Paris rising

Paris rising. As the Allied forces engaged in the Normandy campaign neared Paris, tension in the former capital grew. On 10 August the railway workers came out on strike; on 15 August so did the police—before they heard of the French Riviera landings that day. Next day the post office workers followed suit except for the telephone operators, who stayed on duty and played an essential background part in what followed.

General Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966), who had supervised the destruction of Rotterdam in May 1940 and of Sevastopol in 1942, commanded some 20,000 German soldiers—mostly garrison troops, but including armoured Waffen-SS units. The forces of resistance, few in number, were politically divided: the communists were for immediate action, the Gaullists for caution.

The Gaullists sent a messenger into Paris to explain that the Allied armies did not intend to arrive before the second week in September (it suited Eisenhower's administrators to let the Germans feed the five million Parisians for as long as possible). Locally, the communists had a majority on the essential committees, and the head of the Parisian committee of liberation, Rol-Tanguy, decided it was time to strike, even though he only knew of 600 weapons larger than revolvers that his forces could use.

Early on the morning of 19 August he was bicycling past police headquarters on his way to proclaim the rising when he saw a tricolour hoisted over it, and heard the ‘Marseillaise’ being sung inside: on an order from de Gaulle's delegate-general, the judge Alexandre Parodi, the Gaullists had stolen a march on him.

Sporadic street fighting broke out that day all over Paris. In the evening, the police—who had held out in their headquarters but were running low in ammunition, and whose numbers had dwindled from 2,000 to 500, mainly by desertion—were offered a temporary truce while both sides collected their wounded. This was arranged direct with Choltitz by Raoul Nordling, the Swedish consul-general, who was also in touch with Parodi (the telephone here proving invaluable). The truce, spreading over the city, lasted into the next day, but soon broke down.

All over Paris, particularly in the working-class and communist-dominated eastern quarter, the liveliest citizens built barricades in their streets, and the most hot-blooded young men got hold of weapons if they could, and sniped at any stray Germans they could find. Hardly any of the barricades were tank-proof and Choltitz had some tanks, but he hesitated to use them. Hitler ordered him to defend Paris stone by stone; Nordling persuaded him that as an officer, a European, and a Christian he had a duty to disobey orders and preserve it. He could moreover see for himself that the Germans had lost the campaign in France at least, if not the war.

Responsible Frenchmen were anxious that Paris should be spared the fate of Warsaw, then in the throes of its own disastrous rising. Eisenhower continued to give no orders for the capture of Paris. The BBC, to shame him into action, published on 23 August a report that the city had already been liberated. That day, Eisenhower and the commander of the Third US Army, Patton, consented to release the 2nd French Armoured Division, under Leclerc, from normal duty; Leclerc launched a couple of troops of tanks on Paris, and followed them with the rest of his division as soon as he could. Captain Raymond Dronne led this token force into the heart of Paris, reaching the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville on the evening of 24 August.

Next morning Paris was en f ête, and Choltitz signed an instrument of surrender, on which Rol's signature preceded Leclerc's. External and internal resistance could jointly claim a victory.

M. R. D. Foot

Bibliography

Dansette, A. , Histoire de la Libération de Paris (Paris 1946, constantly revised).
Michel, H. , Paris résistant (Paris, 1982).