Nazi Paris

The History of an Occupation, 1940-1944

Allan Mitchell

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781845458584
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Segunda Guerra Mundial

Basing his extensive research into hitherto unexploited archival documentation on both sides of the Rhine, Allan Mitchell has uncovered the inner workings of the German military regime from the Wehrmacht's triumphal entry into Paris in June 1940 to its ignominious withdrawal in August 1944. Although mindful of the French experience and the fundamental issue of collaboration, the author concentrates on the complex problems of occupying a foreign territory after a surprisingly swift conquest. By exploring in detail such topics as the regulation of public comportment, economic policy, forced labor, culture and propaganda, police activity, persecution and deportation of Jews, assassinations, executions, and torture, this study supersedes earlier attempts to investigate the German domination and exploitation of wartime France. In doing so, these findings provide an invaluable complement to the work of scholars who have viewed those dark years exclusively or mainly from the French perspective.

PART I

TAKING OVER

(June 1940–June 1941)

Chapter 1

LAW AND ORDER

Brilliant as the planning and execution of German military operations had been in May and early June of 1940, the same cannot be said of the Occupation that followed. France had fallen, but now it needed to be governed. Entering into the details, one can only be astonished at the lack of foresight and the extent of resulting administrative confusion. An early indication was that the first official military staff communiqué from occupied Paris was released on 14 June as German troops were still entering the city, yet a second did not follow until more than a week later. In the meanwhile, soldiers and civilian administrators fanned out in the capital, randomly requisitioning hotels, public buildings, offices, and other quarters wherever they could find them. Not quite a ghost town, Paris was nonetheless strangely silent. Most of its bakeries, bars, bistrots, restaurants, cinemas, and boutiques were closed and shuttered. The streets were nearly empty and quiet, except for the occasional clatter of passing German military vehicles, horse-drawn caissons, motorcycles, or marching squads of gray-clad soldiers. On the sidewalks and squares a few uniformed French police officers stood about, lacking reason or motivation to direct the sparse traffic.¹

This scene of desolation has often been described in eyewitness and subsequent accounts, and it provides the appropriate setting for a brief outline of the slowly emerging administrative structure of the German Occupation that attempted to gain control of a chaotic situation. Initially, to reduce matters to their simplest terms, the basic problem was that the German command itself was in virtual chaos. The first phase of the Occupation was therefore characterized by a welter of titles, acronyms, ill-defined prerogatives, and overlapping duties as the German bureaucracy struggled to adapt itself to the particular circumstances of occupied France.²

That the invaded French territory should be placed under a military occupation was not a conclusion foregone. Occupied portions of Poland, for instance, were left largely to the cruel mercies of the SS. Alsace and Lorraine were in effect annexed to Germany and put under a Nazi Party Gauleiter. The Netherlands and Luxemburg were accorded civilian administrations. But France and Belgium were still considered unfinished business in the summer of 1940, since the conflict with Great Britain remained in progress, for which the German Wehrmacht was supposedly preparing Operation Sea Lion. Hence, the fateful decision was made to leave the main Occupation in military hands while the French nation was being carved up into palatable morsels. Besides the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, the two northern Atlantic departments of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais were detached to military headquarters in Brussels. Mussolini's Italy received a thin slice (later expanded) of Alpine region opposite Switzerland. And, famously, the southern third of France was placed under the political authority of Marshal Pétain's quasi-independent regime at Vichy. The rest, cut off from the Midi by an arbitrary demarcation line, thereby became the fiefdom of the German army. It included three-quarters of the French population, most of its industrial complex, all of the Atlantic and Channel coastline, and of course crucially the capital city of Paris.³

It would be proper to speak of four layers of German military administration insofar as occupied France was concerned. At the top, needless to insist, was the supreme command of all combat forces, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW)—in a word, Hitler. Ever since the ouster in 1938 of generals Blomberg and Fritsch, both of whom faced scandal charges, and the subsequent resignation of the estimable Ludwig Beck, who protested the risk of a European war over Czechoslovakia, as chief of staff, the German military establishment remained securely in the grasp of the Führer. This proved to be of capital importance for France, because, as countless documents testify, a nod from Hitler's headquarters put an end to every argument. In the Third Reich and its conquered territories, a personal dispatch signed by Hitler (Führererlass) was the final word. As a rule, it was Hitler's chief adjutant, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, who dealt directly with Occupation authorities in Paris. But Hitler's wish was unquestionably Keitel's ukase, and there was never an instant of doubt that instructions from OKW meant an order to do the master's bidding. Distant and aloof as he seemed, the Führer actually took a keen interest in France for a while and did not hesitate, from time to time, to intervene in affairs of the Occupation. Yet there were two manifest difficulties with such a procedure. The first was Hitler's almost total ignorance of Paris, which he rapidly toured once in his life at dawn on 28 June 1940, soon after signing the Armistice at nearby Compiègne. His immortal pose for photographs that morning at the Trocadéro in front of the Eiffel Tower was just that, a pose, indicating no familiarity whatever with things French. The second difficulty, as it proved, was that Hitler exercised his unchallenged authority over France in ways that too often turned out to be self-contradictory. Symptoms of this disruptive tendency would become apparent in the initial phase of the Occupation and were to persist as the months passed.⁴

