Armaan Singh’s Reviews > Paris '44: The Shame and the Glory > Status Update

« The notion of national solidarity was a common theme of all the post-liberation instant history. To sustain it required some radical editing of the photographic record. […] The side of France that aided and abetted the Nazis was also almost completely absent from the celebratory expo and the outpourings of the publishing houses – several of which had carried on business happily under the occupation. »

« On the other side of the city in the Bois de Vincennes, the [Fourth Infantry Division] were bedded down in bivouac tents. They were damp and dirty but, lying there with the raindrops pattering on the canvas, they felt secure and flowing with the joy of existence. It seemed to Irwin Shaw, […] now in Paris with the army film unit, that this ‘was the day when the war should have ended.’ »

« The hot, still air was flooded with the sound of bells. It had started just as [Capt Raymond] Dronne arrived at the Hôtel de Ville […] ‘The shouts, the singing of the Marseillaise mingled with the chimes. We all had tears in our eyes and lumps in our throats… This was the sound of victory.’
The Germans heard the bells too and felt a different emotion. [Dreizner] felt a ´shiver go down my spine.’ »

« The street fighting had the intimacy of a battle of antiquity. […] Sartre witnessed a grisly incident when the FFI ambushed a German saloon car, ‘black and powerful like an Andalusian bull,’ […] Coming under fire […] [A FFI militant] levelled his pistol and with the ‘slow, careful grace of a torero calculating the moment for the last fatal plunge of the sword’ pulled the trigger. »

« To impose his authority on France [De Gaulle] had to control Paris. As well as being the heart and soul of the nation, it was the cerebral cortex, directing all the essential functions of the state. […] To thwart any fait accompli, the Allies had to march on the city immediately. And Eisenhower was the only man who could make the decision to hand him the keys to his kingdom. »

« [The] police prefecture was the beating heart of the uprising. For the first time in the history of the city, the flics were on the same side of the barricades as the revolutionaries. They seemed determined now to atone for their years of shame serving the oppressor and crushing the forces of freedom. […] Someone climbed on the [prefecture’s] roof and hoisted the tricolour. »

« On the morning of Thursday 17 August, Rol-Tanguy raised the temperature. A proclamation was issued to the people of the city signed in his name calling on every able-bodied citizen to join the [Forces françaises de l'Intérieur]. […] The order of the day for one and all was deadly simple: ‘Chacun son Boche!’

“This year [Bastille Day] has been reinstated as a holiday, but public celebrations remained illegal. As the anniversary approached, the communists and the clandestine trade union organisations saw a chance to rouse the city in a massive popular protest against the occupation and support for the Resistance. […] Parisians came out en masse in the biggest show of defiance since the Germans arrived.”

“The question of what to do with de Gaulle once the troops were firmly ashore was a tricky one for the Allies. […] Roosevelt’s worry had been that de Gaulle would seek to impose the virtual state he had created in exile and his own authoritarian rule on the French people without the French having a say in the matter. He believed that, until that was done, France should be treated like Italy”