Paris libéré

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60 years ago today, von Choltitz surrendered Paris to Leclerc and Rol-Tanguy after a week of insurrection and several days of fighting led by the French Second Armored Divsion and the American Fourth Infantry Division. Almost 1,500 Parisians died that week liberating their city. Four years after that photo of the teary-eyed Frenchman watching the Germans parade down the Champs-Elysées, around two million people came to watch the Leclerc and De Gaulle parade down the same avenue. Have you ever been in Paris on August 25? Have you ever heard any stories about the Libération?

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 14:58 (twenty-one years ago)

the last time i was in paris i was really noticing those "tombée pour la france" plaques everywhere

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:02 (twenty-one years ago)

i worked across the street (in the 11th) from a small memorial to a number of men who had been killed in the fighting you speak of. one of them was 19 years old. there were always fresh flowers and little flags surrounding the plaque.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:02 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost

yes, "tombée pour la france." exactly.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Lots of people have died defending or attacking Paris since 1814 but the Liberation, as a popular and recent uprising, seems the best commemorated casualty-wise. In small towns I'm always shocked at the WWI monuments aux morts with their heart-breakingly long lists of dead, many of whom have the same names, but the plaques in Paris always shock me in a different way. Here I am walking down this very sophisticated shopping street enjoying myself and half a century ago someone who was probably eating naught but beets or something, who may have had wooden soled shoes and the same shirt that he'd worn four years previous was getting plugged by some young Hessian or Bavarian kid. It's the seeming incongruity with modern Paris that shocks somehow.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:20 (twenty-one years ago)

the resistance and liberation are commemorated everywhere in paris. there are several metro-station exhibits devoted to them. i find it all quite moving, but i also can't help but wonder if the "memory" of these events isn't obscuring some messier aspects of the recent french past....

in any event, the most moving WWII memorial i found in france was on the outskirts of arles, on the way to the train station. there was a carnival setting up on various plots surrounding a traffic circle. working-class teenagers were bumming around while the bumper-cars tent blasted eurotechno. in the middle of the traffic circle was a grass island with a waist-high rock in the center, which commemorated a fierce battle between american troops and retreating germans held on that very spot. (apparently dozens were killed.)

also, in a far corner of the labyrinthine chartreuse du val de benediction in villeneuve-lez-avignon (a wonderfully preserved and curated place which also serves as a theater-education center), there is a plaque which tersely explains that an american pilot, shot down over avignon, ejected himself from his plane but became entangled in his parachute, landed and died in that very corner.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:33 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry: that last sentence was grammatically constipated, but i hope it makes sense anyway.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:39 (twenty-one years ago)

the lively Emma B has a visceral reaction against memorials of any kind.. i remember walking down in Battery Park and when we passed the damaged sculpture that had come from the plaza of the WTC, erected as a kind of memorial, she looked like she wanted to hit somebody. maybe France is just chockablock with this stuff and she's sick of it? i think this is the contradiction i'll never understand about France - there's a real aversion to sentimental earnestness there.. nothing really matters, in the end. yet its people are among the most weepy melodramatic in the world.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:44 (twenty-one years ago)

well i don't know if that points to a contradiction in the "french character" (argh gaseous cliché alert) or to divisions within the country itself. certainly there is a prnounced, often weepy "national memory" (what is that terrible 1960s pop song? is it "je vis à la france"?) but a lot of people i met seemed totally unresponsive to this.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:52 (twenty-one years ago)

although there is certainly not much of the deep anxiety over national pride that i found in many germans (and scandanavians! though god knows why).

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

The very first time I went to France was the summer of 1984 and I was with several generations of a numerous French family sipping tea in a garden in Versailles on this date. Several of the parents' generation were old enough to remember the arrival of the Americans and said some very obliging things to me, their American guest. Then the ancient and quite deaf grandmother started recounting her memories of the arrival of the Americans and it soon dawned on me from several details in her account that the lady was talking about being a little girl in 1917. Her children gently corrected her, trying to bring the conversation back to the subject of August 25, but I remember just sitting their shocked and grateful that I could be connected, however tenuously, to an event otherwise so distant to me in space and time

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:01 (twenty-one years ago)

michael do you know the pop song i'm talking about? i believe the singer died in the 1980s. they play it occasionally on the variety shows, and it always makes me want to vomit. (sort of the french version of lee greenwood's "gos bless the usa.")