Beneath the OKW ranked next the chief commander of the German army, the Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres (OBH), General Walther von Brauchitsch. Usually withdrawn at the castle of Fontainebleau, 30 kilometers southeast of the capital, or with increasing frequency removed altogether from French soil in Berlin, Brauchitsch essentially became an absentee landlord. During the first months of the Occupation, he did participate actively in determining its administrative structure, but the repeated shifts of personnel and constant revision of job descriptions indicated that this was an improvisation without carefully considered objectives. Technically, the phlegmatic Brauchitsch functioned throughout the opening weeks of the Occupation both as OBH and as Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich (MBF), the military commander in France. On 25 October 1940, the latter post was formally relinquished by Brauchitsch, and that date in effect marked his permanent abdication from the military governance of France. At most, he remained as a kind of moral preceptor for the officers and troops stationed there, irregularly issuing sermons about the importance of proper conduct in order to preserve the “reputation” (Ansehen) of the German army. Apart from that sacred and tirelessly repeated concept of military honor, it is fair to conclude that Brauchitsch left no deep impression on the Occupation.⁵

The third level of authority was the one abandoned by Brauchitsch and bestowed on General Otto von Stülpnagel late that October. For all practical purposes, the position of MBF had heretofore been filled by an elderly career officer, General Alfred von Streccius, who rather ineffectually labored under the awkward title of Chief of the Military Administration in France (Chef der Militärverwaltung in Frankreich). Since this designation was simply abolished when Stülpnagel took office, Streccius was not literally his predecessor, although that was actually a distinction without much difference. Stülpnagel thus soldiered on under the mistaken assumption that he would thereafter be solely in charge of all French affairs in the Occupied Zone. The reality was different. Behind the administrative curtain, a central theme of his tenure as MBF was the steady erosion of Stülpnagel's authority, which was finally to culminate in his resignation in early 1942. Everyone, it seemed, had a direct line to some higher power in Berlin—Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Eichmann, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Speer, Canaris, or Hitler himself, to name only the most obvious. Personally sensitive and excitable, Stülpnagel attempted in vain to assert his primacy in Paris while others deliberately set about to undermine it. Still, his strenuous efforts were abetted by a dedicated bureaucratic cadre that included several outstanding military and civilian administrators. Housed on the Avenue Kléber in the sprawling Hotel Majestic, which instantly became a sort of huge ugly Vatican of the Occupation, they were divided into a military staff (Kommandostab) and a parallel administrative staff (Verwaltungsstab). Of these, the latter soon became more significant, due in large measure to its capable director, Dr. Jonathan Schmid, and to the emergence of the astute Dr. Werner Best as its central figure. The military staff was confined mostly to technical matters concerning German troops stationed in France, although the influence within it of a young and efficient German officer, Lt. Major Hans Speidel (a post-war NATO commander), was not negligible. Also worthy of specific mention, for future reference, was Dr. Elmar Michel, who headed the MBF's Economic Section and who was later to succeed Schmid after his departure from Paris in August 1942.⁶

The fourth rung in this chain of command was represented for most of the first phase of the Occupation by Lt. General Ernst Schaumburg, an officer too frequently neglected by historians. In the earliest flowcharts depicting the German administration of the Occupied Zone, two separate posts had been created to handle the quotidian problems of administration in the capital: a municipal commandant of Paris (Stadtkommandant von Paris) and, again awkwardly, a Chief of the Military Administrative District of Paris (Chef des Militärverwaltungsbezirks Paris). The latter included oversight of the entire Department of the Seine as well as the adjacent departments of Seine-et-Oise and Seine-et-Marne. As this arrangement proved both unwieldy and redundant, however, the eventual result was that the two jurisdictions were unified (minus the two neighboring departments) under a single title: Kommandant von Gross-Paris. The sobriquet of “Greater Paris” thereby became synonymous with the Department of the Seine, meaning the city and immediate environs, the famous Parisian banlieue. This consolidation, which began on 1 March 1941, gave Schaumburg immense authority over the day-to-day regulation of the Paris region and enabled him to dominate his French counterpart, the Prefect of the Seine. With his residence centrally located on the Right Bank in the swanky Hotel Meurice, on the Rue de Rivoli across from the Louvre, Schaumburg kept watch over the interaction of the municipality and its troops of occupation. Also indicative of his importance in the military hierarchy is the fact that Schaumburg ordinarily functioned as the MBF during Stülpnagel's frequent furloughs from the capital.⁷

