Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [45]
In addition to head-shaving and summary executions, the épuration sauvage included sentences handed out by FFI military tribunals or the local Comité de Libération; looting under the guise of searches; and the lynching of prisoners set free by conventional courts. Many of those executed were undoubtedly guilty, for the German occupation had created a climate in which crime flourished. France had never seen as much trafficking, racketeering, theft, blackmail, abduction and murder as it did in those four years. But since the Germans and most of the miliciens responsible for the worst crimes had departed, many innocent people as well as guilty ones were killed out of rage and frustration. In a number of cases, both German soldiers and collaborators were saved by French veterans of the Great War, who, with considerable courage, told the would-be executioners that they had no right to kill anybody without a trial.
The Paris police, who had worked so closely with the Germans during the Occupation, now turned on each other. When the strike of 15 August was announced from the Prefecture of Police, it was made clear that its purpose was to help with the liberation of Paris. But instead of joining in street battles for control of the capital, many policemen (sometimes accompanied by FFI) went on what one author called a ‘chasse au collègues’ – a hunt for colleagues. Hundreds of policemen were arrested and held in the Prefecture, and one or two may even have been killed to stop them incriminating their assassins.
By the end of August a police purge committee had been formed, headed by a Communist resistant called Arthur Airaud, who had been tortured by the police Special Brigades in March 1944. Airaud was a ruthless operator who wanted not only revenge but also as many fellow Communists in the police force as possible. By 5 October, Luizet was obliged to sign an order suspending 700 officials and administrators working in the police and justice departments. Within the following year, the list of those suspended and brought before the police purge committees ran to over 3,000 names.
The provisional government’s efforts to put a skeleton administration into place to restore law and order were impressive, but a new Commissioner of the Republic could not hope to exert authority from the first moment. However much the Gaullists wished to maintain the fiction that they were simply reintroducing ‘Republican legality’, the system, in many places, had to be rebuilt almost from nothing. Often, the local liberation committees simply ignored the authority of representatives of the provisional government.
On 26 August, the day that General de Gaulle marched down the Champs-Élysées, a group of FFI arrested the consul-general of the Republic of San Marino at his house and took him off, without any explanation, to their improvised headquarters at the Lycée Buffon. It is possible that the FFI militiamen had confused the ancient Republic of San Marino with Mussolini’s puppet republic of Salo. In any case, they took the consul-general’s money, jewels and car. He was then transferred to Fresnes prison and released on 7 November without any charges having been brought against him.
Malcolm Muggeridge was invited by an FFI group to accompany them on their nightly purges. They were ‘very young, with that curious hunted animal look that street-life gives’. He was