Is Paris Burning?
- Thread starter Amerigo Vespucci
- Start date
I like how all the different strategic decisions made by both sides haven't changed the over-all map much from OTL. Though the Scheldt estuary is cleared almost two months earlier, the supply situation hasn't yet improved. Patton's "bridge too far" had no better success than Monty's. Hitler's "fortress city" theory would in every other instance fail to stem enemy advances, and it has failed just as miserably in TTL in Paris.
Just goes to show that sometimes, no matter how you raise the dust, it'll settle in the same places.
A map of the Western Front at the beginning of October would be nice, for comparison's sake
Just goes to show that sometimes, no matter how you raise the dust, it'll settle in the same places.
A map of the Western Front at the beginning of October would be nice, for comparison's sake
oooooohhhhhhh it was meant as a appreciation of your positiv answerBest news on this rainy and dreary Friday
On October 12, the attack on Paris began. From all sides, American troops, accompanied by a short and sharp artillery bombardment and air strikes from A-20 bombers, began to break through Choltitz's outer line of defenses. Thanks to information on German positions from the FFI, the Americans were able to bring up artillery and specifically target hidden German strongpoints. By the evening of the first day, the brittle German line fragmented. Occasionally, die-hards stood and fought to the death, but by and large, the hungry Germans surrendered after fighting for several hours. At the time that the battle for Paris began, Choltitz still had 33,000 soldiers and 84 tanks remaining to the defense. The Allies had upwards of 50,000 men involved in the battle, with additional reinforcements available had the commander of the attack, General Joseph Lawton Collins, requested them. Because the American force was so ably assisted by FFI partisans, who numbered at least 20,000, he felt no need to do so. He did, however, avail himself regularly of Allied air support available to the Corps involved in Paris. Collins had been commander of VII Corps in the First Army, and was widely considered the best corps commander in the U.S. Army at the time. For this reason, he was assigned command of the Corps assigned to liberate Paris.
By October 15, the second line of defenses, the one organized around the ring of boulevards surrounding the central portion of Paris, was fully invested. Here, the assistance of the FFI was less useful, primarily because Choltitz's garrison had mostly cleared the region inside the loop of partisans. Occasionally, FFI fighters were able to show the Allies a weakness in the German defense, but after this point, the attack became a street-by-street slog. Collins had resolved at the start of the attack to be "deliberate and careful not to waste the resources allotted me." This meant that whenever a German strongpoint was encountered, the Americans would bring up artillery and fire directly into the strongpoint, rather than attempt to immediately attack with infantry. The GMC M3 halftrack-mounted 75mm gun was used with great effect in this way. In addition, Allied tankers found — as had the Germans two months earlier — that armor-piercing ammunition was the best way to penetrate the thick stone walls of many older French buildings. In many ways, the fighting in Paris was similar to that occurring simultaneously in the German city of Aachen, two hundred miles to the north. There, as at Paris, Hitler had ordered the city held at all costs. Both cities had immense historical value, both were defended by "true Nazi" commanders, and both cities featured fierce street-by-street fighting.
No account given here of the fighting of this period can do it justice. A reader can best call up descriptions of the fighting in Stalingrad or read Albert LeDoux's "Liberation Delayed" for an excellent account of these days. Rubble-strewn streets, destroyed buildings, and snipers abounded for both sides. American infantrymen learned to hate the tough stone of older French buildings, as it was all but impervious to small arms fire, and almost by law, seemed to hold a German squad that had to be rooted out before the advance could continue. But continue it did, by dint of hard effort and relentless Allied pressure. By October 23, Choltitz's position was becoming increasingly untenable. Ammunition, never plentiful with the drain forced by fighting partisans, was becoming critical. In addition, several stockpiles of food had fallen into American hands, and German soldiers, hungry and desperate, were beginning to surrender en masse. Their morale, never strong in the midst of a surrounded and besieged city, had fractured badly when the Americans attacked. Fully one in three surrendered before Choltitz himself did on November 11, 1944.
