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The Liberation of Paris August 25, 1944
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The Normandy Breakout had smashed the German Seventh Army, and the Allies advanced on Paris.
The French capital had been occupied for four years, and most Americans associated German occupation with a romantic picture of Parisians struggling against German oppression. In reality, the Vichy Government helped the Germans to send thousands of Jews to concentration camps, and hundreds of thousands of laborers to Germany to work in war production as slave labor. By 1945 most slave laborers were French; the Poles had died out.
For the German occupiers, Paris was a wonderful duty to draw. Dozens of movie houses, burlesque theatres, and dance halls were available to them. Allied bombing struck in the industrialized suburbs, but not the city itself. The gaiety masked terror and repression by the Gestapo and the SS.
After 1941 the Communists rose against the Germans and formed the core of the resistance movements. The effectiveness of the resistance prior to the Normandy invasion is debatable, but they captured weapons and organized to help the Allies. By 1944 the black market was thriving and many poorer Parisians were priced out of the market. Hunger and disease rose, and many more men and women joined the resistance.
After the Normandy invasion Paris waited for liberation. The resistance tracked the slow progress out of the Normandy coast and towards Paris. On August 19, the Communist-led resistance cells rose up against the German garrison commanded by Generalleutnant Dietrich Choltitz. At first he tried to work out a truce with the Free French under Charles de Gaulle, but it broke down and the Germans counterattacked the Maquis with tanks. Hitler, who ordered the city destroyed, asked his staff, “Is Paris burning?”
De Gaulle and the Free French threatened to pull out of the Allied plans and dash for Paris to relieve the resistance on their own. Choltitz did not follow Hitler’s orders to burn the town. Eisenhower had decided to bypass the city, but de Gaulle convinced him that little resistance would be met if the Allies took Paris.
The resistance and the advancing Americans wiped out the few remaining collaborationist and German pockets by August 25. Paris was free.
De Gaulle entered the city the next day. Snipers opened fire on him from a hotel, but he was not hit. He addressed Parisians and the world: “Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated!”
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::The Liberation of Paris::
The liberation of Paris, in theory, was only a matter of time after the success of D-Day in June 1944. The taking of Paris and its liberation would have been a massive morale boost not to just those who lived in Paris but to French people in general, but it did not seem to be a high priority to Allied leaders.August 25, 1944 - Liberation of Paris
BBC NEWS | Europe | Paris liberation 'myth' erases Allies
BBC Paris correspondent Allan Little asks what role the Allies played in the liberation of Paris, sixty years on from the moment which restored French national pride.BBC NEWS | Europe | Paris marks liberation from Nazis
Parisians mark the 60th anniversary of the French capital's liberation from the Nazis.TheHistoryNet | World War II | World War II: The Liberation of Paris
Both political and military expediency were factors in the return of the French capital to its people.TheHistoryNet | World War II | Dietrich von Choltitz: Saved of Paris From Destruction During World War II
Adolf Hitler had decreed that Paris should be left a smoking ruin, but Dietrich von Choltitz thought better of his Fuhrer's order.Liberation in Paris | TIME
Liberation in Paris Agence France-Presse, with 2,200 clients in 44 countries, boasts that it is one of the world's biggest news agencies. But it does no boasting about another distinction :...
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