A COLUMN of vintage American armour with the Stars and Stripes flying and GIs in period uniform rolled through Paris yesterday as the city celebrated its 1944 liberation by French and US forces.
President Chirac led the formal ceremonies, hailing the courage of the Parisians, resistance fighters and Free French forces, in an address at the Hotel de Ville. General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of Gross Paris, the Nazi military region, surrendered at the city hall on August 25, 1944. Nearly 2,000 French died in the five days of street fighting that ended when the Americans sent in Free French forces and their own troops.
Standing in rain on the forecourt of the city hall where he served as Paris Mayor for 18 years, M Chirac said the liberation was a key episode in the collapse of the Nazi regime in Germany. “Liberated Paris meant France was on its feet again. French honour was restored . . . French people, let us remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives to free Paris.”
M Chirac made a link with the wave of anti-Semitic acts and far-right agitation which has been a feature of French life in recent years. He called on the younger generation to take the liberation as a model and try to be “faithful to this ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity”.
“I call on the young to be vigilant, to remember the spirit of the resistance, to fight contempt, this hatred of the other which is still in our midst, which is the darkest side of the human spirit,” he said.
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Bertrand Delanoë, the Socialist Mayor of Paris, called the liberation the most potent symbol of French redemption after the shame of defeat and occupation. The heroism of the time should stand as a lesson for the France of 2004, M Delanoë said. “We need this today to face . . . racism, anti-Semitism, social breakdown.”
The memory of General Charles de Gaulle, who entered Paris just after his troops, consolidating his leadership of post-occupation France, towered over what was expected to be the last big celebration of the liberation.
Despite rain-soaked streets, survivors of the war said the spirit of 1944 was well captured by a re-enactment and dancing that evoked the joy that swept Paris even though bullets were still flying.
While the politicians played up the theme of France liberating its own capital, the United States was to the fore in the popular festivities.
In a city-wide pageant staged by Jerome Savary, a popular stage director, columns of US and Free French armoured cars, lorries and Jeeps entered Paris in the early afternoon, followed by civilians in period costume and lorry-borne jazz bands.
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Some carried veterans such as André Ferrer, 82, a soldier with the Free French Second Armoured Division, which was sent in first by the Americans to relieve Paris after the four-day insurrection. Riding in the same model of Willys Jeep that he rode into Paris in 1944, M Ferrer said: “I don’t normally like parades, but I didn’t hesistate for a second when it came to celebrating 60 years since the liberation on my Jeep.”
The “American” column, manned by French drivers and extras, drew up in the Bastille square to form part of the set for the liberation show. This included mock fighting and old traction-avant Citroëns carrying bannerwaving resistance fighters through the streets. The show ended with a dance, in which Parisians were invited to swing and lindy-hop in berets, baggy suits, floral dresses and other fashions of the time.
Mireille Mathieu, a popular singer of the 1960s and 1970s, sang Paris en Colère (Angry Paris), the theme from Is Paris Burning?, the classic postwar film on the liberation.
M Savary, director of Opéra Comique and a producer of big musical events since the 1960s, said he wanted to capture the “incredible jubilation” of August 25, 1944. “The bands were out welcoming the soldiers and women were throwing themselves into their arms. I wanted to recreate this atmosphere.”
Intense media coverage of the anniversary has reflected what now seems to be a consensus on its broad historical significance. Alexandre Adler, a leading political commentator, summed it up in Le Figaro yesterday. “Sixty years on, the liberation of Paris seems to have been the moment that a new French identity was defined and also the moment of expiation . . . for our past sins.”
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Some were worried that jubilant celebration obscured France’s darker side. Le Monde said that by glorifying the liberation, the France of the Vichy collaboration state was being played down. France’s unsavoury side lived on with the breakthrough of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right leader, in the 2002 presidential election, it said. It was again on show last weekend with the destruction of a Jewish social centre in Paris.