Charles de Gaulle

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In August of 1944, Paris, which had been occupied by German troops for 4 years, was liberated by the joint action of the Resistance, the French Forces of the Interior, General Leclerc ‘s 2nd Armored Division and the Allied troops sent by General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

On Saturday, August 25, 1944, at 4pm, Charles de Gaulle triumphantly arrived in Paris, liberated from the German occupiers but battered by the many confrontations of the previous days. It was the General’s grand return to the city he had left four years earlier. General Charles de Gaulle had fled to London. From there, he refused to accept the armistice, establishing the Free French movement to resist the occupation from exile.

In Paris, Charles de Gaulle stopping at the Ministry of War, from which he had left on the night of June 10, 1940, and at the Préfecture de Police. From there he walked to Hôtel de Ville where, at around 7pm on the square in front he delivered an impromptu speech to a crowd gathered.

“Why should we conceal the emotion that grips all of us, men and women, who are here, at home, in Paris standing up to liberate itself and who knew how to do it with their own hands. No! we will not conceal this deep and sacred emotion. There are minutes there that surpass 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 armies of France, with the support and help of the whole of France, the France that fights, the only France, the true France, the eternal France…”

On August 26, 1944, General Charles de Gaulle led a triumphant liberation march down the Champs-Élysées in Paris, marking the end of four years of Nazi occupation. Following the city’s surrender, he walked from the Arc de Triomphe where he rekindled the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before descending the avenue on foot toward Notre-Dame, Crowds of nearly two million Parisians filled the streets,

De Gaulle’s march was a crucial act of “political theater” designed to assert French sovereignty and restore the Republic with the Free French at the forefront. The march occurred one day after the formal surrender of German forces in Paris, which was negotiated by Dietrich von Choltitz, who defied Adolph Hitler‘s orders to destroy the city. The celebration was interrupted by scattered sniper fire from Germans who were still holding out. Though the crowd scattered, de Gaulle  refused to take cover, he continued the march unfazed. He famously dismissing the sniper fire as “buffoonery.” The procession ended with a solemn service at Notre-Dame Cathedral, further sealing the day’s symbolic weight.

De Gaulle ensured that the Free French, not the Allies, stood at the forefront of liberation. De Gaulle had convinced General Dright D Eisenhower to have French troops play the primary role in liberating Paris on August 25, 1944.

Notre Dame Paris France

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Notre Dame Cathedral survived WWII largely intact, though it suffered minor damage from bullets during the 1944 liberation. The cathedral was protected with sandbags, which were placed around the portals. The portals are the large, sculpted entry ways to the cathedral which have hundreds of sculpted saints and martyrs. The cathedral’s stained glass was removed to prevent destruction. It narrowly escaped orders   Adolph Hitler’s order to destroy all monuments, landmarks and bridges. This order was disobeyed by Nazi commanding officer Dietrich von Choltitz.

Hitler did not visit Notre Dame during his 1940 trip. Hitler wanted the city destroyed and Dwight Eisenhower did not want Allied troops to get bogged down in a prolonged battle for Paris France. Memories of the Germans fighting for a long and arduous winter at Stalingrad left the impression that the Germans could make Paris a similar albatross around the neck of the allied push towards Berlin.

French resistance fighters and civilians forced Eisenhower’s hand since they blockaded streets and took back important public buildings. The square outside Notre-Dame Cathedral, usually empty early on a Saturday morning, filled with hundreds of policemen on August 19, 1944, all of them converging on the fortress-like Police headquarters. A flag unfurled atop the building: the blue, white and red French tricolor, banned by Paris’ German occupiers and last flown officially four years prior. The French police, on strike against the occupation, had returned, this time in revolt. Paris’ uprising against the Nazis had begun.

Resistance fighters erected around 600 street barricades—made of paving stones, trees, carts and sandbags—to stall and harass German troops. They seized government buildings, including the the city hall, where they pulled down a bust of Philippe Pétain, the French leader who’d collaborated with the Nazis, and replaced it with a portrait of Charles de Gaulle, the French General who insisted that France must be liberated at any cost.

Gunfire crackled all across the city as French freedom fighters hunted down Nazis and hoped to bring about the liberation of their city which had been under the boot of Nazi occupation since 1940. Two thousand police inside the Prefecture had used Molotov cocktails to thwart an attack by three German tanks. A fragile cease-fire, negotiated by the Swedish consul in Paris, saved the French police just as their pistol and rifle ammunition was about to run out.

If the revolt was unsuccessful the Nazi reprisal would be widespread and deadly. Adolf Hitler had ordered Dietrich von Choltitz, to “stamp out” any insurrection “without pity.” As Paris’ revolt grew.  Resistance fighters, were typically executed by firing squads. Mont Valérien fortress in Suresnes, near Paris, was the site for the execution of over 1,000 resistance fighters and hostages. It is estimated that around 60,000 French resistance fighters were executed, and 27,000 perished in concentration camps.

Hitler’s orders to Choltitz escalated. A Hitler order declared. “Paris must not fall into the hands of the enemy or, if it does, he must find there nothing but a field of ruins.” Choltitz refused to follow this order which would certainly result in his execution once the news got back to Hitler. But the war was almost over.

