Read Online Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949 by Antony Beevor - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Antony Beevor
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Paris, Colonel Rol-Tanguy, relaunched the fighting the next morning, 22 August. Posters across the city proclaimed his battle-cry – ‘
Chacun son Boche!
’ This was followed a short while later by an even more atavistic call to battle – ‘TOUS AUX BARRICADES!’ – recalling the failed revolutions of the nineteenth century, and the old myth of Paris as the Red Jerusalem. Rol-Tanguy, a former commissar in the International Brigades in Spain, ordered the whole population of Paris, men, women and children, to barricade every street they could to prevent the Germans from moving, a lesson learned in Barcelona at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Hardly any barricades were erected in the fashionable
arrondissements,
the 7th, 8th and 16th; the greatest number were in those quarters around the north and east of the city, which had voted overwhelmingly for the Popular Front in 1936. The most effectively sited were in the south-eastern part of Paris, where the FFI was commanded by Colonel Fabien, the Communist who had assassinated the young German naval officer three years before.
Teams formed spontaneously from street or neighbourhood. The young and strong uprooted cobblestones, while a human chain, mostly women, passed them back to those building the barricade with railings, iron bedsteads, a plane tree chopped down across the street, cars turned on their sides, and even, in one case, a
vespasienne
public urinal. A tricolour was usually planted on top. Women meanwhile stitched white FFI armbands for their menfolk usually with just the initials in black, or with patches of red and blue to make a tricolour. Paris at this time was a city of rumours. No one knew how far away the Allies were, orwhether German reinforcements were on their way. This created a tense atmosphere, affecting defenders and onlookers alike.
‘I arrive at a small FFI position near the Place Saint-Michel,’ wrote Galtier-Boissière in his diary. ‘A machine-gun is placed on the pavement, covering the Saint-Michel bridge; a tall, fair-haired and well-dressed young man is the gunner. On both sides of the boulevard there are about ten young men in shirt sleeves, with a
brassard
round their biceps, carbine in hand or brandishing little revolvers. Some wear army helmets. These combatants are surrounded by about fifty lookers-on waiting for something to happen. As soon as a vehicle appears on the bridge, all the lookers-on rush back into nearby doorways.’
People helped as they could. The bravest were the stretcher parties, collecting hundreds of wounded from bullet-spattered streets, with only a Red Cross flag to protect them. Professor Joliot-Curie, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and devoted Communist, set up a production line making Molotov cocktails in the Sorbonne. Between Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Place Saint-Michel, Zette Leiris, who ran a well-known gallery, started a canteen for FFI members in the rue Saint-André des Arts. Concierges swabbed blood from the paving stones.
As Galtier-Boissière observed, fighting was much more civilized in the city than in the countryside, because you could go off for lunch with your rifle. There was another advantage: ‘The whole neighbourhood is watching you from their windows and applauding.’ A number of people, however, ignored the firing around them. Some sunbathed on the stone embankments of the Seine, while urchins dived in to escape the heat. Odd figures sat immobile on little canvas chairs, fishing in the river while German tanks attacked the Prefecture of Police, a few hundred metres away on the Île de la Cité; a perch from the Seine represented a free meal. Provisions were so short that when a horse was killed by stray bullets, housewives rushed out with enamel bowls and began slicing steaks off the carcass.
Paris being Paris, cultural landmarks counted for as much as ministries and police headquarters when it came to a revolution. For the acting profession, the first place to be
Chacun son Boche!
’ This was followed a short while later by an even more atavistic call to battle – ‘TOUS AUX BARRICADES!’ – recalling the failed revolutions of the nineteenth century, and the old myth of Paris as the Red Jerusalem. Rol-Tanguy, a former commissar in the International Brigades in Spain, ordered the whole population of Paris, men, women and children, to barricade every street they could to prevent the Germans from moving, a lesson learned in Barcelona at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Hardly any barricades were erected in the fashionable
arrondissements,
the 7th, 8th and 16th; the greatest number were in those quarters around the north and east of the city, which had voted overwhelmingly for the Popular Front in 1936. The most effectively sited were in the south-eastern part of Paris, where the FFI was commanded by Colonel Fabien, the Communist who had assassinated the young German naval officer three years before.
Teams formed spontaneously from street or neighbourhood. The young and strong uprooted cobblestones, while a human chain, mostly women, passed them back to those building the barricade with railings, iron bedsteads, a plane tree chopped down across the street, cars turned on their sides, and even, in one case, a
vespasienne
public urinal. A tricolour was usually planted on top. Women meanwhile stitched white FFI armbands for their menfolk usually with just the initials in black, or with patches of red and blue to make a tricolour. Paris at this time was a city of rumours. No one knew how far away the Allies were, orwhether German reinforcements were on their way. This created a tense atmosphere, affecting defenders and onlookers alike.
‘I arrive at a small FFI position near the Place Saint-Michel,’ wrote Galtier-Boissière in his diary. ‘A machine-gun is placed on the pavement, covering the Saint-Michel bridge; a tall, fair-haired and well-dressed young man is the gunner. On both sides of the boulevard there are about ten young men in shirt sleeves, with a
brassard
round their biceps, carbine in hand or brandishing little revolvers. Some wear army helmets. These combatants are surrounded by about fifty lookers-on waiting for something to happen. As soon as a vehicle appears on the bridge, all the lookers-on rush back into nearby doorways.’
People helped as they could. The bravest were the stretcher parties, collecting hundreds of wounded from bullet-spattered streets, with only a Red Cross flag to protect them. Professor Joliot-Curie, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and devoted Communist, set up a production line making Molotov cocktails in the Sorbonne. Between Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Place Saint-Michel, Zette Leiris, who ran a well-known gallery, started a canteen for FFI members in the rue Saint-André des Arts. Concierges swabbed blood from the paving stones.
As Galtier-Boissière observed, fighting was much more civilized in the city than in the countryside, because you could go off for lunch with your rifle. There was another advantage: ‘The whole neighbourhood is watching you from their windows and applauding.’ A number of people, however, ignored the firing around them. Some sunbathed on the stone embankments of the Seine, while urchins dived in to escape the heat. Odd figures sat immobile on little canvas chairs, fishing in the river while German tanks attacked the Prefecture of Police, a few hundred metres away on the Île de la Cité; a perch from the Seine represented a free meal. Provisions were so short that when a horse was killed by stray bullets, housewives rushed out with enamel bowls and began slicing steaks off the carcass.
Paris being Paris, cultural landmarks counted for as much as ministries and police headquarters when it came to a revolution. For the acting profession, the first place to be
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