Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris (31 page)

As the golden dome of Les Invalides approached along the Avenue de Tourville, they were all acutely aware of the fact that this would be the highpoint of the tour, and a moment of profound emotional significance for the Führer. He came as a conqueror, like Blücher and Bismarck before him, but also as an admirer of Napoleon, his equal, and a representative of the spirit of world history. But when the convoy pulled up on the Place Vauban, he happened to notice, standing proudly on its pedestal, the statue of General Mangin. It was Mangin’s vindictive army that had occupied the Rhineland in 1919. The Führer’s face darkened in an instant, and he was once again the avenger of national humiliation and the defender of German pride. He turned to the soldiers in the car behind and said, ‘Have it blown up. We should not burden the future with memories such as this.’

On hearing this, Breker reflected on the sad lot of a great leader: even at this special moment, he was forced to tear his mind away from art and to plunge back into the brutal world of politics and war.

Inside the Church of the Dome, they stood around the gallery of the circular crypt, gazing down on the maroon-coloured porphyry of Napoleon’s tomb. For once, the party was reduced almost to silence, entranced by the unearthly atmosphere and by the sombre light, which was dimmer than usual because of the sandbags that had been heaped against the windows before Paris had been declared an open city and spared the Luftwaffe’s bombs. The faded flags commemorating Napoleon’s most glorious victories hung from the pilasters. The conqueror of Paris gazed on the fifty-ton tomb of his predecessor, his head bowed, his cap held to his heart.

Breker was standing close enough to hear him breathing and had a spine-tingling sense of history in the making. He listened for the words that would mark the timeless meeting of the two great leaders. An audible whisper left the Führer’s lips as he turned to Giesler and said, ‘You shall build my tomb.’ Then, no longer whispering, he elaborated on the project, saying that the painted dome would be replaced by the vaulted heavens, from which, through an oculus similar to that of the Pantheon in Rome, the rain and light of the universe would pour down on the indestructible sarcophagus. The sarcophagus would bear these two words: ‘Adolf Hitler’.

The Führer chose this solemn moment to announce his ‘gift to France’: the remains of Napoleon’s son, the Duc de Reichstadt, would be taken from Vienna and placed in Les Invalides beside his father’s tomb. It would be another mark of his respect for the people of France and their glorious past.

7.15
A.M
.–S
UNLIGHT WAS RUSHING
along the Seine as they passed the Palais Bourbon and turned to the east. A quarter past seven struck from a tower. Here and there, a concierge had ventured out with rag and broom to begin the daily purging of the doorstep. Dogs liberated from their owners’ apartments were going about their morning business. On the Boulevard Saint-Germain, they stopped briefly in front of the German embassy while the Führer gave instructions for the renovation of the building. Then, hurrying through the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, they passed in front of Saint-Sulpice, the Luxembourg Palace and the Greek columns of the Odéon theatre. Two policemen saw them head along the Boulevard Saint-Michel and turn into the Rue Soufflot. Earlier that morning, a telephone call had woken the Préfet de Police, who was already accustomed to the sudden whims of his new masters. The gendarmerie of the fifth
arrondissement
had told him that the caretaker of the Panthéon had been roused from sleep by German soldiers carrying sub-machine-guns and ordered to have the iron gates open at seven sharp.

At about half-past seven, the Führer was seen marching briskly into the mausoleum and emerging a few moments later with a scowl on his face. He had been disgusted by the sculptures (‘cancerous growths’, he called them) and by the wretched coldness of the place, which affected him like a personal insult: ‘By God!’, he snarled, ‘It doesn’t deserve the name Pantheon, when you think of the one in Rome!’ Breker was familiar with the Führer’s views on sculpture and architecture, but he found it interesting to hear them applied to actual examples. According to the Führer, a piece of sculpture that deformed the human body was an insult to the Creator. He must have been thinking of the choir of the Panthéon and of Sicard’s tumultuous monument to the Convention Nationale, with its craggy, weather-worn soldiers and its defiant motto, ‘
VIVRE LIBRE OU MOURIR
’. A true artist, according to the Führer, did not use art to express his own personality; he took no interest in politics. Unlike the Jew, he felt no need to twist everything out of shape and to make it frivolous and ironic. Art and architecture were the work of human hands, like boots, except that a pair of boots was good for the rubbish heap after a year or two of wear and tear, whereas a work of art endured for centuries.

