Natalie Meg Evans / Kay Blythe Author

In my new novel, The Paris Inheritance, I write about the moment an estimated two million inhabitants fled the city, struggling through gridlocked streets alongside refugees from northern France and the Low Countries. Their goal was the presumed safety of the river Loire, and the south. In what would prove its last dawn as a free city for over four years, Paris stood empty but for those who could not, or would not, leave. 

The French government had beaten the rush, getting away in their official cars ahead of the great exodus. The French army was broken and demoralised, and it was too late anyway to muster a defence of the capital. Anyone who dared unbolt their shutters in the blackout conditions might wonder if the artillery fire flashing above the northern skyline would soon be turned on them. At the US embassy on a corner of Place de la Concorde, the American Ambassador waited with his few remaining staff. William C. Bullitt, maverick, linguist and bon viveur, was keeping to the tradition of his country’s ambassadors since the days of the Revolution: staying put, come what may.

The fates of Warsaw and Rotterdam were a bleak omen of what the coming hours might bring. A calendar month earlier, Rotterdam had been all but razed. Back in September 1939, the Polish capital had been reduced to ruins by aerial and artillery bombardment. As a citizen of a neutral country, Bullitt had nothing particular to fear from the Germans, though of course, aerial bombardment tends to be indiscriminating. 

In post since 1936, Bullitt knew Paris and loved it dearly. A flawless French speaker, well regarded by his hosts, his career had just taken a surreal sidestep. Earlier that day, the absent French prime minister had appointed him provisional Mayor of Paris. The appointment made sense in that the US embassy was by then one of only two functioning administrations in the capital - the other being the office of the Provisional Governor, who, like his fellows, might have to flee at any moment. Moreover, the US embassy had radio communication and the nearest thing to a working telephone. Bullitt, who traced his ancestry back to Pocahontas and was German-Jewish on his mother’s side, was handed his first life-or-death decision in the wee small hours of June 14th. He would, metaphorically, be the one to open the gates of Paris to the enemy. 

 The Germans were prepared to enter under a truce, the French having pledged two days earlier to offer no opposition. The truce fell apart when shots rang out in the north of the city and the mood abruptly swung. General Georg von Küchler, the German army commander who had pounded Rotterdam to rubble – and who shared his Führer’s loathing for the left-leaning and part-Jewish Bullitt – ordered an all-out assault. Paris would be wiped off the map; opening salvos would start at 8:00 a.m. Berlin time. As dawn crept in over the eastern suburbs, the countdown began. The only person empowered to stop mass destruction was the new provisional mayor, but at a moment like this, who do you call? And how? Phone lines throughout the Île de France were crippled. 

Fate - or random chance – came to Bullitt’s aid when the US Embassy in Berne, Switzerland, put in a call to his office, almost certainly wanting to know, ‘Are the Germans there yet?’ This call allowed Bullitt to seize a line through to Berlin. As fluent in German as he was in French, he passionately reminded German command that Paris had pledged no resistance (if one ignored a round or two of youthful gunshot). A hostile attack would bring bloodshed on both sides and be counted a criminal act, unforgotten for generations. Bullitt was persuasive, and a pause was agreed on. The tense negotiations dragged on, and it fell to Bullitt to send proxies to meet with German counterparts at Écouen, a town about twenty km north of Paris. At 5:30 a.m. Berlin time, the truce was reinstated. Von Küchler cancelled his order for bombardment. Paris breathed again. 

By first light, the Germans were entering the city and by afternoon, a swastika fluttered above the Arc de Triomphe as they paraded down the Champs Élysées. The Occupation had begun. A little under four years later, and three days before its final liberation, Paris again stood on the precipice. Hitler ordered that the city should be held or if not held, “Reduced to ruins”. On this occasion she was spared by a German general who made the humane decision to ignore the order. 

William C. Bullitt, whose telephone call to Berlin saved one of the most venerated cities in the world and many lives, joined the Free French forces at the end of the war and died in France in 1967. 

Natalie Meg Evans is the author of eleven historical novels set between the great wars in Europe. The Paris Inheritance is available here