-in-command of the division took over, and was given orders to pull the division further away from the city, expressly written by General Eisenhower. He did so, and Leclerc's foray came to an end. Had he been in position to continue the fight, there seems little doubt that Choltitz's forces would have been able to put up little resistance. Most of their heavy tanks had been destroyed, and once the Second Armored Division was resupplied and rested, it would have made easy meat of the demoralized Germans. This supposes, of course, that Leclerc would have been operating under orders and thus able to request reinforcements from Bradley and Eisenhower. Of course, this was not the case, and the withdrawal of the Second Armored on the afternoon of the 24th gave the German defenders of the city an enormous morale boost. They had seen themselves, outgunned and potentially outnumbered, turn back a foe superior to themselves. To a group of men who had been retreating since Normandy, it was an enormous relief. Choltitz's efforts notwithstanding, until the French withdrawal, many German soldiers had been contemplating surrender en masse as so many of their brethren did outside of Paris.
In the wake of the abortive attack on Paris, the French Second Armored Division was sent north to assist in Montgomery's drive on the Channel ports while Patton and Bradley continued to liberate France. Leclerc himself was never punished for disobeying orders — political considerations in the wake of the death of DeGaulle mandated that the situation be dealt with kid gloves. Leclerc was reassigned to southern France, where he supervised the French drive into northern Italy, and after the war, settled into a quiet retirement in the same region.
In Paris, Leclerc's failure to liberate the city meant the fighting in the streets continued. Colonel Rol's partisans and the men and women manning Paris barricades benefited immensely from the break in fighting afforded by Choltitz's need to face Leclerc. Rol managed to restore effective communications with his men across the city via specialty telephone lines, such as those maintained by the department of public works, and ensured the distribution of Molotov cocktails and medical supplies to barricades across the city. Furthermore, the distraction of most of the German troops in Paris allowed partisans to retake several public buildings that had been recaptured by the Germans. As the firing drew closer on the morning of the 24th, many Parisians thought their hour of liberation was at hand and were overjoyed. Many prepared liberation meals, readied a stored-away bottle of wine, or generally prepared for what they assumed would be the largest party of their lives. It didn't arrive. Most Parisians in the city had little idea of what was actually going on in Sevres, and when the firing died off as Leclerc pulled back, many assumed that it was because the Germans had surrendered. The truth was revealed when the Germans returned to their positions guarding Choltitz's "central bastion." Those German soldiers who had remained to guard the perimeter were glad to see their comrades return, not least because they were afraid the partisans, buoyed by the spirit of liberation, would overwhelm them and begin a slaughter of the men who had begun to demolish the city.
In reality, Colonel Rol could not have assaulted the central bastion even with most of the Germans gone. The previous days' fighting had virtually exhausted his ammunition and weapon supply. In many places, Parisians were reduced to wielding gardening implements as they "guarded" their neighborhood barricade. Rol's continued pleas for air supply yielded no fruit as long as Leclerc still had a chance to liberate the city and Pierre Koenig in London still had a chance to avoid giving communists weapons they might later use against the Gaullists. By 6 p.m. on the evening of the 24th, however, Koenig received word of Leclerc's withdrawal and arrest. The last hope for early Allied liberation gone, he had no choice but to order the postponed weapons drop to go forward. At an airfield near the English town of Harrington, the engines of dozens of B-24 bombers of the "Carpetbagger" squadron warmed up. Since January 1943, they had been the men responsible for air dropping weapons and badly-needed supplies to resistance organizations from Norway to the Pyrenees. Now, they prepared for a maximum-effort operation, codenamed Operation Beggar, that had been first ordered by Koenig, then delayed when it had appeared that Leclerc would break into the city. As the sun began to set, the bombers roared into the air, their bomb bays loaded with 300 tons of specially packaged weapons, ammunition, radios, and medical supplies.
Due to the secrecy of the operation and in an attempt to keep the Germans from being informed about the drop, word was not radioed to Paris until 10 p.m., when the bombers were already in the air. A harried Colonel Rol was forced to quickly mobilize parties to prepare to recover the weapons, which would be dropped at points across the city. Racetracks, open plazas, and the Bois de Boulogne were all selected as the landing zones. Shortly before midnight, the citizens of Paris were jolted from their beds by the drone of aircraft engines and the sounding of air raid sirens. Fortunately for the American and British pilots of the B-24, the German 88s had long since all been deployed in their anti-tank role, and almost no flak greeted the low-flying aircraft. In the streets of Paris, many uninformed citizens sought shelter from what they feared would be another German air attack on the partisans. Since the firebombing of northeastern Paris, the average Parisian had been far less fervent in his resistance to the Germans. White parachutes blossomed in the black sky, and partisans rushed to recover the precious packages that thudded to the ground with a heavy solidity. Not all were successful in recovering the packages, of course. At the place de la Republique, SS soldiers at the nearby Prince Eugenie Barracks drove off the partisan group that had gathered in the plaza to recover that area's drop. The scene was repeated at other points where German soldiers happened to be present. At a few, the partisans managed to drive off the Germans, but this was uncommon. Of the 300 tons of supplies dropped on Paris that night, approximately 190 tons were successfully recovered by the partisans. The rest were destroyed by the Germans, or recovered by non-partisan Frenchmen. The weapons — in particular the precious bazookas — were distributed across the city to points of need. Not all the weapons went to the areas where Colonel Rol dictated, but most did, and the 25th promised to be a hot day for the German occupiers of the city.
In Rastenburg, Hitler's late night/early morning strategy session began with a focus on Paris. Upon being informed of the French division's approach to the city, Hitler asked, "Is Paris burning?" General Warlimont replied, "Yes, my fuehrer," for lack of any concrete information. Hitler again asked about the location of the Karl mortar and the 25th Panzer division and associated formations. The mortar had not been able to move due to Allied air attack, but the two divisions continued to approach the city, and were expected to arrive early in the morning of the 26th, about the same time the mortar would reach the city. Each was slightly more than 24 hours away from Paris.
***
Paris awoke on the morning of the 25th in what was rapidly becoming a desperate situation. Food was rapidly running out — even the rutabagas that formed most of the average Parisian's diet were becoming scarce — and although the water supply was still reliable, electricity most certainly was not, with most neighborhoods receiving just an hour or two a day — if anything at all. As the sun rose toward noon, Parisians learned how close they had come to liberation the day before, and how that liberation had been foiled by the Germans. This inspired some to join the partisan bands or those watching the barricades, but to most, it merely served as a reason to remain at home for just a little longer, despite the worsening food situation. Gunfire, which had slackened over the 23rd and 24th with the poor FFI ammunition situation and the German focus on the Second Armored Division again increased. Rol's communists and the non-communist FFI fighters used their air-dropped weapons to good effect, luring Germans into ambushes and other situations that negated the German advantage in firepower. The tanks that remained in the central portion of the city after the desperate action to halt the French division became prime targets for the bazookas and Gammon grenades dropped into the city. One favorite tactic was to pry up cobblestones in front of a barricade, then emplace command-detonated mines beneath the cobblestones, which were then carefully replaced. German tankers, buttoned up in their sealed armored boxes, rarely saw the disturbed stones before the explosives were triggered.
Choltitz, focused on forming a new defensive line south of the city, was slow to recognize the fact that the partisans were back with a vengeance. Throughout the morning, he had been drawing up plans for a far shorter, concentrated defensive line running from Sevres to Choisy to form the southern portion, and the north bank of the Seine would mark the western and eastern lines of defense. An inner line would be drawn up around the ring road of boulevards, and a final defensive position would be built around the already-secured "central bastion," which lay along the Loire in the center of the city. This would necessitate giving up Orly airfield, but with the withdrawal of the Luftwaffe, it was of limited utility anyhow. Furthermore, the line could be easily extended to cover the northern portion of the city if — when — the Allies encircled it. Shortly before noon, Choltitz contacted Field Marshal Model with news of the previous day's action and of his new plan of defense. He asked for further reinforcements, but Model informed him that none were available and even that the 25th Panzer division and associated formations would soon be diverted to stop the Allied Third Army, which was thrusting toward the German border. Choltitz, frantic, pleaded with Model not to deny him the promised Panzer divisions. Model reluctantly acquiesced, but stated that Choltitz could not count on any further assistance. Indeed, Model was planning to evacuate his Soissons headquarters — 80 miles north of Paris — for fear that the Allies would reach it in just a few days.
Choltitz came away from the conversation deeply disappointed that no further help could be gotten, but relieved at least that the panzers would soon arrive in Paris. The previous days' fighting against partisans and the French Second Armored, plus losses to desertion or simple surrender to the Allies had cost Choltitz several thousand men. Of the approximately 20,000 defenders present on August 19, he had just 16,000 remaining. Furthermore, the Allied weapons drop was sure to indirectly inflict many more casualties, and Choltitz doubted that he could successfully hold anything outside the central bastion without those reinforcements. At 2 p.m., with fighting intensifying, Choltitz heeded the suggestion of his staff officers and ordered the flooding of the Paris Metro. The Metro, opened in 1900, was one of the world's largest, and had a ridership second only to that of the Moscow system. During 1940, it had served as an air raid shelter (though not to the extent of the one in London) and had continued operation despite rationing, parts shortages, and all the problems associated with the Vichy government. Keeping the tunnels dry was a major undertaking at the time. The original tunnels, which had been hand-dug beneath the city, were not lined, and constantly seeped water and flooded during times of heavy rain. Heavy-duty pumps were employed to keep the tracks clear of water in places, and during the early days of the uprising, the tunnels were used for communication and transportation by the FFI and communists alike. With the destruction of the Seine river bridges, the Metro tunnels became even more crucial for the Resistance. In addition, some Resistance cells used underground storage compartments as hideaways for weapons and ammunition. The Metro tunnels were just one part of the catacombs deep below the city. Colonel Rol himself used a public works sewage tunnel as a headquarters. But on the afternoon of the 25th, German soldiers smashed the pumps that kept the tunnels dry. In some places, the pumps were even reversed, flooding Seine water across the tracks. No warning was given to those in the tunnels, and tragically, the Metro was one of the few things in the city with (relatively) reliable electricity service. Dozens were electrocuted when water covered live electrical connections. Hundreds of others, some of whom were civilians sheltering from gunfire above, drowned when water filled the stations in which they were sheltering. Choltitz deemed the flooding a critical military measure intended to cut Resistance communications and transport — it undoubtedly was, but the civilian population suffered disproportionately.
Fortunately for Colonel Rol, the tunnel in which he made his headquarters did not flood along with the Metro and so many other tunnels. From his position underground, he continued to direct the fighting, and continued to plead for more air drops of weapons and supplies. Even after the previous night's drop, thousands of Parisians wanting to fight were forced to use kitchen knives, gardening implements, or other makeshift weapons for lack of anything else. Two additional drops on the nights of the 25th and 27th resulted in an additional 400 tons of supplies thrown from aircraft, but less than half of that total reached partisan hands. Due to the ineffectiveness of the drops, the Allied command forbade any more for fear that the Germans were benefiting more from the supplies than the FFI was. Even without the drops, however, the partisans — communist or not — made their presence known. Every alley was a potential deathtrap for German soldiers, and every cobblestone potentially hid an antitank mine to knock out one more of the dwindling supply of German armor. Toward nightfall, Choltitz forbade pursuit off large thoroughfares and ordered a return to the concentration/block-clearing tactics that had secured the city halls in the first days of the uprising. Before sunset caused a halt in German offensive operations, the Nazis had again driven the partisans from three city halls that had been retaken while the Germans had been distracted the previous day. Many public buildings — epicenters of fighting city-wide — were becoming pockmarked, burnt shells of their former selves after changing hands for the third or fourth time.
***
Late that evening, the advance elements of 25th Panzer division and its associated formations began arriving in the city. Forced to evade Allied air attack by moving at night, and not always successful at dodging the bombers, both divisions had started their trip from Denmark at half strength in equipment. An additional third to a quarter of that strength had been destroyed en route, leaving the two divisions with three-quarters of their manpower strength and three-sevenths of their equipment strength. Together, the two divisions massed 19,914 men, 89 tanks, and 47 artillery pieces of various calibers. These trickled in at various times over the next couple of days, and gave Choltitz a total strength of just over 35,000 men and 100 tanks. The Karl mortar, bereft of a portion of its ammunition train, which had been destroyed in an Allied air strike, arrived before dawn on the morning of the 26th at the Gare de l'Est, the main building of which had been burned down in Luftflotte 3's air attack on the northeastern portion of the city. The enormous train-car-sized mortar was mobile, courtesy of a large set of tank tracks that had been attached to its carriage, and Choltitz ordered it camouflaged in a hastily-dug emplacement in the central bastion. By the afternoon of the 26th, the mortar was ready to fire, and at 3:40 p.m., launched the first of its 600mm shells at an apartment building occupied by the Resistance. The shell did not hit the building directly, instead impacting in the street in front of the building. This did not greatly matter, however, as each shell weighed upwards of two tons apiece. The resulting explosion destroyed all the surrounding buildings, and even killed several German soldiers who had not evacuated far enough back from the building. Fortunately for the Resistance, the Karl Mortar's utility was limited by its 4.5 mile range, which was just under that of a 105mm gun. From its dug-in position in the Tuilleries, it could range anything inside the ring boulevards, but the outlying neighborhoods and the suburbs were completely beyond its reach.
The deployment of the Karl for the first time and the arrival of Choltitz's reinforcements marked the beginning of true city fighting in Paris. From the beginning of the uprising on August 19, the Germans had deliberately avoided venturing into the narrow alleys and streets that formed the average Paris neighborhood. Choltitz's official order of the 25th to avoid pursuit of partisans into these tight neighborhoods was the best example of this. In the first week of the uprising, the Germans had concentrated on the large public buildings the FFI and communists had seized as strongpoints — the city halls, the public works buildings, the train stations, and so forth. These were typically located on main thoroughfares, and all were separated from the residential portions of their neighborhoods by plazas or parks. By concentrating on these, the Germans did not become entangled in deep street fighting of the sort seen on the Eastern Front. In many ways, the fighting resembled that seen in Shanghai in 1932, when Japanese soldiers battled Chinese ones amid a large civilian populace. Chinese soldiers had sought refuge from Japanese firepower amid the populace, striking from hidden positions before the League of Nations enforced a cease-fire in the city. In Paris in 1944, there could be no cease-fire.
Choltitz had the three divisions he believed required to hold the heart of Paris in a siege, and although the Allies were rapidly advancing across France and beginning encircle the city, Choltitz vowed to hold on as long as possible. "Every Allied soldier drawn here," he remarked, "is one not advancing on Germany." Before resisting the Allies, he still had to drive the partisans from the streets, however, and that meant going into the narrow alleys of residential Paris. There, every corner could hide a Molotov or bazooka, every shadow could (and often was) a rifle, and resistance was often heavy. With reinforcements, more tanks, and the Karl mortar to provide heavy gunfire support to the Germans, Colonel Rol's partisans could not stand and fight the encroachment into the residential neighborhoods. Rol himself was forced to move his headquarters from the underground wastewater tunnel to an outlying neighborhood after his hideaway was discovered by German soldiers. In a terrifying, pitch-black fight, Rol and his men had fought off the German squad in brutal, stinking hand-to-hand combat. Some were killed, but Rol himself managed to escape. By this time, Rol had almost total command of the partisans in the city. De Gaulle's death, the defeat of the Second Armored and the deaths of most of the Gaullist FFI leaders meant that the communists were almost alone in maintaining any sort of organized command structure. In addition, many Parisians took the Second Armored's retreat as a form of cowardice, and this greatly blackened the Gaullist cause in the city. The average Parisian was much more inclined toward the communist effort after the divisions' retreat than before it.
At this point, something should be said about the Allied air effort, or the lack of it in this case. As at the concentration camps, an appropriate air attack at the right time might have relieved the suffering of tens of thousands of Parisians and greatly aided the uprising. At this point, the central portion of Paris along the Seine was completely devoid of Parisians, and any air strike in the area would have killed only Germans. Even at this late date, however, SHAEF was reluctant to bomb Paris for fear of damaging any number of historical landmarks or killing French civilians en masse. The thought behind avoiding Paris was that by bypassing the city and not fighting in the streets, the Allies could avoid further damage to irreplaceable buildings and the civilians living in the city. In addition, although the Resistance was well informed about happenings within the city, the ad-hoc nature of communications outside of it, coupled with the communists' distrust of the Allied command, meant intelligence was not adequately shared until well after the final Allied assault began. Thus, because of a lack of intelligence, the Allies limited air strikes to rural locations such as rail and road junctions and German concentrations in the open. The fast pace of the Allied advance soon meant that when Paris was bypassed, most air assets were being used well to the east of the city. By early October, when most of the landmarks had been destroyed by the Germans and most of the civilian populace fled, the Allies were willing to bomb the city and begin its liberation in earnest. But all through August, September, and the early part of October, Choltitz and the German garrison were granted a free hand to do what they wished without fear of Allied air attack.
The 26th also marked the beginning of the refugee crisis in the city. With the Karl mortar firing into residential districts, German soldiers kicking down doors and firing through windows in an effort to hunt partisans and the almost complete disappearance of critical functions like electricity and food, Parisians began to depart the city in droves. Many had fled the bombing of the northeast portion of the city, but this had not triggered a large-scale flight in the way that the expansion of the fighting on the ground did. Tens of thousands of Parisians simply packed up their belongings and began walking west or south in an effort to reach Allied lines or at the very least a portion of the city in which fighting was not taking place. Thousands sought shelter at the Palace of Versailles, which had avoided damage during the Second Armored's fight. Still others passed through the Allied lines, where the Allies were grossly unprepared to handle the situation. Not until the establishment of the Allied Military Government for France on September 3 under Pierre Koenig was the first effort made to provide shelter or food for the refugees. Tent cities sprung up south of Paris to house tens of thousands of refugees, while hundreds of thousands of others fled to cities in southern France where they strained the new government to its shaky limits. An aid campaign organized in the United States "for the benefit of the helpless French" saw some success, but Paris housed nearly three million people at the beginning of the war, and even the best-intentioned aid efforts fell short. Again, not until mid-October and the beginnings of the Allied advance on the city was an effective refugee assistance campaign finally organized. Few Parisians actually died as a result of their displacement, but their plight was by no means a pleasant one. Hundreds of thousands of French men and women slept in thin-walled tents all through the cold winter of 1944-1945, and thousands remained displaced until the late 1940s.
***
On the 27th, the U.S. Third Army reached Chateau-Thierry, cutting the main east-west rail link between Paris and Germany. By the 30th, the Americans reached Soissons and cut the Paris-Brussels rail line. Paris was now cut off from the rest of the world. Tens of thousands of prisoners stacked up in German-guarded Paris jails would now be stuck there until liberation. Crammed into fetid, squalid conditions, hundreds died as a result of malnutrition or disease. Despite the conditions, thousands more partisans were thrown into still more-crowded jails after surrendering to the Germans. Despite the ferocity of the fighting within the city, some basic courtesies were maintained. For the most part, partisans surrendering to Germans or Germans surrendering to partisans (rarer) were not shot out of hand. To be sure, there were cases where the fury of the moment caused an execution or two, but this was no more different than the scene on the Eastern Front. In comparison to the average combat on the Western Front, it bordered on pure savage barbarity, but to the Germans who had fought the Soviets, this sort of thing was nothing new. In several cases, Choltitz even agreed to prisoner exchanges with various partisan groups. The average rate was seven Frenchmen for every German, but that varied depending on the negotiation skills of the partisan representative and how willing Choltitz was to compromise that day.
And in many neighborhoods, life went on with something approximating normality. In Courbevoie and St. Denis, on the northwest and north sides of the city respectively, little fighting took place and the biggest struggle was to find enough to eat amid shrinking supplies of food. By the final days of August, events in the city had almost settled into a routine. There would be the ever-present streams of refugees heading out of the city through the German defensive line, German soldiers would begin clearing blocks in the central portion of the city at dawn and end at sunset, and the partisans continued to man barricades and strike back whenever an opportunity proved itself available. This situation rarely changed. On a few occasions, an errant shot was directed from someone in the refugee columns at one of the German soldiers watching by the side of the road. The Germans would invariably follow up with a spray of machine-gun fire at the column, killing dozens if not hundreds of French men and women, leaving a score of bloody bodies behind. But the column eventually resumed, whether or not the shooter was ever found. Parisians merely trudged over or around the bodies of their fallen neighbors in search for some safe place in the Allied lines.
In the first weeks of September, the civilian infrastructure of the city utterly disintegrated. What little civilian public works remained operational through the uprising were shut down by Choltitz on September 2 in an effort to encourage the flight of refugees from the city. Choltitz reasoned that by denying the civilian populace the means to remain in the city, it could be cleared of the unnecessary population, making it easier to target partisans and make the city ready for defense. Only the water works, which was needed to supply German soldiers, remained operational, and that only partially, as water to neighborhoods unoccupied by German soldiers was shut off. Many Parisians were forced to drink from the Seine, which had been polluted by the fighting and the destruction of the bridges crossing it. Furthermore, the shutdown of the sewage system ensured that tens of thousands of Parisians used the river as an open-air sewer, making the situation ripe for disease. Dysentery and typhus appeared, and cases spread rapidly. Only the flight of most of the populace kept the situation from becoming an epidemic.
The Germans were slightly more comfortable than the Parisian civilians. Though their rations were far more nourishing than those of the Parisians who could even find food, they did not live well. Limited stockpiles had been accumulated before the rail lines were cut by the Allied armies, and many ordinary German soldiers — the sunny weather notwithstanding — feared a repeat of the Stalingrad catastrophe. Despite these fears, Choltitz's quartermasters managed the food situation as well as could be expected. Though the Germans were hungry, they were starving. They didn't have as much ammunition as they wanted, but neither were they down to their last bullet.
