Americans in Paris: Life & Death Under Nazi Occupation (35 page)

As de Chambrun said goodbye, Pétain asked, ‘Do you think that in spite of everything that’s happened, your father-in-law would consent to come back and help me?’ René thought he might, but he warned Pétain that two people would do anything to prevent Laval’s return to politics: his wife and his daughter.

René left with a burden heavier than the signed copy of a book for François Monahan. He had become the intermediary between Pétain and Laval. It was not a role he had sought, he claimed, but no one was better placed: family friend of Pétain, devoted son-in-law of Laval. In Paris the next day, he received a telephone call from Dr Bernard Ménétral. The Maréchal wanted René to fix a meeting with Laval as soon as possible. The rendezvous had to remain secret to avoid arousing the suspicions of the current prime minister, Admiral Darlan, and the American Embassy, which had repeatedly expressed its antipathy to Laval. René returned to Vichy and, with Ménétral, went to the forest of Randan to mark a spot at the crossing of two bridle paths. Pétain and Laval would meet there, supposedly by chance, the next day.

‘My father-in-law and I arrived at 4.25,’ René wrote. ‘A little later, we saw the marshal’s car. As he was getting out, I leaned toward my father-in-law and told him what Josée had asked me to say, “Don’t give in. Remember December thirteenth.”’ Pétain and Laval went into the woods without eavesdroppers so that the old Maréchal could ask him to return as prime minister. Despite the secrecy, the American Ambassador, Admiral William Leahy, learned of the meeting within twenty-four hours: ‘Ralph Heinzen, of the United Press, told us on March 26 that Laval had had a secret conference with Pétain near Vichy. That same day M. de Chalvron, one of our friends in the Foreign Ministry, reported that he was certain that Laval would be returned and that contact had already been established through Laval’s son-in-law, René de Chambrun.’ Leahy informed President Roosevelt, who sent Leahy a message for Pétain that America would cease all cooperation with Vichy if Laval were restored.

Admiral Darlan, desperate to remain in office, showed FDR’s cable to the Germans. His ploy failed. Hitler now saw the premiership of France as a contest between himself and Roosevelt. He ordered Pétain to choose: America and Darlan or Germany and Laval. Discussions dragged on among Pétain, Laval and Darlan over who would have which post and on what terms. Every detail was reported to Berlin and Washington.

 

On 1 April 1942, Josée Laval de Chambrun celebrated her thirty-first birthday by driving out from Paris to the Château de Candé to play golf and ping-pong with Charles and Fern Bedaux. Charles and Fern were masterful golfers. Having Laval’s daughter to visit helped to cement their friendship with her father. Laval, after all, would be useful if he became prime minister again. Josée bumped into Hans Jürgen Soehring, the German officer who was living with her actress friend, Arletty. In the evening, René joined Josée at the chateau for dinner with the Bedauxs and other friends. René and Josée drove from Candé at midnight to the Villa Argizagita near Biarritz, where Aldebert and Clara de Chambrun were waiting for them. On Sunday, amid the splendour of the Pyrenees, they celebrated Easter together. Clara did not record whether René confided in her the degree to which he had become involved in Vichy politics or that Laval was about to return to office. As an admirer of Laval, she would have approved anything her son did to bring him back. When the Easter festivities ended, both Chambrun families returned to Paris.

In Paris, Josée became embroiled in another kind of Franco-German dispute. Arletty and her German lover, Soehring, were squabbling. Arletty sought Josée’s advice, and Soehring called to accuse her of stirring up trouble between them. On 8 April, René went to Châteldon by train with Josée, François Monahan and Monahan’s brother-in-law, Alexandre de Marenches. On board, they met Ernst Achenbach, counsellor at the German Embassy, and the pro-German journalist Jean Luchaire. If René was not a collaborator, the company he was keeping left little room for another interpretation.

On 13 April, Pétain made his choice: Laval and Hitler over Darlan and Roosevelt. Six days later, Laval became prime minister with Darlan in the government as military chief. Including Darlan was not sufficient to placate Roosevelt, who reacted immediately. He recalled Admiral Leahy from Vichy, and the US navy disarmed the French fleet in France’s Caribbean colonies. The United States blamed René de Chambrun for instigating Laval’s coup, but he pleaded that his involvement had come by chance while trying to help François Monahan. Like his mother, René was guided more by family and friendship than politics.

