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WWII On This Day: August 19

What happened on August 19 during World War II? This date brings together 7 events from 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1944
A German military vehicle at the Place de l'Opéra during the opening day of the Paris uprising, 19 August 1944.
A German military vehicle at the Place de l'Opéra during the opening day of the Paris uprising, 19 August 1944. Camille Rapp / Musée Carnavalet, PH34929 · CC0 1.0 Source
Occupation, Collaboration and Resistance in World War II

The Paris uprising turns occupation into a struggle for state authority

On 19 August 1944 Paris police and resistance groups occupied public buildings and fighting spread through the capital as German forces withdrew from Normandy. The German garrison still controlled major strongpoints and routes, while the insurgents lacked enough weapons for a prolonged battle. Resistance leaders disagreed over whether to sustain the uprising or accept a truce while Allied forces approached. For the Provisional Government, the issue was political as well as military: French authorities wanted ministries, police and municipal institutions to pass directly into republican hands rather than leave the…

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Warsaw Uprising: Two medics and a soldier (right) from "Parasol" battalion after coming out of sewers at Warecka Street near Nowy Świat (North Śródmieście district). In the center Maria Stypułkowska-Chojecka "Kama". On the right Krzysztof Palester "Krzych".
Warsaw Uprising - Soldiers from Parasol on Warecka Street 1 September 1944 · Jerzy Chrzanowski · Public domain · Source
The Warsaw Rising

The general assault on the Old Town

Reinefarth’s forces opened a concentrated attack with infantry, assault engineers, armour, artillery, aircraft, an armoured train and fire from the Vistula. The district was already crowded with wounded people and refugees from Wola. German fire was directed against a small area whose surface links to Śródmieście had been cut.

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Tanks and half-tracks of the French 2e Division Blindée pass the Arc de Triomphe through crowds on the Champs-Élysées, 26 August 1944.
Jack Downey, US Office of War Information · Library of Congress · Public domain · Source
The Liberation of Paris

The police seize the Préfecture

Around two thousand striking policemen occupied their own headquarters on the Île de la Cité at first light and raised the tricolour over it for the first time since June 1940. La Marseillaise was sung in the courtyard. It was the signal the rest of the city had been waiting for. Within hours town halls, newspaper offices and telephone exchanges across Paris were being taken.

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The Liberation of Paris

Luizet installed as Prefect of Police

Charles Luizet, appointed by the Provisional Government, took possession of the Prefecture as its lawful head. Alexandre Parodi, de Gaulle's delegate general, and Jacques Chaban-Delmas, his military delegate, were both in the city. The Free French were installing their own administration inside a rising they had not ordered, which was the point. Whoever held the buildings when the shooting stopped would hold the argument about who governed France.

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The Liberation of Paris

The rising spreads

Town halls in the eastern arrondissements were taken one after another. Fighting broke out at the Place de la République, on the boulevards and around the German strongpoints. Weapons were taken from the men who had been carrying them. Estimates of insurgent strength run to about 20,000 fighters, with firearms for perhaps a third of them. Most of the rest went out with whatever was to hand.

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The Liberation of Paris

German armour shells the Préfecture

Tanks and self-propelled guns came onto the quais and shelled the Prefecture across the river, setting fires in the courtyard. The defenders had rifles, a few automatic weapons and petrol bombs made in the building. The Prefecture held. Choltitz had the means to level it and chose to shell rather than assault, which is the first of several decisions later used to argue he was already looking for a way out.

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The Liberation of Paris

Nordling opens negotiations

Raoul Nordling, the Swedish consul-general, born in Paris and running a business there, put himself between the garrison and the rising. He proposed a truce to both sides on the argument that neither could win quickly and both would lose the city. He had no authority over anyone. What he had was access to Choltitz, a telephone, and the standing of a neutral in a city where nobody else could talk to both sides.

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