Dietrich von Choltitz: Saved of Paris From Destruction During World War II

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Although he was a collaborator, Tattinger was understandably aghast at this revelation. How could even the Nazis consider such an atrocity? Suddenly, Choltitz was seized by one of his periodic attacks of asthma and went into a fit of uncontrollable coughing. Leading him onto the balcony for some fresh air, Tattinger looked down on the lovely sculptured garden of the Tuileries and had an inspiration. Gesturing at the captivating vista, he made his point. Below them a lovely young girl was riding her bicycle on the Rue de Rivoli; on the manicured grounds of Le Notre, children played by the pond with their sailboats; across the adjacent Seine was the glittering dome of Les Invalides; and beyond that stood the landmark of the City of Light, the Eiffel Tower.

The Frenchman’s appeal was powerful: ‘Often it is given a general to destroy, rarely to preserve. Imagine that one day it may be given you to stand on this balcony again, as a tourist, to look once more on these monuments to our joys, to our sufferings, and be able to say, ‘One day I could have destroyed this, and I preserved it as a gift to humanity.’ General, is not that worth all a conqueror’s glory?’ Choltitz looked silently to his left at the Louvre and to his right at the Place de la Concorde and replied: ‘You are a good advocate for Paris, Monsieur Tattinger. You have done your duty well. Likewise I, as a German general, must do mine.’ Would he?

Despite the frantic adjurations of his most able lieutenants, de Gaulle was unable to keep the feared uprising from materializing — so he did the next best thing and beat the Communists to the draw. On the morning of August 19, Gaullist forces throughout the area commenced attacking German forces and fortifications. It was not long before the Communists joined the fray, and scores of occupation troops were assailed by irregulars armed with World War I surplus Lebel rifles, Molotov cocktails, pistols, shotguns and a few slow-firing Hotchkiss machine guns. As the Germans began to strike back with their panzers, the destruction began to mount.

The heart of the rebellion was the police prefecture, so Choltitz decided to attack it with dive bombers and armor at daybreak on August 20. He mentioned his plan to a new acquaintance, Raoul Nordling, the Swedish consul in Paris, and Nordling proposed a novel alternative — that the general offer a cease-fire to the desperate men inside the prefecture. Choltitz like the suggestion. He would not have to declare open war against the capital by attacking such a central institution, and a truce would restore order. The Fuhrer did not want his troops to be forced to defend the city against attacks from without and within. The truce was also the greatest thing imaginable for General Charles de Gaulle.

General Eisenhower experienced a mix of emotions as he awaited de Gaulle’s arrival at his Granville headquarters, but anger prevailed. The Parisian uprising had him agitated enough. Without immediate help from the Allies, the irregulars would likely be wiped out, and Paris would suffer the same blazing fate as Warsaw. Eisenhower realized that he and the Western Allies as a whole would be held as accountable as the Germans if they failed to prevent this catastrophe, but preventing it could disrupt the entire timetable of the war in Europe and prolong the horrid conflagration by several months.

Even if de Gaulle was not responsible for the rebellion, Eisenhower was certain he would attempt to use it to his advantage to pressure the Americans and British into pursuing the immediate liberation of Paris, following which he would be able to set himself up as the undisputed leader of postwar France. Eisenhower was fed up with de Gaulle’s habitual ‘trying to get us to change our plans to accommodate his political needs.’ However, there was a crucial trade-off of which the American was keenly aware. Without de Gaulle there was the very real possibility that France might become a bulwark of European communism.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Foreign Affairs, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, World War II