IN THE LATE 1950S, two reporters who had met during the war, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, were working in Paris—Collins for Newsweek, Lapierre for Paris Match. In the early 1960s, they wrote a history of the liberation of Paris titled Is Paris Burning? and placed the German commandant of the capital, General Dietrich von Choltitz, at the centre of the narrative.

The story was the ideal stuff of rip-roaring journalistic history: cannons trained on Paris’s monuments, bridges wired with explosives, and a blockbusting howitzer—a siege mortar—with the menacingly Teutonic name of Karl making its way to French capital.1 As it did, Choltitz was transformed. A hardened supporter of Hitler handpicked by the dictator for his ruthlessness, he was said to have gone through a moral transfiguration as he contemplated his Führer’s order to blow the City of Light to pieces before the Allies could occupy it. His eye distracted by pretty gardens and pretty girls, he set out to save the French capital. Against all odds, a Prussian saved Paris from ruin.

It was quite a story. The problem is that the book is filled with unreferenced claims, distortions, and half-truths. As a scholarly account of the liberation of Paris, it is almost useless. The book attributed to Choltitz a military capability that he lacked. Upon closer, source-based inspection, it becomes clear that he could command neither the artillery and infantry divisions, which were mostly fighting elsewhere, nor the tactical bombers, which had been blown out of the sky by the Americans, that would have been necessary to devastate the capital.2 Almost pathetically, all he could manage to do was hold down a civilian uprising and await the end. The most critical interpretation of Choltitz holds that the so-called saviour of Paris, who was feted by French politicians and a literary public in the last years of his life, was a fraud.3

As so often, the truth lies between the extremes. Choltitz was not a Stauffenberg, a Stülpnagel, or a Hofacker. He was not a man who, whatever his earlier sympathies for National Socialism, eventually set his face firmly against Hitler and Nazism and threw his energies into ensuring their overthrow. Yet, he was something more than an accomplished headline grabber, a media-friendly self-promoter who convinced gullible journalists to transform his military weakness into heroism of the highest order. He was a complex, morally ambiguous, and, in the end, brave and pragmatic man who used his position to ensure the near-bloodless surrender of one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Paris was never at risk, as Collins and Lapierre would have us believe, of becoming a Dresden—or, more aptly, a Warsaw—under Choltitz’s command. But a more obedient, stubborn, and fanatical man could have handed over to the Allies a scarred city, littered with many more bodies.

The story of Paris’s salvation, however, is much more than the story of Choltitz. As in the case of Speer, the relentless focus on this one man by journalists and Hollywood filmmakers searching for heroes obscures the role of other German officers. Many of them were veterans and, rather against the odds, survivors of July 20. And most, if not all, of them had developed a deep love for this most lovable of cities. They had set in place efforts to minimize damage to Paris even before Choltitz arrived to assume command, and they gladly extended essential aid to Choltitz in disobeying Hitler’s orders. Finally, flexibility in Allied policy allowed a quick capture of the city.

The story of Choltitz is nonetheless central to disentangling fact from fiction in understanding Paris’s last days under German occupation. That story begins not in the French capital but in Rotterdam. Choltitz, whose career in the German army extended all the way back to his enlistment in 1914, was by 1940 an Oberstleutnant and commander since 1937 of the Third Battalion, Sixteenth Airborne Infantry Regiment (Luftlande Infanterie-Regiment 16) that took part in the May 1940 attack on Rotterdam. His actions there and, later, in Sevastopol suggested a reputation for brutality and nearly blind obedience.

A further, contested foundation of Choltitz’s reputation may have been laid near Sevastopol. After Choltitz’s ultimate surrender in August 1944, the Allies placed him with other generals at Trent Park, North London. Unknown to the generals, the British taped and transcribed their conversations. In one conversation, Choltitz is quoted as referring, rather out of context, to Hitler’s order on the Jews: “The worst job I ever carried out—which however I carried out with great consistency—was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this thoroughly and entirely [bis zur letzten Konsequenz].”4

Historians have rushed to judgment. Choltitz’s son, with a rather obvious horse in the race, pointed out that no audio recording of the conversation has surfaced.5 As the transcribers could not see who was speaking, it is possible that another general made the comment. It is even possible, though less likely, that the copy is a forgery. As yet, no corroborating evidence of Choltitz’s involvement in the massacre has been found. Many German generals committed atrocities, so it is possible, perhaps probable, that Choltitz ordered the action. There simply is not yet enough evidence to know with certainty.

