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WWII On This Day: August 25

What happened on August 25 during World War II? This date brings together 9 events from 1940 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
A formation of Heinkel He 111s in the Battle of Britain
Imperial War Museums, MH6547 · Public domain · Source
The Battle of Britain

RAF bombers reach Berlin

RAF bombers attacked Berlin on the night of 25–26 August. The material damage was limited, but the raid challenged Göring's public assurances about the security of the German capital and was followed by further attacks. The Berlin raids acquired a large place in later explanations of why the Luftwaffe turned toward London. Reprisal and prestige mattered, but German target policy was also being shaped by intelligence estimates, the desire to draw Fighter Command into battle and the strategic value of London's docks and communications. A historian can therefore connect Berlin…

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1944
An American landing party in Normandy.
An American landing party in Normandy. US Army Signal Corps · DPLA / NARA · Public domain Source
Operation Overlord

Paris liberated

The French 2nd Armoured Division under General Leclerc, with the US 4th Infantry Division, entered a city already in insurrection. General von Choltitz surrendered the garrison and did not carry out the order to destroy the bridges and monuments. The city had not been an operational objective. Eisenhower had intended to bypass it and avoid the burden of feeding two million people. The rising forced the decision.

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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 main force enters

The main body of the 2e Division Blindée entered through the southern gates on 25 August, while the US 4th Infantry Division advanced into Paris on another axis. Leclerc established his command post at Montparnasse. French armoured columns then moved against the remaining German strongpoints with FFI guides helping them through barricaded streets.

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German prisoners, many of them officers, collected inside the former Wehrmacht headquarters at the Hôtel Majestic on 25 August 1944.
German prisoners, many of them officers, collected inside the former Wehrmacht headquarters at the Hôtel Majestic on 25 August 1944. US Army Signal Corps · Public domain Source
The Liberation of Paris

German strongpoints fall across the city

French and American troops, often accompanied by FFI, reduced the remaining German strongpoints around sites including the Luxembourg Palace, the École Militaire, government buildings and military headquarters. At the Hôtel Majestic, former Wehrmacht headquarters, German officers and soldiers were collected as prisoners. A US Army Signal Corps photograph records them inside the building on 25 August.

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German prisoners leaving the Hôtel Meurice under escort on the rue de Rivoli, 25 August 1944.
German prisoners leaving the Hôtel Meurice under escort on the rue de Rivoli, 25 August 1944. Paris Musées / Musée Carnavalet · CC0 1.0 Source
The Liberation of Paris

Choltitz is taken at the Meurice

French troops reached the Hôtel Meurice and captured Choltitz at his headquarters. He was taken first to the Préfecture de Police and then to Leclerc at Montparnasse. A Paris Musées photograph from 25 August shows German prisoners from the Meurice leaving under escort beneath the arcades of the rue de Rivoli.

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The surrender convention of 25 August 1944, signed by Dietrich von Choltitz, received by Leclerc and countersigned by Henri Rol-Tanguy.
The surrender convention of 25 August 1944, signed by Dietrich von Choltitz, received by Leclerc and countersigned by Henri Rol-Tanguy. Gouvernement provisoire de la République française · CC0 1.0 Source
The Liberation of Paris

The surrender is signed

Choltitz signed the capitulation of the Paris garrison on 25 August. The written convention was received by Leclerc and countersigned by Henri Rol-Tanguy for the FFI. Orders to cease resistance then had to reach German positions scattered across the city. The document survives and is used here as the event image rather than a later or generic surrender photograph.

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The Liberation of Paris

Rol-Tanguy's signature fixes the Resistance into the surrender

Henri Rol-Tanguy's countersignature placed the FFI command on the written capitulation beside the regular French military authority represented by Leclerc. That mattered politically. The liberation had been both an urban uprising and a regular military entry, and the surrender document preserves both claims on the same page.

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The Liberation of Paris

De Gaulle goes to the Ministry of War first

De Gaulle entered Paris and went not to the Hôtel de Ville, where the Resistance was waiting, but to the Ministry of War, into the office he had left in June 1940. He found the furniture where he had last seen it. The choice was deliberate and it was an argument. By occupying the office of the state he asserted that the French Republic had continued in exile and had now come home, and that nothing needed to be proclaimed or handed over.

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The Liberation of Paris

The speech at the Hôtel de Ville

De Gaulle went to the Hôtel de Ville and addressed the crowd, presenting the liberation as the recovery of a French state that had continued through the war. He credited Paris, the Resistance and the armies while refusing the idea that the Republic had to be proclaimed anew. The speech turned the military liberation into a statement about political legitimacy.

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