Recollection: The Liberation of Paris in August 1944 (part 1)

This year 2014 is a year of war commemorations.  I already wrote posts on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War here in Georgia, then I wrote posts on the centennial commemorations in Paris for the beginning of World War I, and this week is the commemoration of the August 1944 liberation of Paris.  From 19 August through 25 August 2014 the city of Paris is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its Liberation during World War II.  Tomorrow, on Monday 25 August, 2014, there will be an official ceremony on the Place de l'Hotel de Ville (City Hall Plaza) where, for the first time, the President of France, the Prime Minister and the Paris Mayor will all be there to address the citizens.  On this same plaza, 70 years ago, General de Gaulle gave his famous speech "Paris ! Paris outragé ! Paris brisé ! Paris martyrisé ! Mais Paris libéré ! Libéré, par son peuple, avec le concours des armées de la France …."  (Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Freed by its people, with the support of the French Army ...)  Below are photos and postcards of that historic day (courtesy Mairie de Paris.)  (Click on collage to enlarge.)

Anne Hidalgo, the first woman mayor of Paris, will talk there about the roles of women in the French Resistance during the war.  Below are women from the French Resistance walking in Toulouse in August 1944 next to a Resistance woman working on a rail sabotage.

Several Paris museums are having exhibits on the Battle for Paris.  The surviving veterans of the 2nd Armored Division (2e DB) of General Leclerc are being recognized and celebrated.  The 2e DB included men from 22 countries and many from Africa.  A special tribute is being paid to the fighters of the 9th Company from Chad, known as "Nueve" because it was made up of Spanish Republican volunteers.  It was the first regiment to enter Paris on 24 August 1944.  On Monday August 25, 2014, there will be a large sound and light show (video mapping) projected on the Hotel de Ville building re-enacting the day Paris was liberated followed by a public ball with a "swing" style orchestra.  On August 26, 2014, a remembrance mass at Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral will be celebrated with a special tribute to the city employees and elected officials who died for Paris.

I wrote this post under "Recollection" because I was there the day Paris was liberated.  I was 4 years old and can barely remember it, but I remember part of it.  Here is a picture of me with my dog Jade taken in Paris on 15 April 1944, four months before the liberation.

My mother, of course, talked to me often about this special day, as well as my grandfather, since I did not remember that much.  My granddad had a collection of postcards and photographs from the war.  In addition, the photos I show on this post are courtesy of the City of Paris archives, the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.

The liberation of Paris lasted from 17 August, 1944, to 25 August, 1944, when the occupying German garrison surrendered.  Paris had been occupied by the Germans since the fall of the city on June 14, 1940.  A puppet French state had been set up with its capital in Vichy.  On June 17, 1940, General Charles de Gaulle moved to London, England.  On 18 June, 1940, de Gaulle talked to the Resistance and French people from the BBC radio.  On 28 June, 1940, Winston Churchill recognized general de Gaulle as the head of the Free French.  De Gaulle established a political headquarter in Algiers, Algeria, and a military staff in London.  He kept speaking to the French people from London, via the air waves, urging them to keep fighting and resist Nazi and Vichy rule.  He went on leading the French government in exile and the Free French Forces (FFI) (made up of French soldiers in Britain and men and women from the Resistance) until the liberation.

On August 10, 1944, the railway and Metro staff went on strike, followed by the police and post office workers on 13 August.  The city was on a standstill with 20 minutes of electricity per day.  The head of the German occupation of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz secretly started the evacuation of some of his staff, but he still authorized, on August 11, the arrest of several Jews.  On August 15, 1944, the news came to Paris that a second Allied landing had successfully happened on the coast of southern France.  This energized the Parisians.  On 16 august, 1944, 35 young high-school students who had just joined the FFI were betrayed by a Gestapo agent.  Von Choltitz had then executed by his soldiers in the Bois de Boulogne (machine-gunned and finished off with hand grenades.)  Spontaneous fighting happened all over the city, in the Latin Quarter, near the Louvre, etc. 

