The Fall of Paris (1940)
On June 14, 1940, German soldiers marched in formation down the Champs-Élysées and past the Arc de Triomphe. Paris — the capital of France, the cultural capital of the Western world, a city that had last been occupied by a foreign enemy in 1815 — had fallen in six weeks. The speed of France's collapse stunned the world; the images of Wehrmacht troops beneath the Eiffel Tower were among the most disorienting photographs of the twentieth century.
Six Weeks That Shook the World
Germany invaded France and the Low Countries on May 10, 1940. The Allied plan — based on the assumption that Germany would repeat its World War I strategy of attacking through Belgium — sent British and French forces north into Belgium to meet the expected thrust. The Germans did attack through Belgium, but their main armored force drove through the Ardennes Forest to the south, which Allied planners had considered impassable for tanks. By May 21, German panzer divisions had reached the English Channel, cutting off the Allied forces in Belgium. The evacuation at Dunkirk (May 26 – June 4) rescued more than 338,000 Allied soldiers but left behind all their heavy equipment. The Germans then turned south. The French had not built a continuous defensive line south of the Maginot fortifications; their reserves were exhausted; their command structure was paralyzed. On June 10 — the day Mussolini declared war on France to grab a share of the spoils — the French government fled Paris. The French military declared Paris an "open city" — a designation meaning it would not be defended militarily — to spare it from the destruction that had leveled parts of Belgium and northern France.
Did You Know?
When Hitler arrived for his famously brief tour of Paris on June 23, 1940 — in the pre-dawn hours, lasting only three hours — he was accompanied by sculptor Arno Breker and architect Albert Speer. Hitler visited the Opéra Garnier, the Sacré-Cœur, and Napoleon's tomb. He reportedly told Speer afterward, "It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today." He never returned. The Eiffel Tower's elevator cables were cut by French engineers so he would have to climb the stairs; his motorcade never stopped at the tower.
The Armistice and Vichy France
France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22, 1940, in the same railway car at Compiègne where Germany had surrendered in 1918 — Hitler's deliberate choice of venue to erase that humiliation. The armistice divided France: the northern and western zones, including Paris, fell under direct German occupation; the southern zone was governed by the collaborationist Vichy regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain. About two million Parisians had fled the city in the days before the Germans arrived — one of the largest mass evacuations in European history. Those who remained found the city eerily quiet and the Germans, initially, disciplined and correct in their behavior toward the civilian population. That veneer of normality concealed the brutal realities of occupation: the systematic persecution and deportation of Jews, the execution of Resistance members, the forced labor programs, and the constant surveillance and terror of life under the Gestapo.
Liberation
Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944 — four years, two months, and eleven days after it fell. The liberation was achieved through a combination of the Allied breakout from Normandy, an uprising by the French Resistance and Parisian workers, and a deliberate political decision to ensure that French forces — led by General Philippe Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division — entered the city first, preserving French national honor. Hitler had ordered Paris destroyed rather than surrendered intact; the German commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz, refused, sparing the city its historic monuments and infrastructure. General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, led a triumphant procession down the Champs-Élysées on August 26, 1944 — the same street where German soldiers had marched four years earlier. The fall and liberation of Paris remain two of the defining moments of the twentieth century, bookmarks around four years of occupation that tested every dimension of French society.