This is one of the most glorious episodes of the Second World War.
In August 1944, after four years of occupation,
Parisians are revolting against the Germans,
without waiting for arrival allied troops.
A hailed insurrection by General de Gaulle
during his famous speech of the Town Hall.
Paris, liberated!
Freed by himself,
freed by his people with the support
and the outline of France whole !
An epic engraved in our memories,
where the French have the best role.
But is it that simple?
The people of Paris Did he really rebel?
And was this liberation also exemplary as we would like?
With new images,
those of individuals,
with the last direct witnesses.
We want to tell you a more complex story.
We didn't know if they were people who really had,
resisted, made the shot,
or who had just started an cuff around the arm.
I didn't know who to shoot.
Germans, communists...
There were a lot of people who needed revenge!
The mistake I made was to have dated a German,
but I don't regret it!
If we could have cut them into pieces, the Germans would have done it.
I knew what awaited us,
we were going to be placed in front of a wall and executed.
70 years later,
look back at one of the events keys to our history.
The only real insurrection popular of the year 44.
A revolt that was far away to be won in advance
and which continues today to question us.
April 26, 1944.
We are four months before the liberation of Paris,
a month before disembarkation.
At the town hall, Marshal Pétain is cheered by the crowd.
The Germans who occupy always France,
authorized him to leave Vichy for several days.
Question: Who are they cheering for?
These tens of thousands of inhabitants who sing the Marseillaise,
banned by the Germans since four years...
The man who, in Vichy, collaborated with the occupier?
Or the soldier who, a quarter century earlier in Verdun,
led them to victory.
The days preceding Pétain's visit,
the allies who prepare the disembarkation,
bombed the infrastructure German,
barracks, railway tracks,
factories.
1,000 inhabitants of the Paris region, died under the bombs.
A new test for more distraught French people,
more confused than ever
and which benefits the old marshal.
Jacqueline Lajoie, 18 years old at the time.
The Americans bombed the house of his grandparents in Seine-et-Marne.
They took everything the village in a row,
flying fortress,
who destroyed the entire village!
Not a house was left standing.
You know, we were trapped.
We didn't know.
What is going on ? Why do they do this?
We knew afterwards that it was to destroy the German army.
French people trapped,
caught in their contradictions
and trying to survive to this new test.
In Saint-Ouen, the Péchoux family,
films the Allied bombings.
Here is little Jean-Claude in the middle of the ruins.
Worrying.
There was a shelter that was just next to our house,
it was in a basement of a building.
We were there, cloistered, locked in vaults,
a vaulted cellar.
We were packed with 30 or 40 people,
with just a candle, it would create pure and simple fear.
It was a threat.
It didn't give the impression,
that it helped with the liberation to come.
This may come as a surprise, but in the spring of 44,
danger sometimes seems to come more allies than Germans.
According to these amateur films turned by the soldiers,
the occupants would be almost harmless.
In Paris, there are around 25,000,
often old or very young.
Apart from a few SS units,
most work in administration.
This little film was filmed by a German,
Wolfgang Lemke.
That day he traveled the capital with friends.
How can we imagine that these streets peace may be soon,
the scene of fierce battles?
Their excursion continues by plane for an overview of the capital.
As if the city belonged to them.
In Paris, unlike the provinces,
the Germans don't behave not in occupants,
but as if they were at home.
They requisitioned hundreds of buildings in beautiful neighborhoods.
And everywhere, they feel safe.
Like here at Place de l'Opéra, where the Kommandantur is located.
No protection, no barbed wire,
no quibble.
A simple barrier in front of the Meurice hotel,
where the commander of Paris was established.
While wishing get rid of the Germans,
many Parisians seem having accommodated themselves to the occupation.
Listen to what a high school student says fourteen years old at the time.
The future actor Claude Rich.
At the same time, his brother is fighting in Italy against the Germans.
The Germans I saw, they were sentries.
I had no hatred.
It's especially after the war we learned,
concentration camps and all that.
Before,
what stood out to me,
it's that the Germans had a smell.
And the smell they had, it was oriental tobacco.
When we passed in front a German car,
we could smell an oriental scent.
It was the journey, they were not French.
Here is one of them,
Corporal Hans Albrecht.
Originally from Stuttgart,
he was having an affair at the time with a young French girl.
Fernand de Lamare,
my darling in Paris.
She worked in our barracks.
In German, we called her Fernande.
But I, I knew it was Fernande.
Near the Arc de Triomphe, there was a small cinema.
I often went there with her.
We were going to shelter in a nice place for lovers.
A kind of rotunda in a square.
She was one of those who thought that we Germans
were the best.
Despite general disapproval,
Parisians show off with the enemy.
By interest.
Or for love.
Like this Lido usherette who meets an officer on the boulevards.
I passed by the café Nasturtiums and he was sitting there.
And suddenly, I saw him behind me
and he said to me: “Are you taking a walk, miss?”
I said yes.
He told me about the war.
And after, I asked him questions,
on the Germans
and it interested me.
And then we saw each other again,
and then I loved it.
He wrote poems,
on trees, on nature.
They were beautiful boys.
He was handsome, tall, blonde with blue eyes.
Paris was in my heart.
From cinema to cabaret passing by the Lido,
all these establishments were functioning as in peacetime.
For us, the question was to know what you could eat or drink there.
Alcohol, women, partying.
In hiding however,
ruthlessly repressed inhabitants,
prepare the revolt.
Against the occupiers and against their ideology.
The worst the world has ever seen.
We call them FFI,
the French Forces of the Interior.
They belong to everyone political trends,
right and left.
How many are there in Paris?
We'll never really know.
Dozens of thousands.
But they have very few weapons.
Among them, an activist 25 year old communist,
Cécile Rol-tanguy.
We see her here with her baby and the pram,
in which she hides a machine gun.
With her husband Henri Rol-Tanguy,
the head of all the FFI from the Paris region,
she got involved to expel the occupant.