The day before the surrender, the central bastion was ablaze with explosions as the Germans destroyed anything of value. As a final coup de gras, the Germans destroyed the city's waterworks, which had been supplying the defenders with water from the rubble-choked banks of the Seine throughout the battle. So much rubble had been dropped into that most French of rivers that in many places wreckaged formed dams, causing the river's water to rise above its banks, flooding the surrounding streets before the dams washed away, only to reform further downstream, where another pile of rubble waited. Alone amid the chaos, Notre Dame survived. Though damaged by shelling and American bombing, it still stood when Choltitz sent a messenger bearing a white flag to General Collins. American forces had not yet penetrated the central bastion, but fighting was taking place a half a dozen blocks from Choltitz's headquarters in the basement of the Hotel Meurice. When Choltitz surrendered, he had just 8,000 men still fighting. 14,000 had been killed, and 11,000 had already surrendered to American or French forces. American casualties were lighter, but still high. 8,329 American soldiers were killed in the liberation of Paris, and French casualties are estimated to have been higher than those of the Germans. Including the period of the uprising prior to October 12, it is estimated that upwards of 80,000 French men and women were killed directly resisting the Germans in Paris. This does not include the tens of thousands of civilians believed to have died due to malnutrition, disease or fighting in the embattled city. Much of the central portion of Paris lay in ruins, and virtually all public buildings and structures used as defensive strongpoints were either destroyed or damaged to the point that they had to be torn down. Despite the high cost, Paris had at last been liberated.
By October 15, the second line of defenses, the one organized around the ring of boulevards surrounding the central portion of Paris, was fully invested. Here, the assistance of the FFI was less useful, primarily because Choltitz's garrison had mostly cleared the region inside the loop of partisans. Occasionally, FFI fighters were able to show the Allies a weakness in the German defense, but after this point, the attack became a street-by-street slog. Collins had resolved at the start of the attack to be "deliberate and careful not to waste the resources allotted me." This meant that whenever a German strongpoint was encountered, the Americans would bring up artillery and fire directly into the strongpoint, rather than attempt to immediately attack with infantry. The GMC M3 halftrack-mounted 75mm gun was used with great effect in this way. In addition, Allied tankers found — as had the Germans two months earlier — that armor-piercing ammunition was the best way to penetrate the thick stone walls of many older French buildings. In many ways, the fighting in Paris was similar to that occurring simultaneously in the German city of Aachen, two hundred miles to the north. There, as at Paris, Hitler had ordered the city held at all costs. Both cities had immense historical value, both were defended by "true Nazi" commanders, and both cities featured fierce street-by-street fighting.
No account given here of the fighting of this period can do it justice. A reader can best call up descriptions of the fighting in Stalingrad or read Albert LeDoux's "Liberation Delayed" for an excellent account of these days. Rubble-strewn streets, destroyed buildings, and snipers abounded for both sides. American infantrymen learned to hate the tough stone of older French buildings, as it was all but impervious to small arms fire, and almost by law, seemed to hold a German squad that had to be rooted out before the advance could continue. But continue it did, by dint of hard effort and relentless Allied pressure. By October 23, Choltitz's position was becoming increasingly untenable. Ammunition, never plentiful with the drain forced by fighting partisans, was becoming critical. In addition, several stockpiles of food had fallen into American hands, and German soldiers, hungry and desperate, were beginning to surrender en masse. Their morale, never strong in the midst of a surrounded and besieged city, had fractured badly when the Americans attacked. Fully one in three surrendered before Choltitz himself did on November 11, 1944.
The day before the surrender, the central bastion was ablaze with explosions as the Germans destroyed anything of value. As a final coup de gras, the Germans destroyed the city's waterworks, which had been supplying the defenders with water from the rubble-choked banks of the Seine throughout the battle. So much rubble had been dropped into that most French of rivers that in many places wreckaged formed dams, causing the river's water to rise above its banks, flooding the surrounding streets before the dams washed away, only to reform further downstream, where another pile of rubble waited. Alone amid the chaos, Notre Dame survived. Though damaged by shelling and American bombing, it still stood when Choltitz sent a messenger bearing a white flag to General Collins. American forces had not yet penetrated the central bastion, but fighting was taking place a half a dozen blocks from Choltitz's headquarters in the basement of the Hotel Meurice. When Choltitz surrendered, he had just 8,000 men still fighting. 14,000 had been killed, and 11,000 had already surrendered to American or French forces. American casualties were lighter, but still high. 8,329 American soldiers were killed in the liberation of Paris, and French casualties are estimated to have been higher than those of the Germans. Including the period of the uprising prior to October 12, it is estimated that upwards of 80,000 French men and women were killed directly resisting the Germans in Paris. This does not include the tens of thousands of civilians believed to have died due to malnutrition, disease or fighting in the embattled city. Much of the central portion of Paris lay in ruins, and virtually all public buildings and structures used as defensive strongpoints were either destroyed or damaged to the point that they had to be torn down. Despite the high cost, Paris had at last been liberated.
Hendryk
Banned
Language nitpick: it's "coup de grâce".
