Revealed: Hitler’s mass-slaughter plan to blow up Paris… and the audacious scheme that foiled him

Book of the week: Paris ’44: The Shame And The Glory by Patrick Bishop (Viking £25, 400pp)

The Olympic Games are a magnificent showcase for the historic sights of Paris, where athletes from all over the world race along the Haussmannian boulevards and over the impressive bridges, past Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Palais du Luxembourg, Les Invalides and one architectural gem after another.

It is strange, then, to realise that exactly 80 years ago, in the first weeks of August 1944, the inhabitants of the French capital lived in fear that all this beautiful, irreplaceable heritage was about to be destroyed – blown up and burned down by German occupiers seeking revenge and now forced to flee as Allied troops approached the city.

There was a different kind of Olympic battle going on, a battle of life and death.

How close Paris came to destruction – and how many of its citizens were slaughtered in an almighty bloodbath – is vividly and movingly described by British war historian and Paris resident Patrick Bishop.

Allied tanks and other military vehicles on the Champs-Elysees during the Liberation Parade in August 1944, as a cheering crowd looks on

We relive the tension of those days of terror and, even though we know the outcome in advance, it is still a relief when the city comes out unscathed. It could so easily have had a different, catastrophic ending.

Four years earlier, in 1940, Parisians had been ashamed when their city fell without a fight to Hitler’s Nazis. Their shame was compounded by the lackadaisical, often active, cooperation of their new masters.

More than a year passed before any formal resistance emerged. Even then, it was fragmentary, disorganized, and riven by political rivalries and suspicions, particularly between communists of the FTP and supporters of Charles de Gaulle, the irritable, self-righteous leader of the Free French who had fled to England and was widely condemned for having left France.

In August 1944, when the Germans began to retreat, this was the French’s chance to strike back. For most of those who had kept their heads down – the attentists, as they were called, the ones who waited – it was an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon. They wanted to “redeem their mortgaged manhood,” as Bishop puts it, and pretended that they had been resisting all along.

American troops march down the Champs-Elysees in Paris with the Arc de Triomphe in the background

German soldiers surrender to French troops in August 1944, before the liberation of Paris

Prime Minister Winston Churchill with French leader Charles de Gaulle in Paris in November 1944

But choosing the right moment to take to the streets and man the barricades was crucial. On the other side of Europe, SS stormtroopers were mercilessly suppressing an uprising aimed at liberating Warsaw. Act too quickly and Paris could suffer the same fate.

Amid the chaos and uncertainty, enduring myths emerged. After the war, the German commander in Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, claimed to be the hero who had saved the city by defying Hitler’s order to destroy it. And indeed, he had delayed, negotiated, and surrendered, without pressing the destroy button.

But Bishop believes the general twisted the truth, saying he didn’t have the explosives or the manpower to do large-scale damage and that his primary motivation was to save his own skin.

The real credit for keeping Paris intact, according to the author, goes to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, General Eisenhower.

The military plan, agreed upon at the very top, had always been to bypass the capital and concentrate all resources on pushing the enemy back to the German frontier. Paris was seen as a potentially dangerous diversion, slowing progress and endangering victory.

But Ike was quietly subdued by the wily De Gaulle, who convinced him that if he left Paris to its fate he risked great loss of life, anarchy and, worst of all, a communist takeover.

Against orders from above, the American promised to ensure that de Gaulle would assert his authority as the new leader of France. To this end, he agreed that French troops, although supported by the Americans and the British, would lead the liberation of the capital.

By mid-August, unrest was growing in Paris, with strikes paralyzing both the city and the police, who had worked closely with the Germans during the occupation but were now switching sides.

German tanks roamed the boulevards, destroying makeshift barricades. German snipers shot people at random from rooftops. Anyone caught carrying weapons was shot on the spot.

There were casualties on both sides in what was now a people’s war, a popular uprising against the occupiers. However, they were severely under-armed and barely held their ground.

But rescue was on the way. Under their commander, General Philippe Leclerc, the tanks and 16,000 men of the 2nd Armored Division of the Free French Army were approaching Paris. As they entered the city through cheering crowds, those at the head of the column—most of whom had never set foot in Paris before—were at a loss as to how to get to the center.

A moped rider came forward and led them through winding streets to the Seine. It was 9:22 on the evening of Thursday, August 24, when Captain Raymond Dronne entered the Hôtel de Ville to shouts of “Vive de Gaulle” and “Vive la France.” Bells rang out all over the city, culminating in the great bell of Notre Dame.

The Marseillaise – banned during the occupation – was sung on street corners. ‘We all had tears in our eyes,’ one soldier recalled. ‘This was the sound of freedom, the sound of victory.’

But whose victory? When de Gaulle – ‘radiant majesty’ and determined that the honour should be his alone – led the victory parade down the Champs-Elysees, he brushed aside the communists in the resistance and gave only a brief nod in a speech to the Allies for their ‘help’.

Another myth was born – that France had liberated itself. Although it was a parody of the truth, the past was successfully rewritten.

What happened next was not pretty. Parisians turned on anyone they could point to as a scapegoat. Women who had slept with Germans, some 20,000, were brutalized. Thousands of collaborators were summarily executed.

Bishop is scathing: ‘Few of their persecutors had done much to be proud of during the occupation. It is hard not to see this as an attempt to erase years of acceptance in an orgy of pseudo-justice.’

The subtitle of his book, ‘The Shame and the Glory’, was chosen for a reason.