Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

to swim.’) Darlan flew to Algiers from Vichy on 5 November, two days before the American invasion, to see his son in hospital. His arrival caused great confusion in the American camp. They did not know whether he would serve their purposes or oppose the landings. Meanwhile their chosen leader Giraud, then in Gibraltar, started to change his mind at the last moment, causing even greater confusion.
    The landings which took place two days later succeeded largely because Admiral Darlan and General Juin in Algiers secured the ceasefire. The deal which the Americans then made with Darlan, who claimedhe was still loyal to Marshal Pétain, was satisfactory from a purely military point of view, but it set off a political storm in the United States and in Britain. The greatest anger, not surprisingly, was among the Free French in London and the Resistance of the interior.
    De Gaulle had not been told of the landings on 7 November. He was furious when he heard the news the following morning. ‘I hope the Vichy people will fling them into the sea!’ he yelled. ‘You don’t get France by burglary!’ When the implications of the American deal with Darlan later became clear – that Roosevelt had no scruples about using unrepentant Pétainists – it looked as if de Gaulle faced political oblivion. The new regime in North Africa was nicknamed ‘
Vichy à l’envers
’ – Vichy back-to-front – because Darlan had hardly changed his coat, let alone his views. He still acknowledged Pétain as leader, the Gaullist cross of Lorraine was still outlawed and Jews had to continue wearing the yellow star. But on Christmas Eve 1942 the balance of power in French affairs was fated to change when a young monarchist, Second Lieutenant Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, assassinated Admiral Darlan with a .38 Colt automatic issued to him by Colonel Douglas Dodds-Parker of the SOE (the Special Operations Executive).
    The overall organizer of the operation was Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie, brother of Emmanuel, the leader of the Libération Resistance movement. Henri d’Astier, an officer in military intelligence, was part of a royalist group in close touch with the Comte de Paris, the pretender to the throne of France. In fact he was a monarcho-Gaullist, a combination which was less paradoxical then than it might appear. De Gaulle was seen as a regent who might bring about a restoration of the French royal family.
    The knowledge and involvement of de Gaulle’s officers, and presumably therefore of the General himself, are hard to doubt. A third Astier brother, General François d’Astier, who had recently rallied to de Gaulle, was found to have left Bonnier’s group with $2,000 during a brief mission to Algiers. The notes were traced to a British transfer of secret funds to de Gaulle’s Comité National in London. De Gaulle’s rather Delphic disclaimer of involvement was most unconvincing, especially when everyone knew that Darlan’s death had revived his political hopes.
    General Eisenhower was deeply shaken when woken with the news.He summoned a meeting at Allied Forces Headquarters in Algiers on Christmas morning. The fact that Bonnier had used an SOE pistol prompted Eisenhower to threaten to resign if any British involvement in the assassination was discovered. Dodds-Parker submitted a report exonerating SOE and this was accepted. Curiously, the French autopsy, perhaps for complicated political reasons, later described the bullet as of 7.65mm calibre and of French manufacture.
    The Shakespearian drama of Darlan’s death, with all the elements of treachery and rival ambitions, has long exerted a strong fascination. Conspiracy theories abound, with minutiae disputed. But present evidence strongly suggests, as another SOE officer then in North Africa put it, that it was ‘a Gaullist and royalist plot with a measure of British collusion’. It is the size of that ‘measure’ which cannot yet be defined. According to the same officer, Dodds-Parker – entirely on his own initiative – had approached the chief of SOE’s naval section just before the assassination to see whether he could shelter a certain individual on board his ship, the
Mutin
.
    Suggestions that Churchill back in London had received the message that ‘we’ve got somebody here who’s going to have a crack at Darlan’ are almost certainly wrong. But whispers of the forthcoming attempt had clearly reached London, even if SOE’s headquarters in Baker Street