By September 13, nearly a month after the uprising had begun, Choltitz felt confident enough in his situation to radio to Rastenburg that "the area within the ring boulevards has been cleared of partisan influence." This is unlikely, as that night, FFI fighters launched an attack toward the site of the Karl Mortar. Though they were unsuccessful in damaging it, the attempt shows that even at the "central bastion," Paris was still largely in the hands of the partisans. The Germans had likely merely ensured that the partisans had to strike at night or risk being shot out of hand. On the 5th, Choltitz had issued an order proclaiming that any French man or woman spotted within 100 meters of the loosely-defined central bastion would be shot without warning. This order was issued after a German colonel had been killed by his French mistress, who herself committed suicide rather than be captured. Despite instances such as this, Choltitz clearly felt that the city was being calmed by force. On the 14th, he issued orders for the demolition of the Paris landmarks that had thus far been mined. The several hundred factories Hitler had ordered destroyed were long since rubble, but Choltitz had neglected to begin demolitions of most Paris landmarks for fear of antagonizing the populace. With the situation somewhat under control, he no longer had to fear this. All through the afternoon of September 14th, the center of Paris rang with the sounds of exploding buildings, many of which were centuries old and of priceless historical value. The Louvre, the Cafe de l'Univers, Palais-Royal, Chamber of Deputies, Ecole Militaire Petit Palais, Palais-Bourbon, Hotel de Crillon, Palais de Justice, Grand Palais, Ministry of Finance, Hotel Continental, Palais du Luxembourg, and dozens of other landmarks that had defined Paris became rubble. The Arc de Triomphe was blasted into pieces by a score of German tanks after resisting several demolition charges. The dome of Les Invalides, which had survived the demolition of the telephone exchange in its basement, was finally brought down, covering Napoleon's damaged tomb in a mass of rubble. And finally, the Eiffel Tower, that most Parisian of landmarks in the early 20th century, was destroyed in such a manner as to block access to the destroyed D'Iena bridge. Choltitz ordered the rubble of many of the buildings to be transformed into strongpoints for defense. Just as the ruins of Monte Cassino had served as an excellent defensive position in Italy earlier that year, so too would the ruins of dozens of French buildings.
Choltitz gave the orders to destroy these buildings with a heavy heart. He took no joy in the destruction, and gave the order only reluctantly. It wasn't that he hated the French or any of their buildings. He simply had orders to defend the city and to destroy those monuments, orders given by Hitler himself. He had delayed destroying them for as long as he could, first protesting that there were not enough men available to lay charges, then that there were not enough explosives to do the job. The arrival of reinforcements and the discovery of the torpedo factory had eliminated both of those problems. Searching for another excuse, he seized upon the idea that destroying the monuments would inspire the resistance to fight harder. But even that excuse went by the wayside when virtually the entire city rose in revolt, requiring Choltitz to drive the population out of the city. Now there were no more excuses, no chance to avoid the inevitable. He simply had to follow orders -- there was no other choice.
In the wider world, the destruction of so many French landmarks was spread far and wide as an example of German barbarity. Propaganda pictured the Notre Dame cathedral (left undestroyed) standing among a sea of ruins. French men and women outside Paris were outraged by the German destruction, and the demolition of so many buildings was repeated in the Saar after the war, when the French soldiers patrolling that nation's occupied zone demolished many Rhenish castles and other historical monuments "in memory of Paris." In the city itself, Choltitz was relieved to discover that the destruction of the monuments — done at the behest of Hitler as well as for defensive strategy — did not cause a massive uprising of the populace. Most uncommitted French citizens had already left the city, and those who would fight the Germans already were. To Choltitz, there was only one thing left to do: Prepare for the inevitable Allied attack.
***
In mid-September, the Allied attack was still a month away. Antwerp had fallen on September 4, and for Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, and Montgomery, the Rhine awaited. The Allied supply situation was on the whole bad, but not nearly as bad as it might have been. The Red Ball Express was doing good work keeping Patton and Bradley from eating through the whole of their stockpiles, and it was hoped that the capture of Antwerp would do much to relieve what shortages there were. On September 5, Patton was given the green light to advance to the Moselle River, encompassing Metz. This town fell on September 10, whereupon Patton was summoned to a strategy meeting with Eisenhower, Bradley, and Montgomery in Brussels. There, Montgomery laid out his plan for Operation Market-Garden, a combined airborne and ground assault to outflank the defenses of the Siegfried line by advancing through Holland. Patton objected, as this would starve the other two allied armies of supplies. He proposed an alternative plan, codenamed Operation Stencil, which, like Market-Garden, would be a combined airborne/land operation, but focused on the upper Rhine at Strasbourg, rather than the lower Rhine at Arnhem. Patton remarked, "Give me the gas and guns, and we can bounce the Rhine in 10 days."
Over Montgomery's (and when he heard of it, Churchill's) objection, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for Patton's plan. Owing to the need to stage airborne forces from French bases rather than British ones, Patton was given 10 days to coordinate and prepare for the operation. Montgomery's plan for an advance across the lower Rhine was shelved, and he was ordered to use his forces to achieve the more limited goal of clearing the Scheldt estuary, which guarded the approaches to Antwerp. Montgomery's XXX Corps did so with skill, capturing 20,000 men of the German 15th Army and opening the estuary to shipping traffic by September 30. Operation Stencil began on September 20, and in its initial stages moved quickly, but soon bogged down in the face of German resistance. The men of the 82nd Airborne Division and 1st Independent Polish Paratroop Brigade, dropped near the bridge at Strasbourg, managed to hold on for three days longer than the plan had called for, but in the end, were forced to surrender by a German counterattack. The failure of Operation Stencil to successfully cross the Rhine is well known, and Patton's subsequent reassignment did little to mollify Montgomery and the British, who felt that had Montgomery been given the go-ahead, his plan would have succeeded where Patton's failed. Counterfactual historians often point out Montgomery's plan as an example of something that could have shortened the war by several months. Nevertheless, Patton's failure to successfully cross the Rhine in September meant that the Allied armies were temporarily brought to a halt for lack of supplies. The limited stockpiles remaining were used to advance the central front into the Rhineland, but no crossing was attempted again until after shipping into Antwerp restored Allied supplies of fuel and munitions.
With the Allies temporarily halted by Patton's defeat, SHAEF's eyes returned to Paris, which remained a festering red dot on the Allies' strategic maps. The September 14 destruction of so many Paris landmarks, relayed to the rest of the world through FFI transmitters, shocked the Allies, who were preparing for Patton's offensive and thus unable to immediately act against the city on a large scale. On September 18, the U.S. 26th, 95th, and 104th infantry divisions, freshly arrived in Normandy, were ordered to begin closing the ring around the city. These arrived in the region on the 26th, and launched probing attacks on Choltitz's outer ring. Much intelligence about the state of this ring was provided by FFI fighters, who were also given surplus weapons by the three U.S. divisions which had orders to avoid close combat before reinforcements arrived. On October 4, the same day that the 82nd Airborne Division surrendered in Strasbourg, the Eighth Air Force launched its first air attack on Choltitz's central bastion in Paris. The bombers devastated the central portion of the city occupied by the Germans and destroyed the Karl mortar that had been plaguing the FFI for almost two months. On October 2, the 10th U.S. Armored Division arrived in Paris' area of operations, and orders went out for the city to be liberated at "the earliest possible opportunity."
***
On October 12, the attack on Paris began. From all sides, American troops, accompanied by a short and sharp artillery bombardment and air strikes from A-20 bombers, began to break through Choltitz's outer line of defenses. Thanks to information on German positions from the FFI, the Americans were able to bring up artillery and specifically target hidden German strongpoints. By the evening of the first day, the brittle German line fragmented. Occasionally, die-hards stood and fought to the death, but by and large, the hungry Germans surrendered after fighting for several hours. At the time that the battle for Paris began, Choltitz still had 33,000 soldiers and 84 tanks remaining to the defense. The Allies had upwards of 50,000 men involved in the battle, with additional reinforcements available had the commander of the attack, General Joseph Lawton Collins, requested them. Because the American force was so ably assisted by FFI partisans, who numbered at least 20,000, he felt no need to do so. He did, however, avail himself regularly of Allied air support available to the Corps involved in Paris. Collins had been commander of VII Corps in the First Army, and was widely considered the best corps commander in the U.S. Army at the time. For this reason, he was assigned command of the Corps assigned to liberate Paris.
By October 15, the second line of defenses, the one organized around the ring of boulevards surrounding the central portion of Paris, was fully invested. Here, the assistance of the FFI was less useful, primarily because Choltitz's garrison had mostly cleared the region inside the loop of partisans. Occasionally, FFI fighters were able to show the Allies a weakness in the German defense, but after this point, the attack became a street-by-street slog. Collins had resolved at the start of the attack to be "deliberate and careful not to waste the resources allotted me." This meant that whenever a German strongpoint was encountered, the Americans would bring up artillery and fire directly into the strongpoint, rather than attempt to immediately attack with infantry. The GMC M3 halftrack-mounted 75mm gun was used with great effect in this way. In addition, Allied tankers found — as had the Germans two months earlier — that armor-piercing ammunition was the best way to penetrate the thick stone walls of many older French buildings. In many ways, the fighting in Paris was similar to that occurring simultaneously in the German city of Aachen, two hundred miles to the north. There, as at Paris, Hitler had ordered the city held at all costs. Both cities had immense historical value, both were defended by "true Nazi" commanders, and both cities featured fierce street-by-street fighting.
No account given here of the fighting of this period can do it justice. A reader can best call up descriptions of the fighting in Stalingrad or read Albert LeDoux's "Liberation Delayed" for an excellent account of these days. Rubble-strewn streets, destroyed buildings, and snipers abounded for both sides. American infantrymen learned to hate the tough stone of older French buildings, as it was all but impervious to small arms fire, and almost by law, seemed to hold a German squad that had to be rooted out before the advance could continue. But continue it did, by dint of hard effort and relentless Allied pressure. By October 23, Choltitz's position was becoming increasingly untenable. Ammunition, never plentiful with the drain forced by fighting partisans, was becoming critical. In addition, several stockpiles of food had fallen into American hands, and German soldiers, hungry and desperate, were beginning to surrender en masse. Their morale, never strong in the midst of a surrounded and besieged city, had fractured badly when the Americans attacked. Fully one in three surrendered before Choltitz himself did on November 11, 1944.
The day before the surrender, the central bastion was ablaze with explosions as the Germans destroyed anything of value. As a final coup de grâce, the Germans destroyed the city's waterworks, which had been supplying the defenders with water from the rubble-choked banks of the Seine throughout the battle. So much rubble had been dropped into that most French of rivers that in many places wreckaged formed dams, causing the river's water to rise above its banks, flooding the surrounding streets before the dams washed away, only to reform further downstream, where another pile of rubble waited. Alone amid the chaos, Notre Dame survived. Though damaged by shelling and American bombing, it still stood when Choltitz sent a messenger bearing a white flag to General Collins. American forces had not yet penetrated the central bastion, but fighting was taking place a half a dozen blocks from Choltitz's headquarters in the basement of the Hotel Meurice. When Choltitz surrendered, he had just 8,000 men still fighting. 14,000 had been killed, and 11,000 had already surrendered to American or French forces. American casualties were lighter, but still high. 8,329 American soldiers were killed in the liberation of Paris, and French casualties are estimated to have been higher than those of the Germans. Including the period of the uprising prior to October 12, it is estimated that upwards of 80,000 French men and women were killed directly resisting the Germans in Paris. This does not include the tens of thousands of civilians believed to have died due to malnutrition, disease or fighting in the embattled city. Much of the central portion of Paris lay in ruins, and virtually all public buildings and structures used as defensive strongpoints were either destroyed or damaged to the point that they had to be torn down. Despite the high cost, Paris had at last been liberated.
***
Ironically, three days after Choltitz surrendered, Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive, a massive counter-attack intended to relieve the defenders of Paris, who he saw as among the most noble in the entire German Army. The attack nevertheless went forward after the surrender and despite inadequate preparation. Though the Allies were caught off guard, the offensive was stopped by massive aerial bombardment, made available by the clear skies and good weather in which the attack was launched. The German force was cut to pieces. The weakened Germans, devastated by the loss of their few remaining mobile formations on the Western Front and facing an Allied force securely supplied through Antwerp, were unable to resist a second attempt at crossing the Rhine in January 1945. This set the stage for the Allies to meet the Soviets south of Berlin on April 7, 1945 and bring the war to an end.
Choltitz was tried for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Trials and found guilty on all four counts. He was hanged to death on October 16, 1946 alongside the other surviving Nazi leaders convicted at the trial. Over a hundred other German officers who participated in the siege of Paris were handed over to French courts following the war and were also given death sentences. Far more sentences of death (98) were handed down by the French judges than life sentences (37) or acquittals (3). As the instigators of the Paris atrocities were made to pay the price for their actions, so too was Germany at large. The Saar and Palatinate, which lay in the French occupation zone, were methodically stripped of industrial equipment, which was shipped westward to replace that which had been destroyed in Paris. Much malicious destruction was also done to the two regions out of a desire for simple revenge for what had been done to Paris. The French approach to its occupied zone was very similar to that of the Soviet Union in its zone. This fact greatly hurt West Germany in the initial years of that nation's existence and French atrocities sparked some Neo-Nazi groups in the region, which has the highest number of such organizations today despite laws forbidding their existence.
Despite the rebuilding of its industries, Paris itself lay in ruins until Pierre Koenig, prime minister of the postwar French government, ordered the beginning of a rebuilding campaign in 1947. He vowed that the capital of France would be returned to Paris from Lyons (the interim capital set up by the Allied Military Government) by 1955. Parisian citizens displaced by the battle for Paris proved to be a powerful political force in the postwar government. Largely communist or socialist leaning, they tended to disdain involvement in American or European groups due to the belief that the Allies had deliberately avoided capturing Paris and in part had contributed to the city's plight. They promoted a strong self-government leaning toward the left end of the political spectrum, and disdained international involvement and treaties. Many believed America and Britain to be at fault for Paris' plight, and disdained further dealings with those two countries. The Koenig government succeeded in signing and implementing the Treaty of Brussels, the NATO treaty, and the European Coal and Steel Community, but resistance from the Parisien Bloc in 1958 nullified France's participation in the European Economic Community organization, which continued to grow despite the predictions of those who believed such an organization was impossible without French participation.
Colonial issues proved to be one of the few issues where the Parisien Bloc found allies among the French political establishment. France's few remaining colonies fell into the hands of independence movements, which were duly recognized as the rightful governments of those territories over the objections of the Gaullist fringe, which dominated the right-side spectrum of the French government. Despite the Gaullist protests, Indochina, Algeria, Guiana, and the nations of French West Africa soon gained their independence relatively peacefully and painlessly. Though internal strife developed in some of the new countries, France itself found itself uninvolved. In 1962, the Parisien Bloc succeeded in forming a coalition government, and assumed the prime ministership. Although the government lasted just seven years, it succeeded in forcing through radical changes to France, including French withdrawal from NATO (potentially triggering that year's Cuban Missile Crisis), a massive public works campaign, and dozens of other social and political reforms. In 1969, the Parisien/communist coalition collapsed when the communists proposed enacting closer ties to the Soviet Union. Many Parisiens objected on the same grounds that they objected to treaties with the United States and European nations, and the coalition was replaced with a new government, which steered France on a course closer to center.
The Social Democratic and Socialist government that replaced the coalition government in 1969 brought France into the EEC as a provisional member, but continued independence-minded elements in the government kept France from becoming a full member. Today, France is as set in its own independence as ever. The French maintain a distinct personality from the rest of Europe, and strongly maintain their independence in the face of a tide of internationalism sweeping Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Several counterfactual historians have offered theories that had De Gaulle not disappeared and Paris been liberated early, France would have steered a more internationalist course and become part of a United States of Europe closely aligned to the United States of America, standing alongside it in the American invasion of Iraq as well as Afghanistan, to name just two events. This seems unlikely, given the past course of French history, and in reality, a world with De Gaulle and an early liberation of Paris likely would resemble our own.
Sources:
"Is Paris Burning?" By Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.
"World War II in Europe: The Final Year" By Charles F. Brower, Roosevelt Study Center.
"World War II: A Statistical Survey"
"A Soldier's Story," General Omar N. Bradley.
Setton, Kenneth M., "900 Years Ago: the Norman Conquest", National Geographic Magazine (August 1966): 206–251.
"Is Paris burning?"
"Yes, my fuehrer."
On August 7, 1944, Wehrmacht Generalleutenant Dietrich von Choltitz arrived in Rastenburg, East Prussia, site of Adolf Hitler's Wolfshanze, "Wolf's Lair." From the complex in East Prussia, the elderly former corporal of the German Army commanded millions of soldiers spread across a continent. Though the territory commanded by his armies had shrunk drastically in the last two years, Hitler still commanded most of the continent. But now, sixty miles from the front, the faint sound of guns could be heard at Rastenburg. Hitler's empire was slowly crumbling.
Even at such a late date, many in the German Army still believed in victory. Drawn by the charisma of Hitler and their belief in German superiority, they held hopes that somehow, Germany could still emerge victorious despite the encroaching Allies. Von Choltitz was one of those men, though in the last few months, his belief had begun to falter slightly. Three weeks prior to Choltitz's arrival in Rastenburg, a group of German Army generals had conspired to assassinate Hitler prior to launching a coup that would allow Germany to make an honorable peace. Though von Stauffenberg's bomb succeeded in wrecking an aboveground building in the Wolfshanze, Hitler was uninjured and the coup was foiled.
One of the most prominent generals involved in the coup attempt had been Karl Heinrich von Stulpnagel, commander of German Army forces in France. Upon Stulpnagel's arrest in the wake of the coup attempt, his subordinate, General Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, in charge of the defense of Paris, came under increased scrutiny. Neither Hitler nor the top OKW generals who remained after the coup held Boineburg-Lengsfeld in high esteem. He was a rear-echelon commander, who had held sway over garrison commands almost since the fall of France in June, 1940. Both Hitler and his generals believed it was time for a new commander as Paris moved from a comfortable garrison to the penultimate front line.
Enter Dietrich von Choltitz. As a Lieutenant Colonel, he had been the first man out of the door as German paratroopers attacked Rotterdam on May 10, 1940. His forces assaulted the airbases around the city, but heavy resistance kept them from penetrating the downtown districts. Choltitz ordered a Luftwaffe air strike to attack the central portion of the city to sow panic and open an opportunity for his soldiers. Shortly before the air strike arrived, the Dutch defending the city surrendered. Choltitz failed to cancel the strike, which burned down hundreds of buildings and killed over 1,000 civilians. When asked why he didn't cancel the strike, he answered, "They resisted. It was an important lesson." The next year, Choltitz supervised the capture of Lwow in the opening days of Operation Barbarossa. When the civilian population rose against the Germans, he ordered most of the city razed. Early the next year, he supervised the capture of Sebastopol on the Black Sea, and issued orders that no special consideration was made for civilian casualties if it were to cause undue harm to Wehrmacht soldiers. As German soldiers retreated in the face of the Red Army, he was made commander of Army Group Center's scorched earth tactics. As he later confessed to a Swedish ambassador in Paris, "Since Sebastopol, it has been my fate to cover the retreat of our armies and destroy the cities behind them."
Choltitz gained a reputation as an officer who never failed to follow orders, who was a tenacious defender and attacker, and who was utterly loyal to Germany. In the wake of the July 20 coup attempt, that last characteristic was as important as any other to Hitler. Upon his arrival in Rastenburg, Choltitz was stripped of his belt, sidearm, and had all his personal belonging searched intensively by Hitler's SS guards. This was nothing special — it was the normal procedure since July 20, even for a senior general in the German Army. Choltitz was ushered into Hitler's meeting room, and the two began an in-depth discussion of the defense of Paris. "Paris," Hitler said, gesturing at a map, "is the heart of France. He who holds Paris holds France, and any general who defends the city must be as steadfast as if he were defending Berlin itself. Are you such a man?"
Choltitz answered in the affirmative, and was then subjected to two hours of lecturing by Hitler, who covered virtually everything from the creation of the Nazi Party to the recent coup attempt against him. Though Hitler's hand had been shaking and he had given the impression of an elderly man on his last legs at the start of the talk, he warmed to his subject and by the time he was finishing, he was in rare form and Choltitz felt far more confident about the state of the country than he had been when he entered. At the conclusion of Hitler's harangue, he reminded Choltitz, "You will stamp out without pity any uprising of the civilian population, any act of terrorism, or any act of sabotage against German forces. For that, Herr General" Hitler continued, "you will receive from me any support you need." With that, Choltitz was confirmed as the new commander of Gross Paris, and was entrusted with all the authority of the commander of a city under siege. Four hours later, he boarded a train heading west.
At the same time, several hundred miles to the west, General Dwight David Eisenhower was also debating the future of Paris. At the time of the discussion, American forces were only just breaking free of Normandy, thrusting south of Avranches as they executed Operation Cobra, the breakout from the Normandy beachhead, a plan that would ultimately result in the encirclement of more than 150,000 German soldiers in the Falaise Pocket. That event was almost a month in the future, but Eisenhower already had his eyes and thoughts moving eastward. In the top-secret report "Post-Neptune Operations Section II — Crossing of the Seine and the Capture of Paris", Eisenhower's plan was set forth.
After the encirclement and reduction of German forces in the Falaise Pocket, Allied forces would split into two main groups for the march eastward. Montgomery's 21st Army Group would cross the Lower Seine between the Oise River and the English Channel, capturing Le Havre and threatening the V-1 and V-2 launching sites in the Pas de Calais — the reduction of which was a political priority. Meanwhile, Bradley's 12th Army Group (containing Patton's Third Army) would strike east, crossing the Seine at Melun, south of Paris, before driving northeast to Reims. There, Bradley's forces would wheel westward to meet Montgomery's forces, which would have turned eastward at Amiens. Above all, Eisenhower wanted to keep his tanks rolling in the open terrain of central France and avoid becoming bogged down in street fighting in Paris. Eisenhower correctly believed Paris would be heavily defended by the German Army, and wanted to avoid Paris becoming a Western Stalingrad. Only when Paris was surrounded would a gradual approach into the city begin, after the Germans had been weakened by a starvation of supplies. The encirclement would also — Eisenhower believed — have the effect of avoiding undue harm to the civilian population of the city. A siege might result in a German surrender without the need for a battle, as was then taking place in Brest and Lorient.
One lesser-known consideration by Eisenhower in the decision to avoid Paris in the short term was his fear of supply drain that Paris would become in the event of its liberation. At the time of Eisenhower's decision, Cherbourg was the sole major supply port open to the Western Allies, and though the capture of Antwerp, Le Havre, Brest, and ports in southern France were forecast to alleviate any potential supply problems, the needs of Paris itself also posed a major problem. A study by Allied analysts predicted that in the event of Paris's liberation, a supply effort equivalent to that needed to supply eight divisions would be needed to keep the city functioning. At the time, Eisenhower had just 37 divisions deployed in France, and the long-term supply picture looked questionable if any additional burden — such as the liberation of Paris — was added. For the time being, Eisenhower decided, the liberation of Paris would have to wait. To effect Eisenhower's plan, SHAEF parachuted several French operatives into Paris with instructions that the Resistance was not to begin any general uprising until after the encirclement.
As we know, things did not go according to plan.
