Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

now deserted. For the German tanks on the Place de la Concorde, the gentle incline to the Arc de Triomphe offered a perfect field of fire. But this part of Paris gave a misleading impression of calm. Elsewhere, confusion was compounded by rumours springing from either hopes or fears: the Americans were approaching from the south-west; a fresh panzer division had arrived from the north; there was no ammunition left; the Germans had mined every building in central Paris; the
fifis
had managed to cut the wires to the detonators. Nobody knew for certain what was happening.
    On this day, 22 August, a new wireless station, Radiodiffusion de la Nation Française, came on air. It was to act as the voice of the Resistance. Proclamations from various bodies were read out, often followed by the Marseillaise, which had been banned for the last four years. People would turn up the volume and open their windows to make sure everybody in the street could hear it too.
    The new station was soon warning people to avoid certain areas. The rue de Seine in Saint-Germain-des-Prés was particularly dangerous because the Germans had a line of fire from their strongpoint in the Palais du Luxembourg. The Place Saint-Michel at the bottom of the boulevard was so dangerous that it was known as ‘
le carrefour de la mort
’. But however invaluable the broadcasts, people could only listen during the short periods when the electricity supply was restored.
    That evening the firing died away. ‘Fritz and
fifis
went off for supper,’ remarked Jean Galtier-Boissière. And sightseers soon emerged to inspect the damage.
    The Germans continued to improve their principal strongpoints in the centre of Paris: the Prinz Eugen barracks near the Place de la République, the Palais du Luxembourg (the Senate), the Palais Bourbon (the National Assembly), the École Militaire, the Invalides and the Hotel Majestic on the Avenue Kléber. The Hotel Meurice on the rue deRivoli, which was General von Choltitz’s headquarters, was less heavily fortified.
    There, the commander of Gross-Paris received the formal order from Hitler’s headquarters to defend Paris to the last man and turn the city into ‘a pile of ruins’. Choltitz, to the enduring gratitude of its citizens, had no desire to carry this out, but needed the Allies to arrive soon so that he could surrender to regular forces. If they did not come in time and Hitler discovered the degree of procrastination in following his instructions, he would order in the Luftwaffe.
    Finally, that evening, there was a change of heart in the Allied camp twenty kilometres south-west of Bayeux. A messenger managed to convince General Eisenhower’s staff officers that failure to move on Paris immediately would lead to a terrible massacre and possibly the destruction of the city. Eisenhower, who had turned down de Gaulle’s appeal two nights earlier, was now convinced. Shortly before nightfall, Leclerc received the order from General Omar Bradley to advance rapidly on Paris. The exultant yells of ‘
Mouvement sur Paris!
’ provided an electrifying charge of fierce joy.
    At dawn the following morning, Wednesday 23 August, the 2e DB, in two columns following parallel routes, pushed eastwards out of Normandy as fast as it could through heavy rain towards the Île de France. The hot weather had broken at the worst moment, and their tanks and half-tracks slithered on the slippery roads. Leclerc went ahead. He had over 140 kilometres to go to Rambouillet, a town forty kilometres from the capital, lying close to a very ill-defined front line.
    The officers of Leclerc’s division found a curious collection of irregulars at Rambouillet when they arrived in the afternoon, of whom the most colourful was Ernest Hemingway. Officially, Hemingway was a war correspondent for
Collier’s
magazine, but he was more interested in playing the professional soldier. He was surrounded by some locally recruited and heavily armed ruffians, and seemed to be making up for lost opportunities in Spain seven years before.
    Based in the Hotel du Grand Veneur, waiting for the 2e DB to advance the last stretch to Paris, were Colonel David Bruce of the OSS (who in 1949 became the United States ambassador to France), JohnMowinckel from a field unit of the Secret Intelligence Staff, and a senior member of the Gaullist intelligence service, Michel Pasteau, whose
nom de guerre
was ‘Mouthard’.
    Hemingway and his group of
fifi
irregulars had been