It was fascism.
We knew well that there was good people, no doubt.
But what really struck me, they are the ones who were shot.
My father was deported, we didn't know where he was.
Everything was unbearable.
We are a great people after all.
We made a revolution.
We still know,
that we can participate,
to insurrections and all that.
We must awaken national feeling,
revolt against this occupation,
unworthy of a people.
To prepare for the insurrection,
the resistance fighters are looking to train the population,
by multiplying symbolic actions.
As here in 1942 at the Étoile,
when they disturb a German ceremony.
But the resistance is few followed by Parisians.
We called them terrorists.
Because he killed. He was a terrorist.
Even if he was a German, he was coming,
with a knife to do not make noise,
then to a shift...
a knife in the back, the guy fell...
We were like, “What is this? What does it mean ?"
And after,
so we had the radio that we listened to despite everything,
They told us: “No, they are not terrorists,
They are resistance fighters.”
We had taken on a certain passive side.
What could we do?
We didn't know which side deliverance would come.
She would come one day, it was certain, but when?
Where and by whom? We do not know.
June 6, 1944.
The event that changes everything.
150,000 allied soldiers land in Normandy,
to free Europe from Nazism.
Here London
Supreme Command Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces
has just published the following press release.
Under the command of General Eisenhower
allied naval forces started this morning
the landing of the allied armies on the northern coasts of France.
I remember !
I understand...
So there it is, wildfire!
Wildfire.
I was in my bed
and I hear screaming in the House.
It was probably my mother who heard the news.
I was very happy. Finally, Something is going to happen!
We started by making flags.
That's it, we are free! They go Get the Krauts out the door!
They were the Boches or the Schleus.
We treated them like that.
We're going to be free. But we knew that it wouldn't be right away.
It impressed me terribly, from there,
we only thought about that.
I cried.
I cried because I said:
"That's it, they're going to leave,
We're going to hurt them."
In the following days,
Nazi propaganda attempts to show that the French
take the side of the occupier against the Allies.
Watch these images filmed at the station from the North at the request of the Germans.
In retaliation for the bombings, a small group of Parisians,
employees mistreat Allied soldiers,
taken prisoner in Normandy.
There is also this ceremony surprising,
at the Invalides.
3 weeks after disembarkation,
1000 new recruits of the French militia,
take the oath under the Nazi salute,
anti-communists, anti-Semites,
they are the ones who, for months, chase the resistance
and the Jews alongside the Germans.
Another image, the same day, at the town hall,
thousands of Parisians come honor the remains of the militiaman
and collaborator Philippe Henriot.
We are told that we are not patriots because we accept,
the collaboration policy with Germany.
For months, Philippe Henriot ignited the audience,
through his radio speeches.
He has just been executed by the Resistance.
These images from July are disturbing.
But they are misleading.
Because since the landing, without it appearing anything,
a new balance of power settled in the capital.
The Germans were much less arrogant.
It was no longer the same thing.
There was an evolution,
good for us and less good for them.
We had the impression that the Germans were withdrawing,
a bit like the oyster under the lemon.
They returned home,
in the commanders, in the barracks,
we saw them less.
On the other hand, the Parisians invaded gladly,
a bit of the street.
They were the ones who took the streets, let's say.
A tiny, but telling sign.
While the shots are always punishable by death,
journalists film the Germans on hidden camera.
He approaches a few meters soldiers,
despite the noise of their cameras.
As if the Germans already were no longer scary.
This is the moment when resistance decides to strike a blow.
This is Robert Chambeiron,
a former deputy of Jean Moulin.
Under a false identity,
he is one of the members of the Council National Resistance.
We are now convinced,
that the Germans are not invincible
and there is no reason not to fight
and that if we fight, we can win.
We decided in the National Council of the Resistance,
to mark July 14, 1944,
by a large demonstration.
and we are going to issue a slogan to women and girls
of Paris to take to the streets,
with red dresses, blue belts,
white bodices to see parade blue, white, red,
under the noses of the Germans the day is a big July 14th.
On this historic July 14,
only these few images remain discreetly shot,
which show tricolor emblems sold by the nose and the beard,
French police and Germans,
which no longer react.
That day, 100,000 demonstrators,
especially left-wing activists,
parade in the Paris region, as evidenced by this single photo,
taken in Vitry-sur-Seine.
A report from the Communist Party mentions the flags,
banners,
the leaflets distributed in the processions.
We sing the Marseillaise in defiance of the occupier.
Like a dress rehearsal before the revolt.
In Paris,
residents are starting to accept the price to pay for their release.
At the end of the war,
when we saw the fortresses flying come,
which were always very high, very numerous,
and when there was sun, we had the impression of a swarm of bees
and it was...
People were going out, they didn't go to the shelters,
they came, they wanted to watch them
and people shouted: “Bomb!
Kill Em !"
We had learned hatred and accepted war.
Entrenched in their barracks,
German soldiers start to get scared.
Look at these photos apparently harmless,
taken at the Clignancourt barracks.
We see administrative staff there of the Army,
mostly old,
receive urgently military training.
Behind the facade smiles,
do they still believe in it?
It was a terrible time this uncertainty.
We guessed the twist that it was going to take.
We knew we had no chance to defeat the American powers
and British.
From my room at the Hôtel de France,
I looked out the window,
I saw the planes go by English and American,
which were flying very low and I said to myself:
"What will it give if they can steal like that with impunity?
But for us, there was no choice.
What could we do? To desert ?
One day, a cleaning lady, who spoke a few words of German and said to me:
“You don’t want to come with me?
Come with me."
I could have followed her.
And probably she would have hidden it from me in his apartment but...
Me, my conscience, my duty as a soldier,
that would have been desertion.
It would have broken my heart to abandon others
and disappear quietly.
They were afraid, that, to be afraid,
they were scared.
I don't know.
Let them be harmed,
that the Americans,
don't behave very well.