In Algiers, General Charles de Gaulle, the then-leader of Free French forces, schemed. He feared (correctly, as it turned out) that the American Department of State and the British government were maneuvering the situation in France to ensure his position would be quietly shuffled off to the side following the liberation of Paris and the establishment of a new French government. Though he is less regarded than former French Prime Minister Pierre Koenig, Charles De Gaulle was perhaps the best-known French leader of the war at that time. In the wake of the surrender of the pre-war French government in June 1940 and the establishment of Vichy, De Gaulle was the most prominent member of the French military to advocate continued resistance. Thanks to British support and that of several of France's African colonies, he gradually built a base of support and began leading the military liberation of French overseas colonies. At first, he fought against Vichy forces in central Africa. Later, Gaullist forces fought Vichyite troops in Syria during one of the bloodiest bouts of fighting in the Middle East during the Second World War. By 1944, he had become secure enough to begin thinking about the post-war situation, which he believed should be in his control. Naturally, the other Allies differed, but De Gaulle was determined that no trace of AMGOT (Allied Military Government in Occupied Territories) exist in France. Post-liberation, the French government should begin and end with him, he thought.
There were two threats to that view. First was Allied meddling, but De Gaulle felt he could control that problem through diplomacy and by using Free French elements in the Allied armies to exert influence. The second, and far more pressing problem, was the existence of the large communist element in the Resistance. At the time of the Normandy invasion, the French Resistance was composed roughly 50/50 of Free French of the Interior (FFI) and of communist fighters. The FFI was concentrated mostly in the countryside, while the communist fighters were more numerous in the cities, particularly in Paris. So concerned was De Gaulle about communists gaining influence that he ordered a halt to weapons drops around Paris on June 14, for fear that the communists were taking too many of the weapons intended for the FFI. He estimated that Paris itself contained roughly 25,000 communist Resistance members. In reality, the number was half again that total.
By early August, De Gaulle had become convinced that Paris must be liberated as soon as possible by the Allies in order that he might establish his government in Paris and forestall a potential communist-led uprising. If the Allied armies could reach Paris before a general uprising, the communists would drastically lose influence in favor of his own organized Free French soldiers. The Paris communists themselves were just as determined to dominate the post-war picture. Famously, Henri Tanguy, leader of the Paris communists and better known as "Colonel Rol," famously declared, "Paris is worth 200,000 dead."
***
General Choltitz arrived in Paris on August 9. During his dinner with the outgoing commander of "Gross Paris," Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, he found the defenses of the city utterly inadequate. The city contained fewer than 20,000 German soldiers, and most of those were clerks, garrison troopers, or prison guards. There were fewer than 10,000 actual combat soldiers in the city, and most of them were simply recuperating from the fighting in the West. Both Boineburg-Lengsfeld and Choltitz disliked each other immediately. Choltitz believed Boineburg-Lengsfeld's plans to construct a "Boineburg Line" of defenses to the west of the city to be utterly impractical given the forces available and to be the product of a garrison mindset, while Boineburg-Lengsfeld believed Choltitz to be a fanatical "true Nazi." Fortunately for each man, Boineburg-Lengsfeld left the city the next day. Choltitz's first action as commander was to set up his headquarters in the Hotel Meurice, just north of the Seine River and northwest of the Louvre.
On Sunday, August 13, Choltitz had his first meeting with the commander of German forces in the west, Gunther von Kluge. Kluge was busy deciphering the disaster in the Falaise Pocket and desperately trying to extract some measure of success from the catastrophe, but he still managed to spare two hours for discussion with Choltitz. He explained that the latest intelligence estimates indicated that the Allies would outflank the city. Kluge agreed that by standing and defending Paris, Choltitz would force the Allies to invest armor to dislodge him, thus aiding the whole situation in the West. Both men agreed that just three divisions would be sufficient to force the Allies into a street-by-street advance for up to a month. When Choltitz requested three divisions for the defense of the city, however, Kluge replied that all available forces were currently needed to help shore up the front, which was virtually nonexistent due to the Falaise disaster. It would take time to transfer divisions from the 19-division-strong Fifteenth Army, which was only now being freed from defending the Pas de Calais, where the German high command had expected a second Allied invasion. After a lunch in which Choltitz again tried to pry divisions free for Paris (he succeeded in acquiring only two regiments), he returned to the Hotel Meurice. Along the way, he and the rest of the population of Paris heard guns in the distance for the first time. The front was approaching.
That same day, Kluge ordered the disarmament of the French police in order to prevent them from rushing to the aid of any prospective uprising. Over 20,000 weapons were seized. In response, the police went on strike, beginning the next day. To prevent the populace from taking advantage of the police's weakness, Choltitz staged the largest German military parade since 1940 through the streets of Paris. It was to be a show of force, demonstrating to the populace that Choltitz took his job seriously and give the impression that any uprising would be dealt with harshly, regardless of any approach by the Allies. Choltitz, who had dressed in civilian clothes and mingled with the unknowing crowd in order to gain an impression of how well the demonstration worked, was sharply put off when he ran across group after group of Parisians jeering and joking about the marching Germans.
As German soldiers paraded through Paris, in Rastenburg, Hitler again went off on one of his increasingly frequent tangents. Although he had been on a "good" day when Choltitz visited, Hitler's emotional instability and weak-mindedness had grown sharply since the July 20 assassination attempt. During a briefing on the situation in France, he exploded and demanded to know where the Wehrmacht's enormous 600mm "Karl" mortar was. The mortar, which had been built for siege warfare and successfully employed at Brest-Litovsk, Sebastopol, and Stalingrad, was found after eight hours in a warehouse in Berlin. At Hitler's order, the enormous tracked mortar — a smaller cousin of the enormous "Dora" railway gun — was loaded aboard its special railcar and put on a train to Paris. Accompanying it was a trainload of the mortar's ton-and-a-half ammunition. As Hitler ranted, he explained in no uncertain terms that if the Parisians would not be cowed by the German military, they would be cowed by ton-and-a-half shells destroying Parisian city blocks one at a time. Hitler's advisers told him it would take eight days for the mortar to arrive in Paris.
In Paris, as Hitler demanded yet another tool for the destruction of the city, Colonel Rol was developing yet another tool. Meeting with the leader of the communist resistance in the striking police department, he worked out plans to ensure that the city's 20,000-strong police department would be sure to follow his commands when the inevitable time to overthrow the Germans arrived.
***
The next day, August 15, General Choltitz was again summoned to von Kluge's headquarters. In the briefing, Kluge's chief of staff, Gunther Blumentritt outlined Kluge's plan for a limited scorched earth policy in Paris. The plan detailed the systematic destruction of Paris' gas plant, electric power stations, and water facilities. Blumentritt elaborated that the plan would be crucial to slowing the Allied advance by forcing the Allies to divert needed military aid to sustain the city after liberation. To Choltitz, the presentation was very dry, very professional, and completely at odds with the emotional, yet inspiring, tirade launched by Hitler in Rastenburg the week prior. It was also not surprising. In addition to Hitler's informal "suggestion" to not let the Allies capture Paris intact, Choltitz had received an order from the German high command calling for the "destruction or total paralysis" of the Paris industrial infrastructure in order to prevent it from being turned against Germany after the Allied capture of the city.
Choltitz didn't object to the plan's scope. Indeed, the destruction of Paris' infrastructure was only natural to someone who had supervised similar plans (albeit on a smaller scale) on the Eastern front. Choltitz's only objection came in regards to the timing of the plan's implementation. How, he asked, was he to defend the city if his soldiers had no water to drink? In addition, launching the plan prematurely would throw thousands of jobless factory workers into the hands of the Resistance, making Choltitz's job of maintaining order all the harder. Kluge listened to the arguments put forth by both Choltitz and his chief of staff, but decided to side with Choltitz for the time being. That did not mean that preparations could not be made, however. When Choltitz returned to the Hotel Meurice, he took four demolitions experts with him. Installed in the fourth floor of the hotel, armed with plans of every factory in the region, and given two staff cars for transportation, they promised Choltitz they could come up with a plan to "paralyze Paris' industry for more than six months."
Even as the demolitions experts began drafting their plans in the Hotel Meurice, the men of the 813th Engineer Company were busy mining the 45 Seine River bridges between the suburbs of Le Pecq in the west to Choisy in the east. Their destruction would be almost as large an architectural catastrophe as the demolition of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. The pont Alexandre III was a national monument; the pont de la Concorde contained stones from the Bastille, demolished during the French Revolution; and portions of the pont de la Tournelle dated to 1369. Regardless of their historical or economic significance — they tied the two halves of Paris together — all were being mined for demolition by the men of the 813th Engineer Company. The head of the company, Captain Werner Ebernach, was a longtime acquaintance of General Choltitz. Together, they had served in Germany prior to the outbreak of war. Now, they would be working to bring the war to its bitter end.
As Ebernach delivered his report on the bridge mining to Choltitz, the general received two disturbing reports. The first dealt with the ongoing police strike. The second indicated that eight German soldiers had been killed in the suburb of Aubervillers. It was the Resistance's first major strike against the occupiers of Paris, and it was no doubt generated by the worsening conditions for Paris' civilian population. Even with the front lines more than fifty miles away, Paris was already suffering shortages that went above and beyond the normal wartime rationing. Meat had virtually disappeared from the city, and newspapers carried recipes for making turnips and radishes — the staples of the civilian diet — more palatable. In a small notice at the bottom of the shrinking newspapers — paper shortages were beginning to bite even harder — there was an advertisement for the newspapers' most popular use — rolling cigarettes.
***
On August 16, Choltitz ordered the evacuation of all non-essential German soldiers from the city. A vast column soon developed leading out of the city to the east, containing tens of thousands of garrison clerks, troops on leave, political workers, and German civilians. Thousands of French collaborators, seeing the way the wind was blowing, also decided to leave. Just as many stayed, however, believing the promises that "we will be back by Christmas." Those who stayed soon had cause to regret their decision. Still, the exodus was not as vast as it might have been. General Choltitz took the opportunity to create several scratch companies from the more capable soldiers planning to depart. Over their objections, cooks, clerks, aides, and other men who hadn't fired a weapon in all their years of service were handed a rifle and began drilling under the harsh eyes of the SS brigade in the capital, which Choltitz had assigned the task — partly to keep them out of the way. Even to someone who still believed Hitler's message with only a shadow of a doubt, the fanaticism of the SS and SD was frightening.
That same morning, as Choltitz gave orders to create the scratch companies, Captain Ebernach made a discovery that would allow for the demolition of most of Paris' pre-war landmarks. In a blocked-off automobile tunnel in the suburb of Saint-Cloud, Ebernach discovered a massive factory, codenamed Pliz, that even at that late date, was turning out torpedoes for the Kriegsmarine's submarines. Though the sea war had largely died down after the U-boat losses of 1943, the factory had kept on turning out torpedoes. When Allied aerial attack severed the rail lines between Paris and the U-boat pens along the coast, the factory workers merely began stockpiling their finished product in the tunnel alongside their underground assembly line. By the time Ebernach arrived, over 500 torpedoes were stacked neatly in the tunnel. They were stored fully assembled in their metal racks, only requiring the insertion of detonators (kept handily nearby) to be complete. As Ebernach toured the factory, he remarked, "My God! With these torpedoes, we could blow up half the bridges in the world!" Ebernach officially claimed the torpedoes in Choltitz's name, and hurried back to the Hotel Meurice.
In the afternoon, Choltitz took Ebernach's news of the find in stride. He was busy formulating a defense plan for the city, which he outlined to his assembled staff. The initial plan was an ambitious one. Discarding the 10-mile-long "Boineburg Line", he drew a 60-mile-long arc beginning at the town of Poissy on the Seine, south through St.-Cyr, Palaiseau, east to Vilenevue-le-Roi, and north to Ormesson-sur-Marne. To defend this enormous distance, he had just the 10,000 men of Lt. Colonel Hubertus von Aulock. To bolster that strength, Choltitz ordered Paris' dozens of 88mm Flak guns taken down from their air defense positions in the city and emplaced along the line. That move had been suggested by the commander of the 11th Paratrooper Regiment, which was part of the defenses of the city. In addition, Choltitz informed the men present that he had been promised reinforcements by both Kluge and the Fuhrer himself. All went away from the meeting with much to do and little time in which to accomplish it before the Allies arrived.
The civilian situation continued to deteriorate rapidly. Postal workers joined the police strike, paralyzing mail service and communications (the postal service was also in charge of the telephone exchanges). Although German forces quickly took over the telephone exchanges, mail services would not be restored to the surviving portions of the city until just before Christmas. The Resistance was dealt a setback when 35 resistance members were captured by the Gestapo in the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the west side of the city. All 35 men were executed on the spot by machinegun fire and grenades. There is some question as to whether Choltitz himself ordered the execution. Due to his later death and the destruction of most records during the fighting for the city, it is unlikely whether a command link will ever be discovered. Regardless of who ordered the executions, they nonetheless marked the first shots fired in the open war between German soldiers and the Paris resistance. Though the deaths of the 35 pale in comparison to later atrocities, the site of their deaths is today marked by an enormous monument commemorating the tens of thousands of Resistance deaths suffered during the liberation of the city.
***
On the morning of the 17th, General Alfred Jodl, Hitler's closest military adviser, telephoned General Choltitz, asking if the demolitions ordered in the city of Paris had begun. Taken somewhat aback, Choltitz replied that the demolitions experts had only just arrived in the city and that he was reluctant to begin actual demolitions until such time as they would not adversely affect his troops defending the city. "I was ordered to defend the city first, and destroy it only if necessary," Choltitz said. Jodl replied that he was "extremely disappointed" and that "the Fuhrer is growing impatient." Choltitz replied by saying that the beginnings of demolitions would "set the city up in arms," and that he was waiting for further reinforcements before beginning the task. He concluded by saying that thus far, "the Parisians haven't dared to move."
In Algiers, one particular Frenchman was planning to move. General Charles De Gaulle, having been fully informed of Eisenhower's plan to bypass Paris, made up his mind to transfer his command and government to France immediately. By arriving on French soil as soon as possible, he would be able to force Eisenhower's hand, even if it meant something as drastic as ordering the French Second Armored Division to advance on Paris alone and liberate it in the name of his government. His mind made up, the leader of the Free French began making plans for the move to France. Resistance leaders in and around Paris received radioed orders to be ready for a very important visitor in the immediate future.
German soldiers across the city began to emplace demolition charges. From the Palais du Luxembourg, where SS men worked to mine the basement of the palace, to the Chamber of Deputies and the Quai d'Orsay (home of the French Foreign Office), German soldiers maneuvered boxes of explosives, unrolled spools of wire, and connected blasting caps to batteries. At 19 Avenue d'Ivry, the Panhard factory turning out parts for V-2 rockets was mined. The giant Siemens-Westinghouse electronics complex in Fontainebleau and other sites around the city suffered the same fate. On the Rue Saint-Amande, the 112th Signal Regiment wired Paris' central telephone office for demolition. Since June 1940, the office's trunk lines and teletypes had directed German operations from Norway to the Spanish border as well as handling domestic traffic within the city. The city's second telephone center, under Napoleon's Tomb at Les Invalides, was also wired for demolition.
But for all the preparations, the man who would order the switches pressed, General Choltitz, had not yet decided when the dire minute would arrive. Until the population of Paris rose against the occupiers, as he knew it would any day now (the rising tide of Resistance actions pointed that way), he would give the general population of the city reason to join the Resistance. In addition, the four demolitions experts were still busy developing plans for the destruction of other factories around the city. As charges were emplaced at the Palais du Luxembourg, the experts visited the Renault auto works, the Bleriot aircraft factory, and four other factories. Though no units were yet available to begin placing charges, the experts' blueprints were becoming marked with red Xs where explosives were to be placed. As soon as the first round of charges was set, those factories would be taken care of.
Choltitz was also busy with other tasks during the day. Swedish Consul-General Raoul Nordling had been pestering Choltitz for a meeting for several days. After hearing Nordling's offer to be an intermediary for a potential prisoner exchange between the Allies and Germany, Choltitz rejected the idea out of hand. He had no interest in releasing the three thousand political prisoners in Paris jails, not when the Resistance was threatening an uprising and when Hitler had been so determined to defend the city. His job would be difficult enough without an additional three thousand guns against him. Nordling did extract a promise from Choltitz that he would not issue the order for prisoner executions in the event of an uprising. That did not, of course, mean SS soldiers couldn't act outside Choltitz's orders.
After Nordling was escorted out, Pierre Charles Taittinger, the Vichy mayor of Paris, was escorted in. Taittinger had heard of Choltitz's plan to demolish much of the city in preparation for its defense, and was stunned. This man, he thought, was preparing to destroy Paris as if it were just another village in the Ukraine. Choltitz believed Taittinger had Resistance connections, and wanted to impress into the man a fear of German authority. He pointed at a scale map of the city. "Suppose a bullet is fired at one of my soldiers, here on the avenue de l'Opera. I would burn down every building in the block and shoot all the inhabitants." Taittinger was shocked, but the emotion with which Choltitz had pronounced the words caused a coughing fit in the dry air. Seizing the opportunity, Taittinger escorted the general to a window overlooking the Tuileries. "Often," Taittinger said, "it is given to a general to destroy, rarely to preserve. Imagine that one day it may be given to you to stand on this balcony again, as a tourist, to look once more on these monuments and remember that you preserved them as a gift for all humanity." For a moment, Choltitz stood, taking in the view of the Louvre, the green gardens, and the place de la Concorde. He then turned to Taittinger. "You are a good advocate for Paris, Mr. Taittinger," he said. "You have done your duty well. And likewise I, as a German general, must do mine." He then turned and went back to planning the destruction of the city.
Less than one hour after resuming work, Choltitz was interrupted yet again. This time, it was the new commander of the Western front, Walther Model. As it turned out, shortly after his meeting with Choltitz on the 15th, von Kluge had been recalled to Berlin after a connection was found between him and the July 20 plotters. Little more than 12 hours later, he was dead, having committed suicide. Field Marshal Walther Model, former commander of the Ukrainian front, was picked to replace him. Choltitz saw Model as a devoted Nazi, but a man of unbending will and great personal courage. Despite these characteristics, Choltitz believed Model to possess poor judgment and thought him a poor commander. Nevertheless, this would turn out to be in Choltitz's advantage, as Model later sent reinforcements to Paris long after they should have been sent to defending other portions of France. That began on this, the first day of Model's command, when he detached a retreating regiment of the Fifteenth Army, which was hurriedly rushing eastward from its former position in the Pas de Calais.
Model spent most of his short initial meeting with Paris berating what he saw as a "disorganized" front, pointing out the long column of fleeing German noncombatants he had seen on the drive from Metz to Paris. Choltitz responded by laying out his plans for the city, including his intention to begin demolitions if and when the Resistance rose against German forces. This included his imagined (but not until then formulated) plan to use Parisian landmarks as hostages against the good behavior of the Resistance. Just as individual hostages had been taken in response to partisan attacks on the Eastern front, so too would hostages on a far grander scale be taken in Paris. Model gave his approval to the plan. "Believe me, Choltitz," he added, "what took us forty minutes in Kovel will take us forty hours in Paris. But when we are finished, this city will be destroyed."
At the same time, in another portion of the city, the demolition was already being completed. But not a demolition of structures — the demolition of human beings. As Model spoke, 1,482 Jewish citizens of Paris, emblazoned with yellow Star of David patches, were loaded in trains heading east, to concentration camps in Germany. Accompanying them were the SS guards who had maintained the Parisian prisons of the Final Solution in Paris. Considered noncombatants by the Wehrmacht, the SS commander of the prison only had to remove the final Jews from the city to balance his books. Also aboard the train were approximately 1,200 French political prisoners, crammed into every space imaginable in boxcars originally designed to hold horses. The train effectively emptied the Paris prisons, except for a few dozen criminals, who would later be executed during the Resistance uprising.
Ironically, the prisoners aboard the train fared far better than the average citizen of Paris. Near Nancy, the train was intercepted by a local Resistance cell that had failed to stop a similar train just three days prior. Warned by contacts in Paris, they were able to get into position and free the captives before melting into the local populace. They only had to hide for approximately three weeks before advancing Allied troops liberated the area.
As night fell in Paris, Pierre Laval, first and only prime minister of Vichy France, prepared to flee the Hotel de Matignon, the palace that served as "Government House" to the pre-war government. Laval himself was as much of a refugee as any in the city — he had occupied the palace since the Vichy government's independence had been dissolved by the Germans in November 1942. Since that time, he had governed as a figurehead, a mere cat's paw for the German authorities. On the night of the 18th, he left France forever, only returning during his perfunctory trial prior to his execution at the hands of the French government.
The story of the Hotel de Matignon can perhaps be taken as a metaphor for the story of Paris during the Liberation. After Pierre Étienne Flandin used it as his residence in 1935, it had been seized by a German officer during June 1940. In November, 1942, Laval used it as his residence until his flight. During the uprising, Resistance leader Yvon Morandat seized the building in the name of Charles De Gaulle. When De Gaulle failed to arrive in the city, the building was burnt to the ground as the Germans restored order. When the Allies entered the city, its ruins proved an excellent killing trap for German soldiers hunting Americans. Following the Liberation, the site was bulldozed and later served as grounds for a block of prefabricated concrete communal apartments constructed by the government. Today, following the collapse of the communist government, the site is home to one of Paris' largest shopping malls.
***
On the morning after Laval's departure, Friday, August 18, others were also at work preparing for what they saw as the inevitable. In a quiet upstairs apartment in one of the thousands of blocks across the city, one of the largest FFI cells in the region prepared a brief message to higher command in London:
PARIS SITUATION EXTREMELY TOUCHY, STRIKES OF POLICE, RAILROADS, POSTS AND DEVELOPING TENDENCIES TO GENERAL STRIKE. ALL CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR AN INSURRECTION HAVE BEEN REALIZED. LOCAL INCIDENTS, WHETHER SPONTANEOUS, PROVOKED BY ENEMY, OR EVEN IMPATIENT RESISTANCE GROUPS, WILL BE ENOUGH TO LEAD TO GRAVEST REPRISALS. GERMANS THREATEN DESTRUCTION OF MONUMENTS IN RETALIATION. SITUATION WORSENING WITH PARALYSIS PUBLIC UTILITIES: NO GAS, HOUR AND HALF ELECTRICITY DAILY, WATER LACKING IN SOME PARTS OF TOWN, FOOD SITUATION DISASTROUS, NECESSARY YOU INTERVENE WITH ALLIES TO DEMAND RAPID OCCUPATION PARIS, OFFICIALLY WARN POPULATION IN SHARPEST MOST PRECISE TERMS POSSIBLE VIA BBC TO AVOID NEW WARSAW.
That last threat, about creating a "new Warsaw," was the strongest possible example. Only a few weeks earlier, the Polish Home Army, spurred by the approach of the Red Army, had risen in revolt against the Nazi occupiers. As the Red Army, in a callous move designed to weed out those with the capability to resist its impending occupation, held back, the Germans crushed the revolt. Most of the city was leveled in the process, and the horrific story caused some in the Resistance to be more cautious than they otherwise might have been.
