Liberation of Paris

A truck painted with the marks of the FFI and the V for Victory

On 15 August, in the northeastern suburb of Pantin, 1,654 men (among them 168 captured Allied airmen), and 546 women, all political prisoners, were sent to the concentration camps of Buchenwald (men) and Ravensbrück (women), on what was to be the last convoy to Germany. Pantin had been the area of Paris from which the Germans had entered the capital in June 1940.[6][7]

The same day, employees of the Paris Métro, the Gendarmerie and Police went on strike; postal workers followed the next day. They were soon joined by workers across the city, which caused a general strike to break out on 18 August.

On 16 August, 35 young FFI members were betrayed by an agent of the Gestapo. They had gone to a secret meeting near the Grande Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne and were gunned down there.[8]

On 17 August, concerned that the Germans were placing explosives at strategic points around the city, Pierre Taittinger, the chairman of the municipal council, met Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris.[9] When Choltitz told them that he intended to slow the Allied advance as much as possible, Taittinger and Swedish Consul Raoul Nordling attempted to persuade Choltitz not to destroy Paris.[10]

FFI uprising on 19 August. One skirmisher is wearing an Adrian helmet.

All over France, from the BBC and Radiodiffusion nationale, the Free French broadcaster, the population knew of the Allies' advance toward Paris after the end of the battle of Normandy. Radiodiffusion nationale had been in the hands of the Vichy propaganda minister, Philippe Henriot, since November 1942 when de Gaulle took it over in an ordonnance he signed in Algiers on 4 April 1944.[11]

On 19 August, continuing their retreat eastwards, columns of German vehicles moved down the Avenue des Champs Élysées. Posters calling citizens to arm had previously been pasted on walls by FFI members. The posters called for a general mobilization of the Parisians; argued that "the war continues"; and called on the Parisian police, the Republican Guard, the gendarmerie, the Garde Mobile, the Groupe mobile de réserve (the police units replacing the army), and patriotic Frenchmen ("all men from 18 to 50 able to carry a weapon") to join "the struggle against the invader". Other posters assured that "victory is near" and promised "chastisement for the traitors",: Vichy loyalists and collaborators. The posters were signed by the "Parisian Committee of the Liberation", in agreement with the Provisional Government of the French Republic, and under the orders of "Regional Chief Colonel Rol" (Henri Rol-Tanguy), the commander of the French Forces of the Interior in Île de France.

The first skirmishes between the French and the German occupiers then began. Small mobile units of the Red Cross moved into the city to assist French and the German wounded. The same day, the Germans detonated a barge filled with mines in the northeastern suburb of Pantin, which set mills on fire that supplied Paris with its flour.[7]

A captured tank fires against a sniper's position

On 20 August, as barricades began to appear, Resistance fighters organized themselves to sustain a siege. Trucks were positioned, trees cut down and trenches were dug in the pavement to free paving stones for consolidating the barricades. The materials were transported by men, women and children using wooden carts. Fuel trucks were attacked and captured. Civilian vehicles were commandeered, painted with camouflage, and marked with the FFI emblem. The Resistance used them to transport ammunition and orders from one barricade to another.

Skirmishes reached their peak on 22 August, when some German units tried to leave their fortifications. At 9:00 a.m. on 23 August, under Choltitz's orders, the Germans opened fire on the Grand Palais, an FFI stronghold, and German tanks fired at the barricades in the streets. Hitler gave the order to inflict maximum damage on the city.[12]

On 24 August, after combat and poor roads had delayed his 2nd Armored Division, Free French general Leclerc disobeyed his direct superior, American V Corps commander Major General Leonard T. Gerow, and sent a vanguard to Paris with the message that the entire division would be there the following day. The 2nd Armored Division was equipped with American M4 Sherman tanks, halftracks and trucks, and the vanguard that Leclerc chose was the 9th Company of the Régiment de marche du Tchad, nicknamed La Nueve (Spanish for "the nine") because of its 160 men under French command, 146 of them were Spanish Republicans.[13] 9th Company commander Captain Raymond Dronne became the second uniformed Allied officer to enter Paris after Amado Granell and the first French officer to reenter the capital.[14]

The 9th Company broke into the center of Paris by the Porte d'Italie and reached the Hôtel de Ville at 9:22 PM.[15] Upon entering the town hall square, the half-track "Ebro" fired the first rounds at a large group of German fusiliers and machine guns. Civilians went out to the street and sang "La Marseillaise", including as Pierre Schaeffer broadcast the news of the 2nd Armored Division's arrival on a Radiodiffusion Nationale broadcast and then played it. Schaeffer then asked any priests who were listening to ring their churches' bells, and the churches who participated included Notre-Dame de Paris and Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre – whose bells include the Savoyarde, a bourdon that is France's biggest bell.[16] Dronne later went to von Choltitz's command post to request the German surrender.