On 18 August, 1944, Colonel Rol-Tanguy, head of the Paris underground French Resistance, or French Forces of the Interior (FFI) launched an order of insurrection.  The FFI and the citizens of Paris started attacking their German occupiers.  Some of the fighting was violent.  The 2,000 to 3,000 policemen on strike took arms and on 19 August invaded the Prefecture of Police, their former headquarters - the first official building to be liberated, then more buildings were liberated.  The FFI and citizens had few arms and had to deal with 20,000 well equipped German soldiers with 80 tanks, 23 cannons, and more.  Posters were placed all over Paris urging the Parisians to fight.

The posters above asked the Parisians to take arms, to place French flags on windows, to do everything possible to stop the enemy from moving within Paris by sabotage, harassment, building barricades, cut trees, puncture the tires of German vehicles, attack isolated Germans, to create as much havoc as possible and show courage and heroism.  Men, women and children responded by building barricades everywhere.  My mother helped build one on our street, rue Condorcet at the crossing of rue Turgot (my father could not as he had been gravely injured in the war.)  She bought a photo of our barricade from the local photographer, and I still have it.  I scanned it, front and back below, showing my mum's writing.  (Click on photos to see better.)

I do remember these barricades as they were such an unusual sight in Paris.  The Parisians responded enthusiastically to the call for insurrection.  Men, women and children used wooden carts to move the materials needed for the barricades.  In the center of Paris 600 barricades were built to fight against the German army.

My mother would constantly urge me not to look up, to the rooftops.  There the "milice" or Vichy collaborators, auxiliary of the Gestapo and German forces, had snipers taking aim at random citizens.  I remember watching some from our apartment dining-room window - one was standing in front of the window below.  I don't have a picture from the 1940s but the photo below is one I took in the 1950s - the roofs looked the same.

Civilian vehicles were painted with camouflage paint and marked with the FFI emblem.  There were thousands of Resistance members in Paris.  They would use these vehicles to transport ammunition and orders from barricade to barricade and to bomb gasoline depots.  Women on the top right picture below are helping to move cobblestones in rue des Martyrs, not far from our apartment.

Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, nicknamed "Leclerc" was a French officer who escaped twice from German prisons.  He went to Britain to meet de Gaulle and to fight with the Free French.  De Gaulle sent Leclerc to Africa to lead battles there.  In 1943 the forces under Leclerc's command were re-equipped by the Americans and transformed into the 2nd Division Blindee (2nd Armored Division - 2eDB.)  This division was formed in London with the goal of leading the liberation of Paris during the Allied invasion of France in order to have an important French formation in situ at the re-occupation of Paris.  On August 21, 1944, Rol-Tanguy, the head of the Paris Resistance/FFI, sent an envoy to advise Leclerc that if reinforcements did not come soon "the Parisian insurrection will be drowned in blood."  Below are photos of FFI and civilians fighting.

On that same day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, told de Gaulle (who had just arrived in France to meet with him) that he did not consider Paris a primary objective, that Paris would be bypassed.  American General Omar Bradley wrote in his memoirs about Paris, that it was "nothing more than an ink spot on our maps to be bypassed as we headed toward the Rhine."  Because of politics and tactics the Allied Command had very early decided to defer liberation of the city.  De Gaulle insisted, warning that if no help was given to the Parisians and the FFI soon, the city was doomed and it would be a disaster.  Below is a photo of General Leclerc and his staff waiting in Rambouillet for orders to bring his 2eDB into Paris.

American President Franklin D. Roosevelt "hated de Gaulle so fiercely that he was almost incoherent on the subject."  (from a book by Robert Dallek on FDR.)  FDR was dismissive of de Gaulle's requests of "legitimate French rights."  Since 1942 FDR and his governemtn had decided that French General Giraud would be the one that they would work with to liberate France.  FDR even had de Gaulle under surveillance.  But General de Gaulle sent a letter to General Eisenhower threatening to break away from the Allied Command with his Free French Army and the Resistance/FFI and send his own orders to Leclerc's 2e DB to go into Paris.  Because of this letter, on August 22, 1944, General Eisenhower did reconsider and finally agreed to let the 2e DB proceed with the support for the liberation of Paris, escorted by the 4th American Infantry Division.  Skirmishes in Paris were high on that day, August 22, 1944, with 800 to 1,000 FFI killed and 1,500 wounded.  (photo below courtesy Raymond Vanker.)

Part two coming up in my next post.  More to come.....