They were afraid that the Americans they behave,
like them, behaved,
we never know !
We had only one thing in mind,
emerge safely from this quagmire.
We had come to terms with the idea to retreat.
This war was lost anyway.
What no German soldier doesn't realize yet,
is that most leaders of the Wehrmacht,
the regular army, is prey to the same doubts.
And that at the Majestic Hotel, whose defenses are strengthened,
Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel,
the head of administration military in France,
an anti-Nazi, is also looking for,
to end the war.
July 20, 1944,
the day that could have changed the course of history.
In East Prussia, a bomb attack,
destroyed Hitler's headquarters
and the noise runs that the Führer is dead.
General von Stülpnagel is one of the conspirators.
He summons the same evening his assistants at the Majestic Hotel,
with Lieutenant Schefft.
Members of the general staff were in the office.
We were told: “Gentlemen, the Führer is dead.”
Schefft, see you immediately in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Go cut the SS frequencies and intelligence services.
They will be interned At nightfall.
This is the operation that many hoped for.
During the night, without anyone doesn't realize it,
the SS of Paris are arrested
and the regular army, the Wehrmacht, take the power.
Until the news breaks from Germany.
Alone or almost among his collaborators,
the Führer miraculously survived
and the attack is a failure.
Hitler's reaction was relentless.
Stülpnagel is hanged in a Berlin prison,
while in Paris a general is appointed who never disobeyed orders.
Dietrich von Choltitz.
His mission, prepare the defense of Paris.
The general died in 1966.
His son Timo von Choltitz,
agreed to meet us.
This is my father and me.
It doesn't really look comfortable both !
And there you see him with his soldiers,
after the Battle of Rotterdam.
It was in Rotterdam, in 1940,
what appears the first time publicly the general,
when the city is razed by the German air force.
We find it later in the USSR,
where he destroys the cities of Sevastopol,
kyiv, Kharkov and many others.
He had the reputation,
to be a brutal destroyer of cities.
It was one of the strategies Germans used in Russia.
They almost destroyed everything in their path.
Every house, every barn was burned,
whether it is stone or wood.
Everything was destroyed during the retreat from Moscow.
It was the scorched earth principle.
My father spoke with Hitler of the defense of Paris.
He knew perfectly well that he would be given the order to make it a field of ruins.
There were 22,000 soldiers there,
on whom he could count.
This is the case of Sergeant Blache,
responsible for a communications unit in the 15th arrondissement.
I was a technician and they said to themselves:
“This man is talented, he will be able to take care of the explosions."
So I was sent to a company of pioneers,
where I was taught to handle explosives,
to trigger them...
I returned to my unit and they delivered the explosives to us.
At the same time, in Normandy,
the Stalingrad of the West, as the Germans will call it.
Since the landing,
Hitler's armies oppose Allies fierce resistance,
almost fanatic,
as the soldier discovers American Werner Kleeman.
The Germans were fanatical and harsh
and death meant nothing to them.
The first 3 days, we surrounded a group of 6 Germans
and our company commander asked them to surrender
They replied: “No!”
So we used our flamethrower and we roasted them.
They're the kind of fanatics that we had in front of us.
On August 1,
the Allies received reinforcement of 15,000 French people,
of the second armored division,
disembarked in turn in Normandy.
From North Africa passing through England,
commanded by General Leclerc,
these French people have an obsession.
Save Paris.
We all had hope that we could,
after crossing Normandy,
arrive in Paris, the capital of France and revenge.
We had to go quickly, we were all aware of it,
because is Paris wasn't going to jump?
What do the Germans were going to demolish in Paris?
At the beginning of the month of August,
after two months of fighting,
General Patton's Americans
manage to break through the lines Germans in Avranches.
But the Allied general staff on which the second DB depends,
wants to bypass Paris by the North and the South,
avoiding direct confrontation.
According to plans of Generalissimo Eisenhower,
Paris will be liberated during of the month of September,
when the Allied vanguard heading towards Germany will have passed it.
General Eisenhower and General Bradley,
did not want to liberate the city,
because they didn't want any fights from streets, from houses to houses.
The street fight fights from a house to the other, it's the worst.
We were told that the objective was not to liberate Paris,
but to kill Germans.
We dreamed of winning the war,
whatever the path to take to beat the Germans.
In Paris, deprived of information,
residents ignore threats which weigh on them.
We could no longer hear London,
since a while.
It was so confusing that we couldn't hear anything anymore.
So basically, we lived,
we lived in the present,
we lived every day a bit like very young children do.
As proof, this astonishing film,
shot by the Péchoux family,
August 15 on the banks of the Marne.
They were the ones filming American bombings.
This time, while the Allies are still tens of kilometers away,
the inhabitants bathe in the rivers,
as if the battle was a foregone conclusion.
When I see the pictures that my father filmed at the time,
undoubtedly, there was no worry,
but rather a big release of the populations,
who were really 100% happy.
I think they had really trust,
that things were going in the right direction, almost irreversibly.
We were still in the middle war in quotes,
but the spirits had walk hard,
to say : “That’s it, we’re at the end!”
In mid-August,
the Parisians are far away to imagine that resistance,
is about to strike a big blow
and throw all his strength in the battle.
For the resistance, impossible to wait no longer the allies without doing anything.
In Paris, a new phase begins, the insurrection.
Like a month earlier, on July 14,
a call for sabotage and the strike is launched,
towards the workers.
Thousands of people stop the work.
But this time,
to fight.
No more trains,
no more electricity or almost.
No more police on the streets.
They too are on strike.
In just a few hours,
life stops in the Paris region.
I was still bored because I no longer had,
connection with Paris,
but I found it normal.
I understood that he was going something happen.
The people had to be trained French in battle.
We couldn't let the French people,
apart from his own liberation.
An atmosphere of arms vigil,
in the courtyards of buildings, the Germans burn their archives.