It is easier to believe that Choltitz was the sort of unreflective anti-Semite that one would expect, given his age, class, and profession. In reaction to Churchill’s speech on September 28, 1944, he said to Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben (who had surrendered Cherbourg): “Have you read Churchill’s speech? Appalling beyond all words! A Jewish brigade to go to Germany! Then the French will take the west and the Poles the east. The hate in that speech! I am completely shattered.”6

Choltitz was cast as a player in the events of August 1944 by Hitler himself. On August 7, the dictator summoned Choltitz to the Wolf’s Lair. There, still bearing injuries from the July 20 explosion and seething with rage at the generals who had betrayed him, Choltitz was given new orders: he was to take over the command of Paris and defend it to the last bullet.7 Hitler was not alone in viewing Paris as decisive. No less a figure than Rommel was convinced that the Allies would see the capture of Paris as “operationally, politically, economically, and psychologically decisive.”8 They would then use it as a base for launching an invasion of the Reich. Hitler, however, would add his own twist: if Choltitz could not defend Paris, he was to destroy it. The meeting with Hitler has often been written up as the defining moment when Choltitz realized that Hitler was insane.9 It might have been, but Choltitz, like all German generals, had more than enough information before August 1944 to support that proposition.10

Choltitz was a monarchist who had served as a child page to the Queen of Saxony, a descendant of a Prussian aristocratic military family, and a veteran of the Wilhelminian army. Contemporary accounts suggest that the monocled general was a bit pompous and somewhat of a snob.11 None of this recommended him to Hitler. Hitler chose him rather because of his reputation as an unquestioning follower of orders. Choltitz had proved himself in Hitler’s eyes while fighting the Allies during the Normandy breakout, not to mention his record of unstinting loyalty over almost five years of war. Although Choltitz found it convenient after the war to express regret over his campaign at Normandy, he fought it at the time with determination, skill, and great willingness to tolerate large numbers of German casualties. As his future orderly officer put it, “We knew, and could even understand given the context [presumably of July 20], that Hitler wanted to trust a ‘Nazi general’ who could act drastically [scharf durchgreift] when defending Paris. As Paris had been declared a fortress, the plan was already in place: Paris would be defended, as it was so wonderfully put [by Hitler], ‘from the rubble.’”12

As a first step to transforming Paris into a fortress, Hitler had allowed all non-essential administrative personnel, the SD, and Gestapo to leave the city.13 Trucks parked outside the various German headquarters across Paris were being loaded with papers, records, and equipment. Smoke and ash from burning documents once again filled the summer sky. In the rue Royale, which links La Madeleine to the Place de la Concorde, busloads of German soldiers prepared to depart. Some of them waved handkerchiefs in a sad, silent farewell to the city.14

When Choltitz arrived in Paris on the tenth, he made his way to a handsome building at boulevard Raspail No. 26, across the river from the Louvre and the Tuileries. It was the house of Generalleutnant Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, who had led the arrest of the Gestapo, SS, and SD on July 20. Boineburg had been sacked, though he would survive the war, and Choltitz was to replace him. If Collins and Lapierre are to be believed, Choltitz’s arrival at Boineburg’s residence was met with only resignation and despair.15 Choltitz, in their account, was harshly dismissive of Boineburg’s plans for defending Paris, which involved forming a defensive ring around the city. Such a plan provided a line of defence, but it also—not without reason—ensured that the bulk of fighting would occur outside the capital. Boineburg’s plea that Choltitz do “nothing that could bring irreparable destruction to Paris” met only silence. In a final, dramatic gesture, Choltitz is said to have implicitly cast scorn on Boineburg’s decadence by eschewing his boulevard Raspail house in favour of a relatively simple room at the Hotel Meurice. He then turned to Boineburg and added laconically, “For the days ahead, Herr General, I shall need a headquarters, not a residence.”

Choltitz indeed stayed at the Hotel Meurice, but the rest of this story is fiction. More reliable evidence shows that Choltitz had a long after-dinner conversation with Boineburg and Oberst Unger, who was, like Boineburg, connected to the July 20 conspiracy. It was during this conversation that Boineburg, along with Unger, appealed to Choltitz to spare the city. They did so on strategic grounds: destroying Paris would serve no military purpose.

