AUGUST 21, 1941
PARIS, FRANCE
8:00 A.M.
The man with ten seconds to live is boarding a train.
Ensign Alfons Moser is thirty, a German naval officer stationed in Paris who could not look more visible and out of place in the working-class Barbès-Rochechouart Métro stop. He wears a spotless pressed white service tunic, white shirt, sharply creased white trousers, shining white shoes, and—because the train station is above ground in the open air—white peaked cap atop his head rather than tucking it under his arm, as regulations require while indoors.
And yet, Ensign Moser feels nothing but safe. Everyone in the station knows it would be suicide to attack a German serviceman. The execution of Jacques Bonsergent is proof. Throughout the fourteen months of occupation, Moser and other Nazis stationed in the City of Lights have grown accustomed to coming and going as they please. Many Germans carry guidebooks to make their way around the city and tote cameras to record the sights, just like regular tourists. They are regulars at local cafés, sunbathe along the Seine in summer wearing just their underwear—and sometimes nothing at all—and make liberal use of the city’s prostitutes. There are German-only bars, bistros, brothels, and movie theaters. All clocks in the city are set to Berlin time. The people of Paris must be off the darkened streets by 9:00 p.m., but Nazi noncommissioned soldiers can stay out until midnight. Officers like Alfons Moser have no curfew at all.
But Moser should also know better than to parade his crisp German accent and lightning rod of a uniform so far away from the posh hub of Paris.
Particularly now.
Urged on by the German secret police—an organization known as the Gestapo—Paris gendarmes arrested 6,000 Jews over the past two nights.* Métro stations in some parts of the city have been shut down due to growing unrest. French Communists are also outraged by Nazi Germany’s recent invasion of the Soviet Union and are eagerly responding to calls from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to take up arms against the Nazis.
As of August 14, the French Communist Party is outlawed. Just yesterday, demonstrations near the Gare Saint-Lazare led to the German pronouncement of the death penalty for such an affiliation. This includes members of General Charles de Gaulle’s increasingly popular Free French movement, allegedly aligned with the Communists.
The arriving train slows. Ensign Moser searches for the first-class car reserved for German officers. The platform is thick with commuters. Those millions who fled the city in the great exodus of June 1940 have almost all come back. Some semblance of routine has also returned, but everything from food to gasoline is rationed to fuel the Nazi war effort. Citizens have few travel choices beyond a bicycle, bus, or the Métro.*
Most ride the train.
Germans ride the train too. Which is why the French Resistance lies in wait for Alfons Moser.
History will not record why the lieutenant is starting his day so far from the western section of Paris, home to the German occupying force. The Barbès-Rochechouart station lies at the intersection of the 9th, 10th, and 18th arrondissements, where pro-Communist sentiment is high and a German officer in a bright white uniform is certain to be the object of hatred.
Perhaps Moser has chosen a discreet place to spend the night, whether with a woman or man or simply by himself, far from the prying eyes of German navy—Kriegsmarine—headquarters at the Hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde.
Or maybe he is returning from an early-morning errand.
Yet, no matter what brought Ensign Alfons Moser to Barbès-Rochechouart, he is clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time.
History will also not record the type of pistol twenty-two-year-old Pierre Georges slips from his pocket as he pushes through the crowd. The Germans have ordered the confiscation of every gun in France. The penalty for possessing a firearm is death. The notion of a Frenchman owning a handgun is so absurd that press reports about what happens next will claim the attacker used a knife.
But Pierre Georges—Communist, veteran of the Spanish Civil War, French Resistance leader, soon to adopt the code name “Colonel Fabien”—most definitely has a gun. He is married and handsome, a father, with thick, wavy hair and shining brown eyes. Georges’s height is on the shorter side. A Polish colleague in the Resistance named Samuel Tyszelman was executed by a German firing squad two days ago. His crime was singing “La Marseillaise” at a public protest and shouting “Down with Hitler!”
Pierre Georges demands revenge. He has waited for a German to come through the station since dawn. Three other Resistance members stand in the crowd. They are not like British SOE operatives, specially trained by a government agency, equipped to accomplish war’s hard tasks. They are young men who spontaneously chose to heed the words of Charles de Gaulle and resist. They must be careful whom they trust lest they suffer the fate of other resistance groups like the Groupe du Musée de l’Homme.
Georges is well aware that the Gestapo and Paris police rolled up those brave intellectuals last spring. Their instantly iconic Résistance newspaper stopped publication after just five issues, though not before inspiring countless Parisians to join the cause. Museum director Paul Rivet fled the country just in time and is now pursuing his studies of ethnography in South America.
But nineteen other members of Groupe du Musée de l’Homme are not as lucky. They now languish in prison, enduring torture and awaiting trial, their plight a warning to any would-be Resistance fighter to be extremely careful, for a supposed friend may actually be a Gestapo informer.
Pierre Georges trusts the Resistance fighters standing near him on this platform. Like him, they are idealists and patriots, unpaid and self-equipped, learning the skills of rebellion as they go. Details matter: Barbès-Rochechouart has been chosen for its elevated platform, which offers a better chance of escape than a tunnel. Pierre Georges has no personal vendetta against Alfons Moser. The Resistance fighter simply rose from bed in the morning darkness determined to shoot a German officer.
Any officer will do.
The doors open. Moser places one foot inside the train. He is almost away, even though he does not know he is escaping. Bullets slam into his back and skull. The naval officer pitches forward onto the first-class floor. A small entrance wound just above his collar shows trace amounts of brain, blood, bone, and flesh. The exit wound is a gaping cavity. One lung is punctured.
No amount of bleach will clean that uniform.
The ensign lies alone. Strangers cannot help but stare. His heart still beats, stretching those ten seconds far longer than Pierre Georges had planned. If Moser were drunk, passed out in such a position, in the very public space of a commuter train, the scene would be a humiliation, the ultimate sign of weakness and dissipation.
Instead, the dying body of Alfons Moser, the first German officer of this war to be executed by the people of Paris, represents power.
The French are strong enough to fight back.
Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, shows his own ruthless strength by ordering one hundred French prisoners executed to atone for the murder.*
Immediately.