They evacuate the furniture, often stolen, to Germany.
They send away those who will not be not useful in combat.
The Gestapo, certain collaborators.
They couldn't take me.
Robert had said, before all this:
“I’ll come back for you.”
But where were they taking me?
August 18, 1944,
the tension is at its peak.
Huge German armored convoys,
retreating from Normandy,
cross the capital from west to east.
I was outraged,
to think that they could leave without being kicked out.
It's really this sentence that came out to me.
We're not going to leave them leave like that.
And so my husband who knew things,
that I didn't know, he calmed me down.
But, don't get upset, wait,
you will see tomorrow.
That day, Henri Rol-Tanguy,
comes out of a meeting with the leaders of the Resistance,
in a café in the seventh borough.
The different movements come to agree,
on the outbreak of hostilities.
Returned home to Montrouge,
In the middle of the night, and in fear of being denounced,
the head of the FFI launches,
immediate popular insurrection.
My husband told me, “You’re going to hit.”
But it was 3 a.m.
I told him: "In a building like this, I can't type,
that makes noise."
And so I hung around,
as much as I could to bring it until 6 a.m.
Then at 6 a.m. I hit.
He left with the paper.
The order of August 19 in which it is said,
that the insurrection will follow.
The text of Rol-Tanguy is printed and plastered all over the city.
To each his own, according to the words of the time.
After four years of occupation,
humiliation, persecution.
Parisians are called to join the FFI
and go on the attack.
Arm cuff.
Using Molotov Cocktails and old guns.
The resistance fighters come out clandestinity,
harass the enemy and attempt to seize their weapons.
Like this young girl Anne-Marie Dalmaso,
who snatches his rifle to a wounded German.
Before putting him away.
Just 22 years old.
Or George Duxon,
this veteran of 1940,
escaped from a prison camp,
who just blew up a tank German with a grenade.
They were heroes to me.
It was still 4 and a half years,
that we lived the life of animals,
occupied by the German.
There was nothing left.
There was no more pride, no more honor...
And then all of a sudden, it was the dream,
that we did every day listening to the London radio,
we see these people who were shooting at them,
in front of everybody.
The heart of the battle lies here,
at the police headquarters, in the Île de la Cité.
2000 police officers who were strike since August 15,
have taken over the controlled building by the Vichy authorities.
A student in engineering school,
whoever wants to fight, joins them.
There was a huge mess in the prefecture courtyard.
There were trucks, cars,
cars destroyed, there were everything and a crazy world.
The Germans were passing by in trucks and they shot every time.
And I had a little revolver.
And I admit, I started at the window with my gun,
and I shot.
On board this burning truck is the German Blache.
I yelled, “Everyone out!”
Among those who had jumped from the truck, five were injured on the ground.
I still remember one of them who begged me:
“Bernard, help me!”
He had been shot in the stomach.
I will always remember it because It’s still a sad spectacle.
His friend who was trembling with fear,
who was crying
and which showed the photo of his family.
A few hundred meters away,
the residents of the neighborhood observe the scene.
Every time one of us was touched,
the crowd roared with joy.
I said, “We’re going to attack them!”
I had a rifle, a pistol and two grenades
and I shouted: "Forward, rifle in the air!
We cross the bridge screaming and we'll see what happens."
And there, all those who were on the Place du Châtelet,
they ran away.
During the first hours,
few residents join the FFI.
Most observe the fights,
sometimes pretending to participate,
as Georges Marcel notes, Gaullist resistance.
During the insurrection, the Parisian population,
a large part had stayed at home,
they were not in the streets amid gunfire.
They came down to have seems to be participating.
I don't know what, they were there for. They looked.
As soon as a German car or a sidecar or something else arrived,
they were flowing back at full speed on the stairs at home.
There they were called sparrow scarecrows.
The next day, a Gaullist group invests,
one of the symbols of Paris, also controlled by Vichy.
City Hall.
We were very motivated,
we were told that we had to take the town hall
and we left to take the hotel city ​​of Paris and settle there.
We didn't hesitate for a second.
We entered quickly, without resistance.
All the employees were leaving, everyone was gone!
They ran away from city hall!
We regained possession,
from Paris town hall.
We were going home.
To arms, citizens !
Form your battalions!
Let's walk ! Let's walk !
Only an impure blood...
An unimaginable situation Few days ago.
While the Germans are still everywhere in Paris
and that they have several dozen tanks,
a man from De Gaulle, Marcel Flouret,
recently parachuted from Algiers,
takes office as prefect,
on behalf of the provisional government of the French Republic.
In a few minutes,
a new power led by the Gaullists are formed in the heart of Paris,
against the Germans, but also to occupy the land,
against the communists in the post-war perspective.
Among them, politicians,
but also students, intellectuals,
all volunteers and without political experience.
Here in the prefect's office,
Charles Pegul de Rovin,
who traded his gun against a machine gun.
While already,
the first tanks are heard.
A German column arrives, of tanks,
who was going up the quays.
There was a German biker in front,
an officer in the tank's turret, outdoors.
And the orders are given:
“Above all, no one shoots.”
Perfect.
There is a c***,
who takes his gun and "pan", the biker in the air.
And at that moment,
the officer returns,
closes the turret and cannon directed at the town hall.
And as I am Catholic and a believer,
I made my sign of the cross. I said: "It's over,
the war is over, he will screw up city hall.”
He fired a cannon. It was finished.
Did he receive orders or was he in a hurry to leave,
because there was the whole column behind...
They continued.
The Germans have just discovered almost by chance,
that the town hall, after the police headquarters,
is in the hands of the Resistance.
We were afraid they would enter in the town hall,
because the tanks would have could break down the door
and enter the town hall.
And that would have been a disaster.
A few hours later, the tanks are back.
They attack the building.
But once again,
they leave the place for no apparent reason.
On the second day of the insurrection, the question is valid.
What does General von Choltitz want?
