The Last Battle (33 page)

He too, Reynaud said, had plenty to expose, and certain people—same murderous look—had better watch themselves! Not only were [Daladier and Reynaud] not on speaking terms, they could hardly wait to carve each other up. None the wiser, I had to settle for a simple statement of our discovery without further adornment.
⁷

Once all the VIPs were ready, Kramers shepherded them down to the courtyard, out the front gate, and onto the schlossweg, where Krobot and the female former number prisoners were waiting with bags in hand. Soldiers loaded their luggage into the back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck waiting in front of the church. Schloss Itter’s former prisoners boarded a line of waiting jeeps—the French being careful, of course, to segregate themselves into the same little groups they’d formed during their imprisonment. Just before seven
PM
the convoy of vehicles set off for Innsbruck, with Kramers’s jeep leading the way and a truckload of 142nd infantrymen following to provide security.
⁸

The French VIPs stayed in Innsbruck overnight and were suitably feted by, and photographed with, the 103rd’s MacAuliffe. On May 6 they were driven across the German border to Augsburg, and that evening they dined with Seventh Army commander Alexander Patch. The American general had originally intended to fly the French notables home from Augsburg aboard a U.S. Army Air Forces C-47, but French 1st Army commander Jean de Lattre de Tassigny asked permission to undertake the VIPs’ return to France. Patch agreed, and on May 7 the former prisoners were driven to de Lattre’s headquarters in Lindau, on the German shore of Lake Constance.
Upon the group’s arrival, Weygand, Borotra, and de La Rocque were led away; the 1st Army commander announced that the trio would be put on trial in France for their “collaborationist” activities. The other former prisoners were treated to yet another sumptuous banquet, and the following morning all but Daladier were driven to Strasbourg, where they boarded General de Gaulle’s personal aircraft for the flight to Paris. The Bull of the Vaucluse, for his part, drove to Paris with his son Jean, an officer on de Lattre’s staff.
⁹

For Krobot and the female former number prisoners, the way home led east, not west. After ensuring that they’d all received a thorough medical examination and enjoyed several days of good food and clean beds courtesy of the U.S. Army, Kramers deposited them at a displaced-persons camp operated by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

That Zvonko Čučković did not accompany his fellow former prisoners was the result of some quick thinking on his part. Within hours of the liberation of Schloss Itter the Croat convinced French liaison officer Eric Lutten that someone should gather up all the personal items the VIPs had not been able to take with them and then ensure that the articles were safely reunited with their owners—in France. Zvonko volunteered for the mission, of course, and was given a travel document authorizing him to accompany the items to Paris and stipulating that he report back to French authorities in Austria by May 23. He made the trip, returned on schedule, and within weeks was repatriated to Yugoslavia.
¹⁰

The aftermath of the Schloss Itter battle was rather anticlimactic for Jack Lee and his men. The four infantrymen who’d taken part in the fight—Pollock, Worsham, Petruckovich, and Sutton—rejoined their unit, then assembling in Itter village. After turning Gangl’s body over to the priest at St. Joseph’s Church, Lee sent Basse and
Boche Buster
back to rejoin the 23rd TB. Once the burnt-out
Besotten Jenny
had been unceremoniously towed away by a tank-recovery vehicle, Lee and his four crewmen, accompanied by the surviving “tame” Germans, boarded a truck for the ride back to Kufstein. There the Wehrmacht men who’d risked their lives to help the GIs defend the French notables were marched off to a POW cage for processing.

The end of the battle for Schloss Itter did not mark the end of the castle’s role in World War II history, however. Even before the French VIPs had departed for Innsbruck, the 142nd Infantry’s George Lynch made the fortress his regimental command post, and over the following twenty-four hours he helped broker—through meetings with Georg von Hengl—a local
cease-fire and the ultimate surrender of all German forces in Tyrol. Following Germany’s unconditional capitulation in the early morning hours of May 7, Schloss Itter became (though for less than twenty-four hours) the provisional headquarters of Allied occupation forces in Austria.
¹¹

Several weeks after Germany’s surrender Basse and Lee were recognized for their leadership during the battle for Schloss Itter, the former with the Silver Star and the latter with the Distinguished Service Cross.
¹²
Lee’s citation noted his

extraordinary heroism in action, as Commanding Officer of Company B, 23rd Tank Battalion, in the vicinity of Wörgl, Austria, and the Itter Castle on 4–5 May 1945. Captain Lee with a small group of soldiers infiltrated into hostile territory, demoralized enemy forces, prevented the destruction of two key bridges, and caused 200 German soldiers to surrender. He found many prominent French prisoners at Itter Castle, and immediately organized a defense with both American and German troops. Despite a fanatical SS attack and heavy artillery barrage, Captain Lee’s men held until friendly troops arrived. Captain Lee’s initiative, boldness, courage, resourcefulness and outstanding qualities of leadership exemplify the highest traditions of the Army and the United States.
¹³

W
HILE THE BATTLE OF
S
CHLOSS
Itter may have been a defining moment in the lives of many of its participants, it was not—except for Sepp Gangl and those unnamed attackers who may have died in the assault—the final moment. The various key players in the last full-fledged ground combat action of World War II in Europe—the French, Germans, Americans, and others—went back to their normal lives, and it is only right that we briefly examine how some of those lives played out.

THE FRENCH

É
DOUARD
D
ALADIER

The Bull of the Vaucluse returned to politics after the war, serving as a deputy in France’s Constituent Assembly and from 1953 to 1958 as mayor of Avignon. His son Jean later compiled and edited Daladier’s wartime diaries. Published as
Journal de Captivité, 1940–1945
(
Prison Journal, 1940–1945
)
several years after Daladier’s death in October 1970 at age eighty-six, the book did exactly what the former Schloss Itter captive had told René Levesque it would do: excoriate his political rivals, especially Paul Reynaud.

