2-Minute History: ‘Saviour of Paris’ — Dietrich von Choltitz
The Nazi general who defied Hitler’s orders to obliterate Paris in the last days of World War II — part of my 2-Minute History Series
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August 25th, 1944, Parisian firefighters braved shots from German soldiers to hoist the tricolored flag to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Courtesy TourEiffel.Paris
Saviour of Paris
In 2011, I traveled to Paris for research on a screenplay I was writing about an American actress in Paris who helped save the lives of 42 airmen during World War II as a part of the French Resistance.
She was able to smuggle men to safety with the help of a German soldier who hated Hitler and loved America. The soldier risked his own life to help her save the lives of others.
I told this to the Bette community in the days after the November election so they would know that there will be people within the Trump regime who will defy him. Those people must be sought out, I said. We will need allies within, who will oppose him from inside his own ranks.
In the time I have spent in Paris on my travels through Europe, I wondered out loud to a Parisian friend if in 1940, French Prime Minister Phillippe Pétain had cut some kind of deal with the Germans to save Paris, and he told me the remarkable story of a German general who was the man actually responsible for saving Paris.
2-Minute History — Dietrich von Choltitz
As the last commander of Nazi-occupied Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz defied Adolf Hitler’s order to destroy Paris, and instead, surrendered the city to Free French forces on August 25, 1944.
Two days earlier, Hitler had given him the order by cable:
"Paris darf nicht oder nur als Trümmerfeld in die Hand des Feindes fallen.”
Translated:
"Paris must not pass into the enemy's hands, except as a field of ruins.”
Explosives were then placed at bridges and monuments (later, to be demined).
With the arrival of Allied troops on the edge of the city at dawn the next day on the 24th, Choltitz made the decision not to destroy the city. Instead, he surrendered the German garrison to representatives of the provisional government the following day, earning him the nickname, Saviour of Paris.
According to Choltitz, his defiance of Hitler's direct order was due to three reasons: military futility; his respect and admiration for the French capital's history and culture; and his belief that Hitler was insane.
Choltitz was held for the remainder of the war at Trent Park, in north London, with other German officers and later transferred to Camp Clinton in Mississippi. When he died in 1966, present at his burial in Baden-Baden were high-ranking French officers.
According to the History Channel series The Wehrmacht, General von Choltitz is quoted as saying:
“We all share the guilt. We went along with everything, and we half-took the Nazis seriously, instead of saying ‘to Hell with you and your stupid nonsense’. I misled my soldiers into believing this rubbish. I feel utterly ashamed of myself. Perhaps we bear even more guilt than these uneducated animals.”
After the war, Phillipe Pétain was tried and convicted for treason. He received a death sentence, but it was commuted to life in prison due to his service in World War I and his advanced age.
I have often pondered how different America would be today if we hadn’t forgotten how to deal with actual treason.
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Dietrich von Choltitz signing the Nazi surrender after the liberation of Paris, courtesy Wikipedia
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