Why doesn't he attack to the building conquered by the Resistance,
while at the same time, Warsaw,
the capital of Poland, who also rose up,
is being destroyed by the German army.
My father knew he had to begin the destruction of Paris.
For Notre Dame,
1.5 kg of TNT was required.
For the Pantheon, maybe three kilos.
And TNT, my father had plenty of them.
He had in Paris more than 300 torpedoes,
from stocks of the German army.
A torpedo contained up to 1000 kilos of TNT.
There were enough p to blow up,
all the monuments of Paris in just one time.
But does the general want to fight?
Three days earlier, on demand from a Swedish diplomat,
Raoul Nordling,
he released several thousand political prisoners.
Far from destroying Paris,
he seems to want to negotiate.
Look at these photos, at the Porte d'Orléans,
Germans parley with the FFI.
On August 20, to everyone's surprise,
he signs a truce with several Gaullist insurgents.
Officially to evacuate the wounded.
While the insurrection just beginning,
speaker cars call for an end to the fighting.
Because of the promises made by the German command,
not to attack public buildings,
occupied by French troops,
the government of the Republic French woman asks you,
to suspend the assault against the occupier
until the evacuation of Paris.
The explanation will come later.
The Germans wish above all,
keep free of axes traffic in Paris,
to evacuate their troops.
Because a few days earlier,
the Allies landed in Provence
and Hitler's army, caught in pincers,
now backs up forced to Germany,
to reconstitute a line of defense.
For the insurgents at City Hall,
the truce is already a victory.
It allows you to wait the arrival of the allies,
while moving away the destruction of Paris.
In the prefect's office,
a strange atmosphere sets in.
By their own admissions,
these young resistance fighters live one of the most beautiful moments of their existence.
Like Roger Grenier.
You had to see the prefect's office,
with very pretty girls,
who called,
a friend who was at the back of the room,
with his radio, was trying to catch some jazz.
There was a certain enthusiasm, girls, I remember,
were training in the office the days when there was nothing,
trained with great difficulty to make Molotov cocktails.
Sometimes there were romantic rivalries,
two guys who were in love from the same girl.
That happens.
The one we liked, we were heckling a little with them,
but we didn't think about the trifle,
the problem of defending the Hotel city ​​was important to us in the first place.
It's obviously completely exhilarating.
In addition, we believe we are invulnerable.
There was a friend very kind, very modest.
He was told: “Stand there”,
he was seated in the prefect's place.
We felt like we were,
the new power, a little bit anyway.
A new power which is not to everyone's taste.
Because if the Gaullists are present in the center of Paris,
the communists took control of several neighborhoods,
especially in the suburbs.
And some get scared.
At the time, the FFI, I didn't like them at all.
I wasn't the only one.
We were a little scared.
In certain environments, we were a little scared.
We remembered 36,
where we sang the Internationale under our windows.
They were communists who believed that truly,
what we didn't do in 36, we were going to do it now.
There was a lot of tension.
A heavy atmosphere...
Within the resistance too, the tension is growing.
On August 21, third day of the insurrection,
the communists and the Gaullists,
until now united, seem close to breaking up.
For the communists, the truce is a trap of the Germans,
to defeat the insurrection.
It was then that the head of the FFI,
Rol-Tanguy, takes an initiative which changes the course of the revolt.
Here is his PC, located under Place Denfert-Rochereau,
26 meters underground.
It is from here that he dictates to his wife Cécile,
a new call to the Parisian population.
Success is a function of numbers,
that massive recruitment must be undertaken immediately.
The mission of the FFI of the Ile-de-France region is:
open the road to Paris for the allied armies victorious and welcome them there.
Regional Chief Colonel Rol.
Everyone at the barricades.
On the fourth day of the insurrection,
Rol-Tanguy calls the inhabitants to reconnect,
with their revolutionary past.
This time his call is heard,
men, women and even children.
Almost everyone gets involved.
600 barricades are erected in Paris.
A communist resistance fighter, Edgar Morin,
is on one of them in Montmartre.
It was part of our unconscious collective history.
We read that in our history books.
We know that there are 48, 1830, all that.
We read Victor Hugo, we read Les Misérables.
It seemed natural to continue all this.
It is obvious that we were carried by enthusiasm,
a popular joy, an enormous joy.
We paved the streets,
we destroyed trees,
we took out old mattresses, old things and old things.
We were very proud like that in front,
but we were afraid.
We risked taking a prune. There was no doubt about that.
We wanted to do something.
We had to participate in the Liberation.
We couldn't stay doing nothing, arms hanging.
Finally act, participate.
It's doing one's duty. It was normal.
It's okay to participate to a movement,
who will try to put outside the Germans.
We had a bit of the impression for wasting our time,
without saying it, we've been waiting a long time.
On the evening of August 22,
the insurrection is relaunched.
We won't stop him anymore.
Not even General von Choltitz,
who will explain later having received that day,
Hitler's formal order,
to reduce the capital in a heap of ruins,
even if it means perishing himself under the rubble.
Thanks to the barricades,
this order is now unrealizable.
What do you want me to tell you?
For us it was an obstacle, we couldn't go out anymore.
In fact, we were surrounded.
I said to myself, “The end is coming.”
It's inevitable.
A revolt brewing in a city,
cannot be suppressed by an army.
Choked? Maybe not.
But it can turn into a bloodbath.
In Normandy, two days earlier,
General de Gaulle met the leader of the Allied armies, Eisenhower,
by telling him of his fears,
that the Germans provoke carnage in Paris
and that the communists take power.
He even threatened,
to disobey the Allied staff,
by launching the second DB itself towards the capital.
Which of these arguments wins?
We'll never really know.
But on August 22, General Eisenhower,
gives the order to the second DB
and the fourth division American infantry,
to rush towards Paris.
I was relieved to know that we were marching on Paris.
Paris is the symbol of France.
The French sent us La Fayette to help us,
during our American Revolution.