The Americans were not the only ones displeased to see Laval back in office. Josée had begged her father not to serve under Pétain, whom she had hated since the 13 December affair. Jeanne-Eugénie-Elizabeth Laval, Pierre’s wife, was even more adamant. When German Ambassador Otto Abetz arrived at Châteldon to congratulate Laval, Jeanne Laval refused to welcome him or to accept flowers from his French wife, Suzanne. ‘I don’t want to see Germans in my house,’ she told her husband, as she went on making jam in the kitchen.

 

In the summer of 1942, Germany appointed a new
Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich
, 56-year-old career soldier and First World War veteran General Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel, to replace his cousin, General Otto von Stülpnagel. Otto had implemented Hitler’s policy of shooting hostages in retaliation for Resistance attacks. His successor, who had been involved in an aborted but undiscovered conspiracy to depose Hitler in 1939, believed that killing hostages both violated the soldier’s code and failed to intimidate the Resistance. In fact, martyrdom attracted more people into its ranks. But Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel was deprived of the powers his cousin had to police Occupied France. They went instead to Major-General Karl Oberg of the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi Party’s security agency known as the SD. The SD tracked down the Reich’s enemies, and the Gestapo took action against them. The 45-year-old Oberg looked like the archetype of Hollywood’s evil Nazi: shaved head, rimless glasses, black uniform and pug face. Born in Hamburg, Oberg joined the SS in 1931, two years before Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Now, he was in Paris as
Höherer SS und Polizeiführer
, Higher SS and Police Leader, to take over policing of the Occupied Zone from the Wehrmacht. Oberg was the protégé of Reinhard Heydrich, tasked with emulating the vicious policies that Heydrich was instituting in Czechoslovakia. The Gestapo chief, Colonel Helmut Knocken, fell under his command, as did the Criminal Police (Kripo), the SS and the SD. Oberg commanded 10,000 German military and political policemen, and he had the support of ten times that many French police who took their orders from Vichy. He had two missions: to send Jews from France to die in Poland and to destroy the French Resistance. He ordered what became known as
la rafle du Vel d’Hiv
, the round-up of the Vélodrome d’Hiver, on 16 July. The Germans dragged 13,000 Jews without French citizenship from their homes in Paris to the bicycle stadium where the French government had interned unwanted foreigners like Arthur Koestler in 1940. Among those held there without proper sanitation or sufficient food and water were 4,000 children. When the hierarchy of the Catholic Church appealed to Laval on their behalf, Laval answered, ‘They all must go.’ The Vélodrome d’Hiver was a transit point from which the helpless Jewish men, women and children were taken to Drancy, herded onto trains and sent to death camps in Poland.

Oberg’s vicious treatment of Jews was nearly matched by the ferocity of his campaign against the Resistance. On 10 July 1942, he declared, in addition to
résistants
themselves, he would punish their families. To intimidate ‘saboteurs and troublemakers’, he announced, ‘One. All close male relatives in ascending line, including brothers-in-law and cousins of the age of eighteen, will be shot. Two. All similarly related females will be sentenced to hard labor. Three. All children of men and women affected by these measures, who are under the age of seventeen, will be put in reform schools.’ Oberg hunted down assassins who were shooting German soldiers in the streets and Metro stations of Paris as well as
résistants
who were killing German soldiers and mutilating their bodies in the countryside. His network of French informers spied on and denounced their countrymen. His agents tortured everyone they suspected of possessing information on Allied pilots escaping to England. Executioners worked full-time shooting
résistants
and hostages in the prison at Mont Valérian and outdoors beside the waterfall in the Bois de Boulogne. It did not take long for Oberg to earn the sobriquet ‘Butcher of Paris’.

 

Summer should have led to relief of some kind. Instead, the Germans made life worse. On 1 June, the German military government decreed that all Jews must wear the
étoile jaune
, a yellow Star of David, sewn onto their outer garments. Within days, some of the estimated 110,000 Jews still in Paris bravely demonstrated against the order. Jewish war veterans wore their military decorations beside the yellow stars, and, to the irritation of the German police, ‘let it be known that they were proud to be wearing their national emblem’. Gaullists, communists and
Zazous
, young Parisians with a counter-cultural affinity for American jazz music and long hair, sported yellow flowers, yellow handkerchiefs and paper stars in solidarity. Such sympathizers were a brave minority. The star had a practical purpose: it identified Jews who violated General Karl Oberg’s order prohibiting them from entering restaurants, cafés, theatres, cinemas, music halls, markets, swimming pools, beaches, museums, libraries, historic monuments, race tracks and parks.