Dietrich von Choltitz survived World War II, surrendering as the German commander of Paris on August 25, 1944. He was held as a prisoner of war in Trent Park, London, and later in Mississippi, U.S., before being released in 1947. He died of a long-term illness on November 5, 1966, in Baden-Baden, Germany.

The cathedral was a focal point of the liberation, with a Magnificat sung on August 26, 1944, to celebrate the end of the Paris occupation. While it survived, the structure did suffer minor damage, including bullet holes in some stones. It is believed that 901 French Forces of the Interior members and 582 French civilians died in the fighting.

Paris Bomb Shelter

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The Paris Liberation Museum features an original 1940s underground bomb shelter used as a Resistance command post. Located twenty meters under the museum, the command post used during the Liberation by Colonel Henri Rol, head of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) which was the unified military wing of the French Resistance that played a crucial role in the August 1944 liberation of Paris. It has 10-foot thick concrete walls, pedal-powered ventilation, and gas-tight doors. The memory of World War I gas attacks made keeping the bunker airtight a priority.

Built in 1938 as an air raid shelter. It was constructed to protect against potential aerial attacks.. The bunker, which features a 250-line telephone exchange, served as the operational command post for the final battle to liberate Paris, rather than as a civilian shelter. The bunker never really saw any action as a shelter, Paris was largely spared from air attacks during WWII, and there was little danger of poison gas.

The bunker was used as the headquarters for French Resistance leaders including Colonel Rol-Tanguy during the August 1944 uprising. It features a restored “disinfection room” gas masks, and a bicycle used to generate electricity. In this bunker, plans were set in place for the city’s liberation. In one room there are still telephone switchboards and a typewriter as if staff had just left yesterday.

Starting on August 15, 1944, thousands of FFI members and Parisian police initiated a general strike and armed insurrection. They seized police stations and barricaded streets before Allied forces arrived. The FFI hoped to liberate the city themselves, but their limited, mostly light, weapons cache forced them to rely on the arrival of General Leclerc‘s 2nd Armored Division and U.S. 4th Infantry Division, which entered the city on August 24-25, 1944.

The Allies were still pushing the Germans toward the Rhine River 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 knew Adolf Hitler‘s Nero Decree required the German military to destroy the city if the Allies attacked.  Charles de Gaulle persuaded them to attack.  De Gaulle,  learned the French Resistance had risen up against the German occupiers and he was unwilling to allow his countrymen to be slaughtered like the Polish Resistance during the Warsaw Uprising. He petitioned for an immediate frontal assault. He threatened to detach the French 2nd Armored Division and to order it to single-handedly attack the German forces in Paris, bypassing the chain of command in so doing, if Eisenhower delayed approval.

Paris was considered to have too great a value, culturally and historically, to risk its destruction. The Allies were also keen to avoid a drawn-out battle of attrition like during the Battle of Stalingrad when Germany was stopped in it’s tracks by the Russians. Ultimately the Allies liberated the city.

The FFI’s actions, including securing key Paris buildings, prevented the German garrison from destroying the city. The actions of the FFI allowed the city to be liberated on August 25, 1944, with relatively light resistance.

Clamerey France American Military Camp 2

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Once at the Clamerey, France American Military Camp, I could not stop sketching. This large open tent encampment felt like it was for a higher rank officer. There was a poster of Charles De Gaulle, and the French flag was on the flag pole. De Gaulle was he French leader in exile during World War II. One man passing through the camp was the spitting image of the French leader in his crisp clean uniform.

For this sketch I had to sit in the direct sun light. I am something of a vampire so I am always concerned about being burnt to a crisp. I put an eraser on the edge of a tree shadow to my left and after a few minutes noticed that the shadow would be moving towards me as I sketched. I decided to bite the bullet and hopefully the shade would reach me before I became a cinder.

A photographer was joking with me in English. He said, “you can pick any color, as long as it is green!” He was right. I almost emptied out my green pan of color on my pallet. My choices were, warm green, cool green dark green and light green.

Another gentleman was admiring what I was doing, and he introduced me to his grandmother. She whispered to me, “magnifique.” Merci, I replied. This was the first French word I picked up. I said it to every person who stopped to make comments that I could not understand.  Te son later explained that his grandmother had been just a little girl when the Americans came to liberate the city she was in. She vividly remembers a G.I. giving her a candy bar.

The encampment was on a magnificent old French estate. The building was built of stone and the tiles on the roof looked like they had been there for hundreds of years. There were hints of the oncoming fall. The golden sun light illumined the far trees a rich orange color. Some trees were as dark as a coal mine, and other were bright like a lantern.

By the time this sketch was done, I was getting hungry. I started to wonder if there were any restaurants in the small provincial town. I hadn’t noticed any as I drove in from my hotel down south near Dijon. France. I had tried to book an air B&B in a tent but that booking was interrupted when my bank told me my debit card had been hacked. I drove across France not sure if I wold find a place to stay when I got there. The tent air B&B was full when I got there. I sat in the parking lot of a hotel for several hours trying to get funds to cover hotel expenses. The hotel where I made those calls was completely booked. I was advised to stop down the road and thankfully that hotel had a room where I could camp for the night.