The Liberation of Paris
In August 1944 Paul Sapieha was a Captain in the US Army — and a Polish citizen (he was promoted to Major the following month). As Chief of the Foreign Liaison Branch, G-2 Section, HQ 12th Army Group, he was the principal interface between General Bradley’s command and all French, Belgian and other Allied authorities. What follows is an account of the few days before and during the liberation of Paris, drawn from his wartime diary and from letters he wrote years later to the authors and veterans who asked him what he remembered.
The Intelligence Mission: Rambouillet and Chartres
On 19 August 1944, with Paris still in German hands, General Sibert sent Sapieha and his team forward to gather intelligence on what was happening inside the city. They established a plan: de Legge would go to Rambouillet, where he knew people; Vivet to Maintenon; Sapieha and LeBel to Chartres to question refugees. They spent the night in a farmer’s barn on blankets and hay, eating eggs and drinking wine.
At Chartres the next morning they found the chief of the Paris metro police, who had arrived by bicycle the night before. He told them the Germans intended to pull out of Paris, and that the FFI had things well in hand. They also established contact with the local FFI commander and his wife, an actress, who were ready to ride to Paris on bicycles. Sapieha dispatched her, then drove on to Rambouillet.
At the Hôtel du Grand Veneur they found de Legge — and Ernest Hemingway. Writing to Larry Collins in 1966, Sapieha recalled:
“Ernie asked me immediately what if any decisions had been taken on the Paris operation, being very adamant himself that Paris must be taken immediately, and was evidently quite au courant of the situation there. He also told me that he would be one of the first in Paris.”
His diary entry for the same day was terser: “Find Hemingway’s driver half naked and drunk fixing jeep. Avoid Hemingway as don’t want to get involved.”
De Legge had telephoned the Préfet de la Seine from Rambouillet, who gave him a precise picture of the situation: the FFI held the Prefecture; the Germans were preparing to leave; allied intervention was urgently needed. This, combined with what Sapieha and LeBel had gathered in Chartres, gave Sibert and Bradley the intelligence they needed.
The next day, 21 August, General Leclerc arrived at HQ in Laval to ask permission to advance on Paris. Bradley granted it.
Entering Paris: 25 August 1944
On 24 August the first attempt to reach Paris stalled south of the city. Sapieha and Sibert turned back to Chartres. The next morning they tried again, entering through the Porte d’Orléans. The diary records the approach:
“Signs of small fight along the Orléans road, barricades of torn up pavements, multitudes on both sides of streets. Tour Eiffel in same place. Have two cases of K-rations, so throw some to people along the road.”
They made for Gare Montparnasse, where Leclerc had set up his command post. The station was crowded: Gen. Gerow and Bob Low of V Corps were there, along with Leclerc’s staff. Fighting was still going on near the Luxembourg palace, the Palais Bourbon and the École Militaire. A restaurant-keeper heated water for coffee and produced a bottle of wine. Snipers on the rooftops opened fire; Sapieha and Sibert lay flat on the station pavement. He noted later, writing to Colonel Hansen: “I asked Gen. S to lie down as cover was a bit too far, and so we were of course lying in the gutter — the General remarked that it was probably the first time that a captain tells a general to get down into a gutter. To appease him I gave him a piece of bread, rather stale.”
Von Choltitz and the Cease-Fire Order
At three in the afternoon, General Dietrich von Choltitz — the German military governor of Paris, the man who had received Hitler’s orders to destroy the city — was brought into the station by Leclerc’s officers, having been captured at the Hôtel Meurice with his entire staff.
What happened next Sapieha described in detail in his letter to Collins:
“After v.Choltitz had been brought to the Gare Montparnasse, Lt. Col. Low of G-2 Vth Corps, an old friend of mine, came in to the office where I was, and asked if I spoke and wrote German fluently; having confirmed, he told me to follow him, and that I must ask von Choltitz for the wording of his order to all still resisting German units to cease fire. Low and I entered the station master’s offices, where von Choltitz was sitting at a desk. Having saluted him, I asked him in German for his order which he dictated to me. He looked grim and thoroughly beaten. I wrote his order with 18 copies on an old and rather unwieldy typewriter and having finished called Low; we went in to Choltitz’ office together. Low then asked him to sign the 18 copies — and added, pointing at me in English: Polish — I translated Low’s request, v.Choltitz having had a good look at me, picked up a pen and signed 18 times — he said nothing however. The order was then distributed among Leclerc’s officers.”