Dankwart Graf von Arnim, Boineburg’s orderly officer (Ordonnanzoffizier), was also at boulevard Raspail No. 26 that evening. Arnim was a young, soft-spoken aristocrat from Brandenburg who had served on the eastern front before being transferred to Paris. He had worked under Boineburg for a year and, like most staff officers in Paris, was connected to the events of July 20. He had heard about them from family members involved in the planning, but he only learned of the coup’s launch as it occurred. The coup’s failure would cost him a great deal: the National Socialists hanged one cousin on the day that Choltitz arrived in Paris; two more of his cousins would be hanged in September.16 In Arnim’s far more reliable account, following the chat, “it was clear that Boineburg and Unger were on the very best of terms with Choltitz…. There was clearly an agreement to focus exclusively on military and administrative matters, and that the most important issue at stake was the fate of Paris.”17

Arnim took Choltitz to his rooms at the Hotel Meurice. The orderly had asked to be transferred to the Panzer Lehr Division in Normandy, presumably to avoid being party to the destruction of Paris. To this, Choltitz replied that he had already spoken with Boineburg about Arnim’s further employment. Choltitz needed an orderly officer whom he could trust, one who understood the complexities of Paris; the general really had to insist, therefore, that Arnim stayed.18 (It was further evidence that the distance between Boineburg and Choltitz was, from the beginning, not great.)

As it was an order, Arnim had little choice, but the conversation had also revealed that the two men were distant relatives.19 The fact that Choltitz both consulted Boineburg, an officer so deeply implicated in the July 20 plot, and made a point of hiring a support officer so close to Boineburg, hardly made him the general of Hitler’s fantasies. In fact, given that Choltitz had long had ties to the German military resistance and held Stauffenberg in the highest regard, this common address book is unsurprising.20 The important point here is that Choltitz did not go through a moral transformation during his tenure in Paris. Though possibly at a later meeting rather than this one, Choltitz commented on Hitler’s order to destroy Paris: “I cannot implement this insane order.”21 He made the decision not to defend Paris before that tenure and without reference to the military means at his disposal. The Collins-Lapierre thesis and the counterclaim that Choltitz did not destroy Paris because he lacked the means both get it wrong.

Had Choltitz wished to launch a robust defence of the city, German reports in August 1944 would not have made happy reading for him. The core of German defences in Paris was the 325th Security Division (used on July 20 to arrest the SS), made up of four regiments of mostly older troops.22 Security divisions were weaker than field divisions, given the age of the soldiers and the fact that they had less artillery and motor transport.23 The division had a small number—as few as four—of small tanks.24 Their job was to mop things up, to come in after the advancing field divisions had defeated the enemy, to occupy the area, and to put down any efforts at last-ditch resistance. The division had some five thousand troops. According to postwar French military estimates, Choltitz also had at his disposal some twenty-three 105 mm and 150 mm cannons, thirty-six 75 mm and 88 mm guns, around nineteen Mark V-VI tanks and as many as fifty-nine Mark III-IV tanks.25 After the war, Choltitz deliberately played down the number of tanks he had, claiming it was only four.26 Finally, Choltitz could give orders to Generalmajor Hubertus von Aulock, who commanded battle troops positioned by Boineburg outside the city: the 48th and 338th Infan try Divisions, a storm battalion of the First Army, and the batteries of the First Flak Brigade. This brigade, however, was not very mobile and consisted largely of seventeen-year-olds with little military training.27 Altogether, Choltitz had 17,000 to 20,000 troops under his direct command: 5,000 attached to the 325th Security Division and the rest in units positioned outside the city’s perimeter, as well as the authority to commandeer any units passing through the city.28 Choltitz could thus directly or indirectly command some 25,000 to 30,000 men.29

Beyond this, Choltitz could call on limited air support. On August 17, the Luftwaffe was ordered to destroy all the airbases around Paris and moved its headquarters to Reims. Across France, it had only sixteen fighter groups with around 150 serviceable fighters.30

Military shortages were not Choltitz’s only problem. Paris’s restless inhabitants, having suffered arrogance, humiliation, and hunger since 1942 (the time of Otto von Stülpnagel’s resignation), smelled blood. News of the July 20 coup, of Allied military triumphs in Normandy, and of bombing raids outside the capital all combined to suggest a picture of German weakness. On August 10, Parisians struck. Exactly 152 years after the Paris mob assailed the Tuileries and massacred the Swiss Guard, the railway men, defying the strictest German orders, went on strike.31 The strike was conducted with a militancy that would command an anarchist’s respect (those who wavered were won over at gunpoint)32 and was a great success. Within two days, the capital was cut off to rail transport. The Germans, who had been so keen to get into the city four years earlier, were now equally keen to get out of it. As an early historian of the liberation put it,