The 4th US Infantry Division commanded by Raymond Barton also entered through the Porte d'Italie in the early hours of the next day. The leading American regiments covered the right flank of the French 2nd Armoured and turned Eastward at the Place de la Bastille and made their way along Avenue Daumesnil heading towards the Bois de Vincennes.[17] In the afternoon the British 30 Assault Unit had entered the Porte d'Orléans and then searched buildings for vital intelligence, later capturing the former Headquarters of Admiral Karl Dönitz, the Château de la Muette.[18]

While awaiting the final capitulation, the 9th Company assaulted the Chamber of Deputies, the Hôtel Majestic and the Place de la Concorde.

With the battle nearing its end, resistance groups brought Allied airmen and other troops hidden in suburban towns, such as Montlhéry, into central Paris.

25 August – Armoured vehicles of the 2nd Armored (Leclerc) Division fighting before the Palais Garnier. One German tank is going up in flames.

Despite repeated orders from Hitler that the French capital "must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris", which was to be accomplished by bombing it and blowing up its bridges,[19] Choltitz, as commander of the German garrison and military governor of Paris, surrendered at 3:30 p.m. at the Hôtel Meurice. He was then driven to the Paris Police Prefecture, where he signed the official surrender, and then to the Gare Montparnasse, where General Leclerc had established his command post, to sign the surrender of the German troops in Paris.

German soldiers at the Hôtel Majestic, headquarters for the Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich, the German High Military Command in France. They requested that to made prisoner only by the military and surrendered to Battalion Chief Jacques Massu of the 2e DB.

The same day that the Germans surrendered, de Gaulle, President of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, moved back into the War Ministry on the Rue Saint-Dominique and then made a speech at the Hôtel de Ville that was also broadcast. His speech proclaimed that Paris had liberated itself with help from French forces, notably downplaying the part that Barton's 4th Infantry played in the battle, and also dismissed Vichy as a false France.[20][21]

Why do you wish us to hide the emotion which seizes us all, men and women, who are here, at home, in Paris that stood up to liberate itself and that succeeded in doing this with its own hands?

No! We will not hide this deep and sacred emotion. These are minutes which go beyond each of our poor lives. Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France!

Since the enemy which held Paris has capitulated into our hands, France returns to Paris, to her home. She returns bloody, but quite resolute. She returns there enlightened by the immense lesson, but more certain than ever of her duties and of her rights.

I speak of her duties first, and I will sum them all up by saying that for now, it is a matter of the duties of war. The enemy is staggering, but he is not beaten yet. He remains on our soil.

It will not even be enough that we have, with the help of our dear and admirable Allies, chased him from our home for us to consider ourselves satisfied after what has happened. We want to enter his territory as is fitting, as victors.

This is why the French vanguard has entered Paris with guns blazing. This is why the great French army from Italy has landed in the south and is advancing rapidly up the Rhône valley. This is why our brave and dear Forces of the interior will arm themselves with modern weapons. It is for this revenge, this vengeance and justice, that we will keep fighting until the final day, until the day of total and complete victory.

This duty of war, all the men who are here and all those who hear us in France know that it demands national unity. We, who have lived the greatest hours of our History, we have nothing else to wish than to show ourselves, up to the end, worthy of France. Long live France!

The day after de Gaulle's speech, he marched down the Champs-Élysées as Leclerc's French 2nd Armored Division paraded behind. They began at the Arc de Triomphe at the western end, where de Gaulle also rekindled the Eternal Flame at France's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is estimated that up to two million people viewed this parade and reported that such a crowd and the scenes it created on the Champs-Élysées were not seen there again until France won the FIFA World Cup for the first time as hosts in 1998.[22][23]

A few German snipers were still active, and ones from rooftops in the Hôtel de Crillon area shot at the crowd while de Gaulle entered the Place de la Concorde.[24]

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  General de Gaulle and his entourage proudly stroll down the Champs Élysées to Notre Dame Cathedral for a Te Deum ceremony following the city's liberation on 26 August 1944.
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  A British AFPU photographer kisses a child before cheering crowds in Paris, 26 August 1944.
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  As allied troops enter Paris on 26 August, celebrating crowds on place De La Concorde scatter for cover from small bands of remaining German snipers.
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  The U.S. 28th Infantry Division on the Champs Élysées in the "Victory Day" parade on 29 August 1944.
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  American soldiers look at the French tricolour flying from the Eiffel Tower.