There was something in this public display of personal sentiment that inspired Arno Breker with feelings of filial gratitude. He realized that, while encouraging ‘his artists’ to believe that they were his guides to Paris, the Führer was in fact showing
them
the city as it ought to be seen and preparing them for the daunting task ahead. As they drove away from the Panthéon, the Führer turned in his seat and looked ‘Lieutenant’ Breker up and down with a sly smile on his face. Then he said, as if to console him for his ludicrous appearance, ‘No true artist is a soldier…’, and expressed a wish to see the
quartier
where the young Breker had begun his heroic struggle with the muse. ‘I, too, love Paris, and, like you, I would have studied here if fate had not driven me into politics, for my aspirations before the First World War were entirely artistic.’

Since there was nothing of architectural note in that part of Paris, the Führer’s request seemed all the more considerate. They drove along the Boulevard du Montparnasse and saw the famous café called the Closerie des Lilas, and Carpeaux’s fountain of ‘The Four Continents’, which confirmed the Führer’s high regard for Carpeaux’s work. Then they returned to the Boulevard Saint-Michel and drove swiftly down towards the river. There was still so much to see, but time was running out, and they were now a long way from the point of exit.

On the Place Saint-Michel, the Führer returned the salute of two policemen. They crossed to the island and turned along the lifeless
quai
towards Notre-Dame. Here, at least, Paris still exuded its mysterious charm. The walls of the Préfecture de Police slid away to the left like a curtain and the Gothic towers rose in the grey light like the backdrop of a Romantic drama. They drove past without stopping. They saw the Palais de Justice and the Sainte-Chapelle, which made no impression on the Führer, who noticed instead the dome on the other side of the street and said to Breker, ‘Isn’t that the dome of the Chambre de Commerce?’, at which Breker shook his head and answered, ‘No, it’s the dome of the Institut, I think.’ But when they drew level with the entrance, the Führer jerked his head and said to Breker, in great amusement, ‘See what’s written there?…
Chambre de Commerce
!’

7.50
A.M
.–T
HEY CROSSED
the Pont d’Arcole to the Hôtel de Ville, passed by the Carnavalet museum and the shuttered shop windows of the Jewish quarter to the Place des Vosges. Trees masked the cream and pink facades, and the Führer looked positively bored. The twittering sparrows, the leafy garden for nannies and well-heeled children and the cosy arcades gave off an intolerable air of bourgeois self-satisfaction. He did not become animated again until they were heading back along the Rue de Rivoli. This was the sort of nobility that he had in mind for Berlin: the endless row of identical house-fronts, the unmistakeable evidence of a grand design, and the invincible peace and happiness of a great imperial capital.

To the right were the dingy streets that led to Les Halles. Even here, the city seemed quite dead. There were no earthy vegetables blocking the roads, no traders massacring the French language, no smells of coffee and
caporal
. But then, penetrating the morning stillness, they heard the cry of a newsvendor. It sounded like the stranded relic of an earlier age. The owner of the voice was approaching from a side-street with his sing-song cry, ‘
Le Matin! Le Matin!
’ He saw the column of sedans and came running up, waving a copy of the paper, coming to the car in front and yelling, until the words stuck in his throat, ‘
Le Matin!
’ Staring in mute terror at the blue eyes that stared back at him, he fled, dropping his papers on the pavement. A little further on, a group of market women, slovenly and self-confident like all the women of Les Halles, stood talking in loud voices. The loudest and fattest of them peered at the convoy as it came along the street, and began to wave her arms about, pointing at Hitler and saying, ‘
C’est lui–oh, c’est lui!
’ Then, with a speed that belied their corpulence, they scattered in all directions.

‘I have no hesitation’, said the Führer, as the monumental facade of the Louvre hove into view, ‘in pronouncing this grandiose edifice one of the greatest works of genius in the history of architecture.’ A few moments later, he was just as impressed by the Place Vendôme, which, despite the vandalism of anarchists, still proclaimed the undying glory of the Emperor.

Soon, they were back at the Opéra, to see–as the Führer had intended–the gorgeous facade in the full light of day. Without stopping, they accelerated up the Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin and the Rue de Clichy, veered right on the square and followed the boulevards past the Moulin Rouge, as silent as ever on a Sunday morning, to Place Pigalle, but without seeing any of those Parisian women whose lipstick was said to be made from the grease of the Paris sewers.