M
AURICE
G
AMELIN

Following his postwar return to France, Gamelin devoted himself to completing his memoirs, titled
Servir
. The three-volume work—much of which was written during the general’s time in Schloss Itter—was published in 1946 and 1947 to relatively lukewarm reviews. In 1954 Gamelin published a further volume covering his World War I service. He died in April 1958 at the age of eighty-six.

L
ÉON
J
OUHAUX AND
A
UGUSTA
B
RUCHLEN

His years of imprisonment may have further damaged Léon Jouhaux’s health, but they didn’t dim his dedication to the workers of France or to the international labor movement. After his liberation he resumed his leadership of the CGT, but in 1947 the organization’s Communist members forced his resignation. In reaction to what he saw as increasing Communist domination of the French labor movement he helped found the left-centrist Workers’ Force, which he led for the remainder of his life. In 1947 Jouhaux was also elected president of the French National Economic Council and in 1951 helped establish the International Labor Organization as an agency of the United Nations. Jouhaux was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951 and died on April 28, 1954.

Augusta Bruchlen aided Jouhaux in all his postwar efforts on behalf of workers, and she adopted the name Augusta Léon-Jouhaux following their marriage in 1948. She was an important labor leader in her own right, serving as director of the International Labor Organization’s Paris office from 1950 to 1971.
Prison pour hommes d’Etat
, her account of the Schloss Itter years, was published in 1973. This remarkable woman was named a commander of the Légion d’honneur in May 1992 and a Grand Officier of the same in July 2001. She died at the age of 104 on April 28, 2003, forty-nine years to the day after Léon Jouhaux.

P
AUL
R
EYNAUD AND
C
HRISTIANE
M
ABIRE

Like his archrival Daladier, Paul Reynaud returned to politics soon after his liberation from Schloss Itter. He won election to the Chamber of
Deputies in 1946 and over the following decade held several cabinet posts, including minister of finance and economic affairs. Published in 1951,
Au Coeur de la Mêlée
(titled
In the Thick of the Fight
in English) the larger of Reynaud’s two wartime memoirs,
¹⁴
devoted only 4 of more than 680 pages to events at Schloss Itter; the majority of the book was dedicated to explaining his own actions and generally belittling those of his many political rivals—including Daladier, of course. Reynaud was initially a strong supporter of Charles de Gaulle, though in 1962 he broke with the former general over what he saw as de Gaulle’s drive to consolidate his power through manipulation of the constitution. After losing his seat in the Chamber of Deputies, Reynaud dedicated himself to writing on various topics. He died at age eighty-seven on September 21, 1966.

Christiane Mabire married Reynaud in December 1949 and ultimately bore three children: sons Serge and Alexandre and daughter Evelyne. After her husband’s death Madame Reynaud led a very private life. She wrote a short, unpublished memoir dealing with her experiences in Ravensbrück and Schloss Itter before passing away in 2002 at the age of eighty-nine.
¹⁵

M
ARCEL
G
RANGER

After his liberation from Schloss Itter, Granger personally carried two suitcases full of documents back to Paris: one contained Maxime Weygand’s voluminous notes for his intended postwar memoirs, and the other Paul Reynaud’s notes for his book. While some sources indicate that Granger then returned to North Africa, it has proven impossible to discover any solid details about the final years of the man whom Édouard Daladier described in his memoir of the Schloss Itter years as “a true gentleman” and “a fine man, highly patriotic and brave, and a wonderful example of the average Frenchman.”
¹⁶

J
EAN
B
OROTRA

Though in the immediate postwar years the French government considered trying the Bounding Basque as a collaborator for his service in the Vichy government, nothing came of the charges, and Borotra’s popularity was undiminished. He resumed his commercial career, working until 1975. Nor did he give up tennis; he served as vice president of the French Lawn Tennis Association and continued to play in international senior competitions well into his nineties. Borotra died in June 1994 at age ninety-five.

M
AXIME AND
M
ARIE
-R
ENÉE
-J
OSÉPHINE
W
EYGAND

The general and his wife were apprehensive about how they would be received upon their return to France, and rightly so. Maxime Weygand was arrested by the French government on May 10, 1945, and charged with “attempts against the internal security of the state.” The following July the High Court of Justice ordered the seizure of all his property and put the aged and ill former general under guard at a Paris hospital. Called as a witness in the trial of Marshal Philippe Pétain, Weygand did verbal battle with Paul Reynaud, who was acting for the prosecution. Weygand’s own trial sputtered on for three years, and he was finally acquitted in 1948. He returned to writing, turning out books and articles on a host of subjects. Marie-Renée-Joséphine died in 1961, and Weygand himself passed away on January 28, 1965, at age ninety-eight.

M
ICHEL
C
LEMENCEAU

The son of the Tiger entered the rough and tumble of post–World War II French politics, serving in the first and second National Constituent Assemblies from 1946 to 1951. After withdrawing from politics, he returned to private industry and died on March 4, 1964, at ninety-one.

F
RANÇOIS DE
L
A
R
OCQUE

During his time at Schloss Itter the former leader of the Croix de feu wrote what would ultimately prove to be his final political tract. Titled
Au service de l’avenir
(
Serving the Future
), the book was published in 1946, repeated his fundamental political and moral beliefs, and was obviously meant as a first attempt at rehabilitating his reputation. De La Rocque did not live to see that effort succeed, however. Placed under police supervision and then house arrest following his return to France, he died in April 1946 during surgery meant to alleviate lingering pain from one of his World War I injuries.