On 29 August, the US Army's 28th Infantry Division, which had assembled in the Bois de Boulogne the previous night, paraded 24-abreast up the Avenue Hoche to the Arc de Triomphe, then down the Champs Élysées. Joyous crowds greeted the Americans as the entire division, men and vehicles, marched through Paris "on its way to assigned attack positions northeast of the French capital."[25]

The liberation was ongoing, but it became apparent that food in Paris was getting scarcer by the day. The French rail network had largely been destroyed by Allied bombing and so getting food in had become a problem, especially since the Germans stripped Paris of its resources for themselves. The Allies realised the necessity to get Paris back on its feet and pushed a plan for food convoys to get through to the capital as soon as possible. In addition, surrounding towns and villages were requested to supply as much to Paris as possible. The Civil Affairs of SHAEF authorised the import of up to 2,400 tons of food per day at the expense of the military effort. A British food convoy labelled 'Vivres Pour Paris' entered on 29 August, US supplies were flown in via Orléans Airport before they were sent in. Also, 500 tons were delivered a day by the British and another 500 tons by the Americans. Along with French civilians outside Paris bringing in indigenous resources, the food crisis had been overcome within ten days.[26]

Several alleged Vichy loyalists involved in the Milice, a paramilitary militia established by Sturmbannführer Joseph Darnand that hunted the Resistance along with the Gestapo, were made prisoners in a post-liberation purge known as the Épuration légale (legal purge). Some were executed without trial. Women accused of "horizontal collaboration" because of alleged sexual relationships with Germans were arrested and had their heads shaved, were publicly exhibited and were sometimes allowed to be mauled by mobs.

On 17 August, the Germans took Pierre Laval to Belfort. On 20 August, under German military escort, Marshal Philippe Pétain was forcibly moved to Belfort and then to the Sigmaringen enclave in Germany on 7 September; there, 1,000 of his followers (including Louis-Ferdinand Céline) joined him. They established the government of Sigmaringen and challenged the legitimacy of de Gaulle's Provisional Government of the French Republic. As a sign of protest over his forced move, Pétain refused to take office, and was eventually replaced by Fernand de Brinon. The Vichy government-in-exile ended in April 1945.

On 25 August 2004, two military parades reminiscent of the parades of 26 and 29 August 1944, one in commemoration of the 2nd Armored Division, the other of the US 4th Infantry Division, and featuring armoured vehicles from the era, were held on the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of Paris. Under the auspices of the Senate, a jazz concert and popular dancing took place in the Jardin du Luxembourg.[31] In the same event, homage was paid to the Spanish contribution – the first time in 60 years. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë laid a plaque on a wall along the River Seine at the Quai Henri IV in the presence of surviving Spanish veterans, Javier Rojo the President of the Senate of Spain and a delegation of Spanish politicians.

On 25 August 2014, plaques were placed on the Boulevard Saint-Michel and neighboring streets, in the vicinity of the Luxembourg Palace, seat of the French Senate, where combatants had been killed in August 1944.[32] There was dancing in the street in every neighborhood of the French capital and Place de la Bastille, as well as a son et lumière spectacle and dancing on the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the evening.[33]

On 25 August 2019 many acts in commemoration of the liberation of Paris focused on the role of the Spanish soldiers of "La Nueve" (Spanish for 'Nine'). The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, herself descendant of Spanish Republican veterans, emphasized during the inauguration of a fresco that it has taken too long to recognize this chapter of the French history.[34]

The wall of the 35 martyrs, Bois de Boulogne

On 16 May 2007, following his election as President of the Fifth French Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy organized an homage to the 35 French Resistance martyrs executed by the Germans on 16 August 1944. French historian Max Gallo narrated the events that took place in the woods of Bois de Boulogne, and a Parisian schoolgirl read 17-year-old French resistant Guy Môquet's final letter. During his speech, Sarkozy announced that this letter would be read in all French schools to remember the resistance spirit.[35][36] After the speech, the chorale of the French Republican Guard closed the homage ceremony by singing the French Resistance's anthem "Le Chant des Partisans" ("The Partisans' song"). Following this occasion, the new president traveled to Berlin to meet German chancellor Angela Merkel, as a symbol of the Franco-German reconciliation.

La Libération de Paris ("The Liberation of Paris"), whose original title was L'Insurrection Nationale inséparable de la Libération Nationale ("The National Insurrection inseparable from the National Liberation"), was a short 30-minute documentary film secretly shot between 16 and 27 August by the French Resistance. It was released in French theatres on 1 September.

Three-cent stamp picturing the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, with marching U.S. Army soldiers and an overflight by U.S. Army Air Force

On 8 September 1945, the U.S. Post Office issued a three-cent stamp commemorating the liberation of Paris from the Germans. First day covers were illustrated with images of the Ludendorff Bridge illustrating its capture. Other countries have issued stamps commemorating the bridge's capture, including Nicaragua, Guyana, Micronesia, and Republic of the Marshall Islands.[37]

• La Libération de Paris black-and-white film (1944)
• The Liberation of Paris color film (1944) by George Stevens showing the final city shootouts, de Gaulle's triumphal arrival, arrested Germans in the streets of the city and victory parade[38]
• Is Paris Burning? (1966)
• Diplomacy (2014)