Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [70]
‘It is clear that they expect pertinent help from the US,’ he reported to Washington. Telegrams from the American Embassy expressed one exasperation after another.
The French, on the other hand, felt belittled by the American attitude to their war record. Senior French officers had begun to complain openly that ‘the US is supplying inferior and semi-obsolete tanks and other material to the French forces’. A far greater cause for French resentment, however, was the generally justified suspicion that the Americans preferred the Germans. In France, Americans claimed to hear only complaints and excuses; while in Germany they found a population grateful for having been saved from occupation by the Red Army.
Even military parades and celebrations of victory produced bad feeling among the Allies. During the spring and early summer of 1945, de Gaulle held no fewer than five major parades in just over three months. Allied diplomats and officers, especially the Americans, became increasingly exasperated at having to stand for hours watching ‘their’ tanks trundling past on victory parades, using their gasoline when the French were complaining about shortages of fuel.
After the victory celebrations in May came the biggest parade of all on 18 June – the anniversary of de Gaulle’s broadcast from London – with a march-past by 50,000 men, led by the whole of the 2nd Armoured Division. It was a tremendous display, with the French air force flying low overhead in the shape of the cross of Lorraine. ‘One couldn’t help thinking,’ wrote the usually sympathetic Duff Cooper, ‘how all these [planes and vehicles] and most of the equipment was of Anglo-American origin. Not a single English or American flag was shown. There was no evidence of an ounce of gratitude and one felt throughout that France was boasting very loud, having very little to boast about.’
SHAEF had another reason for disapproving of the celebrations with the extra national holidays announced by the government. Coal production in France fell 80 per cent during the week of VE Day, just at the time when France was demanding more coal from the Ruhr on top of the 50,000 tons already allocated. ‘They do not seem to be taking any very active steps to put their own house in order,’ the SHAEF report concluded. Inevitably, another unfavourable comparison was made with the German determination to get back to work.
The French Communist Party was quick to exploit the reservoir of anti-American feeling. Some of the rumours spread were ludicrous, yet gained a measure of credence. The Communist minister, François Billoux, claimed that during the fighting the United States air force had bombed heavily ‘in a premeditated plan to weaken France’. Another rumour even claimed that the Americans had been so angry about the Franco-Soviet pact signed in Moscow that they had allowed the German Ardennes offensive to penetrate into France purely to give the French a fright. Other rumours, rather closer to the truth, concerned a wave of crime by American servicemen and deserters.
Galtier-Boissière wrote: ‘it appears that they are American deserters, who, with sub-machine-guns in hand, are playing at Chicago movies’. The Germans had been the ‘Fridolins’; now the Americans became known as ‘les Ricains’.
At a dinner at the British Embassy, General Legentilhomme, the military governor of Paris, painted a terrifying picture to the Englishwoman beside him. American servicemen were ‘barbarians, worse than the Russians, you simply cannot imagine, chère madame, how appalling the situation is’. Coincidentally a British diplomat, driving back with his wife from a dinner party, found a street cordoned off by men armed with sub-machine-guns ready to rob the occupants of any car which passed. Reacting quickly, he accelerated, forcing them to jump for cover.
There is no way of telling whether these hold-ups were carried out by military personnel or by civilians who had got hold of uniforms. Military police apparel was the most sought after. Clearly, French deserters and former