Sylvia Beach, always sensitive to the hurts of others, felt the indignity inflicted on her Jewish friends. Her assistant, Françoise Bernheim, who had remained close to Sylvia after the shop closed, was also forced to wear the star. Displaying it brought derisive stares, and occasional attacks, from anti-Semites. Not displaying it meant arrest. Sylvia wrote that

When Sylvia, Françoise and an American artist friend, Katherine Dudley, attended a lecture by Paul Valéry at the College de France, a sympathetic usher hid Françoise’s overcoat with its Star of David so she could come inside.

Sylvia and a small group of friends walked through the Latin Quarter with Valéry after his lecture at the College de France. They passed the Rive Gauche, a German propaganda bookshop in what had been the Café d’Harcourt. Police guards were stationed outside to prevent students from smashing its plate-glass windows, as they had when it first opened. When Valéry saw the books of his mentor, Stéphane Mallarmé, on display to promote National Socialism, he was outraged. Sylvia wrote,

Sylvia visited Valéry at home in the 16th Arrondissement, within sight of the Arc de Triomphe. An air attack by the RAF began just as Sylvia and the Valéry family sat down to lunch. The old poet leaped from his chair and ran to the window to watch the bombardment. His younger son explained to Sylvia, ‘Papa adores these raids.’

 

Of the 340 Americans interned at Compiègne in January, only 173 remained in June. The rest had been repatriated in exchange for Germans in the United States or allowed to return to their homes in Paris. Another sixty-six internees in the camp were from the American countries of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, San Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua. A Red Cross delegation visited the camp on 16 June and reported, ‘The morale in the camp is excellent.’ Of seven barracks, three were specifically for US citizens. ‘The brick barracks are all of one model,’ the Red Cross wrote, ‘each one contains seven large rooms of fourteen beds and six smaller rooms of two or three beds.’ Of the food, the inspectors found, ‘American cooks handle the preparation of the meals and the spokesmen declare that they are very well prepared. The spokesmen check on the provisions from the standpoint of quality and quantity. In our opinion the food distributed corresponds to the basic rations.’ Clothing, however, was ‘not in good condition’. Some of the internees had been arrested in January without time to pack, and they were unable to obtain any clothes apart from those they arrived in: ‘Many of them are denuded of everything and do not have the means to buy clothes for themselves; and their families do not either (rationing of cloth, etc.); they do not have enough underclothing and would be very glad if they were aided to obtain some. They do not all have leather shoes, about ten per cent wear wooden shoes.’ Washing facilities were adequate. ‘From the hygienic point of view this camp allows nothing to be desired,’ the Red Cross noted. It added that medical care under the Cuban chief physician, Dr Soler, was ‘excellent’.

A camp inspection on 13 April noted, ‘There are no air raid precautions, and the latter do not seem to be necessary, as the camp is situated away from any dangerous zone.’ Then, on 24 June, United Press monitored a German radio broadcast that announced, ‘British planes last night dropped bombs on an internment camp near Compiègne, northeast of Paris, killing three persons and wounding one.’ The
New York Times
confused matters with a report one month later that ‘four Americans were killed and sixteen wounded when a plane, apparently in difficulties, jettisoned bombs on an internment camp at Compiègne, northeast of Paris on June 21’. Leland Harrison, the US Minister in Berne, Switzerland, raised the possibility that ‘German planes, in reprisal for the escapes of interned Americans according to an unsubstantiated street rumor in Paris, which was reported to Consul Squire at Geneva, bombed the American internment camp at Compiègne.’ Harrison asked whether the incident had ‘been officially reported by the RAF’. The street rumour turned out to be false. The Red Cross confirmed that the camp was bombed during the night between 23 and 24 June by a ‘foreign airplane which dropped a total of seven bombs’, killing two Filipinos and a Cuban. One American was wounded.