D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

balconies, but soon had to withdraw inside as bullets began to hit the hotel.
    Two SS officers arrived at the Hôtel Meurice in an armoured vehicle. Arnim took them up to see Choltitz. They announced that on direct orders from the Führer they were to ‘save’ the Bayeux tapestry, which was in the cellars of the Louvre, by taking it back to Germany. By then the windows of the Meurice were under constant fire from the Louvre, because members of the FFI were shooting at the red and black Nazi banners hanging from the façade of the building. Choltitz pointed out the Louvre and told the two SS officers where the tapestry lay. He remarked that for the finest of the Führer’s soldiers it would surely be a minor matter to take possession of it. The two of them did not dare object to his sarcasm. Persuaded of the impossibility of their task, they withdrew.
    Clemens Graf Podewils, a well-known war reporter for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , was the next visitor. His assignment was ‘to cover the heroic defence of Fortress Paris, and thus strengthen the determination of the homeland to resist’. But it did not take Podewils long to see that the German occupation of the French capital could now be counted in days. Arnim experienced ‘an oppressive sense of paralysis’, wondering what the end would bring.
    The next morning, 20 August, a Gaullist group audaciously seized the Hôtel de Ville. It was part of their plan to take over as many key buildings and ministries as possible to install ‘republican legality’ and thwart the revolutionary aspirations of the Communist FTP. The sight of the French tricolore flying from public buildings once more stirred Parisians profoundly. Individuals followed this example and began to display the French flag from their balconies, even in the rue de Rivoli, close to Choltitz’s headquarters. Long lines of Wehrmacht trucks were spotted hidden under the plane trees along the Boulevard de la Madeleine, ready to withdraw eastwards. Rumours began to spread that the Germans were about to pull out.
    The Swedish consul-general, Raoul Nordling, then negotiated a truce with Choltitz. The German commander even agreed to recognize the FFI as regular troops and allow the Resistance to hold on to the public buildings in return for respecting German strongholds. The truce was endorsed at a meeting of the National Council for the Resistance, because only one of the Communist delegates was present. Rol-Tanguy was furious when he heard. In any case, sporadic fighting continued. Shirt-sleeved young men and women in summer dresses, some wearing old helmets from the First World War, continued to hold the barricades which had been constructed out of cobblestones, overturned vehicles, bedsteads, furniture and chopped-down trees. Many started to wear red, white and blue brassards with the initials FFI embroidered on them by wives and girlfriends.
    On Monday, 21 August, the National Council met again. All of Chaban-Delmas’s arguments to maintain the truce were violently rejected by the Communists, who regarded it as an act of treason. Eventually, a compromise was reached. The truce would not be rejected until the following day. The Communists prepared posters ordering ‘ Tous aux barricades! ’ Skirmishes between the Germans and the FFI continued. In the Place de l’Odéon, just below the German strongpoint in the Palais de Luxembourg, a grenade was thrown into a German truck, setting it on fire. The Resistance in Paris was dismayed that the BBC still made no mention of the uprising.
     
    That day, the British 11th Armoured Division relieved Leclerc’s 2ème DB near Argentan, allowing them to be ready ‘for new missions’. All the division’s thoughts lay ‘in the direction of Paris’. They heard over the radio that American reconnaissance patrols had already reached Rambouillet and the Forêt de Fontainebleau, while the 7th Armored Division was preparing to cross the Seine south of Paris at Melun, Montereau and Sens. ‘What are we doing here?’ was their dismayed reaction. ‘The honor of relieving Paris is surely ours. We have been given a specific promise.’
    Leclerc’s troops knew that Paris was in a ferment, and their understandably impatient commander felt that ‘Paris cannot wait much longer for its solution’. As a Frenchman, and especially a conservative Catholic who feared some sort of Communist coup in the capital, he found it impossible to accept Eisenhower’s argument that