The city of Paris started mobilizing for war in September 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union attacked Poland, but the war seemed far away until May 10 1940, when the Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French Army. The French government departed Paris on June 10, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14. During the occupation, the French government moved to Vichy, and Paris was governed by both the German military, and French officials approved by the Germans. For Parisians, the occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages, and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was imposed from September 1940. Every year the supplies grew more scarce, while inflation increased the cost of buying them. A million Parisians left the city for the provinces, where there was more food and fewer Germans. The French press and radio contained only Nazi propaganda.
The Jews in Paris were forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge, and were barred from certain professions and public places. On July 16–17 1942, 13,152 Jews, including 4,115 children, were rounded up by the French police, on orders of the Germans, and were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The first demonstration against the occupation, by Paris students, took place on 11 November 1940. As the war continued, anti-German clandestine groups and networks were created, some loyal to the French Communist Party (PCF), and others to General Charles de Gaulle in London. They wrote slogans on walls, organized an underground press, and sometimes attacked German officers. Reprisals by the Germans were swift and harsh.
Following the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, the French Resistance in Paris launched an uprising on 19 August, seizing the police headquarters and other government buildings. The city was liberated by French and American troops on 25 August; the next day, General De Gaulle led a triumphant parade down the Champs-Élysées and organized a new government. In the following months, 10,000 Parisians who had collaborated with the Germans were arrested and tried, 8,000 convicted, and 116 executed. On 29 April and 13 May 1945, the first municipal elections after the war and the first in which French women voted, were held.
Capture
Defense preparations
In the spring of 1939, war with Germany already seemed inevitable. In Paris, the first defense exercise took place on 2 February 1939. and city workers began digging 20 kilometers of trenches in city squares and parks to be used for bomb shelters. On 10 March, the city began to distribute gas masks to civilians, and on 19 March, signs were posted guiding Parisians to the nearest shelters. On 23 August, Parisians were surprised to read that the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Russian minister Vyacheslav Molotov had signed the Hitler–Stalin Pact of non-aggression. L'Humanité, the daily newspaper of the French Communist Party (PCF), welcomed the pact, writing: "At the moment when the Soviet Union makes a new and appreciable contribution to safeguard the peace, constantly threatened by the fascist instigators of war, the French Communist Party addresses its warmest greetings to the country of socialism, to its party and to its great leader Stalin". In Paris, the copies of the newspaper and of the other communist newspaper, Ce soir, were seized by the police and their publication suspended. On 31 August, anticipating bombardment, the French government began to evacuate 30,000 children out of the city to the countryside. That night, street lights were turned off as a measure against German air raids. On 1 September, news reached Paris that Germany had invaded Poland, and France, as expected, promptly declared war on Germany.
Safeguarding national treasures
On 27 August, in anticipation of air raids, workmen had begun taking down the stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle. The same day, curators at the Louvre, summoned back from summer vacation, and aided by packers from the nearby La Samaritaine and Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville department stores, began cataloging and packing the major works of art, which were put into crates and labeled only with numbers to disguise their contents. The Winged Victory of Samothrace statue was carefully wheeled down the long stairway on a wooden ramp, to be put on a truck for its departure to the Château de Valençay in the Indre department. Trucks used to move scenery for the Comédie-Française were used to move the larger paintings, including Géricault's Raft of the Medusa. The art works were carried in slow convoys of trucks, convoys, with headlights off to observe the blackout, to the châteaux of the Loire Valley and other designated locations.
The architectural landmarks of the city were protected by sandbags. The French Army waited in the fortifications of the Maginot Line, while in Paris, ration cards for gasoline were issued, restrictions were put on the sale of meat and, in February 1940, ration cards for food were issued; however, cafés and theatres remained open.
German invasion
The French defense plan was purely passive, waiting for the Germans to attack. After eight months of relative calm (known as the Phoney War, La drôle de guerre) on the Western Front, the Germans struck France on 10 May 1940, bypassing the Maginot Line and slipping through the Ardennes. By 15 May, German panzer divisions were only 35 kilometers from Laon, in the rear of the French and British armies, racing toward the English Channel. On 28 May, the British realized the battle was lost and began withdrawing their soldiers from the beaches of Dunkerque. Paris was soon flooded with refugees from the battle zone. On 3 June, the Germans bombed Paris and its suburbs for the first time, targeting in particular the Citroën automobile factory. 254 people were killed, including 195 civilians.
French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud dismissed his supreme military commander, Maurice Gamelin, and replaced him with the 73-year-old Maxime Weygand. He also named the 84-year-old Philippe Pétain, a hero of World War I, as deputy prime minister. Neither Weygand nor Pétain felt the Germans could be defeated, and they began looking for a way out of the war.
Evacuation
On 8 June, the sound of distant artillery fire could be heard in the capital. Trains filled with refugees departed Gare d'Austerlitz, with no announced destination. On 10 June, the French government fled Paris, first to Tours and then Bordeaux. Thousands of Parisians followed their example, filling the roads out of the city with automobiles, tourist buses, trucks, wagons, carts, bicycles, as well as fleeing on foot. The slow-moving river of refugees took ten hours to cover 30 kilometers. Within a few days, the wealthier arrondissements of the city were nearly deserted, and the population of the working-class 14th arrondissement dropped from 178,000 to 49,000.
