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FFI fighters prepare Molotov cocktails in the streets of Paris, August 22, 1944. AFP

Paris is celebrating this week the 75th anniversary of his release. This highly symbolic political event ended in a few hours on 25 August 1944 after six days of popular insurrection.

It's August 1944, it's been four years since the city of Paris was occupied by the Germans. But since the Allied landings of June 6th in Normandy, the Parisians are impatient and revolt is growing. From August 10, the railway workers, then the employees of the subway and the police, went on strike.

On the 19th, the day after the call for the general mobilization of Colonel Rol-Tanquy, Communist leader of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) in Ile-de-France, the first fights break out. Town halls, police stations, the prefecture and the town hall are stormed by the resistance fighters.

Gendarmes opened fire on German troops in Paris in August 1944. AFP

► To listen also: Sylvie Zaidman, director of the new Paris Liberation Museum

Six hundred barricades are set up in the streets, but the battle intensifies and the city needs reinforcements. They will arrive thanks to General de Gaulle, who convinces the allies to change their strategy and to intervene in Paris to help the insurgents.

On the morning of August 25, General Leclerc's second armored division broke through the gates of the capital, to the cheers of the crowd. The same evening, General de Gaulle, in his famous speech pays homage to " Paris outraged, broken and martyred, but Paris released, released by himself ".

A German car on fire in front of Notre Dame during the battle for the liberation of Paris, August 22, 1944. AFP