At least in partial response to the strike and the unrest it reflected, the Germans sought to take out those Parisians with the greatest material ability to harm them: the police. On Kluge’s orders, the Germans began disarming them by the hundreds on August 13, starting in the tough working-class district of Saint-Denis.34 The plan backfired: on August 14, the local police, who had served the Germans so efficiently in suppressing the population and rounding up the Jews, streamed into the arms of the resistance. Three resistance organizations—Honneur de la Police, Police et Patrie, and Front National de la Police (the first two were moderately socialist, the last was Communist)—used the German action to call for a general strike on the sixteenth.35

Two days before the strike was launched, the three wings of what would become the French uprising in Paris met. They were the Communists, the Gaullists, and the police. For the Communists, there was Henri Rol-Tanguy (“Colonel Rol”), a thirty-eight-year-old sheet-metal worker, Communist Party member, and experienced soldier who had served in both the Spanish Civil War and the French army in 1940 (winning the Croix de Guerre).36 He evidently saw no contradiction between his service to France and his membership in the Communist Party, though that party had denounced the war during the period 1939 to 1941 as “an imperialist-capitalist conspiracy.”37 In June 1940, the Communist party newspaper, l’Humanité, welcomed the arrival of German troops in Paris and called on French workers to fraternize with them.38 Whatever conflict of loyalties he suffered up until June 1941, Rol was the leader of the Parisian wing of the Communist resistance and the undisputed leader of the planned uprising against the Germans.39 André Tollet and André Carrel served directly under him.40

Marching at times in step but never in spirit with the Communists was the second wing, consisting of de Gaulle’s men in France. De Gaulle’s representative was Alexandre Parodi. Parodi was the general delegate for the Provisional Government of the French Republic, itself a creation of de Gaulle, who upgraded the umbrella French Committee for National Liberation into a government-in-waiting.41 He also led a Gaullist General Delegation in the capital. The military equivalent of Parodi was Jacques Chaban-Delmas, head of the National Military Delegation. De Gaulle had promoted the athletic twenty-nine-year-old to the rank of general on May 1, 1944.42 As civilian authority superseded the military, Chaban-Delmas in principle answered to Parodi.43 Parodi’s job was to prevent a premature insurrection that could result in a bloodbath and to ensure that, when the Allies took Paris, neither the Communists nor the Pétainists were sufficiently powerful to claim the right of government in postwar France.44 The members of the delegation were few and, despite the honour of having been handpicked by de Gaulle, they could not at this point match the prestige of the Communists.45 As de Gaulle later said to Mendès France with some hyperbole, “We only had on our side Jews, negroes, hunchbacks, cripples, failures, and cuckolds.”46 Léo Hamon, a Christian Socialist resister from Toulouse, was vice president of the Communist-leaning Parisian Liberation Committee.47 Despite this title, as a Christian Socialist, Hamon was closer to the general than the Communists.

In principle, de Gaulle and Chaban-Delmas controlled the armed wing of the resistance: the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). On April 4, de Gaulle appointed General Marie-Pierre Koenig, who had joined him in London, as overall commander of the FFI, while Chaban-Delmas was to direct forces on the ground in Paris. In practice, however, it did not work that way.48 Communists made up the largest single bloc among FFI fighters—and overall amounted to something like 50 percent of the FFI in Paris—and Rol was determined to exercise his authority over the FFI. Under great pressure from the Communist leadership, Parodi sought instructions from Algiers. Receiving no reply, he made a call: he agreed that the Parisian Liberation Committee would direct the FFI and “lead the national insurrection.”49 De Gaulle was furious (“there can be no question of divesting ourselves of any power”), but his reply never made it to Parodi.50 The result was that, in the last days of the German occupation, the Communists would direct the FFI, while Parodi attempted to prevent a national insurrection that could lead to the loss of much blood and treasure while allowing the Communists to seize power.

The final wing in the Parisian resistance was made up of very recent converts: the police. There were Communists among the police, but their sympathy lay in the main with de Gaulle. Every police officer that refused to hand over his arms to the Germans went over, with weapons, to the resistance. After four years of collaboration they, unlike Rol or Parodi, had a great deal to prove.

