locked up, most of their officers had blood pouring down their faces. Spiekerkotter found that their own heavy- drinking officer, Leutnant Nowack who had toasted ‘Calvados still in German hands’ as they left Normandy, now seized his bottle of eau-de-Cologne from the depot in Chartres and poured that down his throat.
Other surrender negotiations proved more dangerous for the emissaries. One German officer prisoner sent with a white flag was shot down along with an FFI officer. And a Luftwaffe flak officer killed himself by holding a grenade against his stomach and pulling out the pin. But by nightfall, the 2eme DB found itself responsible for over 12,000 prisoners who had to be lodged and fed amidst a hungry population who did not want any food to be given to the Germans. Later that night, infuriated Parisians tried to storm the fire station to kill the prisoners from the Palais Bourbon.
De Gaulle, after a meeting with Leclerc at the Gare Montparnasse, went to the ministry of war in the rue Saint-Dominique to make a symbolic visit to his old offices from 1940, when he was a junior minister. He was greeted by a guard of honour from the Garde Republicaine. He found that nothing had changed. Even the names alongside the buttons on the telephone were the same. The building had hardly been used during the four years of Occupation until the FFI took it over.
De Gaulle finally agreed to go to the Hotel de Ville, where Georges Bidault and the National Council of the Resistance awaited him. Whatever the suspicions lingering between the two sides, their acclamation of the general who had refused to abandon the fight was overwhelming. There, in the great hall, their tall, awkward yet regal leader made one of the most famous speeches of his life: ‘Paris. Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated! Liberated by herself, liberated by her people, with the help of the whole of France, that is to say of the France which fights, the true France, eternal France.’
Some members of the Resistance present still felt that he had not paid sufficient tribute to their work.[82] And when Bidault asked him to proclaim the Republic to the crowds waiting outside, de Gaulle refused. This was not a snub, as many people believed. De Gaulle in fact replied, ‘But why should we proclaim the Republic? She has never ceased to exist.’ Petain’s
When the fighting was over, most of the correspondents headed for the Hotel Scribe, which they had known from before the war. Hemingway and David Bruce, surrounded by some of the writer’s improvised militia, went straight to the Ritz, which Hemingway was determined to ‘liberate’. But the most legendary part of the Liberation was what one young officer of the 2eme DB described as ‘
The city seemed to suffer from a collective hangover the next morning. David Bruce recorded in his diary that the previous day they had drunk ‘beer, cider, white and red Bordeaux, white and red Burgundy, Champagne, rum, Cognac, Armagnac and Calvados… the combination was enough to wreck one’s constitution’.
‘Slowly the tank hatches opened,’ wrote an American officer, ‘and bedraggled women crawled stiffly out.’ In the Bois de Boulogne, Capitaine Dronne went round pulling the young women out of his men’s tents. One of them made advances to him. To roars of laughter from his men, he replied, ‘Me, I don’t give a damn. I’m homosexual.’ The lovers of the night then breakfasted together on K-Rations round improvised campfires.
Saturday, 26 August was also a fine, sunny day. There were a few
General Gerow, hearing the small-arms fire, persuaded himself that the 2eme DB was failing to carry out its primary duty of clearing the city. He still seethed at the way the French commanders flouted his authority. Hearing that General de Gaulle was planning a victory procession that afternoon, he sent the following signal at 12.55 hours to the 2eme DB: ‘Direct General Leclerc that his command will not, repeat not, participate in parade this afternoon but will continue on present mission of clearing Paris and environs of enemy. He accepts orders only from me. Ack [nowledge] and report when directive delivered to Leclerc. Signed Gerow.’
Once again, Gerow was ignored. At 15.00 hours, de Gaulle took the salute of the Regiment de Marche du Tchad by the Arc de Triomphe. This uniquely French moment was in no way undermined by the international composition of the 2eme DB, with its Spaniards, Italians, German Jews, Poles, White Russians, Czechs and other nationalities.
When de Gaulle set off on foot down the Champs-Elysees on his way to Notre-Dame, he was guarded on either side by half-tracks of the division. Colonel Rol-Tanguy’s headquarters had called for 6,000 members of the FFI to line the route of the procession, but their presence did little to reassure de Gaulle’s entourage. He was followed by Generals Leclerc, Koenig and Juin. Behind them came the rather disgruntled members of the National Council of Resistance, who had not at first been invited. But the joy of the enormous crowds — lining the great avenue, perched on lamp posts, leaning out of windows and even standing on roofs — could not be doubted. Over a million people were estimated to have thronged central Paris that afternoon.
Shooting broke out on the Place de la Concorde, causing panic and chaos. Nobody knows how it started, but the first shot may well have come from a nervous or trigger-happy
De Gaulle was then taken by car to the cathedral of Notre-Dame. Cardinal Suhard was conspicuously absent. He had been prevented from attending because he had welcomed Petain to Paris, and had recently presided over the memorial service in honour of Philippe Henriot, the Vichy minister of propaganda assassinated by the Resistance.
When de Gaulle entered Notre-Dame more fusillades broke out, both inside and outside the cathedral. But de Gaulle never flinched. As almost everyone threw themselves to the ground around him, he continued to march up the aisle, doubly determined to disarm the FFI, which he regarded as a far greater threat to order than any remaining
Although the French reluctance to acknowledge American help still rankled deeply, General Gerow subsequently accepted Leclerc’s peace-making overture. His 2eme DB was ready to move on 27 August and went into action against the Germans round Le Bourget aerodrome. Also on that day, Eisenhower and Bradley paid ‘an informal visit’ to Paris. Eisenhower had invited Montgomery, but he refused on the grounds that he was too busy. Despite the informality of the event, General Gerow could not resist meeting his superiors at the Porte d’Orleans with a full armoured escort from the 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron to accompany them into the city. The following day, V Corps reported, ‘General Gerow, as military commander of Paris, returned the capital city to the people of France.’ When informed of this by Gerow, General Koenig replied that he had been in charge of Paris all along.
Gerow arranged for the 28th Infantry Division, newly attached to V Corps, to march through Paris the next day to create ‘a parade of the might of the modern American Army for the populace’. Generals Bradley, Hodges and Gerow were joined by General de Gaulle at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe, where they laid a wreath. Then the four men reviewed the march-past from a stand erected by American engineers out of a Bailey bridge turned upside down on the Place de la Concorde. It was entirely fitting that Norman Cota, now the commander of the 28th Division, should lead the parade. Few men had demonstrated so clearly, as he had done at