In the communist Resistance circles, however, there was much less willingness to be cautious. At 9 Rue d'Alsace, the members of the Comite Parisien de la Liberation were meeting to decide the fate of the city. Here was the cream of the crop of the communist resistance: Andre Tollet, the head of the committee, Colonel Rol, and many others. In the cramped, stiflingly hot confines of the building, the five men agreed to an armed uprising in the streets of Paris. Yes, Tollet agreed, there was enormous risk in acting so soon, but if they dithered, either the Gaullists, the Germans, or the Allies would render their group irrelevant. The Gaullists, if they acted first, would have the initiative in driving the uprising. If the Germans brought in more reinforcements, they would be able to crush any uprising with ease. That, of course, was only if the Allies didn't enter the city first — an event that, while joyous, would also render the committee null and void. Thus, they believed their course of action was clear. Only by acting first, and in unison, could they draw the FFI Resistance forces under the umbrella of the communist Resistance and install a government of their choosing before the Allies could do so for them. As they left, the orders would go out. The uprising would begin the next morning — without the FFI's knowledge. Only once it had begun would the FFI leadership be informed and forced to fall into line.
Throughout the day, the communists began to make preparations. Unbeknownst to Colonel Rol or Andre Tollet, the leadership of the Gaullist FFI Resistance was well aware of the communist plan due to a friendly communist member of the Resistance. Rather than confront the communists, the FFI decided to seize the initiative by staging an uprising before the communists could. According to the communist plan, the uprising would begin at 9 a.m. the next day. The FFI sent out messages to its various cells, telling them to be ready by 7 a.m. Messages had to be passed in the brief hours between discovery of the communist plan and that evening's curfew. Most important was the message sent to the ringleaders of the Gaullist Resistance in the striking police department. Because the communist Resistance members in the police had communications problems, the Gaullist ring was able to spread the word to most of the 20,000 members of the police, giving orders to meet at 7 a.m. at the Prefecture of Police, the city-within-a-city that not only contained the police department but also served as the administrative headquarters for most of the Seine département (the province then encompassing Paris) government.
As the plans went out, far to the south, Charles De Gaulle's Lockheed Lodestar, France, took off for the long, roundabout journey to France. The United States had supplied a longer-ranged B-17 for De Gaulle, but the aircraft overshot the runway in Algiers, damaging the aircraft's undercarriage. This fact, plus De Gaulle's belief that the United States could not be trusted, forced him to fly in his own aircraft. He would have to fly to Gibraltar, fuel the aircraft to its maximum capacity, then take the long trip across the Atlantic Ocean, over the Bay of Biscay, and around Brittany to reach Allied-held France. It was a terribly dangerous journey, but one he took willingly, believing that it was his only opportunity to bring about the postwar government he envisioned. His pilot, Captain Claude Guy, had grave misgivings about the flight, but De Gaulle went ahead, anyway. As the 18th turned into the 19th, the Lodestar was above Algiers, flying into history.
***
On the morning of the 19th, the day opened like any other. German soldiers cleared the streets as the night's curfew was lifted, housewives began queuing for their bread ration, and thousands of workers reported to their jobs. Thousands of other Parisian men and women, however, didn't go to their jobs. They picked up hidden weapons, readied white FFI armbands, and prepared to do battle. Thousands of striking policemen awoke, drank their ersatz coffee, bid adieu to their wives, and began traveling to the Prefecture of Police. Shortly before 7:00 a.m. the French tricolor was unfurled over the complex — the first time it had flown over a public building since 1940. Amedee Brussiere, the prefect of police who had presided over an empty building for four days, was shocked to hear a lone voice proclaiming, "In the name of the Republic and of Charles De Gaulle, I take possession of the Prefecture of Police." The man speaking those words was the Gaullist Yves Bayet. His voice was followed by thousands of others in belting out the "Marseillaise," as ironically, Colonel Rol bicycled nearby.
Attracted by the noise, Rol attempted to enter the building, but was turned back by the police. Furious at having been beaten to the punch in seizing the building, he hurried to pass the word to begin the insurrection. Before he could return and somehow wrest control of the police force from Bayet, however, Charles Luziet arrived. Luziet had been parachuted into France some weeks before at the orders of De Gaulle to serve as the Prefecture's first Prefect. His arrival in the city was just one small part of a Gaullist plan that had begun even before D-Day. DeGaulle had ordered emn loyal to him to parachute into occupied France prior to the Allied invasion and move into position to take over local government positions after liberation. Across France, Gaullists manuvered their way into resistance organizations, preparing to take over the jobs of mayor, police chief, and countless other jobs that would be crucial to DeGaulle taking command in France. Luziet's role in seizing command of the police department turned out to have a long-lasting effect on France after the uprising by keeping the police out of the hands of the Parisian communists, who were, at Rol's urging, hurriedly beginning the uprising in other portions of the city.
At the Prefecture of Police, the men who had seized the building prepared to repel the counterattack they knew would eventually come. Men readied firearms (many of them antiques) and readied themselves at windows. Frederic Joliot-Curie arrived with eight bottles of sulfuric acid and several pounds of potassium chlorate. Rolling up his sleeves, he began producing Molotov cocktails from the stores he had taken from the same laboratory in which his mother had discovered radium. Across the city, members of Rol's resistance cells performed the first stroke of the communist insurgency as they smashed the wiretapping equipment of the Germans at the telephone exchanges across the city. Above all, however, Resistance cells around the city began to execute their first order: A chacun son boche — to each his own German. German soldiers barracked in small groups at town homes around Paris found themselves rudely awakened by gunfire, or shot down in the streets by drive-by shootings from screeching motorcars. The first two hours were a confused swirl of action and reaction as Germans found themselves under fire from Resistance cells, seemingly from all corners. A German soldier, ducking into a nearby cafe or apartment for cover, might find himself soon under fire from a Resistance member inside the building who, despite having not been informed of the uprising, acted upon hearing the growing sound of gunfire in the city.
By 9 a.m., General Choltitz was coming to terms with the fact that this was not an isolated event. The fact that so many attacks had occurred almost simultaneously drove him to the correct belief that the uprising had to have been centrally coordinated. Meanwhile, in an apartment nearby, Alexandre Parodi, De Gaulle's highest-ranking representative in the city, gave his full approval to the Gaullist FFI to join the uprising. Though the Prefecture of Police had been seized by FFI soldiers warned of the communist uprising, the rest of the city's FFI had not been fully notified, due to the communist plan to take the lead in the uprising. But once Parodi's order had been passed through the telephone system (now secure with the destruction of the German wiretaps and the seizure of several exchanges), the FFI began to act on a large scale. Commando groups, each composed of Parisian Resistance members braced by one or three men parachuted into the city, began to seize city structures. All 20 of the arrondissement city halls were seized, as were police stations, public buildings, the post office, the slaughterhouse, the morgue, even the Comedie Francaise. Everywhere, the French Tricolor was pulled out of hiding or hastily improvised from bed sheets and hung from captured buildings. The strains of the Marseillaise could also be heard coming from virtually every captured building. In these, the first few hours of the uprising, the Resistance seemed to have gained the upper hand almost everywhere. At the Mairie (city hall) of the first arrondissement, directly next to the Louvre and only a few blocks from the Hotel Meurice, Resistance soldiers stormed the door and seized the building. At the Prefecture of Police, Luizet attempted to use the unfamiliar Prefect's switchboard, which was covered in blinking red lights signifying incoming calls. He pressed random buttons. From one, he heard a Resistance leader at the Mairie of Neuilly screaming for help. Another brought far better news. It was from Chartres, fifty miles distant, where the voice of the town's mayor could be heard, exclaiming that the Americans were driving through the town. Luizet barely had time to digest the information before an enormous explosion drew him from the switchboard. The Germans had begun to respond.
Outside the stone walls of the Prefecture, Sergeant Bernhard Blache of the 112th Signal Regiment ran for cover, away from the burning wreckage that had been the truck that had brought his platoon to the walls of the complex. Terrified, he hugged the ground behind a concrete planter, cowering and holding his rifle. All around, German soldiers — his friends — fell, dead or injured, from the rifles protruding from the smashed-out windows cut into the complex's stone walls. In shock, he saw a German officer's head "literally explode" and his body tumble to the asphalt. Peering up, he suddenly saw an arm swing out over a stone windowsill. Clutched in the hand at the end of the arm was a green bottle wrapped in a dirty towel. Beyond fear now, he sprang up and raced away from the building, toward the Pont-au-Change a hundred yards away. He zigged and zagged, barely sparing a glance at the puffs of smoke near his boots that signified near-misses by French bullets. Across the bridge, the scene was as if the war was in another universe. An old man with a black homburg walked his dog at the end of a leash. A middle-aged Frenchman struggled with the keys to his apartment as he exited his automobile. Enraged by the idyllic scene after so nearly escaping death, he gripped his rifle and forced the middle-aged man back into his automobile and forced him to drive to the Hotel Meurice. There, Blache stormed into the building, mindless of the shocked looks of the German officers, ran up the stairs, and smashed open the doors to the first room he saw and burst into the room beyond. "What are you waiting for, to send the tanks," he exclaimed. "They're cooking my men like sausages!"
***
It was now shortly after noon, and after confronting the furious sergeant, Choltitz began to address the problem in earnest. It was true that the situation was unlike anything he had faced before. Unlike in Russia, where he had faced an opponent engaged in hit-and-run tactics in the empty forests and steppe, here he had to deal with a crowded urban environment against an opponent engaged in a stand-up fight. Although that would seemingly play to German advantages in firepower and tactics, Choltitz had nothing approaching the manpower he had been able to call upon on the Eastern Front. Still, he could do something about that. A call to Field Marshal Model produced a harangue lasting about 30 minutes in which Choltitz was blamed for letting the situation get out of hand and for not taking adequate security precautions. Model decried the "Western Front incompetence," but Choltitz endured and, in the end, extracted a promise from Model for reinforcements. Though Choltitz was disappointed in not getting something more concrete from Model, the Field Marshal did make good on his promise, particularly after Hitler berated Model when the Field Marshal reported the situation in Paris. By the end of the day, elements of the 165th Reserve Division and the 158th Reserve Division began arriving in the city. The two divisions had already been detached from the Fifteenth and First Armies, respectively, in an effort to stop the Allies at the Seine. The other four were annihilated piecemeal by Allied air attack and encirclement as the rest of OB West retreated, but the 165th and 158th would make a good contribution to the defense of Paris long after the Allies had encircled the city.
That was still in the future, however, and Choltitz was not notified about their arrival until some of their officers literally marched into his headquarters. Because of this fact, Choltitz was forced to deal with the situation with the forces he had. More than 12,000 of the men under his command were deployed outside the city, along the 60-mile line he had decreed laid out to the south. What was left in the city were scatterings of the few non-combatant troops remaining, a limited Luftwaffe contingent, a handful of reserve regiments, and an SS contingent at the Prince Eugene barracks on the north bank of the Seine. His sole ace cards (in addition to the few available ground-attack aircraft of the Luftwaffe at Le Bourget) were the tanks of the 5th reserve regiment and the SS contingent. He knew the tanks were invulnerable to anything the partisans had with them. Only a well-placed Molotov could hurt them, and usually only at the cost of the thrower. With those facts in mind, he devised a tenuous plan to take back the city. The first element of the plan was the first lesson taught in military academies around the world — concentration of force. Spread across the entire city, facing each Resistance pocket separately, German soldiers would have a far harder time taking back the city than if they were massed before attack. Choltitz considered offering a cease-fire with the Resistance in order to better mass his forces before they attacked, but discarded the idea after a moment. It would go against his promise to Hitler to hold the city, and besides, would be seen by the Resistance as a sign they were winning. The second element of the plan involved cutting the city's communications. Resistance cells were using the Parisian telephone system to coordinate their attacks, with connections made through a handful of captured telephone exchanges. These would have to be captured and destroyed along with the exchanges already mined. Third, the line south of the city had to be held — with American soldiers less than 50 miles from the city, no German soldiers could be detached from the city's exterior defenses. Fourth, preference should be given to reducing the Resistance pockets south of the Seine, in order to secure the lines of communication and supply with the defensive line. The pockets on the north bank of the Seine, though more numerous than those on the south side of the city, lacked the strength to threaten communications to the west, and could be reduced at leisure. The fifth portion of the plan involved the preparations for reprisals against the French. Through loudspeakers positioned throughout the city (they had already been emplaced for propaganda purposes), Choltitz ordered that a broadcast be made indicating that if the Resistance did not surrender before midnight on the morning of the 20th, he would begin demolitions of Parisian buildings that had already been mined. Those surrendering would be granted free passage outside of the city, to Allied lines.
To effect the first portions of his plan, Choltitz ordered the massing of as many tanks from the 5th reserve regiment and the SS contingent as possible. Though the SS commander complained loudly, and said his troops were not subject to Wehrmacht orders, he eventually calmed and acquiesced to the "temporary" assumption of command by Choltitz. These would form the heart of the "fire brigade" he envisioned rushing from hotspot to hotspot, recapturing the city halls and other public buildings. It would take several hours to gather these tanks. In the meantime, Choltitz gathered the forces in the immediate vicinity of the Hotel Meurice. These consisted of three Panthers and about a company of infantry. They were ordered to recapture the city hall of the first arrondisement, then proceed to the Prefecture of Police (almost directly across the Seine on the Ile de la Cite) and recapture the complex. At 3 p.m., the scratch force arrived at the city hall. The first shots from the tanks blasted the building's iron doors, then shelled the windows from which firing was coming from. Inside the building, there was panic — the partisans had not brought any Molotov cocktails, and ammunition was running low. For 30 minutes, the firing continued, the wounded piling up in the halls. No medical supplies had been brought by the partisans who seized the building, and the misery of the injured was unimaginable, though it paled in comparison to the suffering later endured by many in the city. At approximately 3:35 p.m., the German captain outside demanded the building's surrender. The partisans shouted curses and refusals at him, but as one of the Panthers (perceiving that there was no threat from Molotov cocktails), charged the front door of the building, the firing began to die down. Improvised white flags began to wave from the building's windows, and the Germans began to take possession of the prisoners.
A handful of German soldiers themselves had been held as prisoners in the city hall, and were released unharmed by the partisans. Their survival mollified many of the Germans assaulting the building and who had wanted to kill the French prisoners on the spot. Instead, they were taken by truck to one of the German prisons in the city, beginning the process of filling the buildings that had been emptied on the 16th when noncombatant Germans (including prison guards) were evacuated. With the city hall recaptured, the Germans advanced across the bridge to the south and landed on the Ile de la Cite to recapture the Prefecture of Police. As they did so, distant explosions could be heard across the city, cutting through the sharp cracks of gunfire. Plumes of smoke began to arise from demolished telephone exchanges, where German explosives had virtually destroyed telephone communications within Paris. A handful were still in the hands of the Resistance, but by dusk, most were captured by the Germans and destroyed. With their destruction, over 90 percent of the telephones in Paris became useless. Only a few, connected by smaller switchboards, were still effective. Many of these were in city halls and police stations held by the Resistance, but they only connected to other city halls and police stations, by and large. This had a disastrous effect on the Resistance's ability to communicate quickly, and to a lesser extent, that of the Germans as well. The Germans, however, had a far larger number of radios in the city than did the Resistance, and many of the radios that the Resistance did have were unable to communicate with each other, having been dropped into the city with the intent of communicating with London only. Many of the FFI's vehicles — captured German trucks and cars crudely whitewashed with FFI or the symbol of the Free French — were impressed as messenger vehicles. As in Paris before the uprising, however, bicycles proved to be the most reliable method of transporting messengers.
Below Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides, the destruction of the secondary telephone exchange there was done with such force to damage or destroy many of the pillars holding up the central portion of the building. Throughout the afternoon, creaking and groaning noises echoed through the dome of Les Invalides and Napoleon's tomb could be seen to sway slightly. Late that night, the floor below the tomb gave way. Though the dome was unharmed, the enormous sarcophagus containing Napoleon's remains and the platform holding it up crashed through the floor. The sarcophagus bashed the marble sides of the dome, but still rested above the dome's "floor" due to the height of the platform that had crashed through the ceiling of the destroyed telephone exchange. This damage was rendered moot several days later when the dome itself was dynamited during Choltitz's reprisal campaign.
At 4:15 p.m., the three tanks and a company of infantry began crossing the exposed bridges to the Prefecture of Police. They began taking fire from the building, and, within the lengthening shadow of the Notre Dame Cathedral just 200 yards away, began to return it, shot for shot. The Panthers, as at the city hall, blasted the gate to the courtyard at the center of the building, then began firing at windows containing riflemen. In the building itself, there was panic. Men, first singly, then in increasing groups, began to flee to the Metro entrance within the building, hoping to flee for safety. There, however, they were stopped by one of their compatriots, who declared, "I will shoot the first man who passes me! Our only chance to survive ... is to win!" Ashamed and inspired, they returned to their positions and avoided a flight that could have allowed the Germans to carry the Prefecture even more quickly than the first arrondisement city hall. Those who returned to their stations quickly enough saw one of the Molotov cocktails manufactured by Joliot-Curie smash into the turret of one of the Panthers, setting the kit on the outside of the tank ablaze and immobilizing it after the fire dripped into the engine compartment. The other two tanks, fearing a similar fate, pulled back from the building, leaving the disheartened German infantry to continue a desultory fire at the encircled building.
When Choltitz heard of the tank's destruction, he ordered that the Prefecture be besieged by troops bolstered by another company from the 5th reserve regiment. It was now approaching 6 p.m., and Choltitz was reluctant to order a dusk assault on the building. Night would allow the partisans to approach his troops unseen, potentially exposing his tanks to further Molotov cocktail attacks from French partisans that had snuck closer than would be possible in daylight. Delaying the assault until morning would also allow Choltitz to organize dive-bomber strikes by the Luftwaffe, further opening the door for an assault. In the meantime, he ordered the tanks and infantry that had gathered at the Hotel Meurice to begin assaulting the city's post office and the town halls of the second and eighth arrondisements, all of which were located within 700 yards of the Hotel Meurice. Overwhelmed by the force of tanks and infantry Choltitz had gathered, the defenders of the three locations were either killed or surrendered by 7:45 p.m., approximately a quarter-hour before sunset. To Germans across the city — not all of whom had been able to or were ordered to gather at the Hotel Meurice — the night held wholly different terrors than the daytime, when the insurrection had begun unexpectedly. Most had, by the end of the day, gathered into their concrete strongpoints or at the very least, collected into groups large enough to beat off any attack. Despite this, most feared a sniper's bullet or silent knifing in the middle of the night. Few were able to sleep comfortably. By nightfall, Choltitz's forces had fully retaken most of the historic heart of the city north of the Seine, and had massed for the next day's combat. At 9 p.m., the first soldiers of the 165th and 158th reserve divisions began to arrive in the city. Choltitz ordered the 158th to help defend Le Bourget and Orly airfields, while the 165th was spread in the narrow pocket at the center of the city considered "safe" by Choltitz's staff.
Within the Prefecture of Police, the French men and women who had joined the insurrection feared what the next day would bring. Toward nightfall, their ammunition had begun to run low. Though some had been brought through the Metro tunnels, it was not nearly enough to fend off the assault all knew was coming in the morning. In the basement, Joliot-Curie discovered a gold mine: the accumulated champagne horde of the Vichy police. Dumping out the liquid into the drains of the basement, he and his assistants continued tirelessly making Molotovs for the defense. They would be needed, he knew.
***
Outside the city, people from East Prussia to Gibraltar had their attention drawn to the uprising. At the Wolf's Lair, Hitler was beyond furious at hearing of the uprising. He ordered that "all available reinforcements be put at the disposition of the commander of Gross Paris." He went even beyond that, ordering that Model join the First Army and Fifth Panzer Army into a fortified belt in front of Paris, then reinforce it with the Nineteenth Army, retreating from the southwest. Because of the situation on the ground, however, Model was unable to fulfill this order, as all three armies were by now rapidly falling back in the face of the Allied armies, which by now had fully digested the Falaise Pocket and were streaming eastward. Hitler raged at General Warlimont, overall commander of the Wehrmacht, asking him where the "Karl" mortar was. Informed that it had not yet crossed the French border due to Allied air attack, Hitler flew into a rage so profound that many in the bunker feared he would have a heart attack from apoplexy. Then, spinning on one of his mood swings, he ordered that a top priority movement be given to the 25th Panzer division and a scratch force of tanks collected from garrison duty in Denmark, which should move out of Denmark to reinforce Paris, moving by night to avoid Allied air attack. The 25th had been badly battered on the Eastern Front and had been sent to Denmark to reform and recuperate. This process was not yet complete when the order to move south came through. Though this force was mostly paper (neither the 25th or the various accompanying units had more than half their official strength in tanks or men), they represented a powerful addition to the garrison of Paris — if they could arrive before the Allies surrounded the city.
70 miles south-southwest, General Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, was trying to decide how exactly to best do that. On the night of the 19th, he gave the official orders to bypass Paris as his armies raced to reach the Rhine before the Germans could reinforce it. Two days before, SHAEF had informed him that his daily fuel allotment would be cut by 67,000 gallons after the capture of Paris in order to supply the city. That was enough fuel to move an entire corps 25 miles in a single day. Though Bradley heard reports of "some kind of civil disturbances in Paris," that day he was "determined we would not be dissuaded from our plan for bypassing Paris." That evening, the 313th U.S. Infantry Division crossed over a dam at Mantes-Gassicourt to become the first U.S. soldiers on the east bank of the Seine as part of the plan to bypass Paris.
To the south, General Charles De Gaulle's Lockheed Lodestar rumbled down the runway at Gibraltar. Loaded with 950 gallons of fuel — far more than its normal capacity — it rumbled into the air only after its pilot, Colonel Lionel de Marmier, had run up its engines to dangerously high levels and used every inch of the rocky runway. A second B-17 sent to Gibraltar to transport De Gaulle had arrived with tire problems, and De Gaulle, still fearing that the Americans were out to detour him from his destiny, insisted on using his own plane, ill-prepared or not. After struggling into the air, its course took it west, into the Atlantic, then north, and finally east, to a landing in Allied-held Normandy, from where De Gaulle would presumably lead the French Second Armored Division into the city. He would never arrive.
The disappearance of De Gaulle's Lodestar is one of the enduring mysteries of the Second World War. Built in 1939, the Lodestar was ill-equipped to make the long trip from Gibraltar to Normandy, particularly considering the need to fly across the Atlantic in order to avoid the possibility of interception by German aircraft. Despite that, it was loaded with more than enough fuel to make the voyage, and Colonel de Marmier was one of France's finest pilots. When De Gaulle's flight failed to arrive in Normandy on the 20th or 21st, it was imagined that he had been forced to land in southern England or along the French coast due to a lack of fuel. When no trace of his flight was found, an enormous search operation was launched, lasting nearly a month. The only trace of the aircraft found was a cushion that may or may not have come from the aircraft. The most popular theory regarding the disappearance is that the aircraft ran into storms or fog over the Atlantic, and was forced to ditch due to fuel exhaustion. The Lodestar was not considered a good aircraft for a water landing, and it is possible that the impact of the crash knocked the occupants unconscious, taking them to a watery grave. German interception is also a possibility, but by August 20, records indicate that there were no German aircraft along the entire French west coast, making this event unlikely. French conspiracy theorists like to put forward the idea that De Gaulle's aircraft was deliberately shot down by British or American aircraft so the Allies could institute an Allied military government in post-war France.