The main argument at the meeting of these three factions was whether the police should go on a general strike. As a sign of things to come, Parodi and Rol had a spirited argument, with the former arguing against and the latter in favour. Parodi, as another sign of things to come, agreed to compromise for the sake of unity: better perhaps an ill-advised general strike than a situation in which some police went on strike while others did not.51 And the Communists certainly had a point when they argued that, in the absence of a strike, the Germans would continue to disarm the police, robbing the capital of the closest thing it had to an army.52 As the ranks closed, the FFI issued a strike order:

The hour of liberation has arrived. Today it is the duty of the whole body of the police to join the ranks of the FFI … you will do nothing further to help the enemy maintain order…. You will refuse to arrest patriots … to check identities, to guard prisons and so forth. You will aid the FFI in putting down anyone who continues to serve the enemy in any way … Police who do not obey these orders will be considered traitors and collaborators…. On no pretext allow yourself to be disarmed…. March with the people of Paris to the final battle.53

It was in this city that the new commandant of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, arrived on August 10. Denuded of troops and equipment, and armed with orders to defend or destroy the capital, he faced a population seething with anger and possibly on the verge of open rebellion. The view outside Paris was no better. In Baden Baden were his wife and children, all of whom would be arrested in accordance with the Sippenhaft policy if he failed to carry out his orders. In the north and west of France were the Allies, fully prepared to charge him as a war criminal if he did. It was in this unappealing environment that the new commandant issued his first orders.

Notes

1. “Karl” referred to anti-concrete weapons first produced in 1939. There were two versions: one with a 60 cm Mörser Gerät 40 (which mounted a 60 cm barrel), the other with a 54 cm Mörser Gerät 041. The former had a range of 4500 metres, the latter of 6240 metres, and both could penetrate between 2.5 and 3.5 metres of concrete. The Karls were used successfully during the siege of Sevastopol (at which Choltitz was present) and, during the Warsaw uprising, to crush Polish underground fighters and to demolish the centre of Warsaw. Chris Bishop, ed., The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II, rev. ed. (New York: MetroBooks, 2002), 114–5.

2. On this, see Klaus-Jürgen Müller, “Die Befreiung von Paris und die deutsche Führung an der Westfront,” in Kriegsjahr 1944: im Großen und im Kleinen, ed. Michael Salewski and Guntram Schulze-Wegener (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1995), 43–60.

3. For the most recent statement of this view, see Cobb, Eleven Days in August, 364–6.

4. UKNA, WO 208/4363, GRGG 189, September 8–9, 1944, 2. Emphasis in the original.

5. “Kommentar von Timo von Choltitz, Sohn von General Dietrich von Choltitz,” available at http://www.choltitz.de/Kommentar.html. Choltitz refers to a “photocopied summary.” It is a summary, but it is an original typescript.

6. UKNA, WO 208/4364, GRGG 204, September 27–29, 1944. Emphasis in the original. Commanders Broich, Rassene, Wahle, and Reimann generally agreed that a Jewish brigade was intolerable, while Oberst Reimann added that “the business with the Jews in Germany was quite right, only it should have been done quietly.” Only Generalleutnant Schlieben (who defended and destroyed Cherbourg) declined to join the anti-Semitic and self-pitying rants: “Well, we’ve known for a long time that the enemy won’t present us with any bouquets.”

7. Hitler seems not, at this point, to have given the order to destroy Paris, as is often claimed. According to Choltitz, it only arrived once he was in Paris. UKNA, WO 208/4363, GRGG 217, 3.

8. Hans Speidel, “Gedanken des Oberbefehlshabers,” March 31, 1947, BArch RH 20-7-149.

9. Thornton, Liberation of Paris, 121.

10. There is also some evidence that Choltitz disliked Paris and the French. See Adrien Dansette, Histoire de la libération de Paris (Paris: Perrin, 1994), 117. This evidence, however, is based on interrogations by the Americans, which occurred shortly after Choltitz surrendered, saw one of his officers gunned down in the streets, and was kicked and spat on by civilians. Those statements should be interpreted in that context.

11. “General von Choltitz” (Report of a British officer), August 31–September 3, 1944, UKNA, WO 208/4363, GRGG 185, 15.