Open city
The British General Staff urged the French to defend Paris street by street, but Pétain dismissed the idea: "To make Paris into a city of ruins will not affect the issue." On 12 June, the French government, in Tours, declared Paris to be an open city, in which there would be no resistance. At 5:30 a.m. of 14 June, the first German advance guard entered the city at Porte de La Villette and took the Rue de Flandres toward the center. They were followed by several German columns, which, following an established plan, moved to the principal intersections. German military vehicles with loudspeakers circulated, instructing Parisians not to leave their buildings. At 8 p.m., delegations of German officers arrived at Les Invalides, headquarters of the military governor of Paris, Henri Dentz, and at the Prefecture of Police, where the Prefect, Roger Langeron, was waiting. The Germans politely invited the French officials to put themselves at the disposition of the German occupiers. By the end of the afternoon, the Germans had hung a swastika flag at the Arc de Triomphe, and organized military parades with a marching band on the Champs-Élysées and Avenue Foch, primarily for the benefit of the German army photographers and newsreel cameramen.
Capitulation
On the evening of 16 June, Prime Minister Reynaud resigned. On the morning of 17 June, General De Gaulle left Bordeaux by plane for London. At midday, Parisians gathered around radios heard Pétain, the new head of the French government, announce: "It is with a heavy heart that I tell you today that we must cease hostilities. The fighting must stop." Though no armistice had yet been signed, the French army stopped fighting.
Adolf Hitler arrived on 24 June for a rapid tour by car, his only visit to Paris. He was guided by the German sculptor Arno Breker, and his chief architect, Albert Speer, both of whom had lived in Paris. He saw the Opera House, viewed the Eiffel Tower from the terrace of the Palace of Chaillot, paid homage at Napoleon's tomb, and visited the artist's quarter of Montmartre.
German occupation
During the occupation, the French Government moved to Vichy, and the flag of Nazi Germany flew over all the French government buildings. Signs in German were placed on the main boulevards, and the clocks of all France were reset to the German time zone. The German military high command moved into the Majestic Hotel on Avenue Kléber; the Abwehr (German military intelligence), took over the Hôtel Lutetia; the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) occupied the Ritz; the Kriegsmarine (German Navy), the Hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde; the Carlingue, the French auxiliary organization of the Gestapo, occupied the building at 93 Rue Lauriston, and the German commandant of Paris and his staff moved into the Hôtel Meurice on Rue de Rivoli.
Paris became the primary destination for the rest and recreation of German soldiers. Under the slogan "Jeder einmal in Paris" ("everyone once in Paris"), each German soldier was promised one visit to Paris. One month after the beginning of the occupation, a bi-monthly magazine and guide for visiting German soldiers Der deutsche Wegleiter für Paris (The German Guide to Paris), was first published by the Paris Kommandantur. Certain hotels and movie theaters were reserved exclusively for German soldiers. A German-language newspaper, the Pariser Zeitung (1941–1944), was also published for the soldiers. The German officers enjoyed the Ritz, Maxim's, Coupole, and other exclusive restaurants, as the exchange rate was fixed to favor the German occupiers. Many houses of prostitution existed in Paris, and they began to cater to German clients.
The headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the counter-intelligence branch of the SS was at 84 Avenue Foch. French auxiliaries, who worked for the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst and Geheime Feldpolizei were based at 93 Rue Lauriston in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. They were known as the Carlingue (or French Gestapo) and were active between 1941 and 1944. The group was founded by Pierre Bonny, a corrupt ex-policeman. It was subsequently led by Henri Lafont and Pierre Loutrel, two professional criminals who had been active in the French underworld before the war.
Life in occupied Paris
Civilian population
By the time that the Germans arrived in Paris, two-thirds of the Parisians, particularly those in the wealthier neighborhoods, had fled to the countryside and south of France, in what is known as The Exodus, the massive exodus of millions of people from the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the north and east of France, fleeing after the German victory of the Battle of Sedan (12–15 May 1940). Once the occupation had begun, they started to return. By 7 July, the city government estimated the population had risen again to 1.5 million; it climbed to 2 million by 22 October, and 2.5 million by 1 January 1941. At the beginning of 1943, it fell again, because of air raids by the Allies, the arrests and deportations of Jews and foreigners, and forced departures to factories in Germany of many young Frenchmen, as part of the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), "Obligatory Work Service".
The attitude of the Parisians toward the occupiers varied greatly. Some saw the Germans as an easy source of money; others, as the Prefect of the Seine, Roger Langeron (arrested on 23 June 1940), commented, "looked at them as if they were invisible or transparent." The attitude of members of the French Communist Party was more complicated; the Party had long denounced Nazism and Fascism, but after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939, had to reverse direction. The editors of L'Humanité, which had been closed down by the French government, asked the Germans for permission to resume publishing, and it was granted. The Party also asked that workers resume work in the armaments factories, which were now producing for the Germans. Many individual communists opposed the Nazis, but the ambivalent official attitude of the Party lasted until Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The Ukrainian-Jewish Marxist historian, Maximilien Rubel, was living semi-secretly in Paris, and was astonished by the level of ignorance shown by Marxist members of the resistance that he met, and in consequence, he introduced the term "Marxology" to refer to a systematic scholarly approach to the understanding of Marx and Marxism, which he perceived to be needed.
For the Parisians, the occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was initiated in September 1940. Every year, supplies grew more scarce, and prices higher. The French press and radio broadcast only German propaganda.