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Encyclopedia entry: Paris rising
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to World War II
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to World War II 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information)
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Paris rising.
As the Allied forces engaged in the
Normandy campaign
neared Paris, tension in the former capital grew. On 10 August the railway workers came out on strike; on 15 August so did the police—before they heard of the
French Riviera
landings that day. Next day the post office workers followed suit except for the telephone operators, who stayed on duty and played an essential background part in what followed.
General Dietrich von Choltitz (1894–1966), who had supervised the destruction of Rotterdam in May 1940 and of
Sevastopol
in 1942, commanded some 20,000 German soldiers—mostly garrison troops, but including armoured Waffen-
SS
units. The forces of
...