As the Allies struggled inland from Normandy in August of 1944, the
fate of Paris hung in the balance. Other jewels of Europe,sites
like Warsaw, Antwerp, and Monte Cassino,were, or would soon be,
reduced to rubble during attempts to liberate them. But Paris
endured, thanks to a fractious cast of characters, from Resistance
cells to Free French operatives to an unlikely assortment of
diplomats, Allied generals, and governmental officials. Their
efforts, and those of the German forces fighting to maintain
control of the city, would shape the course of the battle for
Europe and colour popular memory of the conflict for generations to
come.In The Blood of Free Men , celebrated historian Michael
Neiberg deftly tracks the forces vying for Paris, providing a
revealing new look at the city's dramatic and triumphant resistance
against the Nazis. The salvation of Paris was not a foregone
conclusion, Neiberg shows, and the liberation was a chaotic
operation that could have easily ended in the city's ruin. The
Allies were intent on bypassing Paris so as to strike the heart of
the Third Reich in Germany, and the French themselves were deeply
divided feuding political cells fought for control of the
Resistance within Paris, as did Charles de Gaulle and his Free
French Forces outside the city. Although many of Paris's citizens
initially chose a tenuous stability over outright resistance to the
German occupation, they were forced to act when the approaching
fighting pushed the city to the brink of starvation. In a desperate
bid to save their city, ordinary Parisians took to the streets, and
through a combination of valiant fighting, shrewd diplomacy, and
last-minute aid from the Allies, managed to save the City of
Lights. A ground-breaking, arresting narrative of the liberation,
The Blood of Free Men tells the full story of one of the war's
defining moments, when a tortured city and its inhabitants narrowly
survived the deadliest conflict in human history.
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