It required all her strength to stay cool during these exceptionally bloody and chaotic eleven days when almost 1,500 Parisians died in the struggle to chase out 20,000 occupying soldiers as well as collaborationist snipers, many of whom were Vichy miliciens, firing from rooftops wherever they could. Suddenly rosette merchants appeared on the streets, hoping to make a quick franc or two from women determined to declare their allegiance to the nation by sporting a tricolore rosette in their blouse. At last, on 25 August, Dietrich von Choltitz, the German Military Governor of Paris, emerged from his headquarters in the H?tel Meurice to sign the surrender documents. Henri Rol-Tanguy and General Philippe Leclerc of the 2nd Armoured Division, de Gaulle’s representative, were also signatories. The following day de Gaulle, unmissable thanks to his immense height, made his triumphal walk down the Champs-Elysées with thousands of people shouting ‘Vive de Gaulle!’ As he walked, he raised his long arms towards the sky, turning first left and then right, as if offering thanks, in a gesture that was to become his hallmark but was completely new to Parisians then. ‘For those gathered there,’ remarked Elisabeth Meynard, a teacher in charge of a group of schoolchildren that day, ‘he was the living symbol of resistance to the enemy invader.’ With the odd German or milicien sniper taking murderous pot-shots, he then delivered a rousing speech referring, in an immediate attempt to unite the country, to ‘Paris liberated by her own people … supported by the whole of France’.
But he could not totally deny the contribution made by the brave communist fighters amongst whom Cécile Rol-Tanguy had played an important role, a crucial factor in determining the political future of the country. One of the liveliest post-war arguments, still arousing controversy in the twenty-first century though only a handful of the participants are still alive, has centred on the part played by female resisters – whether women carried weapons or ‘merely’ acted in support. Clearly, in Paris women under the command of Rol-Tanguy did use weapons, as can be seen in contemporary footage of the Liberation which shows young girls such as the twenty-two-year-old Anne Marie Dalmaso handling a gun as she fights in the action to defend the H?tel de Ville. Dalmaso had joined the teams of young volunteers especially created to help those affected by the bombing, or evacuated from combat zones.* Madeleine Riffaud, a twenty-year-old communist arrested in July for shooting and killing a German officer in daylight on a bridge overlooking the Seine, was interrogated in Fresnes and even had a date set for her execution but was released in a prisoner exchange and returned to fight in the resistance. On the day after the Liberation Frida Wattenberg, only nineteen, a Paris-born resister working for the OSE and other groups, was immediately sent to the Toulouse office for ‘Questions Juives’ to retrieve crucial files that would contain details of any Jewish genocide in France. ‘When the official asked me what authority I had to claim them I replied: “All I have is my gun,” and pointed it at him.’ Marie-France Geoffroy-Dechaume, cycling around the Normandy coast with explosives at the ready, handled not only weapons but also bomb-making equipment.
However, in the euphoria of liberation, the abiding image is of women throughout France who now suffered summary justice for what was termed collaboration horizontale. Those accused, rightly or wrongly, of having slept with a German, sometimes but not always in exchange for benefits, of having collaborated by providing sensitive information, or merely of having serviced the occupier in the role of housekeeper, seamstress or cook, were all seen as women guilty of infidelity to the nation. They were denounced, hectored, brought to their knees, had their heads shaved; some even had swastikas drawn or branded on their bodies and were made to parade half naked through town to display their shame publicly. No one who watched ever forgot the barbarity, as whole villages turned out to cheer young girls being humiliated perhaps for no greater crime than sleeping with a German in return for some silk stockings or a little bit of money. Lee Miller, the US-born photographer and fashion model who had been accredited as a war reporter with British Vogue, had flown over to France on 2 August and was making her way up to Paris where ‘I won’t be the first woman journalist in Paris … but I’ll be the first dame photographer, I think, unless someone parachutes in.’* Miller was shocked to witness the ‘chastisement’ of two girls who were shaved, spat on and publicly slapped even though their interrogation had merely confirmed that there was enough evidence for a subsequent trial. ‘They were stupid little girls not intelligent enough to feel ashamed,’ Lee wrote to her editor, Audrey Withers.