| Original caption: “German Prisoners of War – Paris sees the Germans go.” Nazi German soldiers, their hands over their heads, march out of the Kommandantur at the Place de l’Opéra. Civilians stand on American-made tanks of the Deuxième Division Blindée (“Second French Armored Division”) as Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (FFI – “French Forces of the Interior”) escort the Prisoners Of War to holding centers. Note FFI man wearing Adrian helmet in foreground. Deuxième Division Blindée Commander General Philippe Leclerc (November 22, 1902 – November 28, 1947) ordered teams of French and German officers to drive through the city jointly announcing the cease fire. 1 of those teams featured Philippe de Gaulle (December 28, 1921 – March 13, 2024), Charles’s son and an officer in the Deuxième Division Blindée. In some places, the teams succeeded in getting the Germans to come out peacefully in exchange for promises that French troops would protect the prisoners from the crowds that were gathering around them. In most cases surrendering Germans avoided being attacked by the crowd, although Vichy politician Jacques Bardoux (May 27, 1874 – 15 August 15, 1959) estimated that 40 Germans were killed by crowds on their way to captivity. Much more commonly, they were spit upon, and in some cases hit with stones or other objects, as they marched through the streets with their hands in the air. United States Army Warrant Officer Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 – May 16, 1984), attached to the Signal Corps with director George Stevens’ (December 18, 1904 – March 8, 1975) film unit, watched as the German officers tried to maintain some dignity “in the middle of a city full of voluble, newly liberated citizens, mostly women, who have hated you for four years and who spend half their time kissing your conquerors and the other half devising means of breaking through the ranks and taking a swipe at the highest officer in your column.” All German prisoners were serenaded with endless choruses of La Marseillaise. But despite the unbridled enmity, Shaw and other observers rightly noted that Parisians were saving their real hatred not for the Germans but for the collaborators among them. Not all German strongpoints surrendered peacefully. By the time teams of officers had arrived on the Place de la République, the FFI had taken control of all of the outer defenses of the Prince Eugène barracks and were preparing an attack on the building itself. The Germans and French had to work together to find an agreement whereby the Germans inside would voluntarily surrender rather than fight to the finish. At the Palais Bourbon across the Seine from the bloody fighting on the Place de la Concorde, the Germans refused to accept the announcement of the ceasefire, believing it to be an FFI trick. They insisted that they would surrender only to Americans. Some American officers from the 4th Infantry Division were quickly located in eastern Paris, which led to the surrender of 530 Germans following combat so intense that the Palais, the home to the lower house of the French Parliament, was on fire. In some cases, French and German teams intervened in the fight-ing just in time. Near the Place de la République on the Rue du Temple, Raymond Dronne found the Germans heavily defending their last telephone and telegraph station. After losing a number of his men in the act of taking the building, he discovered that the Germans had mined it for demolition. Dronne had arrived just in time to force the engineers to defuse their explosives at gunpoint. His actions may well have saved the building and the surrounding area from a major explosion. The surrender of the 176 Germans in the luxurious Hôtel Crillon on the Place de la Concorde went much more smoothly, as they neatly stacked their arms in the cloakroom and calmly walked outside with their hands raised. The final German strongpoint to yield was the Palais du Luxem-bourg, which was guarded by SS troops. Its garrison had 700 men and 10 tanks at their disposal, plus the building itself, which was as imposing as any fortress. Leclerc had been adamant in upholding Eisenhower’s order that no artillery should be used inside the city itself, but he was ready to make an exception to capture this last island of German resistance. Alain de Boissieu (July 5, 1914 – April 5, 2006), the senior French officer on the scene, gave orders to fire on the building’s cupola if Deuxième Division Blindée troops had evidence that the Germans were using it for observation. Finally, at 1935 Hours, even the fanatical Schutzstaffel (SS) troops inside saw that any resistance would be futile and surrendered. The last major German stronghold in Paris was gone, even as sniping continued. But an estimated 2,500 Germans who had put on civilian clothes tried to melt away, most of them in the vast Bois de Boulogne on the city’s western edge. Almost all of them were apprehended in the next few days. As the German prisoners streamed out of the hotels on the Rue de Rivoli, they felt the full fury of a Parisian population that had lived under the Nazis for 4 years. In his diary, German kreigsberichter (“military war photographer”) and Prisoner of War Walter Dreizner (November 21, 1908 – April 24, 1996) described how people threw water and even a bicycle at the German soldiers, while a man burst from the crowd and thumped a soldier to the floor. When they reached the top of the Rue de Rivoli, they were hit by a gale of hatred and the soldiers began to fear for their lives: “A flood of abuse swept over us. These curses came from so many throats that they numbed our ears. They turned into a battle cry: from all sides the masses pressed against us with calls of “Hang them!”, ‘Murderers!”, ‘Band of pigs!’, ‘Band of murderers!”, ‘Thieves!’ and ‘Down with the Huns!’ They hit us, pushed us and spat at us. They were completely out of control. Wild beasts had been unleashed upon us, and we were their victims, victims who could not defend themselves and were not even allowed to do so. This meant death, a tortuous death. The Parisians were in their element. In the midst of this unbelievable screeching we were pushed, hit and forced to the Palais Royale opposite the Louvre. The tall iron railings around the Palais offered us some protection. We could breathe. I felt as if I were in a cage, but a cage where the beasts were outside, pushing up against the iron bars.” Sometimes, the Germans fought back. As the prisoners filed out of the Hôtel Grillon, the headmaster of the boys’ school on the nearby Rue Cambon observed the chaotic scene: “I arrived at the Concorde just as they were bringing the German flag out of the Navy Ministry, and were hoisting the French flag. Hundreds of German officers and soldiers were coming out of the Crillon, being screamed at by the crowd. They jostled each other to get into the lorry quickly. Sitting next to the driver there was a German officer who was white with anger; when the lorry started off he thumped one of the women in the crowd.” The Germans were stunned by their capture. In Montparnasse station, Captain Roger Cocteau-Gallois (June 12, 1905 – August 6, 1995) of Ceux de la Résistance (CDLR – “Those of the Resistance,” an apolitical resistance group that was neither Communist nor nationalist, just anti-German) saw what he felt to be 1 of the most striking signs of the German defeat: “Forty high-ranking German officers, covered with medals and ribbons, were gathered together on a main-line metro platform. There were no seats, so they sat on the platform like a string of onions, their feet touching the rails; every now and again one of them would get up and walk to the water fountain to drink from a soldier’s beaker.” French writer Léon Werth (February 17, 1878 – December 13, 1955), who had recently arrived in Paris, saw the captured soldiers of the Senate garrison sitting down in tightly packed rows, dejected. Their plight prevented Werth from truly rejoicing: ‘The humiliation of these men makes me suffer. It is necessary, it is according to the principles of justice. I approve of it, it satisfies me, it calms me, and yet I cannot rejoice in it. Is this feeling so complicated, so difficult to understand? When I tell people this, they say, “But you are forgetting what they have done, the killings, the torture…” I forget nothing. But a man who is humiliated, his humiliation is in me. 36 German soldiers who managed to escape from the collapse of the garrison reported their treatment by Parisians to their comrades in the surrounding region, reinforcing the atmosphere of threat created by the insurgent population. Surgeon Hans Herrmann (January 15, 1908 – August 3, 1989) of the Panzer Lehr Division wrote in his diary: ‘The German prisoners were abused, spat upon, flogged and treated as they were in 1918, perhaps even worse.’ And there was worse. Lieutenant Count Dankwart von Arnim [(April 29, 1919 – June 22, 1981)] was in the line of soldiers marching up the Rue de Rivoli, their hands held high. He later recalled: “There was screaming, threats, fists were shaken. The accompanying guards found it difficult to protect us – and themselves. Over and again one of us was knocked down by someone in the crowd and was trampled upon. Just in front of me on the march was a friend of mine, Doctor Kayser von Hagen [(July 12, 1904 – August 25, 1944)], a highly educated and sensitive Francophile. Suddenly a shirt-sleeved, bearded giant of a man leapt out of the crowd, put a gun to Kayser von Hagen’s head and pulled the trigger. I stumbled over his fallen body, hauled myself up and staggered on.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii0416.jpg |
| Image Size | 646.87 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2920 x 2228 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | August 25, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | Paris |
| State or Province | Île-de-France |
| Country | France |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NLR-PHOCO-A-65638(20) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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