DeGaulle's disappearance also drew attention due to the fact that the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had also disappeared in an aircraft just three weeks prior to DeGaulle's death. Although a mystery at the time, the wreckage of Saint-Exupéry's aircraft has since been found by marine archaeologists and identified. Similar efforts have been made to search for DeGaulle's aircraft, but with no success. Regardless of De Gaulle's true fate, he was declared dead on September 21, just over a month from the date of his disappearance. During the first days of the uprising, however, no Parisians had any inkling of De Gaulle's fate, and the night of the 19th and the morning of the 20th was spent in anxious anticipation as Choltitz's threat of reprisals echoed through the streets and partisans readied ammunition for the next day's fighting.
***
As the sky brightened above Paris on the morning of the 20th, so too did the sounds of gunfire increase. From scattered shots at the first hint of twilight to the terrible ripping sound of MG-42s at first daylight, the din escalated until, by down, the capper was put on the crescendo. From the north, 27 Ju-87D Stuka dive-bombers flew above the Prefecture of Police prior to beginning their screaming dives upon the structure. They were the complete dive-bombing component of Luftflotte No. 3, the sole remaining component of the Luftwaffe that remained in central France. On August 18, Generaloberst Otto Dessloch had relieved the ineffectual Hugo Sperrle as commander of the Luftflotte with orders to get his aircraft into action over the Western front. Up to the early-morning hours of the 20th, Dessloch had been struggling with the problem of how exactly to do that without being swatted from the sky by overwhelming Allied air superiority. When Choltitz suggested action against the insurrection, Dessloch had embraced the idea. Though his pilots lacked adequate maps of the area, the imposing structure of the Prefecture would be impossible to miss, as would its position on the western end of the Ile de la Cite. Choltitz gave specific orders to Dessloch to avoid hitting the Cathedral of Notre Dame, just 200 yards away, for fear of further antagonizing the populace. Dessloch promised that he would make every effort to avoid the historic structure, but also warned that no guarantees could be made, particularly given the inexperienced nature of many of his replacement pilots.
Thus it was at 6:23 a.m. on the morning of the 20th — approximately 30 minutes after sunrise — that the Stukas struck first in the renewed attack on the Prefecture of Police. Screaming in from above, they delivered their loads almost precisely on target, blasting the top floors of the structure and killing many of the defenders. Owing to Dessloch's instructions to avoid Notre Dame at all costs, only one stick of bombs fell anywhere near the cathedral, and it only scarred the front of the structure, shattering some of the statues on its facade, but surprisingly leaving the stained glass windows on the front intact. Five minutes after the bombs landed on the Prefecture, the massed tanks of the SS contingent and the 5th reserve regiment, coupled with most of the soldiers of the 150th reserve regiment, streamed across the two bridges leading from the north bank of the Seine to the Prefecture. The shocked defenders of the building, having been blasted by the Stukas, could manage only desultory fire before the men of the 150th Reserve entered the building. There, the surviving defenders, having awakened to their peril, responded with ferocity amid the partially-destroyed ruins. As the infantry stormed the building itself, a handful of tanks blasted their way into the courtyard, incidentally cutting off the flood of defenders who, having had enough, were again trying to escape to the Metro station. Unfortunately for them, the German tankers took a dim view of this, and the retreating partisans were stopped by machinegun fire from the tanks. In the corridors, the fighting was ferocious, with Molotovs and grenades flying with abandon. In the confines of the courtyard, a partisan, carrying a Molotov in each hand, ran toward a German tank, setting it ablaze at the cost of his life. Despite such individual acts of gallantry, however, the French defense of the building was doomed. The defenders, after the previous day's action, were virtually out of ammunition, and the attack of the Stukas, combined with that of the tanks and the overwhelming infantry support, brought resistance to an end. Over 600 of the building's estimated 4,500 defenders were killed during the fight, with 73 Germans also losing their lives — almost as many as had been killed in the entire previous day's fighting combined. Over 1,000 partisans did escape before the German soldiers seized the Metro station, but approximately 2,900 FFI men soon found themselves in one of the German prisons scattered across the city.
At 10:45 a.m., Choltitz received the news of the Prefecture's capture with good humor. This was balanced by a report that no more than 50 partisans had taken his offer of pardon in exchange for their surrender. Choltitz was now faced with a dilemma. If he went through with his reprisals, as threatened, it could force the city into an even larger uprising. If, however, he did nothing, he might inspire the partisans to take even bolder action. In the end, he decided to issue orders for the demolition of several industrial plants around the city. Not all the mining was complete at the 200 factories scheduled for demolition, but Choltitz believed that by ordering the destruction of an even dozen of the factories, he could demonstrate his willingness to follow through on his warning while still demonstrating some control. He also ordered that the surrendered partisans be escorted through German lines, as promised. This would further demonstrate his mercy, he thought. Parisian partisans — FFI and communist alike — were not impressed by his action.
After allowing time for the force that had captured the Prefecture to regroup, Choltitz ordered it further south, onto the south bank of the Seine, to capture the Palais du Luxembourg and the fifth and sixth arrondisement city halls. It was now 1:00 p.m., and German soldiers begin running into growing numbers of barricades — hastily-constructed structures that blocked Parisian streets. As in 1871, when the Commune took over the city, the people of Paris began to take to the streets in a spontaneous show of support for the members of the Resistance who had been in it for years. By the end of the day, there were dozens. By the evening of the 21st, there were an estimated 500 in the city, constructed of everything from overturned cars to paving stones to — in the case of several Parisian theaters — the contents of the theaters' prop departments. In his attempt to frighten the populace into submission via reprisals and the use of the Luftwaffe, Choltitz had in fact angered the normal populace of Paris: the teachers, bakers, store owners and secretaries who, while not collaborating with the Germans, hadn't gone out of their way to resist, either. But with liberation apparently at hand, they took to the streets and, clutching weapons dating from the 18th century to some abandoned in 1940, began to fight back. The peak of the average citizens' involvement didn't come until the next day, however, and Choltitz, despite the rising tide of partisan action, felt confident enough to order portions of the 158th Reserve Division at Le Bourget to recapture the train stations and switching yards in the northwestern portion of the city. These had been seized by the FFI, and Choltitz needed them to funnel whatever reinforcements Model deemed fit to give him, as well as to provide for the shipment of prisoners to Germany. He knew that every mouth removed from the city would be one less that would draw on the city's limited stockpiles when the Allies finally encircled it. Choltitz had slightly more than 36,000 men to subdue a city of more than 3 million people. Adding to the problem was the fact that 16,000 of that total was deployed to the south, along the 60-mile long line he had decreed built to defend the city from the advancing Allies. Reinforcements would be desperately needed if any attempt was to be made to hold the city.
Sixty miles to the north, Field Marshal Model arrived at his new headquarters, utterly exhausted after a tour of the front — if the situation was even worthy of that name. All along the line, German soldiers were falling back, helpless in the face of the advancing Allied ground and air assault. Air attack destroyed German transport, and soldiers on foot were soon overrun by the mechanized and motorized Americans and British. Unlike the Wehrmacht, which still relied on horses for most of its transport, this Allied army was entirely motorized. The collapse and the situation he was facing was unlike anything he had faced on the Eastern front. It was ironic, he thought, that he should be sitting in the same bunker where Hitler planned Operation Sealion, his never-launched invasion of England, while now, four years later, Model should be facing an Allied attack that would bring the British to the German border. Still, he thought, there was hope. His first orders upon returning to his new headquarters (freshly moved from St.-Germain-en-Laye, directly west of Paris), were to order the evacuation of all German forces south of the Seine. These would be routed through Paris, and help with the defenses there, he decided. Paris would have to be the linchpin of any plan to delay the Allies. Hitler had decreed the city be held at all costs, and all things considered, the plan wasn't the worst possible idea. Holding Paris would force the Allies to invest the city, slowing their advance and allowing time for his mauled armies to regroup and launch counter-attacks, just as Hitler had ordered.
With a plan taking shape in his mind, he contacted Choltitz via telephone. It took nearly 45 minutes for a connection to be established, but this allowed Model to further refine his plan with his staff officers before communicating with Choltitz. He instructed Choltitz that Paris should be held at all costs and that he was planning to evacuate the four infantry divisions remaining south of the Seine through Paris. Furthermore, the rest of the remnants of the Seventh Army (which had been facing the Allies in Brittany and southern Normandy) would also be evacuated through the city. Portions would remain behind to bolster the city's defenses, aided by the arrival of the 25th Panzer division and a collection of scratch units, which, he informed Choltitz, were being redeployed from Denmark on the Fuhrer's orders. The city, he instructed, should be held at all costs in order to slow the Allied advance and force them to devote forces against it. Choltitz informed him of the growing problems with partisans in the city, and said that wide stretches of Paris had been "abandoned by German forces in an effort to protect critical installations." Model ordered that Choltitz continue with his reprisal campaign and suggested that driving some of the populace out of the city and into Allied lines might force the Allies to slow their advance in order to care for the refugees. Because no record of the telephone conversation exists today, historians have been unable to fully recreate the exact phrasing of this, or whether it was indeed an order, as most have suggested. Regardless of whether it was a suggestion or an order, Choltitz took it as an order, a fact that would have drastic consequences during the siege of the city during the fall. Choltitz and Model disconnected the conversation after approximately two hours, each feeling that the other was doing their utmost to help the other, and both came away satisfied. Unfortunately for Choltitz, however, little of Model's actions did any good. Such was the rapid pace of the Allied advance that the whole of the Seventh Army was trapped south of the Loire and forced to surrender. Of the four infantry divisions remaining on the south side of the Seine (the 158th and 165th had also been part of this force, but had been withdrawn ahead of the others), their fate was scarcely different. Barely 7,000 scattered, panicked men arrived in Paris from a total strength of over 35,000. The rest had been either captured or killed.
Barely had Choltitz finished his conversation with Model when the switchboard in the Hotel Meurice notified him that he had an incoming call from Rastenburg. Generaloberst Jodl, Hitler's right-hand military man, demanded to know why only twelve of the city's factories had thus far been demolished. The Fuehrer, he warned, was growing impatient. Had the experts from Berlin finished their work? he asked. Yes, Choltitz admitted, they had. In fact, the demolition plans for all 200 factories were located in a suite in an upstairs bedroom of the Meurice. The four demolitions experts, having been trapped in the city due to the uprising, were busy at work assisting with emplacing demolition charges on the Seine bridges. With that answer, Jodl demanded to know why the demolitions had not progressed further. It was, Choltitz answered again, due to the uprising. All available troops were needed to retake the city and quell the uprising. Furthermore, he answered, he was afraid that demolitions might further antagonize the populace. "The Fuhrer," Jodl responded, "does not care for the citizens of Paris. Antagonize them if you must, but whatever happens, the Fuhrer expects you to carry out the widest demolition possible in the area assigned to your command."
In Normandy, where late evening was beginning to fall along with the rain, General Eisenhower had just been informed that General De Gaulle's plane was overdue and that no contact with it had been made since it left Gibraltar. Worried, Eisenhower ordered that a search be begun for the General. It was possible, he replied, that De Gaulle had been forced to divert to another location for any number of reasons. With the order given, Eisenhower put the subject out of his mind — there was too much already to worry about. His armies were crossing the Seine, and preparing to thrust east and north. Montgomery was poised to strike toward the Pas de Calais and Antwerp, while Bradley was crossing the upper Seine and getting ready to race to the Rhine. There was much to be done, and as long as they stayed clear of Paris, Eisenhower figured, everything would fall into place.
As night fell on Paris and the second day of the insurrection came to an end, Colonel Rol's communist fighters exacted a bit of revenge for the Prefecture of Police. Attacking a convoy of German trucks with Molotovs, they managed to set four ablaze and brutally machine-gunned those who managed to escape the flames by jumping out of the truck beds. The 83 Germans killed were almost as many as had been killed during the entire day's fighting up to that point. Adding to the previous day's total, an estimated 337 Germans had been killed by nightfall. French casualties, while unknown, are estimated to have been in the thousands. Shortly after being informed of the convoy ambush, Choltitz was informed by an excited member of the SD that German soldiers had captured three important FFI officers with all their papers as they tried to drive through a German checkpoint. They hadn't even bothered to burn the papers, he exclaimed, thrilled with the success. He asked Choltitz what they should do with the men, given that they had been captured with weapons and were thus in violation of Choltitz's edict that any Frenchman captured with a firearm should be punished — with death. The other option was to hand the three men over to the SD, a fate, as Choltitz recorded in his diary, "not worthy of a dog." Instead, "shoot them" was his order. With that order, Alexandre Parodi, the highest-ranking member of the Gaullist resistance in the city, became one of its first casualties.
***
Shortly after midnight in the very early morning hours of August 21st, General Jacques Philippe Leclerc, commander of the French Second Armored Division, digested the news that Charles De Gaulle was missing. The word had been passed through the army's grapevine almost at the speed of light, and as a general commanding a division, he got the news even quicker than most. It was something that had kept him awake, even into this, the darkest morning he had ever known. De Gaulle and Leclerc had fought together from Cameroon in central Africa to now, almost the very doorstep of Paris. It was a "tragedy beyond tragedy" to lose him at the very moment of Paris' liberation, Leclerc thought. Still, he vowed, he had a duty perform, and though De Gaulle might be gone — he knew in his heart that De Gaulle was dead, even though officially, he was merely "overdue" — he would fulfill the promise he made in the sands of the Sahara to one day liberate Paris, even if it meant disobeying the orders of his corps commander, his army commander, that of General Bradley, General Eisenhower — even God himself. For the last four weeks, his fuel trucks had been secretly taking double rations. He had been slow in reporting destroyed vehicles. All this was to allow him to build up a supply of fuel "off the books," thus enabling the division to have the capability to sprint into Paris, if and when the opportunity arose. He vowed that he would seize that opportunity, and damn the consequences. For De Gaulle, for himself, and for Paris.
Also in the early-morning hours of the 21st, Colonel Rol took advantage of the relative safety the night provided by moving into a new underground headquarters. The capture and execution of Parodi — Rol had learned of the man's death shortly after midnight — put new impetus on the move. And so, Rol and his lieutenants crept through the sewers of Paris, through darkness even more total than that of the blacked-out city above. His destination was a station of the pumping authority, located 90 feet below the streets of the Monparnasse district. Though the Germans had retaken much of the historic central district, Rol was enormously satisfied with all that had been accomplished up to the morning of the 21st. The hospitals had been seized, most of the city halls still remained in FFI hands, the newspapers were rapidly turning out masses of propaganda and instructions on how to build barricades, make Molotov cocktails, and all the vital information needed to resist the Germans. Most of the city's train stations were in the hands of the partisans, and best of all, new barricades were being erected almost hourly. Rol calculated that these would do the best work in slowing the German tanks. But, he allowed, slowing them wasn't his goal — he wanted to retake the city, wresting it from German control. Barricades were not enough for that. He needed weapons: Bazookas, Gammon grenades, mortars, and explosives of all kinds. To do that, he needed to request assistance from the Allies. The trick was to do that without pushing them into invading the city themselves, something that would surely wreck the communists' plans to install a leftist government. Rol had sent a messenger through the German lines, but there was no guarantee that the man would arrive safely. He needed to send messages through the FFI radios, something that would have to be done quickly, before the Gaullists in charge of those radios recovered from the death of Parodi's command. He resolved that he would have trustworthy men and women in control of the radios by noon.
As it had the previous day, the sun brought increased fighting. The day did not begin as bloodily as the 20th, however — the fall of the Prefecture of Police removed the biggest single block of resistance against the German forces. But as Napoleon once said, "he who is strong everywhere is strong nowhere," and that statement was proved on the morning of the 21st. As Choltitz's massed soldiers and tanks had begun to recapture various public buildings across the city on the 19th and 20th, they began to lose the strength of numbers. Firepower is exponential — two men firing rifles is more than twice as effective as one man firing a rifle. And because the widespread nature of the insurrection forced Choltitz to detach units to protect buildings his "fire brigades" had seized, the effectiveness of those fire brigades dropped with every platoon forced to defend the shattered remains of a building. Choltitz's original plan to maintain a perimeter around the area of the city that had been cleared of FFI began to show cracks. In the morning, small numbers of FFI fighters managed to slip past the German perimeter around the historic core of Paris to snipe at officers and men along the Champs Elysses. In the north, the 158th Reserve Division, which had been battered by the Allies, ordered to retreat to Paris, then had its remaining strength spilt to cover the two Paris airfields, found its northern section stretched to the limit in order to recapture the train stations south of Le Bourget. It was not so much the resistance posed by the FFI — every time the Germans massed for an attack, or if they used tanks, they were successful. It was the fact that the FFI had numbers far beyond what the Germans could bring to bear. The barricades and their ability to draw everyday Parisians into the city made the situation even worse for the defending Germans.
By noon, Choltitz had even been informed of a series of desertions and surrenders, where disheartened Germans surrendered to FFI cells that promised to hide them and keep them safe until the Allies arrived in the city. These posed as great a threat to his ability to defend Paris as any of the FFI's actions. It was in this atmosphere that General Otto Dessloch, commander of Luftflotte 3, arrived at the Hotel Meurice. Dessloch was in high spirits — higher, at least than those of Choltitz — after his Stukas had helped smash the Prefecture of Police. It was then that he laid out his plan. The 150 aircraft of the Luftflotte in Paris would soon have to depart for safer airfields to the north and east. But before they left, Dessloch proposed an assault — not on the strongpoints of the FFI — but on the neighborhoods of northeast Paris. Dessloch traced a finger on a map he had brought for the purpose. From Montmartre east to Pantin, and from Buttes-Chaumont north to the empty stockyards of the porte de la Villette, the Luftflotte could engage in shuttle bombing from Le Bourget, barely five miles distant. The raid would create "a little Hamburg," snuffing out all resistance — and life — in the area, which housed approximately 700,000 Parisians. All that would be required of Choltitz and his men would be to evacuate the area, smash the water mains, and set flares for bomb aiming. This would, hopefully, quell the populace's willingness to resist as well as drawing down the stocks of weaponry at Le Bourget, all of which would need to be destroyed in any event. Choltitz was initially shocked by the man's savagery, but did not reject the plan out of hand. He had been enormously depressed about the chance of the Wehrmacht keeping the city from falling into French hands, but this was something else. He dismissed Dessloch without even a promise to keep the plan in mind. He was too taken aback.
On the other side of the Seine River, a half-dozen FFI radio operators were ordered to take a break. Their positions were replaced by other, fresher operators, who just happened to be communists. Most of the original operators were more than happy to take a temporary — or so they thought — break from the constant readiness the FFI radiomen maintained. The one man who did not feel a need to take a break was ordered to do so. Over the next few hours, each was suddenly awakened from a deep sleep and ordered into "emergency" action against the Germans. Though none were killed, they didn't manage to return to their radio sets for several days. In that time, the radios were manned by a steady stream of communist FFI agents. The tone of the messages sent to London during that time shifted. Instead of requesting an immediate advance to the city by Allied forces, the signals requested urgent air drops of weapons and ammunition. This request was bolstered by the arrival of Colonel Rol's messenger into the Allied lines, now just 30 miles distant from Paris at the town of Rambouillet. Ushered into the tent of General Bradley, he informed Bradley of the situation in the city, and, downplaying the seriousness of the partisans' position, said that all the FFI needed were steady drops of weapons and ammunition and they would be able to deliver a liberated Paris into Allied hands without the need of a single Allied soldier. Though of two minds about this (dreading the need to supply the liberated city, but relieved that no street fighting would be needed), Bradley agreed to pass the message on to Eisenhower in a strategy meeting scheduled for that evening.
***
In the afternoon of the 21st, the depressed Choltitz received an ear-blistering call from Field Marshal Model. Model berated Choltitz in the strongest possible terms for failing "to maintain order in the area to which you have been assigned," and for failing to hold the Seine River crossings to allow the passage of his retreating soldiers. Model was, in actuality, merely passing on the frustration he felt when faced with a hopeless situation on the Western front and from being squeezed from behind by Hitler, whose orders, issued hourly, sometimes countermanded each other and added confusion to an already chaotic and unstable situation. The sole bright spot was the situation in front of Paris, which had only reported "light enemy reconnaissance," and it was Model's fear of losing this sole bastion of stability that drove him into a fear-driven harangue. His final order to Choltitz was a stern warning to "restore order in the city at any price." Choltitz managed to prod Model into providing another half-division of reinforcements from the city, this time having them pried from the troops moving east from the Low Countries, and having been given his order, went about his duty with an air of fatalism. Casualties were mounting among the German soldiers (far higher among the FFI, but they had many more men to spare), and almost 100 had been killed by 3:00 p.m., nearly a third of the total killed in the first two days of fighting. SS tankers had resorted to tying captured Frenchmen to the turrets of their tanks in order to prevent attacks by Molotov cocktails. This tactic was effective, despite its barbarity, but no Wehrmacht tanker would dare use it. Choltitz convened a meeting of his staff officers, and they frantically attempted to come up with a plan to successfully bring the uprising to an end in a manner that would not critically weaken the defenses south of the city. In the end, they kept coming back to the plan of General Dessloch and the Luftwaffe. It would provide an immediate benefit, wipe out most of the resistance on the north bank of the Seine, and performed with other actions across the city, would surely clear the streets.
At 4 p.m., Choltitz gave the order for the Luftwaffe to begin planning the strike, with bombing to begin at 9 p.m. that evening. In addition to the bombing, Choltitz ordered that the first stage of the Seine bridges demolition plan be implemented. Most of the bridges across the Seine were to be dynamited, with only a few — under the secure guard of German soldiers — to be saved. Destroying the bridges would cut the city in two and destroy any ability for the FFI to reinforce effectively. Once resistance on the north side of the Seine was eliminated, Choltitz would give the order for all German forces on the north bank to move south and crush resistance there. The defenders could then begin to worry about the Allies without fearing attack from the FFI. In preparation for the air attack, the men of the 158th Reserve Division began to withdraw from the Gare du Nord and Gare de l'est, which they had retaken just 24 hours previously. In that time, however, dozens of barricades had sprung up around the two stations, and the men had a harder fight leaving than they had capturing the two buildings in the first place. Along the way, the disgruntled men followed the orders they had been given, throwing grenades down water mains, breaking pipes, and destroying hydrants. The FFI and citizens were so happy to see the Germans leave that they did not take the destruction as anything more than angry vandalism rather than the precursor to tragedy that it was.
