25 August
1944 · politics
Paris was liberated
After four years of occupation, the German garrison in Paris surrendered and Free French forces under General Leclerc entered the city, with the Americans behind them. The bells of Notre-Dame rang for the first time since 1940 and there are newsreels of people climbing onto the tanks with flowers.
De Gaulle walked down the Champs-Élysées the following day, with sniper fire still going on somewhere behind him.
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