One of the defining events in World War II happened 80 years ago, when German troops entered Paris on June 14.
On that morning, according to History, Parisians woke to the sound of a German-accented voice announcing via loudspeakers that a curfew was being imposed at 8 that evening as German troops entered.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tried for days to convince the French government to hang on and that the U.S. would enter the war and come to its aid. French Premier Paul Reynaud telegraphed President Franklin Roosevelt, asking for a declaration of war, or any and all help possible.
Roosevelt said the U.S. was prepared to send aid and was willing to have that promise published. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, however, opposed such a publication, knowing that Adolf Hitler would take that announcement as a prelude to a formal declaration of war.
When German tanks rolled into Paris, 2 million Parisians had already fled, with good reason. In short order, the German Gestapo went to work: arrests, interrogations and spying were the order of the day, as a gigantic swastika flew beneath the Arc de Triomphe.
While Parisians who remained trapped in their capital despaired, French men and women in the west cheered as Canadian troops rolled through their region, offering hope for a free France.
After invading in 1940, the Nazi hierarchy ensconced themselves in Paris’ luxury hotels and hobnobbed at theaters and fine restaurants. Collaborationist militias kept order, and French police were complicit in the most dastardly act of the occupation: the 1942 roundup of about 13,000 Jews at the Vel d’Hiv bicycle stadium before their eventual deportation to the Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland.
The Parisians who weren’t deported or didn’t flee used ration tickets to eat, wooden soles on shoes to replace scarce leather and sometimes curtains for clothes. The black market thrived.
The D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, helped change the tide of the war, allowing the Allies to push through Normandy and beyond to other German-occupied lands around Western Europe.
The message went out to the French Resistance in Paris that the Allies were advancing. On Aug. 19, 1944, Paris police officers rebelled and took over police headquarters. On the night of Aug. 24, the first Allied troops entered southern Paris. The grand entrance of Gen. Philippe Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division followed by Allied forces would come the following day.
The German military governor of Paris, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz, was arrested at his headquarters at the Meurice Hotel and signed the surrender.
Paris buildings still bear the bullet holes of fighting.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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