I had read a lot about Paris.
Notre Dame de Paris, the three Musketeers.
Yes, we had that in mind.
But we also thought we were going find pretty girls.
We had tremendous trust in General Leclerc.
We said to ourselves: "The boss will manage well,
so that it is us who were the first to return."
Be the first to be in Paris?
Of course, General!
August 24, after two days rapid progress,
the second DB is fifteen kilometers away south of Paris.
Close to the goal, but blocked by a German defensive barrier.
It was then that General Leclerc takes urgently,
the decision to launch an avant-garde towards the capital,
without waiting for the bulk of the troops,
with the mission to get there that same evening.
Because in Paris, the situation is getting out of hand.
Following fights between the Germans and the FFI,
the Grand Palace is on fire.
Explosions ring out.
The Germans blew up several military buildings.
Like the telephone exchange where Bernhard Blache is located.
Imagine, blowing up four floors,
what it means to work.
You have to pull cables electric everywhere
and attach the explosives.
One kilo explosives, relatively small
and they must be linked together.
Lieutenant von Berlitz was in the car.
I gave him the detonator.
He pulled the lever.
It was August 24.
And it made a huge bang.
As night falls,
it's now the sky which blazes to the east of Paris.
The SS set fire the Château de Vincennes.
I heard my parents exclaim:
“It’s the castle of Vincennes which is burning!”
And who took me in their arms
and who showed me this gigantic fire.
And for me, it was impressive.
While we were maybe a kilometer away,
to see these flames arise at night
and the rest being black,
as if it were almost even a decor,
it was so surreal.
At the same time, the bells start to ring throughout the city.
On a balcony on the Champs-Élysées,
a couple records his own conversation.
Listen to the sound of the bells!
If the bells ring, it is because the Allies entered Paris.
It’s exactly 10:25 p.m.
We applaud, we applaud the Champs-Élysées, we applaud!
So these are the bells of Liberation!
Be careful, it shoots!
These are the bells of liberation! The Allies have crossed the gates of Paris.
It’s exactly 10:25 p.m.
When all these bells started to scream,
to chime, but really, they were strong.
We felt that the priests had put all their strength into it!
It was an extraordinary joy!
It was a joy of communion, Really,
without meaning,
theological, ideological of the term.
It was a communion of everyone. Everyone was happy.
We were all together.
At the town hall,
the vanguard of the second DB,
has just arrived on the square.
I was in the prefect's office.
We hear screams, howls.
Then noise in the square.
I rush to the window,
from the prefect's office and I see a tank below,
a tank that was not a Panzerdivision for a change,
who was a Frenchman.
I say: “That’s it, they’re coming!”
Three tanks.
Armored cars.
A few dozen men.
At the request of General Leclerc, still stuck in the southern suburbs,
they managed to bypass German roadblocks
and to slip through the Italian gate,
to the heart of the capital.
An emotion like rarely the French have experienced it.
You have to wait for dawn to see their faces.
That of Captain Dronne,
who joined de Gaulle in 1940.
He leads the Nueve,
the ninth company of the regiment of Chad,
composed mostly of refugees Republicans of the Spanish War.
We see French tanks,
with guys going out,
who themselves are moved to tears.
At that moment, we don't think that most are Spaniards...
We are moved by this incredible feeling,
that we are freed,
by the fact that this place central Paris,
she herself is free.
Four heavy years like that,
who suddenly disappear.
Yet, the day has only just begun.
At the same time, in the southern suburbs,
the arrival of the Allies.
We were told to stop because General Leclerc,
wanted to have the honor to liberate Paris.
Our battalion commander told them: “This is all bullshit!
We are moving forward, we have no resistance before us!”
And so we entered despite orders.
Why wait ?
It made sense.
It was the biggest adventure of my life.
The most exciting day of my life,
It's August 25.
Indescribable.
I felt like I was discovering that paradise exists.
And I was there!
I had the torso and the head,
out of the turret.
All of a sudden, without me suspecting it, everything exploded!
German shooters who have not touched my head,
thanks my God,
who shot and I said to myself:
"Don't close your tank and don't lock yourself in it.
Stay outside with your head open,
because I want to see Paris, Paris in jubilation!
Delusional. There is no other.
You don't realize the thousands and thousands of people,
shouting Long live Leclerc, long live de Gaulle,
Long live France,
flags, etc.
Imagine the crowds in the streets,
as for the victory of France,
at the time of the World Cup.
We were totally overwhelmed.
Every simple soldier was celebrated as if he were Eisenhower.
It was jubilant.
Many of us have thought than what we had gone through before,
was worth it,
when we saw the joy of the French.
And in particular, French women.
Girls...
The girls returned completely crazy men,
with their long tanned legs.
The girls were beautiful, radiant, appetizing.
It was happiness.
We had to touch them.
They were much more beautiful than the Germans, of course!
So as much as the others were strict,
I don't know how they did it love, but it wasn't supposed to be fun.
But they were relaxed!
Helmet, the jugular fell,
they were screwing us helmets on their heads.
He didn't look the same than the Germans.
I said, “He’s an American.”
So, I threw myself into his arms!
How good it is to embrace your freedom!
I don't want to be mean, but there was also a side...
A little bit begging.
Cigarettes!
Do you have any cigarettes? Do you have chocolate?
They sent us chewing gum, cigarettes.
That's when I started smoking!
Cigarettes, chewing gum, nylon stockings,
nylon stockings.
We climbed on the tanks, we kissed them, we thanked them,
another one came and it started again,
Chewing gum, stockings, everything!
Is this euphoria premature?
As the allies pass,
Cécile Rol-Tanguy comes out of the underground shelter,
where she spent the time of the insurrection.
She bursts into tears.
These women who threw themselves at those who led the tanks,
who kissed them full on the lips.
But I,
I didn't take a step forward nor backward,
I was standing there, at the edge of the sidewalk.
