A fair cop - Paris, 1944.

Description

Paris Agents de Police and a "civilian" resistant on guard, probably at the Préfecture de Police, Isle de la Cité, Paris, during the 1944 Paris Resistance uprising. In the weeks prior to the uprising, the Communist Resistance showed considerable ingenuity in targeting the Paris Police Force for recruitment, recruiting an improbably large number of new "comrades" from the Force. These Policiers were a valuable addition to the Paris Resistance overall, since they were at this time generally armed with pistols and, in many cases, rifles, and had access to Police arsenals containing more. When the uprising broke out, policemen were more likely to support it than to try to put it down. A great number of the newly-Commie cops occupied the impressive Court of Justice complex on the Isle de la Cité, which included the forbidding stone-built Préfecture de Police. This was a major location for the somewhat scattered and (from the Germans' viewpoint) rather half-hearted fighting that took place across Paris during the uprising. At one point, the Préfecture was subject to attack by the Germans' menagerie of obsolete captured French tanks but, since the attackers lacked infantry support and even high-explosive ammunition, and the defenders lacked antitank weapons, this incident ended in a pretty bloodless draw. Best regards, JR.