In the central water distribution plants, the mains were shut at 8 p.m. Again, those in the area did not see this as anything other than a German attempt to harm the Resistance. Most attention in the city was focused on the Seine, where one after another, the bridges across the river were being destroyed. Eight were secured for use by German soldiers. Five of these lay in the central portion of the city, within the pocket considered relatively secure by virtue of the soldiers of the 165th Reserve Division who were holding the perimeter. At the Austerlitz and Tobelac bridges on the east side of the city, the FFI mounted a spirited resistance to German attempts to blow the bridges. Those two bridges were surrounded by over two dozen barricades, and the defenders had been forewarned by the blasts from bridges further west. When German engineers arrived, they were shot dead and their trucks set ablaze with Molotov cocktails. When tanks arrived a half-hour later, the defenders fought back with explosives taken from dead German engineers. At least three French fighters made suicidal charges with improvised satchel charges, disabling three Panthers. The German captain on the scene halted the fighting after the three tanks were disabled and night began to fall.
At 8:50, a second-hand report of activity at Le Bourget reached Colonel Rol in his headquarters below the streets of south Paris. By this time, it was far too late, even if Rol had believed it to be anything other than German preparations to evacuate the Luftwaffe contingent there. At 9:10 p.m., the first aircraft took off from Le Bourget. They didn't bother to form into groups — this was to be shuttle bombing. Just fly to the target, drop your bombs, land, rearm, fly again, drop and repeat. Because the target was so close, there wasn't even any need to refuel. All told, the 137 aircraft remaining at Le Bourget made 13 runs apiece, with some making 14 or 15 before the stockpiles of aerial weapons at Le Bourget were exhausted. By 4 a.m., all the aircraft had safely returned to Le Bourget and were being refueled prior to leaving France forever. By this time, the streets of northeastern Paris were ablaze. General Dessloch had wanted to create a "little Hamburg" in Paris, but even though the ultimate result fell far short of the destruction wrought in Hamburg, it was still the single largest destructive act on the Western front during the war. There were few incendiary bombs among those dropped on Paris, but the destruction was bad enough. For seven straight hours, at least ten German aircraft were in the air, raining high-explosive destruction on the city.
Not until 8 a.m. on the morning of the 22nd did Colonel Rol receive a report on what had happened, courtesy of a student who had been at one of the barricades on the district when the bombs began to fall. Taking cover in a gutter, 18-year-old Jacob Dévér had shielded his head with his arms as surrounding buildings crumbled. When fires started, he fled south and, exhausted, swam the Seine River to seek the safety of the southern bank. Spotted by a German patrol, he was forced to evade through the unfamiliar alleys and streets until being taken in by a sympathetic store owner. Finally, with the sun well in the sky, he reached Rol's underground headquarters. "We were smiling and confident," he recalled. "The Germans had evacuated the district and we had retaken the train stations. It seemed like they were giving up — a barricade two streets over from ours said they had captured two German soldiers and forced them to work improving the defense. Shortly after nine, we heard a low rumble in the air, coming from the northwest. We all looked up, thinking that it was the Allies, coming to drop supplies. When the bombs began to fall, it took us a moment to realize that we were under attack. By then, the explosions had begun, and everyone scattered. There being no trenches or basements nearby, I was forced to dive into the gutter, the filthy water and urine there staining my shirt and soaking me."
***
Dévér's story was like many others. Though few fires were started at first, those incendiaries that did fall found plenty of fuel from destroyed buildings. There was not enough wind nor enough incendiaries to create a firestorm, but plenty of fires were created by the few firebombs used and from incidental fires caused by destroyed lamps or stoves. A light southwest wind fortunately kept the fires away from the central portion of Paris — German soldiers had been ordered to create firebreaks if the blazes began to spread toward the central portion of the city — but this only drove the fire toward Montmartre. There, bands of citizen firefighters grouped together to create bucket brigades and create impromptu firebreaks. Their efforts were not enough to save the Basilique du Sacré Cœur from damage, but its scorched sides still stood when the Allies captured the hill in late October. Still, much of the artistic heart of the neighborhood was destroyed and the battle against the fires on the western edge of the bombed zone was the most intense. Throughout the entire bombed zone, the attitude was one of shock. Though the fires had spared much of the eastern portions of the bombed zone due to the wind and the ability of the Canal de l'Ourcq to provide firefighting water, almost no place in the northeastern portion of the city lacked bomb damage. An observer remarked, "It was as if the peak of the London Blitz had visited the city for one night." In the end, nearly 12,000 Parisians were killed by the attack, and almost 100,000 were made homeless. Their flight into the countryside — to the north, where they affected German transportation more than that of the Allies, at first — marked the beginning of the Paris refugee crisis.
On the morning of the 22nd, the Luftwaffe's bombing, though brutal, seemed to have accomplished its effect. The streets were mostly quiet for the first time since the beginning of the uprising. Most of the city, though not informed of what had happened overnight, had at least some inkling. The explosions of the bombs, coupled with the drone of aircraft engines, left few in doubt that Paris had taken a great blow from the air. Surprisingly, few believed that it had been the Allies, bombing rail connections in the city. As one man later said, "We believed that the Allies would never damage the City." The fear that the Germans had performed an enormous reprisal were confirmed when Parisians fleeing the affected arrondisements began to reach the southern portions of the city in late morning. Choltitz did his utmost to encourage that flight — if possible, to push the refugees outside the city and into the Allies. Loudspeaker-laden trucks roamed the streets, announcing that any Parisian who wished to leave the city to "avoid the further bombardment of resisting districts by the Luftwaffe." Ironically, Resistance newspapers did much to fan the flames of fear by describing in detail the horrific bombardment of the night before. When two regiments of the 165th Reserve Division moved from their position in the "Central Bastion," as the position along the Seine River was becoming known, to reoccupy the rail yards in the northeast of the city, no shots were fired at them. Instead, sullen Frenchmen and women merely lined the streets and watched them drive by. It took some hours before the lines had been cleared, but by evening, the first train loaded with French prisoners taken during the insurrection was heading east, to Germany.
Though Choltitz's barbarity had won the Germans a short reprieve, Colonel Rol was prepared to continue the fight, harder than ever. All that would be required was a resupply of weapons and munitions from London, and the Resistance would be back and a bigger threat to the Germans than ever. He had, through radio transmissions, received word that the Allies were secretly planning a drop of weapons into the city. Unbeknownst to Rol, General Pierre Koenig, head of the FFI, had ordered the drop be delayed for 24 hours. With De Gaulle missing and presumed dead, Koenig was under enormous stress. As one of the most senior Free French leaders remaining, he had none of the prestige of De Gaulle, and believed that the Free French desperately needed to make a statement if they intended to take the reins of the postwar government. Koenig had none of De Gaulle's drive to build a government entirely separate from the plan intended by the Allies, but he knew that the interests of France and her allies would not always dovetail so clearly as they did during the war. Creating a government free of Allied — and even more importantly, Communist — influence was of critical importance. He knew that any weapon drop would almost certainly benefit the communists more than his own Gaullist FFI members, particularly with De Gaulle's and Parodi's deaths. Secretly, he had radioed Leclerc in France, pleading with him to order the Second Armored Division to advance on the city as soon as possible. A swift liberation would allow he and others to install a Gaullist government of their own choosing, and not one of Allied or communist creation. But he could not hold off on the weapons drop forever. If Leclerc did not reach Paris before nightfall on the 23rd, he would be forced to order the drop, and damn the consequences.
In an apple orchard sixty miles of Paris, Leclerc received the covert plea with no small degree of torment. De Gaulle was almost certainly dead, no trace of him having been seen in over two days. At the cusp of what he believed would be his ultimate triumph, the fulfillment of his pledge to liberate Paris, it was being snatched away. Bradley had returned from the military conference with Eisenhower with orders for Leclerc's division to being advancing to the east — to the German border and away from Paris. Bradley had answered his question about the insurrection and the German bombing with a curt remark that the partisans "bore the responsibility for their failure to obey the order not to begin an uprising." Now Koenig wanted him to disobey orders and liberate the city on his own. In the end, it took him barely thirty minutes to make up his mind. The object of his dreams — Paris — would not be denied. The division would begin its advance at 5:30 a.m. the morning of the 23rd. But first, he had to distract his Allied liaison officers.
As night fell in Paris, General Choltitz emerged from the funk of the previous day. Despite all odds, his Luftwaffe gambit appeared to have worked. Just 20 German soldiers had been killed in the city, his troops had retaken the critical rail links, and all was well. The highlight of his evening came when four unfamiliar SS officers arrived at the Meurice. Choltitz believed them to be bringing reinforcements, but instead they had visited the city on orders from Heinrich Himmler, who had ordered them to recover the Bayeux Tapestry from the Louvre and take it to Germany before Paris was surrounded. Upon arriving at the museum, they had been fired upon by a section of FFI fighters. Choltitz was forced to pull together a group of infantry and an armored car to clear the enormous structure. When the German soldiers finally began searching the building in earnest, they were shocked to discover that most of the museum's art treasures had already been removed by the FFI. Hidden away in places of perceived safety, many would never be recovered. Fortunately for the SS men, the Bayeux Tapestry was one of the few items still remaining — no doubt due to its large size. They loaded it into their automobile and transported it to a salt mine in Germany, where it was recovered with thousands of other objets d'art at the end of the war. In Paris, meanwhile, art from the Louvre continues to be discovered behind walls and in odd places today. The most famous example, of course, was the rediscovery of the Mona Lisa in 1966, found behind a wall in a Parisian apartment when the owner was renovating the building. Despite successes like these, fewer than 3/5 of the pre-war art collection of the Louvre has been recovered. Many pieces are believed to have been destroyed in the liberation of the city, but some are believed to still hide in the nooks and crannies of Paris.
As the fighting in the Louvre was taking place, the enormous "Karl" mortar reached Soissons, 80 miles distant from Paris. This was its final stopping point before arriving in Paris on the early-morning hours of the 24th. In Metz, 188 miles from Paris, the tanks of the 25th Panzer division and associated formations continued their nighttime movement toward the city. Their arrival was less than 48 hours away — if Leclerc didn't arrive first.
***
Leclerc's tanks began moving shortly before dawn. To a modern observer, it seems difficult to imagine that a division consisting of hundreds of vehicles and thousands of men could move in secret, but this was an era before computer networks, before tanks featured aircraft-like friend-or-foe systems, and before constant communications kept commanders in touch at all hours of the day. By 7:30 a.m., virtually all the men of the division had been informed of their commander's plan and its illicit nature. Not a single one broke formation. All were veterans, part of a division whose fighters had seen combat since Free French soldiers marched across the Sahara to do battle against Vichy forces in French West Africa. Many were not from France at all — instead hailing from the colonies or even foreign countries like Mexico or Paraguay and most of those had never been to France before, let alone Paris. All were volunteers. And all shared a common devotion to the idea that France should be liberated and free. The key to all of this was Paris, and their drive toward the city could hardly be stopped by any orders from American commanders who knew nothing of their devotion. Due to Leclerc's foresight, the division didn't need to stop at any of the Allied fuel depots located behind the lines. They fueled instead from their own organic fuel trucks, which drove just behind the tanks and halftracks. Shortly after 9 a.m. on the morning of the 23rd, the BBC made the official announcement that General Charles De Gaulle, commander of the Free French, was missing and had been so since the 19th. News of this spread along the advancing division. By the time the unit reached Chartres, every man in the group knew it. To some, it lent a cold fury. To others, it disheartened them. Leclerc, near the head of the column, was disappointed at the spread of the news. Regardless of the effect it had, he knew it would serve as a distraction to his men, all of whom needed to have their minds clear for the battle ahead.
In Paris, the gunfire that had not appeared on the morning of the 22nd reappeared with a vengeance on the morning of the 23rd. By know, the FFI was running short of ammunition on a city-wide basis, but the bombing of the northeastern portion of the city had inspired a fearful resistance to the Germans. In places where German forces massed to drive out the FFI — as at the Grand Palais, where tanks set the building ablaze — the fear caused FFI fighters to become brittle in their fighting, fleeing at the first sign that the Germans were breaking through. On the south side of the city, soldiers succeeded in securing a highway corridor to the defensive line from the central bastion for the first time. This allowed for the stringing of landlines to replace the ineffective telephone system, allowing for better communication. To both General Choltitz and on the opposite side, Colonel Rol, it appeared that the Germans were slowly retaking the city despite the FFI's continued resistance. Rol continued his desperate pleas for an air drop of ammunition and weapons. These were his only hope. If Leclerc arrived with his division, it would mean an end to the communist resistance, De Gaulle or no De Gaulle.
At 8 a.m., Choltitz had received orders from Rastenburg via Field Marshal Model that instructed him to leave the city a "field of ruins" for the advancing Allies and make his stand among those ruins. Choltitz had already begun to implement those instructions, which were merely a reiteration of orders he had received over the previous days. As propaganda trucks announcing his "amnesty" for refugees filtered through the streets on the 22nd, their broadcasts stood as counterpoint to the loud bangs of factories being destroyed and the enormous plume of smoke that still hovered over the city from the Luftwaffe bombardment. Now, on the morning of the 23rd, the plume of smoke and the trucks had mostly vanished, but the explosions continued. Demolition teams, freed from being tied to the now-destroyed Seine bridges, implemented the destruction plans created by the four experts from Berlin. In addition, explosives continued to be laid at each of Paris' major landmarks. Each was given a flimsy military excuse for demolition — collapsing the Arc de Triomphe would clear fields of fire, while the destruction of the Eiffel tower would block the approaches to several destroyed Seine bridges — but even Choltitz was reluctant to push the plunger on historic landmarks. Still, to him, a line had been crossed and he was far more willing to execute the demolition plan than he had been just 24 hours prior.
At the Austerlitz and Tobelac bridges, fighting renewed after the brief calm of the 22nd. By 10 a.m., German tanks had blasted through the barricades guarding the two remaining Seine bridges not in German hands. Choltitz had forbade most major action in the city after the Luftwaffe bombardment in hopes that his restraint would allow time for the FFI to realize the hopelessness of the situation, rather than forcing them into a corner from which they would be forced to fight. When this failed to achieve the desired effect, he issued orders for the capture or destruction of FFI strongpoints across the city. At the two bridges, two more tanks were destroyed by Molotov cocktails, but both bridges fell to German explosives before noon. Similar scenes took place at city halls and public Paris buildings all across the city. Tanks were massed to blast the FFI from the buildings, and FFI fighters, their ammunition almost gone and lacking heavy weapons beyond Molotovs, were unable to resist for long. Some managed to escape into the warrens of the city. Others were captured and sent to German prisons, which were now bulging with captured Frenchmen, crammed into the most inhumane conditions imaginable, particularly for the wounded. Many were executed outright. To those in the prisons, who would later endure enormous hardships during the siege of the city or who were shipped to German concentration camps, those executed almost seemed to have gotten the better result.
In the city, few knew about Leclerc's approaching tanks. Only the few Gaullist FFI leaders remaining alive and able to communicate via radio had gotten the message. One of these men, Yvon Morandat, executed his orders to capture the Hotel de Matignon, home of France's prime ministers. Upon his arrival, the 400 Vichy policemen who had served as Pierre Laval's bodyguard surrendered to him despite the fact that he had come alone. Together, the four hundred secured the Matignon in the face of a German attack. This arrived in the evening, and German tanks set the palace ablaze. Morandat and the men defending the building refused to surrender, and died fighting while the building burned down around them.
By 6 p.m., Leclerc's division had reached Rambouillet, barely 30 miles from Paris. And all along the line, Allied commanders were searching for the French second armored division. Astonishingly, Leclerc's move had gone unnoticed until 11 a.m. by his liaison officers, who had enjoyed a good time put on by one of his officers. When Leclerc failed to arrive at a staff meeting at 1 p.m. and failed to answer a radio message, a frantic search began. Several times, elements of his division had been found by neighboring Allied forces, but by the time their messages were passed to corps command, the French had moved on. At Rambouillet, Leclerc desperately wanted to stop, regroup, and rest his division, which had been moving for over 12 hours now and had become badly strung out. But he knew that if he stopped, even for an instant longer than the refueling trucks demanded, the Allies would find a way to hand him an order in person. Then, he would be forced to ignore it and be promptly arrested. That could not be allowed, not until his division was engaged in combat with the Germans. Once combat was joined, he would have a ready-made excuse for avoiding further contact. He would have to gamble that the Allies would not force his troops back if he was about to break through to Paris. And so his division moved on through the growing darkness, not even slowing for the crowds of cheering, liberated French men and women who lined the streets of Rambouillet. Had he more time, Leclerc would have preferred to move the thrust of his attack further east. The direct line from Rambouillet to Paris ran through Versailles, and the latest intelligence before he began his move indicated the Germans had recently reinforced the area with more than 50 tanks. It would be like running a gauntlet, but he lacked the time to shift east.
Eisenhower and Bradley, in an emergency conference, debated what to do about the rogue general. Clearly, the first thing to do was to cut off all resupply to Leclerc's division in order to bring him to heel. This had already been effectively done due to his rapid advance. The second thing to do was to regain control of the division. To do that, they had to figure out what he was trying to do. "Isn't it obvious?" Patton, who had joined the meeting while it was in progress, said. "The crazy bastard is trying to liberate Paris all by himself." Messengers were sent via jeep to all likely routes Leclerc's division would have to take to reach the city. Shortly before Leclerc's tanks encountered the first Germans outside of St.-Cyr, a messenger from the V Corps caught up with him. This was Leclerc's moment to cross the Rubicon. To that point, all his actions had been covered by a thin veil of legitimacy. He could always deny receiving radio communications, or come up with other excuses for not halting. But now, reading the paper orders in his hand, he had to take the step from which there was no returning. He ordered the man detained until the attack had begun.
At 9:40 p.m., in the darkness of the evening of the 23rd, Leclerc's division began to engage the Germans outside of St.-Cyr. Paris' best chance for an early liberation had arrived.
***
St.-Cyr was well known in France and abroad as the site of the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, a highly regarded military academy founded by Napoleon in 1802. Following the surrender of France in June 1940, the academy laid dormant for four years, its buildings gathering dust and weeds. The school's teachers had moved to Vichy, then on to Free French-held Algeria, where they continued to instruct. Some of the men of the Second Armored Division had been students or teachers at the academy prior to its move south. Eight days previously, German soldiers had occupied the grounds of the school, transforming it into a strongpoint for the defense of Paris, part of the 60-mile-long line that Choltitz had ordered built. On the 20th, the Allies had bombed the town, part of the overall plan to cut road and rail links around Paris in preparation for its encirclement. Several of the 150-year-old buildings were damaged, but few Germans had been killed. As befitting its position on one of the direct roads leading to Paris, St.-Cyr was ably defended by a company of 17 heavy tanks (Panthers and Tigers) eight 88mm guns redeployed from the air defenses of Paris, and several companies of infantry, who had entrenched themselves in the village and in the stone-walled buildings of the school.
Leclerc's French Second Armored Division had its roots in the men who fought under Leclerc in Africa in 1941. In 1943, after the fall of North Africa, the division was reorganized along American lines and reformed as a light armored division. At the time of the opening of the Battle of St.-Cyr, the division boasted nearly 15,000 men, and despite losses incurred in Operation Cobra — the breakout from Normandy — boasted 197 tanks, 474 halftracks, 44 howitzers, and approximately 14,000 men. This was down from its original strength of 54 105mm howitzers, 263 medium tanks, and 501 half-tracks when it had embarked in Southampton in late July. The division's total strength was nearly as great as that of the entire German line defending Paris in the south. Choltitz could only bring to bear fewer than 20,000 men, 234 tanks, 378 artillery pieces (most were 88mm guns redeployed from Paris), and various other pieces of equipment. Countering the theoretical German numerical superiority was the fact that the Germans were forced to defend a 60-mile front. On their side, however, was the fact that Leclerc's division was badly strung out due to its rapid advance. Its men were exhausted after moving for more than 16 consecutive hours, and many of its vehicles had less than half a tank of gasoline remaining. Thus, when contact was made, Leclerc could only bring to bear a single tank battalion with no artillery support at first.
The Germans in St.-Cyr were astonished when the French arrived. Though reliable communications had been restored to the Hotel Meurice — radio signals had been prone to being jammed by the Allies — their intelligence had given them no forewarning about the Allied advance. Thus, the initial attack was a surprise, and the French nearly carried the defensive line in front of the town despite failing to mass their force. Several Shermans roamed through the streets of St.-Cyr, sowing confusion among the German defenders, and slowing the Nazi reaction to the attack. The shock and surprise nearly swept the Germans away. But the soldiers defending the town were veterans, and recovered quickly from their initial surprise in the darkness of the evening. The tanks that had broken through the line were hunted down by a couple of Tigers detached for that purpose, assisted by Panzerfaust-wielding infantry. Meanwhile, at the front, the gunners of the 88mm cannon had recovered from their surprise and fought back against the advancing French. Though the close range at first was to the French advantage, they hadn't had time to adequately deploy infantry cover, and German infantry soon surrounded and knocked out the halftracks and tanks that were threatening the line directly. By 11 p.m., the fight devolved into a long-range gunnery battle in the pitch darkness, neither side gaining an advantage. Leclerc arrived on the scene, and ordered a flanking maneuver around the village on both sides. This was performed quickly, and with skill, as by now, a second battalion had arrived and the division's artillery had begun shelling the town.
The German commander, within 20 minutes of the first attack, began screaming to Choltitz for help on the recently-laid telephone system that had replaced the now-destroyed civilian system barely 12 hours earlier. Choltitz, roused from slumber, feared that the assault was only the first portion of a larger Allied assault. Though intelligence estimates forwarded to him from Field Marshal Model had indicated the Allies were planning to encircle the city, he did not entirely trust those estimates. After all, the same intelligence officers had failed to detect the Allied invasion of Normandy, instead guessing that it would take place at the Pas de Calais. Because of this disbelief, he only ordered the reserves along the western portion of the defensive line to be put into the fight. Those along the eastern portion of the line would be warned to expect a potential attack in that sector as well. These included soldiers from the 158th Reserve Division, deployed at Orly Airfield. This was the largest single collection of German soldiers along the entire line, and although they lacked heavy armor, their numbers gave them a striking power unmatched among the German forces spread thin along the defensive line. Due to Choltitz's order, however, they remained in place as the defenders of St.-Cyr fought desperately, were outflanked, and surrounded.
