Paris 1940-1944: occupation, collaboration and liberation

On June 14th 1940, German soldiers marched beneath this arch. In perfect formation. With pressed uniforms. The brutal precision of an army that had crossed France in six weeks. Paris had not resisted. The government had fled to Bordeaux the night before. The French army had collapsed. And here, beneath the arch Napoleon built to celebrate his victories, Napoleon's conquerors paraded for two hours. A German soldier climbed to the top and replaced the French flag with a swastika. The eternal flame of the Unknown Soldier, burning continuously since 1923, was extinguished by German militar…

The Champs-Elysees holds two images that cannot coexist in the same mind. The first: June 14th 1940. Perfect rows of German soldiers marching eastward. Tanks. Artillery. Motorcycles. The avenue completely closed. Only the sound of German boots and motors. That image was filmed. It exists. You can watch it on YouTube today. The second: August 26th 1944. De Gaulle on foot. The crowd overflowing the sidewalks. Tricolor flags. People crying on strangers. Between those two images: four years. Four years in which this avenue kept functioning with a disturbing normality. The cinemas opened…

Stop in front of number 228 on the Rue de Rivoli. The Hotel Meurice. For four years, this building was the headquarters of the German military government of Paris. And in August 1944 it was the scene of a decision that changed the history of this city. On August 7th 1944, Adolf Hitler designated General Dietrich von Choltitz as military governor of Paris. Two weeks before the liberation. Von Choltitz arrived with written orders from Hitler. Paris must not fall into the enemy's hands. And if it does, it must be turned into a field of ruins. Von Choltitz received five hundred kilograms …

Place Vendome is today the symbol of Parisian luxury. During the occupation, it was the symbol of a different kind of luxury. The best hotels in Paris were requisitioned by the Nazis. The Ritz was the Luftwaffe headquarters, the German air force. The Hotel Crillon was the navy's base. The Majestic was the occupation army's headquarters. German generals lived in suites with garden views. Ate in the best restaurants. And in that context, a woman named Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel lived at the Ritz with her lover. Hans Gunther von Dincklage. German military intelligence officer. Coco Chane…

In 1940, when the Nazis entered Paris, the Louvre's curators had spent weeks doing something urgent. Emptying it. Trucks. Boxes. Day and night. Sending works of art to castles and country houses in rural France. The Mona Lisa was hidden at the Chateau de Chambord. The Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Chateau de Valencay. The Nazis arrived at a nearly empty Louvre. But there was a nearby museum: the Jeu de Paume. The Germans turned it into the central sorting point for stolen art. Hermann Goering, the second man of the Reich, visited Paris personally twenty times to select pieces fo…

Stand in front of the Paris City Hall. August 25th 1944. General de Gaulle has just entered Paris. And he is about to give the most famous speech in modern French history. But there is something that speech does not say. The Allies did not want to liberate Paris. Eisenhower's original plan was to encircle the city entirely. Cut off its supplies until the Germans surrendered on their own. Paris had no strategic military value at that point. Only symbolic. And symbolic was what Eisenhower did not need. He needed to advance toward Germany. Feeding a city of two million people was an e…

Stop here. What you are about to hear happened meters from where you stand. In this place there was a velodrome. The Velodrome d'Hiver. A covered cycling track. On July 16th and 17th 1942, 13,152 people were brought here. In two days. 4,115 of them were children. They had been detained in their homes at dawn. By the French police. Not by the Germans. By the police of the city of Paris, acting under orders from the Vichy government. The Germans had asked for 22,000 people. The French police delivered 13,152. They came up short. In the velodrome the July heat was unbearable. Ther…

The Marais neighborhood was for centuries the Jewish quarter of Paris. Synagogues. Schools. Kosher butchers. Yiddish printing houses. Centuries of community life on these streets. From June 1942, Jews in Paris had to wear the yellow star sewn onto their clothing. But that was only the visible part. Before that they had already lost their businesses, confiscated or Aryanized. Their bank accounts. Their right to use parks, swimming pools, theaters, restaurants, public telephones, libraries. They could only go to the market between three and four in the afternoon, when the best products w…

This building is the French National Assembly. Parliament. On July 10th 1940, in the city of Vichy, French parliamentarians gathered to vote. The question: whether to give Marshal Petain full powers. Full powers meant dissolving the Republic. Creating the French State. An authoritarian regime of collaboration with Germany. They voted 569 in favor. 80 against. 17 abstained. By 569 votes, France ceased to be a republic. The 80 who voted against are today called the 80 men of honor. Their names are engraved on a plaque in the building. But there is something the plaque does not say. …

There is a fact about the SNCF, France's national railway company, that was secret for decades. The SNCF transported the deported Jews on regular trains. Not special German trains. French trains. With French engineers. With train tickets issued by the French administration. From the stations of Paris, primarily from Drancy on the outskirts, the deportees were sent to the extermination camps of Poland. The journey to Auschwitz took between three and four days. In cattle cars. No food. No water. No ventilation. The SNCF's records show that the company billed the German authorities at t…

When Paris was liberated in August 1944, something began that history books do not celebrate. The epuration. The purge of collaborators. And it was violent, fast, unequal and unjust in many cases. Women accused of horizontal collaboration, of having had relations with German soldiers, were the first visible victims. They were dragged to public squares. Their heads were shaved in front of everyone. Some were stripped. Paraded through the streets. The crowd spat. Threw things. It was a punishment designed for lasting public humiliation. Many of those women had had relations with Germa…

Last stop. This square was not chosen by accident as the center of official commemorations for the November 2015 attacks. In Paris, when there is tragedy, people come here. They bring flowers. Candles. Letters. World War Two is not distant history for Paris. It is the most recent layer of centuries of violence, occupation, resistance and reconstruction. The grandparents of people alive today were those who voted at Vichy. Were those who turned in neighbors. Were those who resisted. Were those who collaborated. The same city. The same streets. The same families. The historian Henry R…