Liberation of Paris (1944): The End of the German Occupation

The Liberation of Paris took place between 19 and 25 August 1944, when an uprising by the French Resistance and the arrival of General Leclerc’s French 2nd Armoured Division ended more than four years of German occupation. The German commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz, surrendered on 25 August, and the next day Charles de Gaulle walked down the Champs-Élysées before vast crowds. The event restored the French capital to French hands and gave de Gaulle’s provisional government the authority it needed to rule liberated France.

Background: Paris under occupation

German troops had entered Paris on 14 June 1940, and the city became the seat of the German military administration in France. Daily life was shaped by curfews, rationing, requisitions and the persecution of Jews, culminating in the Vel d’Hiv round-up of July 1942, when more than 13,000 Jews were arrested by French police on German orders.

After the Normandy landings of June 1944, the Allies broke out of the bridgehead at the end of July. By mid-August American and British forces were racing east across France. The Allied commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, intended to bypass Paris: a street battle could destroy the city, and feeding its population would divert scarce fuel and supplies from the advance towards Germany.

Inside the city, however, the Resistance was ready to act. The French Forces of the Interior (FFI) in the Paris region were commanded by Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, a communist veteran of the Spanish Civil War. De Gaulle’s representatives, led by Alexandre Parodi, feared that a communist-led rising might gain political control of the capital before de Gaulle arrived, but they too accepted that the city would rise.

The uprising begins

On 15 August the Paris police went on strike, followed by railway workers and postal staff. On the morning of 19 August around 2,000 police officers occupied the Préfecture de Police on the Île de la Cité, and FFI groups began seizing town halls, ministries and newspaper offices across the city.

The insurgents were poorly armed, with only a few thousand rifles and pistols between them. The Swedish consul-general, Raoul Nordling, brokered a truce with Choltitz on 20 August, but it was respected only in places and collapsed within two days. From 22 August Parisians built hundreds of barricades from paving stones, felled trees and overturned vehicles, and fighting flared around the Préfecture, the Latin Quarter and the Grand Palais.

Leclerc’s race to Paris

Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque commanded the French 2nd Armoured Division (2e DB), which had landed in Normandy in early August as part of the US Third Army. De Gaulle warned Eisenhower that he would order Leclerc to Paris on his own authority if necessary. Faced with the uprising and with reports that the insurgents were running short of ammunition, Eisenhower agreed on 22 August that the division should advance on the city, supported by the US 4th Infantry Division.

The 2e DB met stiff resistance in the south-western suburbs on 24 August. That evening Leclerc sent a small column under Captain Raymond Dronne, built around the 9th Company, known as “La Nueve” because many of its men were Spanish Republican exiles, through the back streets. It reached the Hôtel de Ville at about 9.20 pm, and church bells across Paris rang out as the news spread.

The German surrender and de Gaulle’s walk

On 25 August the main body of the 2e DB and American troops entered the city. French tanks and infantry attacked German strongpoints at the Senate in the Luxembourg Palace, the École Militaire, the Chamber of Deputies and the Hôtel Meurice on the rue de Rivoli, where Choltitz had his headquarters.

Choltitz was taken prisoner at the Meurice in the early afternoon. He signed the surrender at the Préfecture de Police in the presence of Leclerc, and Rol-Tanguy’s name was added to the document. Orders to cease fire were then countersigned at the Gare Montparnasse, where Leclerc had set up his command post. De Gaulle arrived the same afternoon, went first to the Ministry of War and then to the Hôtel de Ville, where he delivered his most famous speech, declaring that Paris had been outraged, broken and martyred, but was now liberated.

On 26 August de Gaulle laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe and then walked down the Champs-Élysées at the head of a procession, surrounded by Leclerc, Resistance leaders and a crowd estimated at around one million people. Shots rang out at the Place de la Concorde and at Notre-Dame, where de Gaulle attended a Magnificat, but he did not take cover, and the episode strengthened his image as the embodiment of France.

That night the Luftwaffe bombed Paris, causing hundreds of casualties. On 29 August the US 28th Infantry Division paraded through the city on its way to the front, a reminder that the war was far from over.

Key people

• Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French and head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, who used the liberation to establish his authority.
• Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, commander of the 2nd Armoured Division, whose troops were the first regular Allied force to enter the city.
• Henri Rol-Tanguy, FFI commander for the Paris region and leader of the uprising.
• Dietrich von Choltitz, the German military commander of Greater Paris, appointed in early August 1944.
• Raoul Nordling, the Swedish consul-general, who negotiated a short truce and the release of political prisoners.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: Choltitz saved Paris by disobeying Hitler. Hitler did order that Paris should not fall into Allied hands except as a field of ruins, and some bridges and buildings were mined. After the war Choltitz presented himself as the saviour of the city, a story popularised by the book and film Is Paris Burning? Historians note that he lacked the troops, explosives and time for systematic destruction, and that the speed of the uprising and the French advance mattered as much as his reluctance.

Myth: Paris was liberated by Americans alone. The first regular Allied troops in the city were French, and the uprising was carried out by Parisians. Allied commanders deliberately let the French 2nd Armoured Division lead, although American troops entered the city the same day.

Legacy

The liberation allowed de Gaulle to install a provisional government in the capital and to sideline both the Vichy regime and rival authorities. It also created a lasting national narrative, summed up in his speech, of a France that had largely freed itself. That narrative was later challenged by historians who emphasised the extent of collaboration under the occupation.

Plaques marking where Resistance fighters fell can still be seen on many Paris streets, and the Musée de la Libération de Paris, which opened at its new site in 2019 above Rol-Tanguy’s underground command post at Denfert-Rochereau, tells the story. Paris had been besieged before, notably in the Siege of Paris of 1870–1871, but the city emerged from the Second World War largely intact, unlike Warsaw, whose own uprising in August 1944 ended in destruction.

Timeline

• 1940, 14 June: German troops enter Paris.
• 1944, 6 June: Allied landings in Normandy.
• 1944, 15 August: The Paris police go on strike.
• 1944, 19 August: The uprising begins; police seize the Préfecture de Police.
• 1944, 20 August: Raoul Nordling brokers a short-lived truce.
• 1944, 22 August: Eisenhower authorises Leclerc’s division to advance on Paris.
• 1944, 24 August: Captain Dronne’s column reaches the Hôtel de Ville at night.
• 1944, 25 August: Choltitz surrenders; de Gaulle speaks at the Hôtel de Ville.
• 1944, 26 August: De Gaulle walks down the Champs-Élysées.

Why it matters

The Liberation of Paris ended the German occupation of France’s capital, preserved one of the world’s great cities largely intact and made de Gaulle the unchallenged leader of liberated France. It remains a defining moment of French national memory.