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:04 (twenty-one years ago)

that should be "god." i don't know who gos is, much less why he should want to bless the usa.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:05 (twenty-one years ago)

No. The French do have a very fleur bleue side of them which I mostly think cute though sometimes it manifests itself in stuff so sweet that even I feel like barfing.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I had tears in my eyes this morning over the radio news reports about Paris' liberation. They played De Gaulle's "Paris - Liberé" speech (well, just that bit) - great stuff.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:09 (twenty-one years ago)

this is going to sound horrible, but that staged event in baghdad where the "people" tore down the statue of saddam hussein got me thinking about the liberation, and the possible extent to which the standard images/sounds we have of it were similarly staged.

― amateur!!st, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:12 (twenty-one years ago)

amateurist, while there was all sorts of infighting going on amongst the the various factions in the uprising and De Gaulle was setting the stage for the claim that Paris was liberated by the French exclusively and preparing to (rightfully) screw the U.S. out of its role as occupier of France until elections could be held, the fact that 2 million out of 3 million Parisians watched the triumphant entry of the FFI and the ricains leads me to believe it was mostly authentic though i'm sure there were lots of people eager to hide much of their behavior during the occupation.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

or the not-so-recent past! i always wondered how much the plaques were intended to obscure the collaboration (ie the cliche about EVERY frenchman being in the resistance)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 17:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I think that the once justifiable criticism of willful fudging on the part of the French is slightly outdated. More and more the real, complex history of the times emerges. Gaullism and the movement to legitimate the June 18th, 1940 speech resonates less and less with younger French men and women.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 17:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Interesting

http://www.iht.com/articles/535530.html

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 18:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Have you read The Seven Ages of Paris? Very interesting book, especially the chapters about the ends of WWI and WWII. It's out in paperback now, so I just read it on my vacation- really engaging, and not dry like most history books.

― lyra (lyra), Thursday, 26 August 2004 01:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Interesting enough book but my all time favorite is

Hillairet, Jacques. Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1997)

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 26 August 2004 14:11 (twenty-one years ago)

My favourite Paris book is "The Siege & The Commune", also by Alastair Horne.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 26 August 2004 14:23 (twenty-one years ago)

my friends do this series of puppet-theatre shows called "the history of paris in the 19th century"!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 26 August 2004 14:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Also check out http://mondediplo.com/2003/05/05lacroi

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 26 August 2004 16:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I am amazed at the Vicar's revelations!

I was moved to read about Paris yesterday in the Independent.

I think I should read properly about it.

― the bellefox, Thursday, 26 August 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

ok.

let us know when you have.

then we can talk about paris.

ok.

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Friday, 27 August 2004 03:23 (twenty-one years ago)

am are you going back to paris soon?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 27 August 2004 04:36 (twenty-one years ago)

eleven months pass...

Just the annual shout-out to my lovely Paris on the anniversary of its liberation.

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 25 August 2005 14:25 (twenty years ago)

Have you ever heard this riddle, Michel?

Je suis le premier des 26 soldats, et sans moi Paris sera pris. Qui suis-je ?

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 25 August 2005 14:38 (twenty years ago)

No, but it's obviously 'a'.

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 25 August 2005 14:40 (twenty years ago)

I think it's a riddle for kids.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 25 August 2005 14:51 (twenty years ago)

Sans doute.

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 25 August 2005 16:51 (twenty years ago)

Mais vous étiez déjà au courant.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 25 August 2005 16:59 (twenty years ago)

Bien entendu...

― My life with Baaderonixx and the Choco-pops babies (Fabfunk), Thursday, 25 August 2005 17:02 (twenty years ago)

I ain't never heard that before in all my life, ken.

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 25 August 2005 17:12 (twenty years ago)

Je voulais dire que c'etait évident que c'etait une devinette pour les enfants.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 25 August 2005 17:21 (twenty years ago)

Ah, d'accord.

