#ThisDayInHistory Paris Was Liberated From Nazi Occupation
On this day in 1944, some two months after the Allied invasion of Normandy, Paris was liberated from German occupiers as the Free French 2nd Armoured Division.
Paris had been occupied by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Second Compiègne Armistice on 22 June 1940, after which the Wehrmacht occupied northern and western France.
The Allied strategy emphasized destroying the German forces retreating towards the Rhine, the French Forces of the Interior (the armed force of the French Resistance), led by Henri Rol-Tanguy, staged an uprising in Paris.
The Falaise Pocket battle (12–21 August), the final phase of Operation Overlord, was still going on, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, did not consider the liberation of Paris a primary objective.
The goal of the U.S. and British Armed Forces was to destroy the German forces, and therefore end World War II in Europe, which would allow the Allies to concentrate all their efforts on the Pacific front.
The French Resistance began to rise against the Germans in Paris on 15 August, but the Allies were still pushing the Germans toward the Rhine and did not want to get embroiled in a battle for the liberation of Paris. The Allies thought that it was too early to take Paris.
They were aware that Adolf Hitler had ordered the German military to completely destroy the city in the event of an Allied attack; Paris was considered to have too great a value, culturally and historically, to risk its destruction.
They were also keen to avoid a drawn-out battle of attrition like the Battle of Stalingrad or the Siege of Leningrad.[citation needed] It was also estimated that, in the event of a siege, 3,600 tons of food per day, as well as significant amounts of building materials, manpower, and engineering skill, would be required to feed the population after the liberation of Paris. Basic utilities would have to be restored, and transportation systems rebuilt. All these supplies were needed in other areas of the war effort.
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.
Posters calling citizens to arm had previously been pasted on walls by FFI members. These posters called for a general mobilization of the Parisians, arguing that "the war continues"; they 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".
Then the first skirmishes between the French and the German occupiers began. Small mobile units of the Red Cross moved into the city to assist the French and German wounded. That 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.
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.
An estimated 800 to 1,000 Resistance fighters were killed during the Battle for Paris, and another 1,500 were wounded.
On 24 August, delayed by combat and poor roads, Free French General Leclerc, commander of the 2nd French Armored Division which was equipped with American M4 Sherman tanks, half-tracks, and trucks disobeyed his direct superior, American corps commander Major General Leonard T. Gerow, and sent a vanguard (the Colonne Dronne) to Paris, with the message that the entire division would be there the following day.
At 9:22 p.m. on the night of 24 August, the 9th Company broke into the center of Paris by the Porte d'Italie. 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".
Despite repeated orders from Adolf 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, Choltitz, as commander of the German garrison and military governor of Paris, surrendered on 25 August at the Hôtel Meurice.
He was then driven to the Paris Police Prefecture where he signed the official surrender, then to the Gare Montparnasse, Montparnasse train station, where General Leclerc had established his command post, to sign the surrender of the German troops in Paris.
#ThisDayInHistory
August 25, 1944