Leclerc knew that time was rapidly running out and that despite his effort to involve the division in combat, representatives from V Corps were likely on their way to arrest him and relieve him of command. Any delays, even minor ones, could be fatal to his plan of liberating Paris before the Germans could destroy it further or the Allies fully bypass it. He ordered that the reconnaissance battalion speed onward past St.-Cyr on the road through Versailles to the loop in the Seine west of Fort d'Issy. That would take the division into the southern suburbs of Paris, and hopefully bring enough success to prod the army into giving him reinforcements enough to liberate the city entirely, resistance or not. Leclerc might have rested easier had he known that even then, at midnight on the morning of the 24th, the Allied command was still unsure about what to do as a response to his action. Leclerc's ignoring of orders had provoked a crisis of confidence among the Allied leadership. Bradley and Eisenhower both favored taking a hard line on the rogue commander, but Patton and Montgomery — united in one rare instance — favored giving Leclerc the support he needed to liberate the city. Eisenhower desperately wanted to consult with Churchill and Roosevelt, as this was as much of a political issue as a strategic one, but time was not on his side. With the arguments of both sides resonating in his mind, he ordered a compromise. If Leclerc could enter Paris proper, he would be given all the reinforcements needed to liberate the city immediately. If not, he would be arrested for disobeying orders, the Second Armored withdrawn from the city, and the original Allied plan continued. There would be no throwing good money after bad, Eisenhower assured the frustrated Bradley. If Leclerc were successful in taking Paris alone, he would have merely accelerated the plans of the Allied advance, not taken anything away. And if not, yes, the plight of the Parisians was terrific, but there was simply no getting around the cost it would take to liberate the city without a defense-weakening siege first. It was not a plan he enjoyed contemplating — particularly not with the consequences it entailed for the city's civilians — but it was simply the best of a bad set of options right then.
In Paris, Choltitz, too, was debating the best choice from among a series of bad options. By midnight, it had been more than two hours since the initial contact was made at St.-Cyr. Now, contact had been lost with that bastion — it was either cut off or fallen — and firing could be heard in Versailles, just outside the Paris city limits. The limited sector reinforcements were moving into blocking positions along the Versailles roads, and the tanks in the area already had good fields of fire, but would it be enough? He didn't think so. Glancing at the map, he again examined the forces along the eastern portion of the defensive line. There had been no contact, no firing at all along any portion of the line other than around St.-Cyr. Could he risk it? He would have to. He had already spread himself thin in the face of a numerically superior enemy — he now regretted ordering the defense of such a long line — and now he feared he was making the situation worse by preparing to devote his largest unengaged force to the one attack that had so far shown itself. If there was another, as yet undeveloped attack waiting to fall on the eastern portion of his line, moving his reserve out of position would be fatal. But he had no choice. There was no indication of such an attack developing, and he gave the order for the soldiers of the 158th Reserve Division to begin moving west from Orly. Few trucks were available, and local vehicles would have to be commandeered. That brought another question. If moving the 158th was the right move, would they even arrive in time? It was now 12:30 a.m. on the morning of the 24th.
***
In the dark streets of Versailles, not far from the centuries-old palace that gave the suburb its name, Colonel Von Aulock and the men of the 11th Paratrooper Regiment waited. Aulock, the overall commander of the defensive line, had rushed to the area upon hearing about the attack. Now, in Versailles, a position he had thought safely in the rear was about to come under direct attack. He hurriedly ordered the few 88mm guns available to be emplaced in the best positions available to cover the road from the southwest. Unfortunately, most of the city's 88mm guns had been spread along the entire 60-mile length of the defensive line, just as the soldiers had been. Only four 88s were in Versailles, and they were only present because the trucks transporting them to the line had broken down. At 12:30 a.m., Aulock's force engaged the reconnaissance battalion of the French Second Armored. Several French light tanks and half-tracks were destroyed, left burning in the street as the unit scattered. A running gun battle resulted as the French tried to simply filter through the winding streets of Versailles and drive past the Germans to reach Paris. Several companies did successfully escape the streets and reach the wooded parks east of town, but they were scattered and disorganized in the process. Furthermore, nearly 40 percent of the battalion didn't manage to escape the town, and as at St.-Cyr, became separated and defeated in detail by German infantry and tanks. This did have one favorable outcome for the French force — when the first of the division's main body of tanks reached Versailles at 2 a.m., the German defenders were themselves distracted by the reconnaissance unit's actions east of town.
Despite the continued fighting at St.-Cyr, which had now been encircled by the division, Leclerc's force managed to liberate the palace of Versailles at 2:45 a.m. despite losing several tanks and halftracks to Aulock. The losses didn't prevent the French from driving Aulock's force from the town of Versailles, either. Despite a 2.5:1 kill ratio for his tanks, he was forced to retreat to the north of the town shortly after 3:00 a.m. This retreat left Leclerc free to advance to the Boulogne loop of the Seine, which lies to the west of Paris proper. The reconnaissance battalion reached the suburb of Sevres and the banks of the Seine at 3:30 a.m. There, however, they were stymied by the fact that the Germans had blown the bridges across the river. Thus, the leading elements of the division were unable to advance into Boulogne-Billancourt, just to the east. Leclerc was buoyed by the fact that the Loire had been reached. At 4 a.m., he received further good news when word was received that the last German holdouts in St.-Cyr had surrendered. Outnumbered, running low on ammunition, and under fire from all sides, they had nevertheless extracted a surprisingly heavy toll on the French, and it wasn't until Leclerc's massed divisional artillery began to blast them from the stone-walled buildings of the military academy that they lost hope and surrendered. Several valuable hours had been lost to digging them out, but Leclerc hoped that they would not be in vain. He ordered the reconnaissance battalion to halt at Sevres until the strung-out division could be re-armed, re-fueled, rested a bit, and massed for the entry into Paris proper, something he hoped would take place that afternoon.
By 6 a.m. — sunrise — the reconnaissance battalion began to come under increasing fire from the west, where Choltitz had ordered elements of the 165th Division and portions of the city garrison to move south to confront the French before they could advance further. The Germans, dispirited after days of fighting hidden partisans, and believing the fall of the city to be had hand, made a few ineffectual attacks before halting their brief counterattack. Many of the ordinary German soldiers in the city, their commander's desire to fight on notwithstanding, had been demoralized by the rapid German retreat across France, the massive partisan uprising, and the increasing ration shortages caused by Allied bombardment. The approach of the French division was thus seen as the last straw, a chance to surrender and end the war quickly. When Choltitz received word of the desultory action at Sevres, he departed the Hotel Meurice for the neighborhood itself, where he vowed to take direct control of the action and thus boost morale directly. Arriving before 7 a.m., he used his seemingly inexhaustible store of energy rushing all along the hasty line, dodging occasional shots from the French reconnaissance soldiers who were at times just a few blocks away. With the German left anchored on the Seine, Choltitz organized a defensive position that the French could not budge until more soldiers arrived. He vowed that they would not get the chance.
***
Just after 9 a.m., 12 hours after the attack had begun and fully nine hours after Choltitz had given orders for its movement, the elements of the 158th division arrived in position opposite the vulnerable French left flank. From Velizy, south of Versailles, they attacked directly into the unsuspecting French. As Leclerc gave orders for his soldiers to redeploy and face the unexpected threat, which threatened to cut his lines of communication to Sevres, Von Aulock's force, having rallied after being driven from Versailles, counterattacked from Bougival, to the north of Versailles. Though Aulock was acting under no orders other than his own — having lost communication with Choltitz in the retreat from Versailles, his timely action forced Leclerc to address an attack that threatened to cut his overextended division in two. In many ways, Leclerc's success in breaking through the German line was his downfall. Denied reinforcements by a reluctant Allied command, and forced into an attack along a single line, Leclerc was thus vulnerable to counterattack, particularly given that his tired soldiers had been moving for over 30 consecutive hours and fighting for nearly half that time. His tanks and halftracks had not been given time to adequately refuel or rearm, and many were running low on both fuel and ammunition.
Faced with attacks on three sides, Leclerc gave the order for his division to pull back to St.-Cyr to regroup. They could refuel, rest, and rearm there, he knew, then punch through the remaining German resistance with no problem. The Germans were outgunned, he knew, and only the fact that he had been forced to rush into combat gave them the advantage. Despite his hopes, Leclerc would never get the chance. At 3 p.m., as he set up his headquarters in St.-Cyr, he was arrested by officers from V Corps. The second-in-command of the division took over, and was given orders to pull the division further away from the city, expressly written by General Eisenhower. He did so, and Leclerc's foray came to an end. Had he been in position to continue the fight, there seems little doubt that Choltitz's forces would have been able to put up little resistance. Most of their heavy tanks had been destroyed, and once the Second Armored Division was resupplied and rested, it would have made easy meat of the demoralized Germans. This supposes, of course, that Leclerc would have been operating under orders and thus able to request reinforcements from Bradley and Eisenhower. Of course, this was not the case, and the withdrawal of the Second Armored on the afternoon of the 24th gave the German defenders of the city an enormous morale boost. They had seen themselves, outgunned and potentially outnumbered, turn back a foe superior to themselves. To a group of men who had been retreating since Normandy, it was an enormous relief. Choltitz's efforts notwithstanding, until the French withdrawal, many German soldiers had been contemplating surrender en masse as so many of their brethren did outside of Paris.
In the wake of the abortive attack on Paris, the French Second Armored Division was sent north to assist in Montgomery's drive on the Channel ports while Patton and Bradley continued to liberate France. Leclerc himself was never punished for disobeying orders — political considerations in the wake of the death of DeGaulle mandated that the situation be dealt with kid gloves. Leclerc was reassigned to southern France, where he supervised the French drive into northern Italy, and after the war, settled into a quiet retirement in the same region.
In Paris, Leclerc's failure to liberate the city meant the fighting in the streets continued. Colonel Rol's partisans and the men and women manning Paris barricades benefited immensely from the break in fighting afforded by Choltitz's need to face Leclerc. Rol managed to restore effective communications with his men across the city via specialty telephone lines, such as those maintained by the department of public works, and ensured the distribution of Molotov cocktails and medical supplies to barricades across the city. Furthermore, the distraction of most of the German troops in Paris allowed partisans to retake several public buildings that had been recaptured by the Germans. As the firing drew closer on the morning of the 24th, many Parisians thought their hour of liberation was at hand and were overjoyed. Many prepared liberation meals, readied a stored-away bottle of wine, or generally prepared for what they assumed would be the largest party of their lives. It didn't arrive. Most Parisians in the city had little idea of what was actually going on in Sevres, and when the firing died off as Leclerc pulled back, many assumed that it was because the Germans had surrendered. The truth was revealed when the Germans returned to their positions guarding Choltitz's "central bastion." Those German soldiers who had remained to guard the perimeter were glad to see their comrades return, not least because they were afraid the partisans, buoyed by the spirit of liberation, would overwhelm them and begin a slaughter of the men who had begun to demolish the city.
In reality, Colonel Rol could not have assaulted the central bastion even with most of the Germans gone. The previous days' fighting had virtually exhausted his ammunition and weapon supply. In many places, Parisians were reduced to wielding gardening implements as they "guarded" their neighborhood barricade. Rol's continued pleas for air supply yielded no fruit as long as Leclerc still had a chance to liberate the city and Pierre Koenig in London still had a chance to avoid giving communists weapons they might later use against the Gaullists. By 6 p.m. on the evening of the 24th, however, Koenig received word of Leclerc's withdrawal and arrest. The last hope for early Allied liberation gone, he had no choice but to order the postponed weapons drop to go forward. At an airfield near the English town of Harrington, the engines of dozens of B-24 bombers of the "Carpetbagger" squadron warmed up. Since January 1943, they had been the men responsible for air dropping weapons and badly-needed supplies to resistance organizations from Norway to the Pyrenees. Now, they prepared for a maximum-effort operation, codenamed Operation Beggar, that had been first ordered by Koenig, then delayed when it had appeared that Leclerc would break into the city. As the sun began to set, the bombers roared into the air, their bomb bays loaded with 300 tons of specially packaged weapons, ammunition, radios, and medical supplies.
Due to the secrecy of the operation and in an attempt to keep the Germans from being informed about the drop, word was not radioed to Paris until 10 p.m., when the bombers were already in the air. A harried Colonel Rol was forced to quickly mobilize parties to prepare to recover the weapons, which would be dropped at points across the city. Racetracks, open plazas, and the Bois de Boulogne were all selected as the landing zones. Shortly before midnight, the citizens of Paris were jolted from their beds by the drone of aircraft engines and the sounding of air raid sirens. Fortunately for the American and British pilots of the B-24, the German 88s had long since all been deployed in their anti-tank role, and almost no flak greeted the low-flying aircraft. In the streets of Paris, many uninformed citizens sought shelter from what they feared would be another German air attack on the partisans. Since the firebombing of northeastern Paris, the average Parisian had been far less fervent in his resistance to the Germans. White parachutes blossomed in the black sky, and partisans rushed to recover the precious packages that thudded to the ground with a heavy solidity. Not all were successful in recovering the packages, of course. At the place de la Republique, SS soldiers at the nearby Prince Eugenie Barracks drove off the partisan group that had gathered in the plaza to recover that area's drop. The scene was repeated at other points where German soldiers happened to be present. At a few, the partisans managed to drive off the Germans, but this was uncommon. Of the 300 tons of supplies dropped on Paris that night, approximately 190 tons were successfully recovered by the partisans. The rest were destroyed by the Germans, or recovered by non-partisan Frenchmen. The weapons — in particular the precious bazookas — were distributed across the city to points of need. Not all the weapons went to the areas where Colonel Rol dictated, but most did, and the 25th promised to be a hot day for the German occupiers of the city.
In Rastenburg, Hitler's late night/early morning strategy session began with a focus on Paris. Upon being informed of the French division's approach to the city, Hitler asked, "Is Paris burning?" General Warlimont replied, "Yes, my fuehrer," for lack of any concrete information. Hitler again asked about the location of the Karl mortar and the 25th Panzer division and associated formations. The mortar had not been able to move due to Allied air attack, but the two divisions continued to approach the city, and were expected to arrive early in the morning of the 26th, about the same time the mortar would reach the city. Each was slightly more than 24 hours away from Paris.
***
Paris awoke on the morning of the 25th in what was rapidly becoming a desperate situation. Food was rapidly running out — even the rutabagas that formed most of the average Parisian's diet were becoming scarce — and although the water supply was still reliable, electricity most certainly was not, with most neighborhoods receiving just an hour or two a day — if anything at all. As the sun rose toward noon, Parisians learned how close they had come to liberation the day before, and how that liberation had been foiled by the Germans. This inspired some to join the partisan bands or those watching the barricades, but to most, it merely served as a reason to remain at home for just a little longer, despite the worsening food situation. Gunfire, which had slackened over the 23rd and 24th with the poor FFI ammunition situation and the German focus on the Second Armored Division again increased. Rol's communists and the non-communist FFI fighters used their air-dropped weapons to good effect, luring Germans into ambushes and other situations that negated the German advantage in firepower. The tanks that remained in the central portion of the city after the desperate action to halt the French division became prime targets for the bazookas and Gammon grenades dropped into the city. One favorite tactic was to pry up cobblestones in front of a barricade, then emplace command-detonated mines beneath the cobblestones, which were then carefully replaced. German tankers, buttoned up in their sealed armored boxes, rarely saw the disturbed stones before the explosives were triggered.
Choltitz, focused on forming a new defensive line south of the city, was slow to recognize the fact that the partisans were back with a vengeance. Throughout the morning, he had been drawing up plans for a far shorter, concentrated defensive line running from Sevres to Choisy to form the southern portion, and the north bank of the Seine would mark the western and eastern lines of defense. An inner line would be drawn up around the ring road of boulevards, and a final defensive position would be built around the already-secured "central bastion," which lay along the Loire in the center of the city. This would necessitate giving up Orly airfield, but with the withdrawal of the Luftwaffe, it was of limited utility anyhow. Furthermore, the line could be easily extended to cover the northern portion of the city if — when — the Allies encircled it. Shortly before noon, Choltitz contacted Field Marshal Model with news of the previous day's action and of his new plan of defense. He asked for further reinforcements, but Model informed him that none were available and even that the 25th Panzer division and associated formations would soon be diverted to stop the Allied Third Army, which was thrusting toward the German border. Choltitz, frantic, pleaded with Model not to deny him the promised Panzer divisions. Model reluctantly acquiesced, but stated that Choltitz could not count on any further assistance. Indeed, Model was planning to evacuate his Soissons headquarters — 80 miles north of Paris — for fear that the Allies would reach it in just a few days.
Choltitz came away from the conversation deeply disappointed that no further help could be gotten, but relieved at least that the panzers would soon arrive in Paris. The previous days' fighting against partisans and the French Second Armored, plus losses to desertion or simple surrender to the Allies had cost Choltitz several thousand men. Of the approximately 20,000 defenders present on August 19, he had just 16,000 remaining. Furthermore, the Allied weapons drop was sure to indirectly inflict many more casualties, and Choltitz doubted that he could successfully hold anything outside the central bastion without those reinforcements. At 2 p.m., with fighting intensifying, Choltitz heeded the suggestion of his staff officers and ordered the flooding of the Paris Metro. The Metro, opened in 1900, was one of the world's largest, and had a ridership second only to that of the Moscow system. During 1940, it had served as an air raid shelter (though not to the extent of the one in London) and had continued operation despite rationing, parts shortages, and all the problems associated with the Vichy government. Keeping the tunnels dry was a major undertaking at the time. The original tunnels, which had been hand-dug beneath the city, were not lined, and constantly seeped water and flooded during times of heavy rain. Heavy-duty pumps were employed to keep the tracks clear of water in places, and during the early days of the uprising, the tunnels were used for communication and transportation by the FFI and communists alike. With the destruction of the Seine river bridges, the Metro tunnels became even more crucial for the Resistance. In addition, some Resistance cells used underground storage compartments as hideaways for weapons and ammunition. The Metro tunnels were just one part of the catacombs deep below the city. Colonel Rol himself used a public works sewage tunnel as a headquarters. But on the afternoon of the 25th, German soldiers smashed the pumps that kept the tunnels dry. In some places, the pumps were even reversed, flooding Seine water across the tracks. No warning was given to those in the tunnels, and tragically, the Metro was one of the few things in the city with (relatively) reliable electricity service. Dozens were electrocuted when water covered live electrical connections. Hundreds of others, some of whom were civilians sheltering from gunfire above, drowned when water filled the stations in which they were sheltering. Choltitz deemed the flooding a critical military measure intended to cut Resistance communications and transport — it undoubtedly was, but the civilian population suffered disproportionately.
Fortunately for Colonel Rol, the tunnel in which he made his headquarters did not flood along with the Metro and so many other tunnels. From his position underground, he continued to direct the fighting, and continued to plead for more air drops of weapons and supplies. Even after the previous night's drop, thousands of Parisians wanting to fight were forced to use kitchen knives, gardening implements, or other makeshift weapons for lack of anything else. Two additional drops on the nights of the 25th and 27th resulted in an additional 400 tons of supplies thrown from aircraft, but less than half of that total reached partisan hands. Due to the ineffectiveness of the drops, the Allied command forbade any more for fear that the Germans were benefiting more from the supplies than the FFI was. Even without the drops, however, the partisans — communist or not — made their presence known. Every alley was a potential deathtrap for German soldiers, and every cobblestone potentially hid an antitank mine to knock out one more of the dwindling supply of German armor. Toward nightfall, Choltitz forbade pursuit off large thoroughfares and ordered a return to the concentration/block-clearing tactics that had secured the city halls in the first days of the uprising. Before sunset caused a halt in German offensive operations, the Nazis had again driven the partisans from three city halls that had been retaken while the Germans had been distracted the previous day. Many public buildings — epicenters of fighting city-wide — were becoming pockmarked, burnt shells of their former selves after changing hands for the third or fourth time.
***
Late that evening, the advance elements of 25th Panzer division and its associated formations began arriving in the city. Forced to evade Allied air attack by moving at night, and not always successful at dodging the bombers, both divisions had started their trip from Denmark at half strength in equipment. An additional third to a quarter of that strength had been destroyed en route, leaving the two divisions with three-quarters of their manpower strength and three-sevenths of their equipment strength. Together, the two divisions massed 19,914 men, 89 tanks, and 47 artillery pieces of various calibers. These trickled in at various times over the next couple of days, and gave Choltitz a total strength of just over 35,000 men and 100 tanks. The Karl mortar, bereft of a portion of its ammunition train, which had been destroyed in an Allied air strike, arrived before dawn on the morning of the 26th at the Gare de l'Est, the main building of which had been burned down in Luftflotte 3's air attack on the northeastern portion of the city. The enormous train-car-sized mortar was mobile, courtesy of a large set of tank tracks that had been attached to its carriage, and Choltitz ordered it camouflaged in a hastily-dug emplacement in the central bastion. By the afternoon of the 26th, the mortar was ready to fire, and at 3:40 p.m., launched the first of its 600mm shells at an apartment building occupied by the Resistance. The shell did not hit the building directly, instead impacting in the street in front of the building. This did not greatly matter, however, as each shell weighed upwards of two tons apiece. The resulting explosion destroyed all the surrounding buildings, and even killed several German soldiers who had not evacuated far enough back from the building. Fortunately for the Resistance, the Karl Mortar's utility was limited by its 4.5 mile range, which was just under that of a 105mm gun. From its dug-in position in the Tuilleries, it could range anything inside the ring boulevards, but the outlying neighborhoods and the suburbs were completely beyond its reach.
The deployment of the Karl for the first time and the arrival of Choltitz's reinforcements marked the beginning of true city fighting in Paris. From the beginning of the uprising on August 19, the Germans had deliberately avoided venturing into the narrow alleys and streets that formed the average Paris neighborhood. Choltitz's official order of the 25th to avoid pursuit of partisans into these tight neighborhoods was the best example of this. In the first week of the uprising, the Germans had concentrated on the large public buildings the FFI and communists had seized as strongpoints — the city halls, the public works buildings, the train stations, and so forth. These were typically located on main thoroughfares, and all were separated from the residential portions of their neighborhoods by plazas or parks. By concentrating on these, the Germans did not become entangled in deep street fighting of the sort seen on the Eastern Front. In many ways, the fighting resembled that seen in Shanghai in 1932, when Japanese soldiers battled Chinese ones amid a large civilian populace. Chinese soldiers had sought refuge from Japanese firepower amid the populace, striking from hidden positions before the League of Nations enforced a cease-fire in the city. In Paris in 1944, there could be no cease-fire.
Choltitz had the three divisions he believed required to hold the heart of Paris in a siege, and although the Allies were rapidly advancing across France and beginning encircle the city, Choltitz vowed to hold on as long as possible. "Every Allied soldier drawn here," he remarked, "is one not advancing on Germany." Before resisting the Allies, he still had to drive the partisans from the streets, however, and that meant going into the narrow alleys of residential Paris. There, every corner could hide a Molotov or bazooka, every shadow could (and often was) a rifle, and resistance was often heavy. With reinforcements, more tanks, and the Karl mortar to provide heavy gunfire support to the Germans, Colonel Rol's partisans could not stand and fight the encroachment into the residential neighborhoods. Rol himself was forced to move his headquarters from the underground wastewater tunnel to an outlying neighborhood after his hideaway was discovered by German soldiers. In a terrifying, pitch-black fight, Rol and his men had fought off the German squad in brutal, stinking hand-to-hand combat. Some were killed, but Rol himself managed to escape. By this time, Rol had almost total command of the partisans in the city. De Gaulle's death, the defeat of the Second Armored and the deaths of most of the Gaullist FFI leaders meant that the communists were almost alone in maintaining any sort of organized command structure. In addition, many Parisians took the Second Armored's retreat as a form of cowardice, and this greatly blackened the Gaullist cause in the city. The average Parisian was much more inclined toward the communist effort after the divisions' retreat than before it.