Freidrich der Grosse: v n à ci
_____
Sans

Voltaire: Oui. G a

I sure hope this one is apocryphal or that, at best, Voltaire was just humoring him out of a need for money, 'cause it doesn't really work.

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 25 August 2005 17:26 (twenty years ago)

I knew that wouldn't work. 'Sans' is supposed to be directly under 'ci'.

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 25 August 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

Happy Liberation Day, Paree.

― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 25 August 2006 13:15 (nineteen years ago)

VIVE LA FRANCE!

― DV (dirtyvicar), Saturday, 26 August 2006 00:49 (nineteen years ago)

good riddle! keep it real paris. i would like to visit you again soon.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 26 August 2006 19:56 (nineteen years ago)

damn i miss that place-- good thing i snagged a parisienne when i was over there and she just moved into the place last week. le YOINK!

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Saturday, 26 August 2006 20:42 (nineteen years ago)

why are there trees in the champs elysees?

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Saturday, 26 August 2006 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

Wish I were there. *Sigh*

― Michael White, Monday, 25 August 2008 17:59 (seventeen years ago)

le yoink, indeed.

― s1ocki, Monday, 25 August 2008 18:02 (seventeen years ago)

I am here!

― o-ess, Monday, 25 August 2008 18:38 (seventeen years ago)

one year passes...

Oddly, I awoke this morning from a dream where I was looking out at the Boulevard Haussmann on a quiet August weekend, watching the leaves of the chestnut trees fluttering in a late afternoon breeze against the backdrop of pinkish tan limestone façades. I miss you, Paris. Happy Liberation Day.

― repeating cycles of smoking and cruelty (Michael White), Tuesday, 25 August 2009 14:33 (sixteen years ago)

We happened on a small celebration at the Arc de Triomphe on Friday evening. I've been posting beautiful and sad photos of the liberation on my facebook page, along with quotes from Jean Cavaillès about the war. He's a hero of my subdiscipline who died fighting for the resistance.

Tonight my banlieue has a memorial ceremony at its Place des Martyrs de la Résistance, because the liberation came through here on the 25th. I may go. It's absolutely beautiful here today.

― my dixie wrecked (Euler), Tuesday, 25 August 2009 14:48 (sixteen years ago)

http://www.123france.co.uk/123/en/Paris-History_fichiers/image022.jpg

Bonne fête de la libération, Paris!

― young depardieu looming out of void in hour of profound triumph (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 25 August 2009 14:50 (sixteen years ago)

http://www.gastoneve.org.uk/Le_25_aout_1944_Mes_camarades_dequipage_big.jpg

― my dixie wrecked (Euler), Tuesday, 25 August 2009 14:53 (sixteen years ago)

somehow blows my mind it's been 10 years since i lived for a few months in paris... time...

― 'steen suicide (don't drive it) (s1ocki), Tuesday, 25 August 2009 21:20 (sixteen years ago)

<3 paris

― iatee, Tuesday, 25 August 2009 21:26 (sixteen years ago)

Yeah... Can't wait to go back there

― young depardieu looming out of void in hour of profound triumph (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 25 August 2009 21:54 (sixteen years ago)

Much love to Paris. I miss it, too.

― Marcus Brody Ta-Dow! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Wednesday, 26 August 2009 00:42 (sixteen years ago)

one year passes...

http://www.lefigaro.fr/arts-expositions/2011/08/24/03015-20110824DIMWWW00411-inedits-parisiens-sur-aout-1944.php

― Indefensible ad vaginem attacks (Michael White), Wednesday, 24 August 2011 18:27 (fourteen years ago)

Paris me manque. :(

― listening to the church bells, eating buttered toast with cunty (Michael White), Thursday, 25 August 2011 20:48 (fourteen years ago)

Me too, & always. I was there last month though & will be back in a few months, so it's never too far away.

― Euler, Thursday, 25 August 2011 21:45 (fourteen years ago)

Moi aussi. It doesn't seem likely that I will be back in the near future either :-/

― Vaginalogue Bubblebath (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 25 August 2011 21:54 (fourteen years ago)

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