Eleven Days in August

The Liberation of Paris in 1944

Matthew Cobb

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780857203182
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857203199
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

'I had thought that for me there could never again be any elation in war. But I had reckoned without the liberation of Paris - I had reckoned without remembering that I might be a part of that richly historic day. We were in Paris on the first day - one of the great days of all time.' (Ernie Pyle, US war correspondent)

The liberation of Paris was a momentous point in twentieth-century history, yet it is now largely forgotten outside France. Eleven Days in August is a pulsating hour-by-hour reconstruction of these tumultuous events that shaped the final phase of the war and the future of France, told with the pace of a thriller. While examining the conflicting national and international interests that played out in the bloody street fighting, it tells of how, in eleven dramatic days, people lived, fought and died in the most beautiful city in the world.

Based largely on unpublished archive material, including secret conversations, coded messages, diaries and eyewitness accounts, Eleven Days in August shows how these August days were experienced in very different ways by ordinary Parisians, Resistance fighters, French collaborators, rank-and-file German soldiers, Allied and French spies, the Allied and German High Commands.

Above all, it shows that while the liberation of Paris may be attributed to the audacity of the Resistance, the weakness of the Germans and the strength of the Allies, the key to it all was the Parisians who by turn built street barricades and sunbathed on the banks of the Seine, who fought the Germans and simply tried to survive until the Germans finally surrendered, in a billiard room at the Prefecture of Police. One of the most iconic moments in the history of the twentieth century had come to a close, and the face of Paris would never be the same again.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Also by Matthew Cobb
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Maps
• Dramatis Personae
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Prelude. April 1944: Bombers
• 1 June–July: Hope
• 2 Early August: Breakout
• 3 Mid-August: Build-up
• 4 Tuesday 15 August: Turning-point
• 5 Wednesday 16 August: Crimes
• 6 Thursday 17 August: Twilight
• 7 Friday 18 August: Waiting
• 8 Saturday 19 August: Insurrection
• 9 Sunday 20 August: Cease-fire
• 10 Monday 21 August: Conflict
• 11 Tuesday 22 August: Barricades
• 12 Wednesday 23 August: Destruction
• 13 Thursday 24 August, Day: Battle
• 14 Thursday 24 August, Evening: Arrival
• 15 Friday 25 August, Day: Endgame
• 16 Friday 25 August, Evening: Triumph
• 17 Saturday 26 August: Celebration
• 18 27 August–31 December: Restoration
• Epilogue: Mythification
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• List of Illustrations
• Index
• Picture Credits