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Interactive: Relive the Liberation of Paris in WWII

The French capital fell to the Nazis in 1940. Four years later, Parisians, led by the French Resistance, rose up against the German occupiers. FRANCE 24 takes you back to August 1944 and the Liberation.

AFP - French soldiers stand behind a barricade in a Paris street, August 1944.
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The pivotal uprising of the Resistance against Nazi control of Paris started on August 19, 1944, in coordination with the regular Free French army which arrived a few days later.

More than 500 civilians and some 1,000 members of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI, which grouped together the country’s various resistance movements) died during the week-long revolt.

Around 100 regular French soldiers of General Philippe Leclerc’s Free French 2nd Armoured Division, which had fought its to Paris from Normandy with the Allies, also lost their lives.

Dotted around the capital are some 200 commemorative plaques marking where participants in the Liberation died during that historic week.

FRANCE 24 tells the story of ten of these fallen heroes who died to free Paris.

Click on the image below to access our interactive map.
 

 

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