Last Days

A gray pall, impenetrable as a Limehouse fog, settled over Paris last week. The long boulevards were veiled, the Arc de Triomphe blotted out. Parisians had never seen anything like it. Some thought it was the edge of a huge and newly invented Nazi smoke screen blown in from the front, for London and the southeast British coast were also sooted. Some believed it came from the suburban fires, others that it was the work of Paris' own Sainte Genevieve. Still others said it was God.

Hidden, confused, perhaps protected by it, Paris entered upon the second great week of tragedy in its long history. Paris that had meant so many things to so many people, the city that stood as Western civilization's tallest monument to art, science, letters, liberty and love, faced abandonment or destruction.

Made to Take. "I shall fight in front of Paris, in Paris, behind Paris," swore France's old tiger, Georges Clemenceau in 1914 when German artillery rumbled 17 miles away. "We shall defend every stone, every clod of earth, every lamppost and every building," declared an official French spokesman last week.

To defend Paris, however, was a task made surpassingly difficult by the plan of the city. Following six decades of revolution and rioting during which its streets were barricaded on some six occasions, Napoleon III commissioned Baron Eugene Georges Haussmann in 1853 to beautify the city and in doing so to eliminate the tangled mass of crooked streets so ideal for riots and street fighting. The wide boulevards and strategically located focal points such as the Etoile thus came into being. Haussmann figured that barricades could not be easily erected across wide boulevards, nor could the favorite technique of shooting and heaving bricks from upper-story windows be so handily employed. The focal points where several boulevards converged were ideal as artillery stations, and the circular boulevards built replacing the old city walls facilitated the rapid shifting of troops.

History was not too kind to Planner Haussmann. Twenty years later Paris fell to the besieging Germans, after which it was seized and held for 80 days by revolting Communards (see cuts, p. 22-23).

Not only is the Paris plan vulnerable to internal disorder, it is far from invulnerable to seizure from without. An invading general whose troops break through the ring of old forts and gain access to the boulevards has the same advantages that Haussmann's revolt-breakers were supposed to enjoy. And the old masonry buildings become bomb traps since the limestone of which they are constructed shatters easily, each splinter becoming itself a missile.

Life in the Shadow. Under the pall of smoke that turned light clothes grey and made eyes smart, Paris life went on last week. The omnibusses and subways continued to run though less frequently, the radio stations broadcast only martial music interspersed with news bulletins and official communiques (as in Warsaw), people journeyed out to the suburbs to see the damage caused by Nazi bombers and to look at the wreckage of planes shot down. The cafes and the Bank of France remained open, and people stood in queues at local banks to withdraw their savings.

The postman made his rounds and florists considered it a point of honor not to show fear. Urging the evacuation of children, the Journal wrote, "There are too many tender faces exposed to massacre by Nazi assassins." Some shops were closed, the iron or wooden shutters over their windows indicating that the proprietors had departed, but most of them remained open. Two American films ran in Champs-Elysees theatres: Going Places, and You Can't Take It with You.

In the Champs-Elysees, Nazi officers took over the civic departments. A 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew was imposed. German bands played old Prussian marches revived from the Bismarck era, and from Paris radio stations came German commands and German music -- Deutschland iiber Alles and Horst Wessel Lied. Nazi guards stood at rigid attention before the tomb of the unknown soldier. Two German Fieseler "Storch"' planes capable of braking their landing speed to 25 miles an hour sat down neatly on the Place de la Concorde, one of them bearing Hitler's adjutant, Colonel Warlimont, who had come to arrange for the advent of his chief.

Versailles, scene of the birth and death of the German Empire, was prepared for an event greater than either of these. The famed Hall of Mirrors would, according to reports, be the scene of a symbolic ceremony during which Warlord Hitler, in the presence of his generals and perhaps defeated Frenchmen, would touch a match to the Versailles Treaty, thus destroying by fire the document of humiliation which has seared the German soul for 21 years.

Above the American Embassy, just off Place de la Concorde, the Stars & Stripes still waved, but the building was surrounded by a cordon of Nazi infantry.

Ambassador Bullitt, friend of Frenchmen of every political leaning and avowed foe of Naziism, paid a courtesy call on the commander of the occupying forces, General Boguslav von Studnitz, who returned it. Nazi soldiers raced one another to the top of the Eiffel Tower and the winner tucked the tricolor waving from the top most flagstaff under his arm as a prized war trophy.