As the acknowledged second-in-command in Paris, Schaumburg's role was further enhanced by his duties as the supervisor of police in the Department of the Seine. France had no national chief of police, so it was natural for German authorities in the capital to deal with the Prefecture of Police in Paris, even though its legal jurisdiction was only departmental. Under German pressure, the former Prefect of Police was replaced in late June by the compliant Roger Langeron. The problem was that many municipal police units had disappeared during the collapse of the Third Republic, and the formidable Garde Mobile Républicaine, considered too militarized by the Germans, was dissolved. The police structure therefore needed to be reconstituted under close surveillance of the principal German security agencies—the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo), Sicherheitsdienst (SD), and Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP)—which together came indiscriminately to be identified and feared by the French as the Gestapo. This reorganization of police forces in the Paris region proved to be one of the first and most crucial forms of collaboration.⁸

Numbers told the story. A memo in mid-October 1940 accounted for exactly 26,010 French municipal police and rural gendarmes in the departments of the Seine, Seine-et-Oise, and Seine-et-Marne. One must recall that this area in and around Paris contained an estimated population of 6,785,000, according to the memo. At the same time, the manpower of the German police force in all of France probably exceeded no more than 3,000 and was never to become far more numerous. It was therefore imperative for the Occupation to gain the cooperation of indigenous police units that were coherent and strong enough to maintain control of the streets of Paris and yet were insufficient to become a focus of armed opposition to the German military forces stationed there. Accordingly, side arms were allowed for French minions of the law only with caution and in strictly regulated quantity.⁹

In this regard, the Occupation was largely successful. Dozens of internal German reports confirmed that relations with French police officials, if not always cordial, were “correct” and “without friction.” Generally, the French did as they were instructed, although often not with enough efficiency to suit their prompters. One sore point was the so-called obligatory salute (Grusspflicht) expected of uniformed French policemen when passing German military personnel. Complaints abounded that the policemen either neglected to give such acknowledgment or did so in an unacceptably casual manner. Trivial as that matter might seem, it bore heavy symbolic importance for the Germans. When reprimanded about this sloppy comportment, Langeron promised conformity to German wishes but noted in reply that the French lacked the same military tradition as that outre Rhin.¹⁰ Besides endless guard duties and irregular house searches, Parisian police were required to direct traffic and to assist in roundups or razzias of suspected Communists, Gaullists, and Jews, which became routine. In addition, the police were pushed to the foreground whenever a popular demonstration threatened to erupt. The most significant incident of that sort occurred on Armistice Day, 11 November 1940, when students and schoolchildren gathered on the Left Bank near the Sorbonne in the morning, then marched or rode the subway in the afternoon to the Champs-Élysées. Eyewitness accounts varied considerably. Whereas many French tended to magnify the event as a significant display of protest, the Germans played it down, claiming that the youthful crowds, thanks to the conspicuous assistance of the French police, were “effortlessly dispersed.”¹¹ The only other manifestations of note during the initial phase of the Occupation transpired in May 1941 at the Wall of the Federals in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, where several dozen demonstrators twice gathered to commemorate May Day and the resistance of the Paris Commune in 1871. Yet these events, too, had little public resonance and were easily contained by alerted and supervised French police.¹²

The French constabulary was much involved in two broader actions of law enforcement in the early days of the Occupation. One was the arrest and incarceration of British civilians left behind in June 1940, mostly in Paris, while their troops were hastily evacuated during the disastrous military operations that ended on the beaches at Dunkerque. A German police report in early August listed 662 English subjects who had been jailed at Fresnes, just south of Paris. Other prisoners of various types were meanwhile being held on the fringes of the capital at the former tuberculosis sanatorium of Aincourt, also at Clairvaux and Fort Romainville, and in downtown Paris at the Centre des Tourelles.¹³ A second category of special note was composed of Communists, who were described on police blotters as “active” and whose agitation was “ever increasing.” These terms were relative, however, and one military staff memo suggested that the populace of Paris was in fact astonished that the Germans were not reacting more harshly to repress them.¹⁴ With the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 still in force, Occupation authorities were apparently content to leave such measures to the French, and the Prefect of Police, as always prodded from above, dutifully began to keep a regular box score of persons arrested and imprisoned. The count reached exactly 988 by 1 December 1940 and more than 1,700 by 20 February 1941, and was to exceed 2,400 by late June 1941.¹⁵ Yet such statistics must be treated with some skepticism, since they were compiled by French police officials eager to ward off criticism by the Germans that they were performing with inadequate zeal. To evaluate these figures properly, one would need to know much more about who was appr...