@gregory-1967
🔥 Is Paris Burning?
🇩🇪 This famous phrase was shouted by Adolf Hitler in the summer of 1944, in anger and anxiety, when he learned that Paris was still intact—neither burning nor in ruins.
Amid the retreat of the German army from France, a direct order was issued:
“Paris must be destroyed.
The bridges, the Eiffel Tower, the historic churches, the stations, and the cultural centers… all were to be annihilated so that the Allies would receive nothing but the ruins of the French capital.”
But the German general Dietrich von Choltitz, the military commander of Paris, who knew well how history would judge such an act, did not carry out the order.
While the ammunition and dynamite were ready to explode, the German general defied the command so that Paris would not be destroyed.
🇫🇷 Finally, on August 25, 1944, with the arrival of the French Resistance forces and the Allied army, Paris was liberated without being consumed by the flames of war.
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