Eighty years ago this week Paris is liberated and Romania changes sides

 

Paris was liberated by the French 2nd Armoured Division commanded by General Leclerc. The uprising by the resistance had created the risk that the Germans would suppress it by military force as they had done the Warsaw rising. Leclerc disobeyed orders to bypass the city. The German commander Choltitz disobeyed Hitler's orders to fight to the last and surrendered himself and the city. General de Gaulle arrived and installed himself in the War Ministry, which he had left as a junior minister in 1940. He set the seal on his leadership of post-Vichy France with a radio broadcast, a victory parade on the Champs Elysee which culminated in laying a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier and attendance at mass in Notre Dame. He behaved as a head of state. His speech made almost no mention of the contribution of other allied armies to freeing France.

As the Red Army crossed the frontier into Romania  King Michael overthrew the pro-Axis government and replaced it with one that immediately made peace with the Allies and declared war on Germany. Stalin recognised the Royal government and the Romanians opened hostilities against Germany. However, 130,000 Romanian troops taken prisoner by the Red Army were transported to the Soviet Union.

After visiting the British Army in Italy Churchill went to Rome where he was granted a private audience with the Pope. He was favoured with an unusually long conversation of three-quarters of an hour.