Paris liberated

August 25th is officially the day Paris was liberated, though the Germans had effectively lost control earlier . . .



The Germans basically surrendered Paris and fled in the face of the American advance and Resistance uprising; while obviously extremely important politically, Paris had no military value and American commander Omar Bradley would almost surely have preferred to bypass it entirely. In fact, he was much more worried about finding a way to feed the people there than possible German resistance. That's characteristic Bradley - he didn't give a hoot about political symbols; he wanted to kill Germans.

At the tail end of the film, you can see American troops marching in -- that's actually a division maneuvering toward the battlefield further east, which Bradley had diverted to make it seem like he thought taking Paris was a big deal. (He seems in the clip to be thinking, "Get past the damn traffic circle and go!")

Maybe the funniest thing about the liberation of Paris was that while the Free French had been "designated" as the liberators, Bradley ended up having to threaten to take the privilege away from them because they dawdled on the way - the French people were so excited to be free, they welcomed their soldier countrymen with wine, song and women every step of the way. And what soldier can resist that kind of offensive?