There would be a great slaughter in the dreary Hurtgen Forest. For the time being Aulock’s forces busied themselves digging in and installing the 88mm anti-aircraft pieces that had been removed from the city and placed at their disposal for use as artillery against the approaching armored columns.
The city of Paris was spared. Unknown to Sibert, Eisenhower also had had a change of heart. Back in the dreary forests of East Prussia, Hitler snarled at Jodl, ‘Is Paris burning?’ It was not, and would not.In his Hotel Meurice headquarters, Choltitz, demoralized by the events of the past two weeks and despairing of receiving help, decided to surrender. However, Hitler also realized that he might lose Paris. Then even those forces were mysteriously ordered to the south. The Disillusioned Dietrich von Choltitz Dietrich von Choltitz. They would do all-out battle with the occupiers immediately and threatened that, if the Gaullists refused to join in, they would plaster every wall and building in Paris with placards accusing the Gaullists of’stabbing the people of Paris in the back.’The truce was dead, but the time the Gaullists managed to expend in establishing this seemingly disastrous fact would be all that was needed. Seasoned guerrilla fighters would not be a valued commodity in Soviet-occupied Poland, so the dictator ordered his advancing hordes to halt mere miles from Warsaw, leaving the hapless guerrillas alone against a German garrison determined to thoroughly eradicate this rioting gang of’subhumans.’By the time the new rulers marched in, the city was a smoldering rubble heap whose inhabitants were in no state to present difficulties. People cut down trees and dug up cobblestones. Hitler’s missives ordering murderous destruction grew ever more urgent.Nothing substantive could happen in the city until Choltitz formally surrendered, something he secretly arranged to do through a sympathetic third party. While Eisenhower brooded in his gloomy headquarters, de Gaulle was in Algiers, busily sending trusted subordinates to the City of Light to do everything in their power to head off any premature insurrection that might well sow the seeds of a civil war. The tankers’ frantic impatience moved them to hurl themselves and their machines recklessly into German strongpoints rather than attempt standard flanking moves by their accompanying infantry. Their leader announced himself as ‘Lieutenant Henri Karcher of the army of General de Gaulle.’ Choltitz responded, ‘General von Choltitz, commander of Gross Paris.’‘You are my prisoner,’ Karcher informed him.
With this in mind, it is certainly possible that more rigid personalities were drawn to the SS and the Gestapo than to the Wehrmacht.
They feared being attacked by their own bombers. Now, in the pre-dawn of August 21, Leclerc — after attempting repeatedly and futilely to obtain permission from his American superiors to advance, and receiving no word of instruction of any kind from de Gaulle — was moving out on his own authority.The reinforcements Choltitz had been promised were not coming to his aid; instead, they were sent south of the city to where the main Allied thrust was expected. Bravely, he used his close relationship with the Führer and his ministerial role to subvert Hitler’s orders.He accomplished this by issuing coded counter orders with multiple levels of decision making he hoped Hitler would not see through. This missive, similar in content to Gallois’ appeal, finally tipped the scales.Back in the city, Parodi had assembled his Gaullist government in the prime minister’s office and announced its existence to reporters.