Changing gear in rapid succession, the Benz sedans surged up the steep incline, threaded their way through the provincial streets and came out on the Parvis du Sacré-Cœur. They walked to the edge of the square. With their backs to the basilica, they looked out over the city. Church-goers were entering and leaving the building; some of them recognized Hitler but ignored him. He leaned on the balustrade, searching for the lines that would reveal the master plan of Baron Haussmann. At that height, the beauties of Paris were swamped by homes and factories and other utilitarian buildings; almost everything was washed away by the distance and the haze. Paris was an impression, a muddy watercolour, and the sturdy monuments they had seen at close quarters were like little buoys drifting in a grey sea.

Breker sensed the Führer’s disappointment. This had been Adolf Hitler’s one and only visit to the city he had studied so fervently and had longed to see for so many years. The tour had lasted barely two and a half hours, during which he had neither eaten a meal, nor entered a private house, nor spoken to any Parisian, nor even used a toilet. On the odd moments they had been able to exchange a few words, Speer had been as cynical as usual, calling the Führer ‘
le Chef
’, by way of a joke. But now, as Breker watched Hitler scanning the space bisected by the Seine and bounded by dark hills, he seemed to see his eyes gleam and moisten. ‘It was the dream of my life’, the Führer was saying, ‘to be permitted to see Paris. I am happy beyond words to see that dream fulfilled.’ Ever mindful of the purpose of the tour, he addressed his artists–Giesler, Breker and Speer–saying, ‘For you, the hard time is now beginning when you must work and strive to create the monuments and cities that are entrusted to you.’ Then, to his secretary, he said, ‘Nothing must be allowed to hinder their work.’

They stood at the balustrade for what seemed a long time. Finally, turning slowly from the scene, the Führer looked up at the white basilica behind, said, ‘Appalling,’ and then led the way back to the cars.

T
HE
C
ONDOR
took off from Le Bourget at ten o’clock. The Führer ordered the pilot to circle over the city a few times. They saw the sunlight catch the steel-blue curves of the Seine, which made it possible to work out exactly where everything was in relation to everything else: the islands, Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides.

Paris fell away for the last time into the summer haze. Now, only forests and fields appeared through the windows. The Führer banged his fist on the armrest and said, ‘That was an experience!’ The satisfaction of having seen the legendary city outweighed the disappointments (he had imagined everything much grander than it was in reality), and its obvious defects in some way enhanced his appreciation and made him look forward to examining the master model of Berlin with a fresh eye. The only sour note came from Hermann Giesler, who told the Führer that he had not really seen Paris at all, because what was a city without its people? He should have visited it during the 1937 Exhibition, when it was alive with people and traffic. The Führer nodded his head in agreement, and said, ‘I can well imagine.’

Back at the Wolfsschlucht, the Führer shared his thoughts, during walks in the woods, with Giesler, Breker and Speer. While his impressions were still sharp, he made a decision which showed that, even in the absence of its human population, Paris had a powerful effect on anyone who saw it. He had often considered the possibility that the city would have to be annihilated but had now decided not to destroy it after all–for, as he told Speer that evening in the parsonage, ‘When we are finished with Berlin, Paris will be nothing but a shadow, so why should we destroy it?’

When Professor Breker came to record the notable events of his life in 1971, he found his impressions of the little tour even more vivid than memories of his early days in Montparnasse. That vanishing parade of grey monuments, and the newsreel images of himself standing next to the Führer, were more real to him than his own personal experience of the city. As he told his friends, he was grateful to have had the opportunity to witness an aspect of the Führer that few people ever saw–a Hitler who was, for a few hours, released from the cares of war and the mountains of paperwork under which, according to Breker, his enemies tried to bury his ambitions. Even when the monumental statues and bas-reliefs he had produced at the Führer’s behest lay in rubble, he remembered how brilliantly the architecture of Paris, when it was liberated from the distractions of people and traffic, had expressed the continuity of European civilization. He clung to his memories like a secret treasure, all through the difficult years when, as Speer smilingly predicted when they said farewell to each other in the ruins of Berlin in 1945, ‘even a dog will refuse to take food from your hand’.