The destruction is tragic enough, now I shudder about how it will be rebuilt. The post-war years were pretty much the nadir of Western architecture, with most buildings of that time looking like discarded sketches by Le Corbusier or Mies Van der Rohe.
Dr. Strangelove
Banned
I think Paris holds too much symbolic value to not be rebuilt in its former style. Warsaw was also razed to the ground, and the old town was so perfectly restored that today it is difficult to see traces of the war.
But if the worst happens and the french government decides to start from zero, already in 1925 Le Corbusier had proposed this for the centre of Paris:
Thanks. It will be corrected. I also need to put down accent marks in places that should have them.
Completely agree.
Ironically, three days after Choltitz surrendered, Hitler launched the Ardennes offensive, a massive counter-attack intended to relieve the defenders of Paris, who he saw as among the most noble in the entire German Army. The attack nevertheless went forward after the surrender and despite inadequate preparation. Though the Allies were caught off guard, the offensive was stopped by massive aerial bombardment and the German force was cut to pieces. The weakened Germans, devastated by the Allied counterattack, were unable to resist a second attempt at crossing the Rhine in January 1945. This set the stage for the Allies to meet the Soviets south of Berlin on April 7, 1945 and bring the war to an end.
Choltitz was tried for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Trials and found guilty on all four counts. He was hanged to death on October 16, 1946 alongside the other surviving Nazi leaders convicted at the trial. Over a hundred other German officers who participated in the siege of Paris were handed over to French courts following the war and were also given death sentences. Far more sentences of death (98) were handed down by the French judges than life sentences (37) or acquittals (3).
The city itself lay in ruins until Pierre Koenig, prime minister of the postwar French government, ordered the beginning of a rebuilding campaign in 1947. He vowed that the capital of France would be returned to Paris from Lyons (the interim capital set up by the Allied Military Government) by 1955. Parisian citizens displaced by the battle for Paris proved to be a powerful political force in the postwar government. Largely communist-leaning, they exerted a force out of proportion to their numbers. They promoted a strong self-government leaning toward the left end of the political spectrum, and disdained international involvement and treaties, which they deemed to have failed them when the Allies avoided liberating the city. Many believed America and Britain to be at fault for Paris' plight, and disdained further dealings with those two countries. The Koenig government succeeded in signing and implementing the Treaty of Brussels, the OTAN treaty, and the European Coal and Steel Community, but resistance from the Parisien Bloc in 1958 nullified France's participation in the European Economic Community organization, which fell apart in 1965.
Colonial issues proved to be a divisive issue in the Bloc, whose communist elements strongly favored decolonization while other elements promoted the independence that French colonies gave France. In the end, however, the decolonialist forces emerged triumphant in the political struggles, and united with moderate decolonial forces in the government in the early 1950s. In 1962, the Parisien Bloc succeeded in forming a government with the French communist party, and assumed the prime ministership. Although the government lasted just seven years, it succeeded in forcing through radical changes to France, including French withdrawal from OTAN (potentially triggering that year's Cuban Missile Crisis), a massive public works campaign, and dozens of other social and political reforms. In 1969, the Parisien/communist coalition collapsed when the communists proposed enacting closer ties to the Soviet Union. Many Parisiens objected, and the coalition was replaced with a new government, which steered France on a course closer to center.
Today, France is as set in its own independence as ever. The French maintain a distinct personality from the rest of Europe, and strongly maintain their independence in the face of a tide of internationalism sweeping Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Several counterfactual historians have offered theories that had De Gaulle not disappeared and Paris been liberated early, France would have steered a more internationalist course and become part of a United States of Europe closely aligned to the United States of America, standing alongside it in the American invasion of Iraq as well as Afghanistan, to name just two events. This seems unlikely, given the past course of French history, and in reality, a world with De Gaulle and an early liberation of Paris likely would resemble our own.
C'est fini.
Choltitz was tried for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Trials and found guilty on all four counts. He was hanged to death on October 16, 1946 alongside the other surviving Nazi leaders convicted at the trial. Over a hundred other German officers who participated in the siege of Paris were handed over to French courts following the war and were also given death sentences. Far more sentences of death (98) were handed down by the French judges than life sentences (37) or acquittals (3).
