 Paris, the most coveted city in history. Since its beginnings 2,000 years ago, Paris has drawn to it lovers of beauty, of learning, and of liberty. Scholars, churchmen, artists, those who have given us our civilization, and those who have tried to take it from us. In 1940, sounds of the storm of war again drew close. In Paris, we listened, but we felt the storm strike at our spirit. Paris was spared, but we were left to shed our tears for the fall of France. The spirit of Paris appeared crushed, but in 1944, it rose again to prove its claim to life with honor. Each dawn is a new beginning. For us who have lived in Paris all of our lives, for us who live here from day to day, it is more than a city. It is a way of life. It is a meeting every day of the present with our sometimes glorious, yes, and sometimes bitter past. It is civilization, Paris. It is a spirit each day reborn in 3 million lives that makes us one. But each of us, we have our own vitality and purpose, our own pride, and individuality. Beautiful? May we? Never are we too busy to stop and see how beautiful Paris is. It's cathedrals that celebrate the long history of our faith. Arches that celebrate our victories. Buildings are dedication to the arts. But it is our lives around these buildings, these monuments that makes them live. It is the love of learning, not the buildings of a Latin quarter that celebrates wisdom. It is we the people, not the stones that are Paris. The beauty of Paris, allure. What really does it celebrate but the dignity of human life? And art creampel arches, but the dignity of man. The dignity of human life, the dignity of man. We learned again their meaning and their cost. We learned again that summer of 1940 seeing them crushed before our eyes. Loyalty, sacrifice, devotion. Those Paris has inspired always. But envy it has inspired too and greed. May we, every passion of man, Paris has inspired and survived. Did not for centuries Paris fight wolves in its streets at night to serve the day as the center of culture. Now to us again her streets cried out. 1940, I wouldn't forget it, that march on Paris in June. It was hot and dusty, but a happy march. Why? Because we were young. In this city, Paris, we have heard of it all of our lives, like a beautiful woman. And now, she was going to be ours. But with empty streets, Paris welcomed us. Yeah, but was this not better than guns? After a year of war, after the cities we had found necessary to destroy in Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, now to take Paris unharmed, even the fewer himself we had thought the war was over. But this war, it had only begun. For the four years while it would last, we must occupy Paris to keep France under military rule. He who holds Paris holds France. It is the center of all transportation and communication, an administration of the whole country, the city we held, but the people, the ways they behave to us. Sometimes we were not quite so certain. But what could they do, the French with no army left? That is war. The soldier obeys orders. To occupy so charming a city, of course, these orders were not hard to obey. For even our officers, I think, military discipline sometimes left their minds. Yes, and war too. Was it not all agree, Paris was an open city? In the Paris underground, we had the headquarters of the French forces of the interior. With the Gaulists, the Machis, the communists, we had all worked against the Nazi occupation. We had few weapons, only sabotage, and always the threat of reprisals. Now at last, we could prepare for our parts in the liberation, as the Allied army swept toward us to Normandy in 1944. Here it was mid-August and we'd been slugging our way ever since we hit the Normandy beaches in June. Up ahead somewhere was Paris, but it didn't look like we'd be lucky enough to see it. Our goal was Berlin and we heard the plan was to isolate Paris and bypass it. In fact, right now, you could hear our planes going up again to cut the city off. We were barely a hundred miles from Paris when we'd clobbered the Nazi Seventh Army at Argentine. We were still kind of wishing we were going on into Paris, but there wouldn't be much left to see there if the Nazis defended it like they had this town. It was when we got a chance to stop and sample French hospitality or sit down for a few minutes with a cigarette that we talked about what we'd like to do in Paris and what it would look like if we ever did see it. Would Notre Dame look like this or would it look like the picture of the cathedral we'd all seen on a million Christmas cards? And would it all be as beautiful at night? We knew Paris was really blacked out, but we'd heard it called the city of light and that's still the way we pictured it. Blacked out, in our imaginations, Paris still sparkled like a string of jewels, but out here in Normandy, the sparkles we saw were real. The soft life at Paris, it was gone. Now we were ordered to get our tanks and equipment outside the city between Paris and this allied advance that was already smashing our 7th Army to the west. How could we defend Paris against full-scale attack? We were barely 20,000 men. We would have no reserves, but to the last man, the fewer ordered Paris defended. The soldier obeys orders. In the outskirts, south and west of Paris, we took our positions and invaded. For us now in Paris, the city was like a bomb with the fuse lighted. As the Nazis withdrew to their defenses in the outskirts, we mobilized their resistance openly. The allied armies were now so close, what held them back from us? Could the rumor be true that they might pass us by completely? We had no alternative. We must take Paris ourselves. We seized ministries, newspapers. We forced a truce with the Nazis. We paralyzed the city and we waited. By now, some of us were right up within spinning distance of Paris. We still had a war to win, but we began to hear that Paris was falling anyhow. We even heard that De Gaulle now wasn't as worried about the Nazis as trouble from the different factions in the resistance movement trying to take over. So our top brass decided it would be better to take Paris than to have a civil war at our backs, and that De Gaulle would have his wish that French troops would be the first ones to enter. The French Second Army Division under General Leclerc was instructed to move on Paris from Argentine immediately. In the small towns around Paris there were rumors and confusion wherever we went. The French were tearing down roadblocks so we could get through and we heard that Paris had already been liberated by the resistance forces. We heard the Nazis had already signed an armistice and just wanted to get out of town in one piece. Anyhow, General Giraud showed up with our First Army's Fifth Corps to back up the French advance. When the French troops themselves showed up, so many of them had GI uniforms and equipment that things looked even more confusing. They didn't expect to meet much opposition. Now came the Fuhrer's Order. Paris must not fall into the hands of the enemy except as a field of ruins. The Send Bridges he ordered prepared for demolition. But we who were outside the city, what if we must retreat back through Paris? Now they came, we