Fateful Odyssey. While the shell of what was Paris awaited the arrival of the new Attila, the French Government scurried to the south. It found asylum in the quiet town of Tours, but within a day Nazi airmen arrived and, amidst rocking explosions as bombs crashed into streets and highways packed with refugees, the ministers continued their flight. For the first time bomb-weary refugees, some of whom had trekked all the way from Belgium, saw markings of red, white and green on the waves of ceaselessly attacking planes--Italians.

Hemmed in, bombed, desperate, the French Cabinet went into almost constant session in Bordeaux. The military chiefs believed that peace could be arranged with the loss of provinces and colonies but continued national existence. Premier Reynaud maintained that with Hitler no terms could be made. Then came the zero hour with unexpected suddenness. His Government resigned Sunday just before midnight and 84-year-old Marshal Henri Philippe Petain assumed the task of forming a Government of capitulation.

The majestic tragedy of France came to its end here and there with bitter ludicrousness. One French unit marching along a highway south of Paris met a German column unexpectedly at an intersection. Surprised, both stopped but no one shot. Finally the German commander ordered the French to stack their arms at the roadside. "Now run along," he said.

Then, as suddenly as a dam gives way to an inexorable flood, or armies give way to inexorable force, hope vanished. On Monday panic-stricken evacuation began and in one hectic night it grew from a trickle to a torrent, as suddenly all Paris became obsessed with a single thought--to get away.

An endless cavalcade jammed the highways, soon becoming an incredible confusion of cars, taxis, busses, trucks, fire engines, ambulances, traveling circuses and motorcycles, interspersed with bicycles, horse carts, wagons, barouches and pedestrians pushing wheelbarrows or carrying packs on their backs. Collisions at night littered the roadside with wrecks, and the law of the survival of the fittest soon left ancient jalopies stranded by the wayside. Food and cigarets became practically unobtainable and, as gasoline pumps went dry, occupants of cars doubled up to save fuel. Hotel rooms were rented only for a night because other homeless refugees claimed them during the day. Most people slept along the road, and with water scarce and the smoke pall from the battlefield settling upon them, they soon became as black as Senegalese. The people of Paris, leaving their homes and lives behind them, were in utter black, desperate depression as they passed through their own city gates.

Capitulation Preferred. The Government left for Tours, but true to a tradition set by American Ambassador Elihu Benjamin Washburne in 1870 and Myron Herrick in 1914, glossy-pated William C. Bullitt announced that he and nine of his staff would remain "as the representative of the Diplomatic Corps." The eleventh hour arrived with the city emptied of two-thirds of its 2,800,000 inhabitants.

Would Paris choose destruction to becoming an undamaged gem in Warlord Hitler's sceptre? In 1870 it had preferred resistance to the Prussian Bismarck and was besieged and shelled for 132 days while Parisians, reduced to starvation, devoured the animals of their zoo and paid 40¢ each for rats. Last week, as barricades were being erected in the suburbs and Nazi planes were dropping leaflets warning that the only alternative to destruction was capitulation, the decision came. To tense reporters in Tours a white-lipped official announced that Paris would become an undefended, open city.

At the request of General Henri Fernand Dantz, commander of the Paris area, Ambassador Bullitt telephoned to the American Legation in Bern for forwarding to Berlin the message that "Paris has been declared an open city. General Hering ... is withdrawing his army which has been defending Paris. . . . The gendarmerie and police are remaining and the firemen are also." For the first time since the days of Napoleon I Paris had elected not to fight.

Modern Visigoths. At midnight the ancient city gates were closed to prevent fleeing refugees from running into advancing Nazi columns. Then at dawn they came, the modern version of Alaric's Visigoths: grimy German warriors in swift, battle-stained tanks and armored reconnaissance motorcycles. They were Austrian soldiers led by General Edmund Glaise-Horstenau, famous quisling in the Schuschnigg Government. Hitler had once promised commiserating Edouard Daladier, "Oh, Daladier, you're going to get to know my Austrians. You're going to make their acquaintance." He was keeping that promise.

Roaring through the suburbs of Argenteuil and Neuilly, they entered the swank west end of Paris and swung into the broad Avenue de Neuilly leading to the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysees. Another column raced in from St. Denis in the northeast. Horse-drawn supply trains clopped across the Place de la Concorde (see cut, p. 21). No single tank or Nazi warrior passed under the famous Arc because that honor was reserved for Adolf Hitler when he should make his triumphal entry.

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