The Liberation of Paris: 'History fluctuates with the changing times'

Paris was liberated from Nazi occupation on August 25, 1944. As the city commemorates the 80th anniversary, The Connexion speaks with historian Christian Chevandier about how the victory is remembered in France.

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They say that history is written by the victors, but there were several victors in the liberation of Paris. Whose version is the one remembered by the people of France?

Historians always say ‘the truth is complicated’.

This is certainly the case here, as the victors were the insurgents, who held out for six days against a German army that was not very motivated, the soldiers of General Leclerc's 2nd armoured division, who in one day brought down the German strongholds, and more broadly the Allies, as the Liberation of Paris can be considered to have been the final episode in the Battle of Normandy.

All were rightly celebrated as victors, with varying degrees of intensity at different times. 

Politically, the Gaullists and even the Communists, with the essential role of Henri Rol-Tanguy, the leader of the insurgents, were also rightly considered as the architects of this episode. 

Rare images show how newspapers reported Liberation of Paris in August 1944

But the Communist and Gaullist accounts, which are at once complementary and opposites, both contributed to writing this history, also fluctuate with the changing times. 

The context of the Cold War, which lasted for decades, also played a role in the way these events were remembered.

Read more: Resistance fighter honoured as part of 80-year Paris Liberation events

The German commander reportedly refused to allow Paris to be destroyed. Was this the case or was it a way of dressing up a military defeat as a humanitarian gesture?

That’s a case of history being written by a defeated man!

General von Choltitz, who for five years committed war crimes against civilians (in Rotterdam, Sebastopol, etc.), wrote his memoirs in 1950, posing as a humanist who had saved Paris from the destruction that Hitler demanded of him.

But he didn't have the means to do so and, in reality, he saved himself by surrendering.

Built up in the 1960s, the positive image of this sinister soldier also takes us back to the Cold War context, when it was politically expedient to present the Germans, with whom the French were becoming reconciled, in a positive light.

But could the German army have held out against the Allies in Paris?

The Allies feared an urban battle, which are always costly in human lives and very difficult to win, hence their initial plan to bypass Paris and head east. 

But by the end of August the Germans could no longer afford to stay in Paris and their main objective was to reach the Rhine to halt the Allied offensive, especially as the Franco-American landings in Provence had been more successful than the Allies had anticipated. 

For this reason, German convoys fleeing Normandy passed through the town. Some of them were ambushed by the insurgents, around Place Saint-Michel for example. 

Much to their surprise, they had no idea that the town could be unsafe. As a result, many of them were taken prisoner even before Leclerc's troops entered Paris.

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Was this insurrection in Paris really a popular movement?

There is doubt about it, unlike the uprising in Marseille at the same time, where it was only succeeded because regular Free French troops lent a hand.

 It was a popular and reckless movement, since by Monday, August 21 the city was covered with almost 600 barricades, while the Allied armies, including the French armoured division, were 200km away. 

Note the symbolic aspect of the barricade, which harks back to the Paris revolutions of previous centuries.

It was the poorest districts of Paris that were the most involved, but the major handicap was the lack of weapons for the Resistance fighters, one of whose first objectives was to recover those of the German soldiers.

Previously, during the years of occupation, many French people had helped Resistance fighters and Jews when they were being hunted down. 

There was a reason for this: most French people were hostile to the Germans and the Vichy regime was unpopular, especially after the summer of 1942 and its participation in the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies. 

This was what George Orwell, an English writer of the time who knew Paris well, called ‘common decency’.

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Christian CHEVANDIER is Professor of contemporary history at the University of Le Havre. He is the author of 'Eté 44 : l'insurrection des policiers de Paris'  (Vendemiaire, 21 août 2014) for which he won the  Fondation de la Résistance prize