were waiting. But the Nazis, the ones who had shown us the meaning of terror, what had happened to them? Were they so badly off now that they must send children to do the work of men? Childhood, for some of us there had never been one. There had only been war. And for France must death make men of boys too? They came closer to Paris. But so slowly it seemed. Now we learned that Leclerc was slowed not only by the enemy. Each step nearer to us, tumultuous welcomes delayed his troops. Outside Paris, at the town of Rambouillet, they were engulfed. Well the French launched their new advance the next day. If ever the world was waiting for the sunrise it was that morning. But there was rain, then drizzle, and more rumors. The latest was that the Nazis had mined the Paris sewers and were ready to blow up the bridges. Finally all that was real was blood and gunfire. But it came out not like we had planned. We, professional soldiers, being herded like kettle down village streets by country farmers. In Paris we waited, but with the Lechern now not fear. The resistance movement, the French forces of the interior. We were an underground no longer. Yes to the barricades. In that cry is the history of Paris. The stones of the streets they came to life in our hands. Already stained with French blood these stones, torn from the walls of the Bastille in the revolution. Yes and always they have risen in the barricades where the people of Paris meet their oppressors at last. Now this morning of August we heard history singing in our blood. The eyes it was really happening. Our city Paris being liberated. All the confusion of history when it is being made that we could see but a corner of it before it was pulled away into the past. Which confusion? Were not those our soldiers inside the American uniforms? Like all history it took its price. Yes the price from those who expected to pay it. But a price too from us who could fight for Paris only in our hearts. And the highest price from those who became part of our history forever. Now to end it to destroy these reminders of our humiliation. To set Paris in order again. Paris and France. We crossed the Seine River that morning and when we came into Paris we could hardly believe it was real. Really Paris here all in one piece and the people and it's still alive they sure were. And here it was when we hit the center of town around noon. Our Christmas card in August. Notre Dame. In the Montparnasse rail road station a command post was set up by General Leclerc. Now he prepared to go and receive the Nazi surrender. Why did they give him no honor of a full military surrender? No they did not understand. They did not know what he had done but I think he had saved Paris. Von Holtitz had disobeyed orders. He could not defend Paris no but he left it no field of ruins. Our commander like us I think he loved Paris too much to destroy it. There were surrenders going on wherever you looked. Prisoners were being rounded up all over town. Our own fifth corps took over 10,000 and still they came on. Were these the same streets where just yesterday we had commanded? And these were these the French people we had so quietly lived here beside for four years? All this time had it been burning inside them this fury and humiliation they poured on us today. After four years de Gaulle for us all this time he had been France away from France. Now again he was a part of us. The streets and the squares Paris filled them for his welcome. To de Gaulle we could look for order to make Paris and France won again. But still hidden among us were our enemies. Enemies of the people. Enemies of law and order. Communists fascists criminals. In four years the Nazi occupation had bred a disease of hatred and greed in desperate men. Spirits routed by collaboration by dreams of power. Now we woke them in a hurry. Paris belonged to the French again all right? They turned the city upside down with victory and you couldn't escape their gratitude, their excitement even if you wanted to. It was victory with a sharp taste or a sweet taste depending. And the next day they had a parade right through the middle of Paris. The enemy was hardly outside the city. Nazi holdouts and snipers were still hidden all over town but nobody seemed to care where they packed the streets. Yes this parade we were warned it was dangerous. De Gaulle himself he knew this. But the danger that was why we must have the parade. His loyalties to France they had been scattered for four years. Now we wanted only to show that order had returned. That free France stood again as one. Some they had fought not for free France but for power for themselves. Now still they hope to profit from chaos. When the parade reached Notre Dame again there was gunfire. But De Gaulle he had only disdain for these enemies. This courage yes we would follow it anywhere. Napoleon was right, bien sûr, when he said that we French have vanity, levity, independence and caprice with an unconquerable passion for glory. We would assume do without bread as without glory. We had a parade ourselves a couple of days later but it wasn't really much of a celebration for us. We still had a man-sized war going on right outside of town. We paraded through Paris and combat formation because the streets were still so jammed that a parade was the only way we could get through town to pick up the war on the other side. A glimpse of a familiar building or a monument from the corner of an eye and before we knew it we were through it. That was all the look at Paris some of us ever had. Now Paris was more like Paris. There was little fuel for cars so we rode bicycles. Or many things relaxed still but very soon our allies started sending us the food we so desperately needed. How grateful to them we were, how secure we felt now to see their supreme commander himself in our streets. Now again Paris could go about its business. The Nazi occupation was history. Another chapter in the past that is always a part of Paris. A pleasure of being alive again. Like most women I imagine I showed it with a new shopper. After four years Paris at peace. Peace. But tears must be shed for those who helped win it. Like these 27 members of the resistance buried together with a single funeral. While on the roads leading from Paris these nazi dead. There were no tears they had won nothing for anyone. Outside Paris history swept on leaving behind it the past to seek something familiar the future something new. Past and future to us now all look the same anywhere. We drove on across France across Belgium toward the German border. In the Ardenne forest we met a new enemy. Winter days passed without dawns or sunsets. Days as alike as the trees around us. As alike as the roads we followed. They were days as alike as the faces of the prisoners we took. Passing in endless lines like the endless weeks of that winter. But with the spring in Germany we found a new kind of prisoner. The French prisoners of war that we liberated to start their long trek home. And once more Paris waited. To France they came back a million more than a million men and to Paris. Paris she had shed tears of humility of loss. Now her tears they were of gratitude for the return of her sons.