12. Arnim, Als Brandenburg noch die Mark hieß, 231.

13. Steven J. Zaloga, Liberation of Paris 1944: Patton’s Race for the Seine (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2008), 19; Samuel W. Mitcham, Retreat to the Reich: The German Defeat in France, 1944 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 185.

14. Thornton, Liberation of Paris, 121.

15. Details in this paragraph based on Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1965), 48.

16. Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg was executed on August 10, 1944, Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld and Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort in September.

17. Dankwart Graf von Arnim, MdC TE 819, 240.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. See Choltitz’s comments on Stauffenberg while in British captivity in Neitzel, Tapping Hitler’s Generals, 257–67 (Documents 153, 154, 158, and 161). In these last two documents, Choltitz states that Stauffenberg was the “ideal of the coming German generation” and that Hitler should “be killed and the whole world should be told about it; he should be photographed pleading for his life … He should be made to wear just a pullover [author’s note: that is, stripped of all political and military garb and regalia], and to stand there as a criminal, with his hair cropped and so on.” Emphasis in the original. Choltitz went so far as to claim that Stauffenberg approached him with the offer of a post, but I have seen no evidence confirming such a meeting. UNKA, WO 208/4363, GRGG 181 (c), August 25, 1944, 7. This report was made the day of Choltitz’s arrest, when he was in an agitated and likely fearful state.

21. Ulrike Pretorius, “Der Retter von Paris hatte manchen Helfer: NRZ Gespräch mit Dankwart von Arnim,” Neue Rhein-Zeitung, November 12, 1966.

22. “Stammtafel: Sicherungs-Regiment 1,” July 1944, BArch RH 26/325, fol. 1; Zaloga, Liberation of Paris, 26; Müller, “Die Befreiung von Paris,” 43.

23. Ernst von Krause, “Military Commander France (July–September 1944),” n.d., USAMHI, B 612, 2; Zaloga, Liberation of Paris, 26.

24. Müller, “Die Befreiung von Paris,” 43.

25. Dansette, Histoire de la libération de Paris, 119.

26. Ibid.

27. Müller, “Die Befreiung von Paris,” 43.

28. Zaloga, Liberation of Paris, 1944, 27; Müller, “Die Befreiung von Paris,” 46.

29. USAMHI, B 015, Freiherr von Boineburg, “Organization for the Defence of Greater Paris,” May 1945, 6.

30. Dansette, Histoire de la libération de Paris, 119. Zaloga, Liberation of Paris, 27, gives a higher figure of 20,000.

31. Thornton, Liberation of Paris, 126; Müller, “Die Befreiung von Paris,” 44.

32. Thornton, Liberation of Paris, 127.

33. Ibid.

34. Müller, “Die Befreiung von Paris,” 44.

35. Robert Aron, Histoire de la Libération de la France (Paris: Fayard, 1959), vol. 2, 11–2.

36. Roger Bourderon, Rol-Tanguy (Paris: Tallandier, 2004), chapters 5–7; Thornton, Liberation of Paris, 120. Bourderon published works with Rol-Tanguy, and his book should be read as an official biography. See, for example, Colonel Rol-Tanguy and Roger Bourderon, Libération de Paris: les cents documents (Paris: Hachette, 1994).

37. Henri Rol-Tanguy obituary, Daily Telegraph, September 28, 2002.

38. Ibid.

39. Dansette, Histoire de la libération de Paris, 148.

40. See Thornton, Liberation of Paris, 136.

41. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 543.

42. Cobb, Eleven Days in August, 13; François Marcot, Dictionnaire historique de la résistance: résistance intérieure et France libre (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 2006), 386.

43. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 521.

44. Ibid., 562.

45. Aron, Histoire de la Libération de la France, vol. 2, 22.

46. Quoted in Larkin, France since the Popular Front, 109.

47. Marcot, Dictionnaire historique de la résistance, 440–1. The Parisian Liberation Committee (CPL) was set up in 1943. Of the eighteen organizations that joined the CPL, seven were Communist. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 519.

48. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 521.

49. Cobb, Eleven Days in August, 35.

50. Ibid., 36.

51. Thornton, Liberation of Paris, 128.

52. “Rôle de la Police Parisienne dans les Combats de la Libération du 19 au 26 Août 1944,” n.d., Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris (APPP).

53. Le Commandant de la Région de Paris des Forces Françaises de L’Interieur, “Appel.,” Archives de Paris, D 38 Z/4.