The emotion...
But the memory of ours,
to think of all those that I had known,
some of whom had been shot,
for other deportees.
I had my father, we didn't know not what he had become.
I was told he was dead.
It wasn't possible for me to be,
the great joy of all Parisians.
I feel the same emotion than at the time.
No doubt, it stayed with me.
That's it...
Since the day of the barricades,
the Germans have retreated in around ten buildings.
On the morning of August 25, while the Allies progress towards the city center,
a long day of fighting begins.
All of a sudden it's empty,
we don't know how the crowd disappears.
And there, we find ourselves facing the Germans.
While the Americans secure the east of the city,
almost without fighting,
the second DB, supported by the FFI,
receives the mission of reducing German positions.
All are gradually recovered,
at the cost of several hundreds of deaths.
It's violent, it's hard and it's very...
It's brief.
I see smoke in front of me.
I hear: “Move forward, stop, go back.”
There, they were very combative.
There was no gift!
We didn't have the impression at all that they were ready to surrender.
It really was war.
We thought they were demotivated,
but everywhere the Germans resist.
Like here at the Majestic Hotel,
where it was, a month earlier General von Stülpnagel,
one of the accomplices of the attack on Hitler.
After 1 hour of fighting,
the Germans set fire to their equipment and surrender.
But a few minutes later, under the Arc de Triomphe,
one of them does not hesitate to attack Commander Mirambeau,
one of the figures from the second DB.
There were German prisoners,
who were next to it, who were under the Arc de Triomphe with us
and at that moment, there is a German officer,
who left Granada and who threw it on us.
Mirambeau fell to the ground very seriously injured,
transported to hospital.
So you see there was still Germans,
then certainly Nazis, fanaticized people,
the French do not have to take Paris and must not win.
It's us who will stay the bosses of France
and who will be the masters of France.
German prisoners pay for this behavior.
After a shooting scene coming from the roofs,
5 Germans are arrested Star's Plaza.
Here they are, hands in the air,
disarmed by a French soldier
and deprived of their shoes
to prevent them from fleeing.
But the crowd, exasperated, demands their death.
Several cameramen, including François Charlet, filmed the scene.
They emerge into Friedland Avenue,
completely surrounded by women and men in fury,
who shouted: “To death!”
The soldier is very young,
with his machine gun,
trembled in all his limbs.
He lined up these Germans like that.
To discuss.
He turned towards this wild crowd
and it redoubled with “To death!”
The soldier trembled.
And one by one, he took them all down.
At the same time at the military school,
another slip-up.
This film shot by a Parisian, shows Germans,
who have just been taken prisoner according to the laws of war.
But the minutes that precede, they were not filmed.
Soldiers who were in the process of surrender were shot down by the French.
Among them, Bernhard Blache.
When the first gunshots broke out,
I threw myself to the ground.
I didn't have any weapons on me.
And I played dead.
Then, while I was still on the ground,
I got shot in the left thigh.
A civilian wants to finish him off at point blank range.
But at the last moment, he is protected by the Red Cross.
On the pavement, we were insulted by shouting:
“Dirty bitch!”
In the crowd there was old women.
Drool ran down their chins,
they were trying to spit us above without succeeding.
After the euphoria of the morning,
time for revenge against the Germans
and against their French collaborators,
those who helped them to appropriate the capital for four years.
From his balcony on the course of Vincennes,
the Tonnelier family films resistance fighters on the roofs.
When suddenly a shootout breaks out.
Their apartment is affected by the shots.
There was a shot which was entered the room.
And who hurt my mother.
We made him a tourniquet, we took it down,
We had to do something.
And that's where, going down,
from the stairs,
a certain gentleman, a certain FFI said to him:
"Mow her, take her away, It’s a collaboration!”
For what ? Why this hatred?
Everywhere, residents take justice into their own hands,
with complete impunity and without evidence.
Priority target,
the women.
Those who had relations with the occupant.
Look at these faces.
Not those of women.
Those of men.
How to explain such rage?
Odile de Vasselot has been resistant since 1940.
In the middle of an intelligence mission for the benefit of the Allies,
she is stopped by mistake by the police
and taken to the prefecture,
before being released a day later.
A guy came, he spat on the ground in front of me:
“You f***ing g***!
I had the impression that we were going take me and shoot me in a corner.
I was made to return painfully in a cell,
where there was already,
sixteen people sitting on the ground,
with your back to the wall, supporting yourself.
There were some who were women completely shaved, shaved,
on which we had painted a swastika,
on the skin of the skull.
There is one, it was awful,
she was shaved and she passed around photos of her,
with gorgeous blonde hair which fell on his shoulders.
She had the photos, I do not know why.
That day, Henriette Griset,
is arrested in her apartment by an FFI friend,
whose advances she had refused.
There was a pack of shrews,
“The collaborator!”
So they took me at Montreuil town hall.
And then this idiot,
not much, but he got me when even cut my hair a little,
a little bit there and a little bit there.
I think it was jealousy.
Because he liked me.
Obviously, I preferred,
a German soldier,
than a Frenchman.
And I don't think they ever told me that forgiven.
What did the people in the neighborhood do?
They brought me prostitutes, who slept with Germans,
so that I order them to be mowed, etc.
It repelled me.
I said, “Leave her to me.”
As soon as I was calm with the girl, there was a staircase,
I told him: “Save yourself!”
This filthy phenomenon denunciation,
of course it happened.
Everything seemed absolutely shabby, scary.
I saw faces bloody guys.
I saw that they were beaten, maybe tortured,
and that really repelled me.
There were assassinations,
there was a whole monstrous part.
But that we
we concealed, or rather we considered ourselves,
like phenomena
secondary, as we don't make omelettes,
without breaking eggs.
These are the excesses that happen at one point,
where a society is deprived of law.
At that time, as well generous forces,
Only nefarious forces manifest themselves.
Settling of scores on one side.
