D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [255]
On 19 August, de Gaulle arrived at Eisenhower’s headquarters. He heard that the Americans had taken Chartres. ‘We must march on Paris,’ he said to Eisenhower. ‘There must be an organized force there for internal order.’ But Eisenhower wanted to bypass the city. Next day de Gaulle went to Rennes. News arrived that an insurrection had started in Paris. De Gaulle immediately sent General Alphonse Juin with a letter to Eisenhower insisting that it was ‘absolutely necessary to have Leclerc sent into Paris’.75 If this was not done, then he, de Gaulle, would order Leclerc into Paris.
The German commander of Gross-Paris - ‘Greater Paris’ - was now Generalleutnant von Choltitz, the former commander of LXXXIV Corps on the Cotentin coast. Hitler had summoned Choltitz to the Wolfsschanze on the morning of 7 August when the attack on Mortain was beginning. ‘Hitler made me a speech for three-quarters of an hour, as though I were a public meeting,’ he complained later. Hitler, looking sick and bloated, raged at the plotters of 20 July. He claimed that he had unmasked the opposition at one blow and would crush them all. Choltitz was convinced that he really had become deranged and that the war was lost. Hitler, having calmed down, then gave him his orders for Paris. Choltitz had full powers as the commander of a ‘besieged fortress’ over all Wehrmacht personnel in Greater Paris. The city was to be defended to the end.
Choltitz later portrayed himself as an anti-Nazi as well as the saviour of Paris, yet Hitler trusted him because of his performance in southern Russia. Choltitz had indeed carried out Nazi orders faithfully. In British captivity that autumn, Choltitz said to General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, ‘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 order down to the very last detail.’76 (Choltitz, however, never faced a war crimes tribunal for these acts.)
Choltitz reached Paris two days later when the Mortain counterattack had stalled. Leutnant Graf von Arnim met him at the Villa Coty, the residence of Generalleutnant Hans Freiherr von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, whom Choltitz was replacing. Arnim described the fifty-year-old general as ‘short of stature and round in shape, with a rasping voice, wearing a monocle, and on his round head he had a small parting almost right in the middle. He spoke rapidly.’ Arnim, who like many army officers in Paris had been linked to the July plot, was at first cautious with the new commander, purely because Hitler and the OKW evidently trusted him as ‘a bold and experienced general’.
After a simple supper, Choltitz, Boineburg and the chief of staff, Oberst von Unger, went off for a quiet talk, which lasted over two hours. Choltitz told them of Hitler’s instructions: ‘His order was brief: to destroy Paris if the enemy advanced, and defend it from the ruins.’ But Boineburg and Unger, both members of the army resistance, managed to persuade him that to destroy Paris served no useful military purpose. When the three men emerged, it was ‘clear that Boineburg and Unger were on the very best of terms with Choltitz’. Late that night, Arnim accompanied Choltitz to the headquarters of Gross-Paris in the Hôtel Meurice. Choltitz asked him to stay on his staff instead of transferring to a panzer division as he had requested. Arnim, finding that they had many friends in common, agreed.
The Parisian region had several headquarters. The Supreme Command West was at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, while Generalfeldmarschall Sperrle’s Luftwaffe headquarters were in the Palais Bourbon. There was also Admiral Krancke’s Marinekommando West, as well as various SS and Gestapo staffs, Otto Abetz’s embassy and numerous other German state and Nazi Party establishments. Hitler had told Choltitz to send the non-combatants