The truth was that when it came to deciding the fate of the Vercors, the template now being used was not Dalloz’s carefully calibrated Plan Montagnards but something altogether more ambitious. Some among those, British and French, who were directing the Resistance from London were beginning to believe that the young men who had first taken refuge on the Vercors plateau and then been turned into a rough guerrilla fighting force might, in due course and with a little help, be able to take on a face-to-face defensive battle with the gathered might of the German Army.
Between Christmas and New Year – at about the same time that Churchill in his sickbed in Carthage was concluding he had to take the French Resistance more seriously – one of London’s ‘mission leaders’, who had now teamed up with the Maquisards on another of the planned redoubts, the Glières plateau east of Geneva, sent a message to London: ‘We consider that the Glières plateau is now an impregnable fortress.’
It would not be long before this boast, and with it the developing concept of the ‘defendable redoubt’, would be tested.
11
Emmanuel d’Astier de La Vigérie, aristocrat, adventurer, libertine, Socialist, one-time self-proclaimed Communist, eternal optimist, Resistance leader and senior member of de Gaulle’s government-in-exile in Algiers, was summoned to attend the British Prime Minister in the Villa Taylor in Marrakesh at 10.00 on 15 January 1944. De Gaulle himself had just flown back to Algiers, having been in Marrakesh for a morning parade of troops, over which he and Churchill had jointly presided as a show of unity between the two men. It may even have been that Churchill had deliberately waited for the General’s departure before calling d’Astier to see him.
D’Astier records that when he arrived at the Villa Taylor ‘Duff Cooper was there, as was Macmillan just back from Egypt … Clementine and Mary Churchill were on the terrace together with Diana Cooper, who despite her straw hat and chiffon veil looked like a Rossetti painting. Although it was winter it was as warm as a May day on the Île de France. An ADC came for me and led me through darkened rooms to a modest door which opened to reveal Churchill sitting in a large bed, a cigar clamped between his teeth. The nurse attending him stood up and left; the chamber was as small, sparse and white as a hospital room. Somewhat intimidated I stumbled into my first words in English but was soon at my ease … He was an accomplished verbal jouster – never quibbling over positions which he knew were untenable … always knowing when to feint and when to riposte, jumping from word to word, barking with anger from time to time, but chiefly for effect (though it brought the nurse scurrying back in on one occasion to relieve him of his cigar and put it out).’
At the end of two hours, Churchill, dressed in air-force-blue silk pyjamas, finally allowed de La Vigérie to turn the subject to the matter of Britain’s miserly approach to arming the French Resistance, about which d’Astier had complained publicly and vociferously. The Frenchman outlined the case for Britain to deliver something more than just warm words which, he claimed, was about all that had been given so far. Churchill appeared to listen and finally conceded, as though offering a great gift, ‘OK, we’ll give you what you need. I will give the orders myself. Come and see me in London and we will discuss it more.’ It was a piece of typical Churchillian gamesmanship, designed to get the maximum out of graciously conceding a position which had in fact been decided upon even before d’Astier entered the room.
On the day before this piece of theatre, an apparently hale and hearty Churchill had chaired a meeting with his Chiefs of Staff Committee of the War Cabinet in the splendid surroundings of Government House in Gibraltar. All his key advisers and naval, military and air force leaders were there. This was the moment when he had to shift British policy to accommodate the demise of his Balkan enthusiasms in favour of a strategy based on a simultaneous pincer movement through France, from the English Channel in the north and the Mediterranean in the south. But Churchill was constitutionally incapable of taking defeat lying down. He had grumpily come to terms with the Overlord landings on the Normandy beaches, but the grand strategist in him still balked at the Anvil landings on France’s Mediterranean coast. He would still have preferred to continue the Allies’ northern push through Italy ending with a swing west across the Alpine passes into the Savoie, the Isère and the Haute-Savoie.
The War Cabinet minutes record: ‘The Prime Minister … was inclined to agree that Overlord should be strengthened and that Anvil should revert to pre-Tehran dimensions’ (that is, at most, a possible diversionary attack to draw troops from the north, if needed). Churchill would in fact make several determined attempts to divert Roosevelt and Eisenhower away from Anvil, each more desperate than the last, as the date for the Mediterranean landings approached. For the moment, however, he was content to prepare the ground for a return to his preferred strategy if and when the opportunity arose. The minutes of the War Cabinet meeting that day at Government House in Gibraltar reflect this change of course very clearly. Having spent the last year denying that the French Resistance had any strategic importance (and consequently refusing them priority in the supply of arms), Churchill and his key advisers now agreed that ‘A vigorous plan should be worked out to stimulate guerrilla operations in the mountains of the Savoie and in the country between Ventimiglia and the Lake of Geneva.’
The implications of this decision for the Vercors and other possible Alpine redoubts were considerable. First, they would now have first place in the supply of arms they had so far been denied. And secondly, they had become key to whichever southern French strategy the Allies would finally decide on: to both Cammaerts’ ‘leapfrogging’ plan in the case of Anvil, and to Churchill’s Alpine passes plan if Anvil was dropped in favour of a push through Italy.
Miksche’s study had proposed six possible areas for the establishment of redoubts: the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Morvan forest, the Vosges mountains, the Jura and the Alps. But of the options that were now being developed by the Allies (albeit unknown to the French) for the purpose of a southern invasion, only the Alps and the Jura would be relevant. If de Gaulle wanted the Resistance to coordinate its actions in a way which would make them most valuable to the Allies, it was in the Vercors and the other Alpine redoubts that he needed to invest. Unfortunately, he and his advisers had other ideas – ideas which, driven more by political considerations than military ones, would have profound implications for the Vercors.
The next substantive meeting between Churchill and d’Astier was at a conference chaired by Churchill in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street on 27 January. Again, all the British Prime Minister’s key advisers were there. First, Churchill played the Yugoslav card: ‘I aided Mihailovic – they were brave men. Now I am helping Tito. The more the Germans slaughter his men, the more ferocious they get. That’s what I am looking for.’ Then he questioned d’Astier about the reliability of the Resistance: ‘Can you assure me that you French will not use the weapons we provide to shoot each other? That you will follow strictly the orders of Eisenhower without question or considerations of a political nature?’ Finally, he reverted once more to his master card – gracious generosity. ‘I have decided’, he said at the end of the meeting, with the air of a kindly uncle giving money to an impecunious relative, ‘to help the French patriots.’
The minutes of the meeting, normally dry affairs, give a flavour of the event in which the Prime Minister’s peculiarly personal cadences can be easily detected: ‘The Prime Minster said that he wished and believed it possible to bring about a situation in the whole area between the Lake of Geneva and the Mediterranean comparable to the situation in Yugoslavia. Brave and desperate men could cause the most acute embarrassment to the enemy and it is right that we should do all in our power to foster and stimulate so valuable an aid to the Allied strategy.’ Perhaps more important than these fine words was the conclusion of the meeting, which was that the RAF’s first priority – after the bomber offensive on German cities – should now be ‘The French Maquis’. Churchill went on to stipulate that, as a start, arms sufficient to equip 8,000 Maquisards should be dropped into the Alpine region during the month of February 1944.