Celebrations for V-E day-- Part 3: Paris, Washington, D.C., and the Army

In Paris, which lived through four years of German occupation to become a base for Supreme Allied  Headquarters, the French government announced a two-day holiday.  France had special cause for satisfaction for having staged a comeback and earned a right to share in accepting Germany's surrender.

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In Washington, crowds gathered in Lafayette Square across from the White House in anticipation  of an announcement by President Truman to proclaim V-E Day.

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A dispatch from the United States 9th Army  front said withdrawal of American troops toward a previously established line of demarcation between them and the Russians  had begun, with the first-move evacuation of the Yanks from their bridgehead of the banks of the Elbe River.    The Elbe became the temporary line between the Allied armies.

It Is Too Bad FDR Had Already Died.   This Was His Thing.  --GreGen