War crimes and crimes against the humanity of the other.
Until August 25,
the Nazis, notably the SS,
commit their atrocities.
Eleven prisoners shot dead in Romainville.
Several dozen hostages tortured
and murdered at the Château de Vincennes.
35 resistance fighters fell into a trap
and shot in the Bois de Boulogne.
6 resistance fighters executed in the Luxembourg gardens.
Here in Oissery, east of Paris.
The SS locked him in a barn,
dozens of resistance fighters injured
and set it on fire.
As in Oradour, two months earlier.
Until the end, they deported Jews and resistance fighters.
One of them, Guy Flavien, 24 years old,
launched at Pantin station,
a ticket for his family,
as he was taken away towards the Buchenwald camp.
Left Fresnes today for unknown destination.
Thank you food package.
The week went well and morale is good.
See you soon. Very affectionate kisses.
A surprise though,
and size.
After a week of insurrection,
Paris is not destroyed.
This is General Von Choltitz.
The terrible destroyer of cities,
much more hesitant and even tacking as expected.
He went to the second DB
and it is transferred at Montparnasse station.
It wasn't the German officer,
very rigid and very proud guy,
that we are used to,
to see in pictures.
He was a little chubby guy.
Paunchy, scared out of his wits.
He looked a little haggard.
Very defeated.
We will understand it later.
The general, who feared reprisals against his family in Germany,
Pretended to fight and resist,
while preparing his surrender and that of the German garrison.
Is it out of humanity that he spared Paris?
Today, his son would like to believe him.
From his meeting with Adolf Hitler,
he knew he would not destroy never Paris.
He loved Paris.
Already in 1932, he had carried out,
his honeymoon in Paris with my mother.
And for him, at the end of the war,
there was no reason to take responsibility,
to burn a city of such world renown.
For him, it was absolutely unthinkable.
What would have been the point of razing Paris?
the most beautiful city in the world ?
And if, more simply, as we approach from the end of the war,
the general had feared passing court martialed
and being shot by the Allies?
So ends a crazy week,
that of the Parisian insurrection,
the only real popular revolt from the year 1944.
At City Hall, General de Gaulle is welcomed by the insurgents,
who, a week earlier, had reinstalled the Republic there.
Paris, Paris outraged!
Paris broken!
Paris martyred!
But Paris liberated!
Freed by himself!
Freed by his people!
He spoke well,
because he had not planned note then when he spoke,
it was the man who spoke,
with his heart and it's wonderful.
He was very good in his role.
That is to say, of France which fights,
that is to say from France alone!
Of the real France, of eternal France!
What impressed me, it was this ardent crowd.
who screamed his name,
he was really acclaimed like a savior.
We opened the window so that De Gaulle,
can greet the crowd.
Four months after Pétain's visit,
Parisians cheer de Gaulle.
The next day, August 26,
there are more than a million To the Champs Elysees.
Ten times more numerous as for the marshal.
Question :
Are these the same crowd?
Probably not, estimates today most historians.
However, listen to what is said the resistance fighter Edgar Morin,
who is on that day in the procession.
France, who was a Pétaino-Gaullist,
is less and less became a Pétainist
and more and more Gaullist,
since Pétain was supposed be the shield
and de Gaulle the sword.
But when the shield was completely crumbled, the pseudo shield
and the hour of the sword has arrived,
it is obvious that the same crowd who had applauded Pétain,
applauded de Gaulle with no less of sincerity.
At the beginning, we were still quite Pétainist, I think,
the majority of the population.
But then, not at all.
We only had one idea, the liberation to change everything,
to redo everything.
A new France.
A France that is becoming itself again
and can finally turn to the future.
How it feels that day this 14 year old teenager,
Gerard Warter.
It was another city in reality.
Another city, another atmosphere.
We can almost say that the population had changed too.
Before, it was a population completely cold,
neutral, transparent, pressed.
While there we see people which are beginning to open,
to demonstrate,
to show kindness.
We become ourselves again, perhaps even,
the pendulum, does it go A little too much far to the other side,
it's possible !
People had become more exuberant,
than are the Parisians usually.
That was the beginning...
The beginning of life.
We had the impression that all of a sudden,
the Liberation,
was a signal that it was necessary...
Decide to do something.
We were 15-16 years old.
Life was about to begin, what are we going to do later?
The liberation of Paris will have changed their lives.
Charles Pegul de Rovin,
the man with the machine gun,
will engage in the second DB,
with Alain Raphaël and Gérard de Chaunac,
he will pursue the German army until Hitler's eagle's nest in Berchtesgaden.
Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, head of the FFI,
will be integrated into the first army French under General de Lattre,
before being appointed governor from Koblenz in occupied Germany.
Accompanied by his wife Cécile,
he will stay there for a year,
not far from General von Choltitz.
After his captivity in England,
the general will finish his life in Baden-Baden,
where he will die with conviction for saving Paris.
Became a banker then an actor,
Claude Rich will play the role of General Leclerc,
in the film, is Paris burning?
Edgar Morin will move away of the Communist Party,
before becoming a sociologist world famous.
The writer Roger Grenier will be one pillars of Gallimard editions.
As for the anonymous ones,
they resume the course of their lives.
Georges Marcellet will become an actor,
then engineer,
then business manager.
Like his fourth grade classmates infantry division,
the American Jack Port,
will return regularly to France,
to commemorate the landing and the liberation of Paris.
He will receive the Legion of Honor.
The vanquished will try to rebuild their lives,
on the rubble.
Bernhard Blache, the bomber,
will be police commissioner.
Friedrich Schefft, one of those who participated in the attack on Hitler,
will create a fashion store in Göttingen.
Hans Albrecht, Fernande's lover,
will be a teacher.
More troubled than all the others, perhaps...
Henriette Griset, the young usherette of the Lido,
who loved the Germans,
will date an American at the Liberation.
Then will marry a Frenchman in the 50s.