At this point, something should be said about the Allied air effort, or the lack of it in this case. As at the concentration camps, an appropriate air attack at the right time might have relieved the suffering of tens of thousands of Parisians and greatly aided the uprising. At this point, the central portion of Paris along the Seine was completely devoid of Parisians, and any air strike in the area would have killed only Germans. Even at this late date, however, SHAEF was reluctant to bomb Paris for fear of damaging any number of historical landmarks or killing French civilians en masse. The thought behind avoiding Paris was that by bypassing the city and not fighting in the streets, the Allies could avoid further damage to irreplaceable buildings and the civilians living in the city. In addition, although the Resistance was well informed about happenings within the city, the ad-hoc nature of communications outside of it, coupled with the communists' distrust of the Allied command, meant intelligence was not adequately shared until well after the final Allied assault began. Thus, because of a lack of intelligence, the Allies limited air strikes to rural locations such as rail and road junctions and German concentrations in the open. The fast pace of the Allied advance soon meant that when Paris was bypassed, most air assets were being used well to the east of the city. By early October, when most of the landmarks had been destroyed by the Germans and most of the civilian populace fled, the Allies were willing to bomb the city and begin its liberation in earnest. But all through August, September, and the early part of October, Choltitz and the German garrison were granted a free hand to do what they wished without fear of Allied air attack.
The 26th also marked the beginning of the refugee crisis in the city. With the Karl mortar firing into residential districts, German soldiers kicking down doors and firing through windows in an effort to hunt partisans and the almost complete disappearance of critical functions like electricity and food, Parisians began to depart the city in droves. Many had fled the bombing of the northeast portion of the city, but this had not triggered a large-scale flight in the way that the expansion of the fighting on the ground did. Tens of thousands of Parisians simply packed up their belongings and began walking west or south in an effort to reach Allied lines or at the very least a portion of the city in which fighting was not taking place. Thousands sought shelter at the Palace of Versailles, which had avoided damage during the Second Armored's fight. Still others passed through the Allied lines, where the Allies were grossly unprepared to handle the situation. Not until the establishment of the Allied Military Government for France on September 3 under Pierre Koenig was the first effort made to provide shelter or food for the refugees. Tent cities sprung up south of Paris to house tens of thousands of refugees, while hundreds of thousands of others fled to cities in southern France where they strained the new government to its shaky limits. An aid campaign organized in the United States "for the benefit of the helpless French" saw some success, but Paris housed nearly three million people at the beginning of the war, and even the best-intentioned aid efforts fell short. Again, not until mid-October and the beginnings of the Allied advance on the city was an effective refugee assistance campaign finally organized. Few Parisians actually died as a result of their displacement, but their plight was by no means a pleasant one. Hundreds of thousands of French men and women slept in thin-walled tents all through the cold winter of 1944-1945, and thousands remained displaced until the late 1940s.
***
On the 27th, the U.S. Third Army reached Chateau-Thierry, cutting the main east-west rail link between Paris and Germany. By the 30th, the Americans reached Soissons and cut the Paris-Brussels rail line. Paris was now cut off from the rest of the world. Tens of thousands of prisoners stacked up in German-guarded Paris jails would now be stuck there until liberation. Crammed into fetid, squalid conditions, hundreds died as a result of malnutrition or disease. Despite the conditions, thousands more partisans were thrown into still more-crowded jails after surrendering to the Germans. Despite the ferocity of the fighting within the city, some basic courtesies were maintained. For the most part, partisans surrendering to Germans or Germans surrendering to partisans (rarer) were not shot out of hand. To be sure, there were cases where the fury of the moment caused an execution or two, but this was no more different than the scene on the Eastern Front. In comparison to the average combat on the Western Front, it bordered on pure savage barbarity, but to the Germans who had fought the Soviets, this sort of thing was nothing new. In several cases, Choltitz even agreed to prisoner exchanges with various partisan groups. The average rate was seven Frenchmen for every German, but that varied depending on the negotiation skills of the partisan representative and how willing Choltitz was to compromise that day.
And in many neighborhoods, life went on with something approximating normality. In Courbevoie and St. Denis, on the northwest and north sides of the city respectively, little fighting took place and the biggest struggle was to find enough to eat amid shrinking supplies of food. By the final days of August, events in the city had almost settled into a routine. There would be the ever-present streams of refugees heading out of the city through the German defensive line, German soldiers would begin clearing blocks in the central portion of the city at dawn and end at sunset, and the partisans continued to man barricades and strike back whenever an opportunity proved itself available. This situation rarely changed. On a few occasions, an errant shot was directed from someone in the refugee columns at one of the German soldiers watching by the side of the road. The Germans would invariably follow up with a spray of machine-gun fire at the column, killing dozens if not hundreds of French men and women, leaving a score of bloody bodies behind. But the column eventually resumed, whether or not the shooter was ever found. Parisians merely trudged over or around the bodies of their fallen neighbors in search for some safe place in the Allied lines.
In the first weeks of September, the civilian infrastructure of the city utterly disintegrated. What little civilian public works remained operational through the uprising were shut down by Choltitz on September 2 in an effort to encourage the flight of refugees from the city. Choltitz reasoned that by denying the civilian populace the means to remain in the city, it could be cleared of the unnecessary population, making it easier to target partisans and make the city ready for defense. Only the water works, which was needed to supply German soldiers, remained operational, and that only partially, as water to neighborhoods unoccupied by German soldiers was shut off. Many Parisians were forced to drink from the Seine, which had been polluted by the fighting and the destruction of the bridges crossing it. Furthermore, the shutdown of the sewage system ensured that tens of thousands of Parisians used the river as an open-air sewer, making the situation ripe for disease. Dysentery and typhus appeared, and cases spread rapidly. Only the flight of most of the populace kept the situation from becoming an epidemic.
The Germans were slightly more comfortable than the Parisian civilians. Though their rations were far more nourishing than those of the Parisians who could even find food, they did not live well. Limited stockpiles had been accumulated before the rail lines were cut by the Allied armies, and many ordinary German soldiers — the sunny weather notwithstanding — feared a repeat of the Stalingrad catastrophe. Despite these fears, Choltitz's quartermasters managed the food situation as well as could be expected. Though the Germans were hungry, they were starving. They didn't have as much ammunition as they wanted, but neither were they down to their last bullet.
By September 13, nearly a month after the uprising had begun, Choltitz felt confident enough in his situation to radio to Rastenburg that "the area within the ring boulevards has been cleared of partisan influence." This is unlikely, as that night, FFI fighters launched an attack toward the site of the Karl Mortar. Though they were unsuccessful in damaging it, the attempt shows that even at the "central bastion," Paris was still largely in the hands of the partisans. The Germans had likely merely ensured that the partisans had to strike at night or risk being shot out of hand. On the 5th, Choltitz had issued an order proclaiming that any French man or woman spotted within 100 meters of the loosely-defined central bastion would be shot without warning. This order was issued after a German colonel had been killed by his French mistress, who herself committed suicide rather than be captured. Despite instances such as this, Choltitz clearly felt that the city was being calmed by force. On the 14th, he issued orders for the demolition of the Paris landmarks that had thus far been mined. The several hundred factories Hitler had ordered destroyed were long since rubble, but Choltitz had neglected to begin demolitions of most Paris landmarks for fear of antagonizing the populace. With the situation somewhat under control, he no longer had to fear this. All through the afternoon of September 14th, the center of Paris rang with the sounds of exploding buildings, many of which were centuries old and of priceless historical value. The Louvre, the Cafe de l'Univers, Palais-Royal, Chamber of Deputies, Ecole Militaire Petit Palais, Palais-Bourbon, Hotel de Crillon, Palais de Justice, Grand Palais, Ministry of Finance, Hotel Continental, Palais du Luxembourg, and dozens of other landmarks that had defined Paris became rubble. The Arc de Triomphe was blasted into pieces by a score of German tanks after resisting several demolition charges. The dome of Les Invalides, which had survived the demolition of the telephone exchange in its basement, was finally brought down, covering Napoleon's damaged tomb in a mass of rubble. And finally, the Eiffel Tower, that most Parisian of landmarks in the early 20th century, was destroyed in such a manner as to block access to the destroyed D'Iena bridge. Choltitz ordered the rubble of many of the buildings to be transformed into strongpoints for defense. Just as the ruins of Monte Cassino had served as an excellent defensive position in Italy earlier that year, so too would the ruins of dozens of French buildings.
Choltitz gave the orders to destroy these buildings with a heavy heart. He took no joy in the destruction, and gave the order only reluctantly. It wasn't that he hated the French or any of their buildings. He simply had orders to defend the city and to destroy those monuments, orders given by Hitler himself. He had delayed destroying them for as long as he could, first protesting that there were not enough men available to lay charges, then that there were not enough explosives to do the job. The arrival of reinforcements and the discovery of the torpedo factory had eliminated both of those problems. Searching for another excuse, he seized upon the idea that destroying the monuments would inspire the resistance to fight harder. But even that excuse went by the wayside when virtually the entire city rose in revolt, requiring Choltitz to drive the population out of the city. Now there were no more excuses, no chance to avoid the inevitable. He simply had to follow orders -- there was no other choice.
In the wider world, the destruction of so many French landmarks was spread far and wide as an example of German barbarity. Propaganda pictured the Notre Dame cathedral (left undestroyed) standing among a sea of ruins. French men and women outside Paris were outraged by the German destruction, and the demolition of so many buildings was repeated in the Saar after the war, when the French soldiers patrolling that nation's occupied zone demolished many Rhenish castles and other historical monuments "in memory of Paris." In the city itself, Choltitz was relieved to discover that the destruction of the monuments — done at the behest of Hitler as well as for defensive strategy — did not cause a massive uprising of the populace. Most uncommitted French citizens had already left the city, and those who would fight the Germans already were. To Choltitz, there was only one thing left to do: Prepare for the inevitable Allied attack.
***
In mid-September, the Allied attack was still a month away. Antwerp had fallen on September 4, and for Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, and Montgomery, the Rhine awaited. The Allied supply situation was on the whole bad, but not nearly as bad as it might have been. The Red Ball Express was doing good work keeping Patton and Bradley from eating through the whole of their stockpiles, and it was hoped that the capture of Antwerp would do much to relieve what shortages there were. On September 5, Patton was given the green light to advance to the Moselle River, encompassing Metz. This town fell on September 10, whereupon Patton was summoned to a strategy meeting with Eisenhower, Bradley, and Montgomery in Brussels. There, Montgomery laid out his plan for Operation Market-Garden, a combined airborne and ground assault to outflank the defenses of the Siegfried line by advancing through Holland. Patton objected, as this would starve the other two allied armies of supplies. He proposed an alternative plan, codenamed Operation Stencil, which, like Market-Garden, would be a combined airborne/land operation, but focused on the upper Rhine at Strasbourg, rather than the lower Rhine at Arnhem. Patton remarked, "Give me the gas and guns, and we can bounce the Rhine in 10 days."
Over Montgomery's (and when he heard of it, Churchill's) objection, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for Patton's plan. Owing to the need to stage airborne forces from French bases rather than British ones, Patton was given 10 days to coordinate and prepare for the operation. Montgomery's plan for an advance across the lower Rhine was shelved, and he was ordered to use his forces to achieve the more limited goal of clearing the Scheldt estuary, which guarded the approaches to Antwerp. Montgomery's XXX Corps did so with skill, capturing 20,000 men of the German 15th Army and opening the estuary to shipping traffic by September 30. Operation Stencil began on September 20, and in its initial stages moved quickly, but soon bogged down in the face of German resistance. The men of the 82nd Airborne Division and 1st Independent Polish Paratroop Brigade, dropped near the bridge at Strasbourg, managed to hold on for three days longer than the plan had called for, but in the end, were forced to surrender by a German counterattack. The failure of Operation Stencil to successfully cross the Rhine is well known, and Patton's subsequent reassignment did little to mollify Montgomery and the British, who felt that had Montgomery been given the go-ahead, his plan would have succeeded where Patton's failed. Counterfactual historians often point out Montgomery's plan as an example of something that could have shortened the war by several months. Nevertheless, Patton's failure to successfully cross the Rhine in September meant that the Allied armies were temporarily brought to a halt for lack of supplies. The limited stockpiles remaining were used to advance the central front into the Rhineland, but no crossing was attempted again until after shipping into Antwerp restored Allied supplies of fuel and munitions.
With the Allies temporarily halted by Patton's defeat, SHAEF's eyes returned to Paris, which remained a festering red dot on the Allies' strategic maps. The September 14 destruction of so many Paris landmarks, relayed to the rest of the world through FFI transmitters, shocked the Allies, who were preparing for Patton's offensive and thus unable to immediately act against the city on a large scale. On September 18, the U.S. 26th, 95th, and 104th infantry divisions, freshly arrived in Normandy, were ordered to begin closing the ring around the city. These arrived in the region on the 26th, and launched probing attacks on Choltitz's outer ring. Much intelligence about the state of this ring was provided by FFI fighters, who were also given surplus weapons by the three U.S. divisions which had orders to avoid close combat before reinforcements arrived. On October 4, the same day that the 82nd Airborne Division surrendered in Strasbourg, the Eighth Air Force launched its first air attack on Choltitz's central bastion in Paris. The bombers devastated the central portion of the city occupied by the Germans and destroyed the Karl mortar that had been plaguing the FFI for almost two months. On October 2, the 10th U.S. Armored Division arrived in Paris' area of operations, and orders went out for the city to be liberated at "the earliest possible opportunity."
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On October 12, the attack on Paris began. From all sides, American troops, accompanied by a short and sharp artillery bombardment and air strikes from A-20 bombers, began to break through Choltitz's outer line of defenses. Thanks to information on German positions from the FFI, the Americans were able to bring up artillery and specifically target hidden German strongpoints. By the evening of the first day, the brittle German line fragmented. Occasionally, die-hards stood and fought to the death, but by and large, the hungry Germans surrendered after fighting for several hours. At the time that the battle for Paris began, Choltitz still had 33,000 soldiers and 84 tanks remaining to the defense. The Allies had upwards of 50,000 men involved in the battle, with additional reinforcements available had the commander of the attack, General Joseph Lawton Collins, requested them. Because the American force was so ably assisted by FFI partisans, who numbered at least 20,000, he felt no need to do so. He did, however, avail himself regularly of Allied air support available to the Corps involved in Paris. Collins had been commander of VII Corps in the First Army, and was widely considered the best corps commander in the U.S. Army at the time. For this reason, he was assigned command of the Corps assigned to liberate Paris.
By October 15, the second line of defenses, the one organized around the ring of boulevards surrounding the central portion of Paris, was fully invested. Here, the assistance of the FFI was less useful, primarily because Choltitz's garrison had mostly cleared the region inside the loop of partisans. Occasionally, FFI fighters were able to show the Allies a weakness in the German defense, but after this point, the attack became a street-by-street slog. Collins had resolved at the start of the attack to be "deliberate and careful not to waste the resources allotted me." This meant that whenever a German strongpoint was encountered, the Americans would bring up artillery and fire directly into the strongpoint, rather than attempt to immediately attack with infantry. The GMC M3 halftrack-mounted 75mm gun was used with great effect in this way. In addition, Allied tankers found — as had the Germans two months earlier — that armor-piercing ammunition was the best way to penetrate the thick stone walls of many older French buildings. In many ways, the fighting in Paris was similar to that occurring simultaneously in the German city of Aachen, two hundred miles to the north. There, as at Paris, Hitler had ordered the city held at all costs. Both cities had immense historical value, both were defended by "true Nazi" commanders, and both cities featured fierce street-by-street fighting.
No account given here of the fighting of this period can do it justice. A reader can best call up descriptions of the fighting in Stalingrad or read Albert LeDoux's "Liberation Delayed" for an excellent account of these days. Rubble-strewn streets, destroyed buildings, and snipers abounded for both sides. American infantrymen learned to hate the tough stone of older French buildings, as it was all but impervious to small arms fire, and almost by law, seemed to hold a German squad that had to be rooted out before the advance could continue. But continue it did, by dint of hard effort and relentless Allied pressure. By October 23, Choltitz's position was becoming increasingly untenable. Ammunition, never plentiful with the drain forced by fighting partisans, was becoming critical. In addition, several stockpiles of food had fallen into American hands, and German soldiers, hungry and desperate, were beginning to surrender en masse. Their morale, never strong in the midst of a surrounded and besieged city, had fractured badly when the Americans attacked. Fully one in three surrendered before Choltitz himself did on November 11, 1944.
The day before the surrender, the central bastion was ablaze with explosions as the Germans destroyed anything of value. As a final coup de grâce, the Germans destroyed the city's waterworks, which had been supplying the defenders with water from the rubble-choked banks of the Seine throughout the battle. So much rubble had been dropped into that most French of rivers that in many places wreckaged formed dams, causing the river's water to rise above its banks, flooding the surrounding streets before the dams washed away, only to reform further downstream, where another pile of rubble waited. Alone amid the chaos, Notre Dame survived. Though damaged by shelling and American bombing, it still stood when Choltitz sent a messenger bearing a white flag to General Collins. American forces had not yet penetrated the central bastion, but fighting was taking place a half a dozen blocks from Choltitz's headquarters in the basement of the Hotel Meurice. When Choltitz surrendered, he had just 8,000 men still fighting. 14,000 had been killed, and 11,000 had already surrendered to American or French forces. American casualties were lighter, but still high. 8,329 American soldiers were killed in the liberation of Paris, and French casualties are estimated to have been higher than those of the Germans. Including the period of the uprising prior to October 12, it is estimated that upwards of 80,000 French men and women were killed directly resisting the Germans in Paris. This does not include the tens of thousands of civilians believed to have died due to malnutrition, disease or fighting in the embattled city. Much of the central portion of Paris lay in ruins, and virtually all public buildings and structures used as defensive strongpoints were either destroyed or damaged to the point that they had to be torn down. Despite the high cost, Paris had at last been liberated.
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Ironically, three days after Choltitz surrendered, Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive, a massive counter-attack intended to relieve the defenders of Paris, who he saw as among the most noble in the entire German Army. The attack nevertheless went forward after the surrender and despite inadequate preparation. Though the Allies were caught off guard, the offensive was stopped by massive aerial bombardment, made available by the clear skies and good weather in which the attack was launched. The German force was cut to pieces. The weakened Germans, devastated by the loss of their few remaining mobile formations on the Western Front and facing an Allied force securely supplied through Antwerp, were unable to resist a second attempt at crossing the Rhine in January 1945. This set the stage for the Allies to meet the Soviets south of Berlin on April 7, 1945 and bring the war to an end.
Choltitz was tried for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Trials and found guilty on all four counts. He was hanged to death on October 16, 1946 alongside the other surviving Nazi leaders convicted at the trial. Over a hundred other German officers who participated in the siege of Paris were handed over to French courts following the war and were also given death sentences. Far more sentences of death (98) were handed down by the French judges than life sentences (37) or acquittals (3). As the instigators of the Paris atrocities were made to pay the price for their actions, so too was Germany at large. The Saar and Palatinate, which lay in the French occupation zone, were methodically stripped of industrial equipment, which was shipped westward to replace that which had been destroyed in Paris. Much malicious destruction was also done to the two regions out of a desire for simple revenge for what had been done to Paris. The French approach to its occupied zone was very similar to that of the Soviet Union in its zone. This fact greatly hurt West Germany in the initial years of that nation's existence and French atrocities sparked some Neo-Nazi groups in the region, which has the highest number of such organizations today despite laws forbidding their existence.
Despite the rebuilding of its industries, Paris itself lay in ruins until Pierre Koenig, prime minister of the postwar French government, ordered the beginning of a rebuilding campaign in 1947. He vowed that the capital of France would be returned to Paris from Lyons (the interim capital set up by the Allied Military Government) by 1955. Parisian citizens displaced by the battle for Paris proved to be a powerful political force in the postwar government. Largely communist or socialist leaning, they tended to disdain involvement in American or European groups due to the belief that the Allies had deliberately avoided capturing Paris and in part had contributed to the city's plight. They promoted a strong self-government leaning toward the left end of the political spectrum, and disdained international involvement and treaties. Many believed America and Britain to be at fault for Paris' plight, and disdained further dealings with those two countries. The Koenig government succeeded in signing and implementing the Treaty of Brussels, the NATO treaty, and the European Coal and Steel Community, but resistance from the Parisien Bloc in 1958 nullified France's participation in the European Economic Community organization, which continued to grow despite the predictions of those who believed such an organization was impossible without French participation.
Colonial issues proved to be one of the few issues where the Parisien Bloc found allies among the French political establishment. France's few remaining colonies fell into the hands of independence movements, which were duly recognized as the rightful governments of those territories over the objections of the Gaullist fringe, which dominated the right-side spectrum of the French government. Despite the Gaullist protests, Indochina, Algeria, Guiana, and the nations of French West Africa soon gained their independence relatively peacefully and painlessly. Though internal strife developed in some of the new countries, France itself found itself uninvolved. In 1962, the Parisien Bloc succeeded in forming a coalition government, and assumed the prime ministership. Although the government lasted just seven years, it succeeded in forcing through radical changes to France, including French withdrawal from NATO (potentially triggering that year's Cuban Missile Crisis), a massive public works campaign, and dozens of other social and political reforms. In 1969, the Parisien/communist coalition collapsed when the communists proposed enacting closer ties to the Soviet Union. Many Parisiens objected on the same grounds that they objected to treaties with the United States and European nations, and the coalition was replaced with a new government, which steered France on a course closer to center.
The Social Democratic and Socialist government that replaced the coalition government in 1969 brought France into the EEC as a provisional member, but continued independence-minded elements in the government kept France from becoming a full member. Today, France is as set in its own independence as ever. The French maintain a distinct personality from the rest of Europe, and strongly maintain their independence in the face of a tide of internationalism sweeping Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Several counterfactual historians have offered theories that had De Gaulle not disappeared and Paris been liberated early, France would have steered a more internationalist course and become part of a United States of Europe closely aligned to the United States of America, standing alongside it in the American invasion of Iraq as well as Afghanistan, to name just two events. This seems unlikely, given the past course of French history, and in reality, a world with De Gaulle and an early liberation of Paris likely would resemble our own.
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