Fighting during World War II by the French military became an abbreviated affair. When hostilities began in 1940, the nation was ill prepared for the German advance. Worse, French leadership badly miscalculated the speed of the German blitzkrieg. Instead they foolishly fortified the archaic Mageneau line from the previous global conflict.

The Germans merely sidestepped the French preparations and invaded the country from the north after briskly overrunning Holland and Belgium. On June 14, France signed an armistice with Germany and established a subservient government state in Vichy. The Free French movement kept fighting under the command of General Charles de Gaulle. Clandestine Resistance fighting would flare up in unoccupied southern France.

Paris was firmly under German control. The occupying forces identified the most desirable hotels to base their ruthless operations.

For four years, Germany controlled Paris with marginal opposition. Their high-profile presence, violence and deportation against the populace, and ruthless intolerance made struggle appear futile.

The Allied Army’s invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 altered radically the German stronghold. By August, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower was streaming towards Paris with the intention of bypassing the city to concentrate his forces along the Rhine River. He ultimately shifted tactics when French Generals Charles DeGaulle and Jacques-Philippe Leclerc chose to advance and liberate the city regardless of Eisenhower’s participation.

On August 25, 1944, German General Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered Paris to the Free French Government initially at the Hotel Meurice before signing the official document at the Gare Montparnasse railway station the same day. Paris had become liberated from its four year of enslavement.

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