The Liberation of Paris (Yank Magazine, 1944)Two YANK MAGAZINE reporters rode into Paris behind the first tank of the Second French Armored Division, following the story of the city's liberation in their recently liberated German jeep. Here is a picture of Paris and the reaction of Parisians to their first breath of free air in four years.
"As they caught site of the American flag on our car, people crowded around and almost smothered us with kisses..."
*Color Film Footage: D-Day through the Liberation of Paris*
Paris After the Liberation (Yank Magazine, 1944)"The capital of France, as of September 1944, is not the same nervous, triumphant paradise city that it was when the Allies first made their entry."
"The welcome has died down. When you enter the town, today, whether on foot or in a car, everyone is glad to see you, but there are no more mob scenes of riotous greeting exploding around each jeep. Shows are opening again, and the people are beginning to breathe easier...On the other side, Parisians appear as a very grateful but proud and self-reliant population."
French General Petain on Trial (Commonweal, 1945)Attached is an irate editorial concerning the 1945 trial of French General Henri Philippe Pétain (1856 – 1951).
"Whoever is managing the current spectacle in Paris desires us to think that the Petain trial is a revolutionary trial. The thesis is that the whole French nation has risen against the politicians who did not prepare for the war, against the Marshal who signed the the armistice, collaborated with the Germans and betrayed France. And so that trial is not a search for truth, it is a public exposure of truth, it is a simple demonstration...Look at them: Daladier, Reynaud, Weygrand - how they fight each one against the other. Because it is not just Petain who is guilty. It is Petain's trial. But it is also the trial of all the witnesses... Everyone is guilty."
Pierre Laval: French Premier and Traitor (Collier's, 1943)As much as a declaration of war legally mandates the U.S. Government to let loose upon the land an endless hoard of censors and propagandists, there was no need to employ such ink-slingers when it came to printing a profile about the French collaborator Pierre Laval (1883 – 1945), so obvious was his sedition.
Laval is remembered as the Nazi tool who presided over France between 1942 and 1944, allowing for the deportation of Jews and French laborers into Germany. On D-Day, eight months after this piece appeared, Pierre Laval would stand before the radio microphones cautioning his countrymen not to join in the fight against the German occupiers. His many sins would be known a year later during the liberation of Paris, but this writer was very accurate in cataloging his many failings.
The AWOL GIs in the Black Market of Paris (Yank Magazine, 1945)Attached is a four page article that reported on the deserters of the U.S. Army who organized themselves into Chicago-style gangs in post-occupied Paris, replete with gun-molls, hideouts, fencing contacts and all the trimmings of a third-rate-blood-and-thunder detective story.
Vichy Government Flees Paris (Stars and Stripes, 1944)Published in the STARS AND STRIPES issue marked August 19, 1944 (the official date of the Paris liberation) was the attached notice concerning the hasty disappearance of the Nazi-collaborators who lorded over the French during the occupation:
"Laval, Darnand and other Vichyites fled from Paris to Metz, according to a United Press report quoting a French resistance leader who reached the British front from Paris. The whereabouts of Marshal Petain were not known."
MORE ARTICLES >>> PAGE: * 1 * 2 * > NEXT |