In his shorter letter to Collins two years earlier, Sapieha had added:
“I was a captain in the US Army but a Polish citizen, and as Warsaw was often on peoples minds in those days, and in connection with the situation in Paris, it was somewhat symbolic that a Pole would have to write v.Choltitz’ order. If I am not mistaken Lt.Col.Robert Low, from G-2 V Corps who was also present, and called on me for the above purpose, told v.Choltitz ‘a Pole wrote your order’.”
The cease-fire orders were distributed to German garrisons throughout the city. Resistance ended garrison by garrison. Paris was not destroyed.
De Gaulle arrived at the station shortly after, came in with Leclerc, and was — as Sapieha noted in his diary — “very rude to Gerow, whom he doesn’t even greet. Pictures taken of this wooden and unamiable face.” His letter to Hansen was more measured: “I saw de Gaulle after his arrival at the Montparnasse station and watched his departure in the open car in which he was standing — what struck me and others, and we all commented on it, was his stiff and unsmiling figure passing through crowds of enthusiastically cheering people.”
The Ritz
That evening, General Sibert decided they should go into the city. Sapieha suggested the Ritz. Writing to Hansen:
“We started out in our jeep, and it took us a good 3/4 hours to make our way there. When we arrived, the management received us with all signs of the greatest joy — as we went to our rooms, the maids hugged and kissed us — we already had heads and faces full of lipstick from our slow progress through the boulevards and especially the place de la Concorde.”
His diary captures the same moment with a different detail: “I was recognised by the porter when I came in. After him the manager came, then the porters. All greeted me with great effusion. Got rooms for General and self, with the greatest of ease. Slept in room 48. General had 51.”
In the restaurant they joined Colonel David Bruce of the OSS. The food was not what it had been — “a meal of powdered egg omelet, with canned peas and a pear compotte — food was scarce and not good, but of course the champagne was excellent” — and at a long table in the middle of the room sat Hemingway, with an armed escort of seven, who had all been drinking for some time. Sapieha wrote to Hansen: “Ernie came over to our table saying ‘I made it’ and we all drank to Paris, to France and to ourselves — I then joined him at his table and again toasts were exchanged with his seven men. The evening ended in a very high mood… we slept soundly with the feeling of greatest elation and gratitude for the way things had gone.”
Eisenhower’s Entry: 27 August
Two days later, on 27 August, Sapieha was part of the official motorcade for General Eisenhower’s entry into Paris. His diary:
“General takes me along as escort. Ride and show way for Gen. Eisenhower into Paris. Gen. Gerow waits with Koenig at Porte d’Orléans. Go in by way of Ministère de Guerre, Rue St. Dominique / Rue de Rennes first to Invalides to pay visit to de Gaulle. This lasts 30 min… After this the cortège — Eisenhower, Bradley and me — go round the Ave. Albert I, Pl. des États-Unis, to the Arc de Triomphe, then down the Champs-Élysées, and back to Chartres.”
Recognition
For his part in the liberation of Paris — and the wider intelligence and liaison work of the French campaign — Sapieha was decorated by both the American and the French commands. General Bradley awarded him the Bronze Star Medal, the citation recording that “he prepared the cease-fire order which was signed by the German commander of the Paris defenses, and which was delivered to the German garrisons throughout the city.”
France honoured him twice. On 16 February 1945, by Decision No. 404 signed by General de Gaulle and General Juin, he received the Croix de Guerre avec Étoile d’Argent, cited at Division level “pour services exceptionnels de Guerre rendus au cours des opérations de libération de la France.” Then, on 12 September 1945, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and awarded the Croix de Guerre avec Palme by decree of General de Gaulle and Foreign Minister Bidault — the insignia personally presented by General Koenig, the French Military Governor of Germany. Throughout, he remained a Polish citizen; he was not naturalised as an American until July 1945.
The full record of his decorations — American, French, Luxembourg and Polish, with archive references and citations in full — is set out on the Military Record page.
The cease-fire correspondence with Larry Collins (‘Is Paris Burning?’) and Colonel Chet Hansen (General Bradley’s aide) can be read in full: paul-sapieha-correspondence-on-surrender-of-paris-1944.pdf