Paris '44: The Triumph of the Liberation

by William Mortimer Moore

During the fall of 1944, once the Western Allies had gained military advantage over the Nazis, the crown jewel of Allied strategy became the liberation of Paris—the capital of France so long held in captivity.

This event, however, was steeped in more complexity when the Allies returned than in 1940 when Hitler’s legions first marched in. In 1944 the city was beset by cross-currents about who was to reclaim it. Was it to be the French Resistance, largely ephemeral throughout the war and largely Communist? Or was it to be the long-suffering Parisians themselves, many of them meantime collaborators? Or the Anglo-American armies which had indeed won the victory?

Then there were the Free French forces led by Charles de Gaulle, and his second, General Leclerc, who now led a full (albeit American-supplied) armored division? The Germans, too, still retained a hand, with the option to either destroy the city, per Hitler’s wishes, or honorably cede it.

This book punctures the myth parlayed by Is Paris Burning? and other works
that describe the city's liberation as mostly the result of the insurrection by the Resistance in the capital. In fact, de Gaulle gave Leclerc his orders for the liberation of the city as early as December 1943, and the General’s great march down the Champs Élysées the day after the liberation was the culmination of a carefully laid plan to re-establish the French state.

Amidst the swirling streams of self-interest and intrigue that beset the capital on the eve of its liberation, this book makes clear that Leclerc and his 2nd Armoured Division were the real heroes of the liberation and that marching on their capital city was their raison d'etre. At issue was the reconstitution of France itself, after its dark night of the soul under the Germans, and despite the demands of the Anglo-Americans and France’s own insurrectionists. That a great power was restored is now manifest, with this book explaining how it was ensured.

Genres: History, World War II

486 pages, Hardcover

First published November 19, 2015

Reviews

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The liberation of Paris gets scant mention in many histories of World War II. It wasn’t a major battle, and was not a priority for the Allied commanders. Eisenhower intended to sweep north of the city, allowing it to fall into his hands as the Germans retreated toward the Rhine. He especially did not want it to slow down the general advance by having to fight street by street with heavy casualties. For de Gaulle and the French, however, its capture was second in importance only to final victory. Hitler too recognized its symbolic importance, and ordered its destruction, “Paris is to be transformed into a pile of ruins. The General commanding should defend the city to the last man and perish, if necessary, in the rubble.” Notre Dame cathedral, Sacré Coeur, Les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe were to be blown up, along with every other architectural and historical landmark. All forty-two bridges were to be dropped and the Eiffel Tower dynamited to create a giant tank trap.

The Americans and the British already had command conflicts of their own, and adding French concerns did not help. De Gaulle was difficult to work with and disliked by Churchill and Roosevelt, who thought he aspired to become a military dictator. “Privately...Roosevelt remained dismissive of de Gaulle, calling him ‘President of some French committee or other’, when not simply calling him ‘an egotist’”. He had arrived in England in June 1940 hat in hand, with few troops and no arms, yet insisted on being treated as a full equal by the Americans and the British in order to ensure that France remained one of the great powers when the war ended. He recognized, however, that “Great Britain and America were the invasion’s key players, France’s unfortunate role was to provide the battlefield while trying to retain her sovereignty.”

He had a low opinion of les anglo-saxons, and sometimes seemed to prioritize France’s dignity over the war’s strategic objectives. “De Gaulle rejected the notion that ‘France’ should explain herself to other nations irrespective of her faiblesse since 1940, even if France required their blood and treasure to liberate herself.” Nothing shows this better than the orders he gave to General Philippe Leclerc, commander of 2e DB (Deuxième Division Blindée), the French Second Armored Division. De Gaulle told Leclerc to liberate the city even if he had to disobey orders from his American corps and army commanders to do so. Eventually the French were able to persuade Eisenhower to take the city and to allow 2e DB to be the first inside, although since they could not take it alone, the US 4th Infantry Division had to be detached to assist them.

2e DB fought with distinction in the battle, and Leclerc was a first rate division commander, combining rapid advances with tactical finesse to minimize casualties. This book follows the action hour by hour, describing the advances down to the platoon level, showing how they overcame fierce resistance by the Germans, often using local civilians to help outflank machine gun and anti-tank emplacements.

