Paris (AFP)

On August 26, 1944, Paris just released, AFP broadcasts a timeline of eleven days before the capitulation of the Germans, after four years of occupation of the capital.

Here is the day of August 21 told by the AFP journalist Jean Le Quiller.

Paris, August 26 (AFP) -

Monday, August 21 - The truce is really observed only near the police headquarters and City Hall. In this region, thanks to the employees of the metro, the FFI (French Forces of the Interior, Resistance, Ed) can occupy the underground to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The General Staff of the FFI foresees the possibility of evacuating the City Hall by the metro, in case of attack by force by the Germans. He himself moved to Denfert-Rochereau place, in order to have the telephone network of sewers and metro, and catacombs. Thus, the war takes place on the roofs, in the street, and underground.

Elsewhere in Paris, some local battles: in Montrouge, for example, and in the fourteenth, the town halls of the southern sector are occupied. Despite the truce, 90 French are killed from 20 to 21.

Colonel Henri Rol (Rol-Tanguy, chief of FFI Ile-de-France, ed) ordered the removal of the curfew; the doors of the buildings will have to be opened to the FFI and closed to the Germans.

The first free newspapers appear; "Combat" and "Smuggler" issue a number dated August 21st; in the evening, "Defense of France" and "Ce Soir" come out, dated August 22; the reader gets used badly to reading articles where a cat is called a cat and a German a boche; extraordinary photos accompany these astonishing texts: one sees there Germans riding bicycles to flee more quickly; moreover, we discover a German prisoner. A German prisoner of the French ... No need to insist.

In the morning, the Youth Secretariat, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré was occupied by the FUJP (United Forces of Patriotic Youth, Resistance, Ed) who arrested (Maurice) Gaït (Commissioner General for Youth under Vichy, Ed) . Similarly, in the Latin Quarter, the bookstore "Rive Gauche", German propaganda center headed by Mr. Bardeche, brother-in-law of the famous (Robert) Brasillach (editor-in-chief of "I am everywhere", newspaper collaborationist and anti-Semitic, Ed. ), is occupied; "Annual closure", assured the signs unintentionally humorous.

© 2019 AFP