June 6th marks the anniversary of D-Day—in 2019, the 75th one—but this epic military victory was just the beginning of the liberation of France. It would take two and a half more months, until August 24, 1944, before Paris would be freed from its four years of Nazi Occupation. The memory of these four dark years of suppression, deportations, and plundering, as well as the scars of the battle to liberate the capital, can be observed at various sites, both famous and lesser known, around the city. Here's where to go to find the ghosts of World War Two in Paris.
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Places where you can still find evidence of World War II in Paris: Avenue des Champs-Elysées
© Jack Downey, U.S. Office of War Information / CC
Avenue des Champs-Elysées
After the "Phoney War," the calm period between the invasion of Poland and May 1940, the Nazis swooped on France, deftly invading and defeating the country within seven weeks. When they arrived in the capital on June 14, the victors wasted no time in laying claim to the city’s world-famous avenue. A military parade and marching bands descended on Les Champs-Elysées, hanging a swastika flag from the Arc de Triomphe. Two weeks later, Hitler proudly drove down the avenue on his grand tour of Paris, his only wartime visit there. One of the city’s main entertainment centers, its cafés were popular with the occupying forces, and Le Normandie movie theater, still in existence, is an example of the many establishments around the city that were reserved exclusively for German soldiers. The French eventually seized back the avenue with their own victory parade starring General Charles de Gaulle and French and American forces, on the day after the city’s liberation, August 26, 1944. Today, a statue of the triumphantly marching de Gaulle stands guard over the avenue, in front of the Grand Palais.