While they were fighting their way to the city, the resistance forces rose up in a premature revolt. They had weapons for only about one tenth of their members, and no way of knowing when help would finally appear, leaving themselves open to brutal reprisals. Had the Germans made a strong effort to suppress them they would not have had a chance. The situation was further complicated by the fact that there were multiple resistance groups which did not always cooperate with one another, along with many enthusiastic but untrained men and women who wanted to take part in the action and did not necessarily obey anyone’s orders. After the initial uprising a truce was agreed to with the Germans to try to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, but the communist resistance rejected it and ordered its fighters to continue attacking. Their argument was that they had waited four years to exact revenge, and they were not going to miss it even if it meant large numbers of unnecessary deaths. Their decision was emotional rather than tactical, but it was also taken to ensure they would have a stronger bargaining position in France’s post-war political environment.

The Germans had problems of their own. They needed to keep routes open for their retreating forces, while planning for the inevitable arrival of the Allies. The commander of the greater Paris region was General Dietrich von Choltitz, a Prussian who had served effectively throughout the war. He had captured key objectives in Rotterdam in 1940 and had commanded a regiment in the Crimean campaign, where it was reduced from 4800 men to 349. He also participated in the aktion in which tens of thousands of Crimean Jews were murdered, along with thousands of Tartars and members of the Communist party. He later fought in Italy and commanded a corps in Normandy during the Allied invasion. Hitler appointed him to the Paris job thinking von Choltitz was just the man to obey any order he received.

He was in fact a more complicated person than that. He knew Germany was going to lose the war and that the Allies intended to punish those responsible for atrocities, and when he met Hitler personally to receive his orders he became convinced the Führer was mad. He also loved Paris and did not want to see its treasures destroyed purely for revenge. However, he had to play a careful game where he appeared to be following Hitler’s orders to the letter to avoid repercussions to his family, especially amid the paranoia that descended on the Nazi regime after the failed July 20 assassination attempt. He stalled the demolition battalion which had been sent to destroy the bridges, and sent message after message telling Field Marshall Model, the Western Front commander, that he was doing everything he could to hold onto the city in the face of overwhelming opposition. The opposition in fact consisted of a few thousand enthusiastic but poorly armed résistants.

On 24 August the first elements of Leclerc’s division finally fought their way into central Paris and the next day von Choltitz was presented with a demand that he surrender all forces under his command. He was prepared to surrender, but insisted on a baroud d’honneur, a token resistance which nevertheless led to large numbers of pointless French and German deaths. Honor satisfied, he signed the surrender documents and went into captivity. After the war he was ostracized by many of his former colleagues for failing to carry out Hitler’s demented orders to destroy the city.

Not all of the forces in the city were under his direct command, and many Waffen SS, Kriegsmarine, and French collaborationist troops held out for days. De Gaulle arrived on the 25th and a parade down the Champs-Élysées was planned for the next day. At this time French and American forces held only the south side of the city, and it was important to keep moving before the Germans had a chance to fortify their positions in the north. Once again Leclerc disobeyed direct orders from his corps commander to move across the Seine, so that his troops could take part in de Gaulle’s parade, which in any case was thrown into chaos when it was fired upon by some remaining enemy forces. De Gaulle himself, when told that Leclerc was disobeying orders (for which one could be shot in the French army), merely said that the Americans could spare him for a few hours.

Once the final fighting for the city had taken place in the northern suburbs, it was time to tally up the losses.

On the German side, during the last actions at Le Bourget, their 47th Infantry Division is believed to have left seven hundred dead on the ground. Other figures for German losses around Paris run at between three and four thousand dead and up to fourteen thousand prisoners while casualties among the [Resistance] and French civilians were nine hundred and six hundred dead, respectively, and many more wounded.

With the city in hand, much work remained to be done. “Paris was liberated but much of France remained under German control; more than at the height of the First World War.” As Eisenhower had worried, provisioning Paris’s 300,000 residents now became an Allied responsibility, which slowed down the advance to Germany. And as victory approached the Allied commitment to France weakened, “even if Paris was French again, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill seemed willing to take France seriously. One reason for this was obvious: France’s coffers were empty. The Americans were unenthusiastic about financing any more units for France’s renascent armed forces.”

This book does a good job illuminating an often overlooked aspect of World War II, and is especially good at discussing the personalities of the key participants. To follow the assault on Paris the reader would benefit from having a map at hand, because the route through the banlieues, or suburbs, will be unfamiliar to most people.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for those who enjoy "Is Paris Burning?" --The author provides much more detail on the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering of De Gaulle, with proper attention to the French contribution to the liberation of Paris.