The Parisians who weren't deported or didn't flee used ration tickets to eat, wooden soles to replace scarce leather and sometimes curtains for clothes. The black market thrived.
The D-Day landings n June 6, 1944, helped change the tide of war, allowing the Allies to push through Normandy and beyond to other German-occupied lands around Western Europe.
The message went out to the French Resistance in Paris that the Allies were advancing. resistance member Madeleine Riffaud, now 95, described to the Associated Press killing a Nazi soldier on July 23, 1944, on a Paris bridge.
She was spotted as she escaped on her bicycle, then arrested, tortured and jailed before being freed in a prisoner exchange days before the liberation of the city.
Seventy-five years later, she doesn't take the killing lightly. "To carry out an action like that isn't playing with dolls," she said.
On August 19, 1944, Paris police officers rebelled and took over police headquarters. On the night of August 24, the first Allied troops entered southern Paris. The grand entrance of Gen. Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division followed by Allied forces would come the following day.
The German military governor of Paris, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz, was arrested at his headquarters at the Meurice Hotel and signed the surrender.
Paris buildings still bear the bullet holes from the fighting.
Quite the Event. --GreGen
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