The city itself lay in ruins until Pierre Koenig, prime minister of the postwar French government, ordered the beginning of a rebuilding campaign in 1947. He vowed that the capital of France would be returned to Paris from Lyons (the interim capital set up by the Allied Military Government) by 1955. Parisian citizens displaced by the battle for Paris proved to be a powerful political force in the postwar government. Largely communist-leaning, they exerted a force out of proportion to their numbers. They promoted a strong self-government leaning toward the left end of the political spectrum, and disdained international involvement and treaties, which they deemed to have failed them when the Allies avoided liberating the city. Many believed America and Britain to be at fault for Paris' plight, and disdained further dealings with those two countries. The Koenig government succeeded in signing and implementing the Treaty of Brussels, the OTAN treaty, and the European Coal and Steel Community, but resistance from the Parisien Bloc in 1958 nullified France's participation in the European Economic Community organization, which fell apart in 1965.
Colonial issues proved to be a divisive issue in the Bloc, whose communist elements strongly favored decolonization while other elements promoted the independence that French colonies gave France. In the end, however, the decolonialist forces emerged triumphant in the political struggles, and united with moderate decolonial forces in the government in the early 1950s. In 1962, the Parisien Bloc succeeded in forming a government with the French communist party, and assumed the prime ministership. Although the government lasted just seven years, it succeeded in forcing through radical changes to France, including French withdrawal from OTAN (potentially triggering that year's Cuban Missile Crisis), a massive public works campaign, and dozens of other social and political reforms. In 1969, the Parisien/communist coalition collapsed when the communists proposed enacting closer ties to the Soviet Union. Many Parisiens objected, and the coalition was replaced with a new government, which steered France on a course closer to center.
Today, France is as set in its own independence as ever. The French maintain a distinct personality from the rest of Europe, and strongly maintain their independence in the face of a tide of internationalism sweeping Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Several counterfactual historians have offered theories that had De Gaulle not disappeared and Paris been liberated early, France would have steered a more internationalist course and become part of a United States of Europe closely aligned to the United States of America, standing alongside it in the American invasion of Iraq as well as Afghanistan, to name just two events. This seems unlikely, given the past course of French history, and in reality, a world with De Gaulle and an early liberation of Paris likely would resemble our own.
C'est fini.
Vault-Scope
Banned
Utopic, finally! A world where the French have the guttes to say no to globalist extremisme, wouhou.
A quarter of the population was communist after WW2 OTL.
A quarter of the population was communist after WW2 OTL.
burmafrd
Banned
Patton would not have failed since he would never have planned an attack with so many holes in it like Montgomery did. Which is basically what you did. Not to mention without Pattons tremendous movement during the Battle Of the Bulge that battle lasts a lot longer and costs us a lot more in many ways.
Good to know. Do you have a source I can use for that? If so, it helps my theory that the government would eventually go communist without De Gaulle's influence.
Can't comment on the first part, because with all alternates, there's an infinite number of alternatives. On the second part, I envisioned air power basically bringing the attack to its knees because it was launched earlier than OTL, in good weather. That counters the fact that Patton's even more out of place than he was in OTL. Having 8th Air Force's B-17s diverted to tactical strikes on the German advance would be a nice foreshadowing of B-52 Arc Light strikes.
Hendryk
Banned
I'm not too sure about the post-war political developments in your epilogue. As Vault-Scope observed, the Communist Party was already a powerful force in OTL, so that even a sizeable portion of Parisians embracing Communism wouldn't make such a huge difference.
The Fourth Republic was mostly dominated by Socialists and Christian Democrats, and neither movement would be weakened by the events in your TL--rather the contrary, as the absence of a Gaullist party would play to their advantage (unless some other figure, such as Leclerc, takes up the torch). That, of course, doesn't preclude an eventual downfall of the Fourth Republic over the management of the Algerian quagmire. Then again, with early post-war France being under British-American political tutelage, chances are decolonization proceeds in a less traumatic manner; for instance, negociations with the Indochinese nationalists may proceed unimpeded, unlike in OTL where a jackass of a reactionary officer spoiled the whole thing by ordering Haiphong to be shelled in retaliation for a minor incident. This, in turn, would allow the French government to focus on the Algerian issue before it spins out of control, and one negotiated settlement may follow the other, instead of one vicious counterinsurgency following the other.
Lastly, the strength of the Communists may make the Socialists and Christian Democrats all the more determined to pursue European integration, lest a divided Western Europe prove unable to resist the twin threats of invasion from without and subversion from within. Italy was in the same situation as France, having to deal with a powerful Communist movement, and the two countries would as in OTL seek in transnational cooperation an answer to their domestic challenges.
To be honest, I wasn't that sure about them either. Aside from a one-semester class in modern French history, I don't have the knowledge or the information as to what the proper epilogue would be. If you have any suggestions as to that or in regards to anything else in the story, I'd love to hear them while I polish the final draft.