Ambassador Charles Kushner's recent open letter to French President Emmanuel Macron lambasted the French president for not vigorously battling the virulent antisemitism which has exploded in France since the Islamic genocidal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
This righteous appeal from America's top diplomat in France, published in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 25, highlighted that day marked the "81st anniversary of the Allied Liberation of Paris."
However, the liberation of the French capital on August 25, 1944 was accomplished solely by the French Second Armored Division and U.S. 4th Infantry Division.
While Allied soldiers from the United Kingdom and Canada fought in the blood-soaked Normandy Campaign between June 6 and Aug. 25, 1944, they were still bottled up by the German Army 50 miles west of Paris on Liberation Day, as this original U.S. Army Situation Map demonstrates.
However, Ambassador Kushner's error pales in comparison to the misinformation that Gen. Charles De Gaulle disseminated in a famous speech in Paris on that historic day.
The Free French leader erroneously declared that Paris was liberated "by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies."
First of all, there were no "French armies" fighting in France in the summer of 1944, as Germany had imprisoned "up to two million French POWs between 1940 and 1945."
The overwhelming majority were captured during the Nazi armies' six-week blitzkrieg, across the northern half and entire Atlantic coast of France, in the spring of 1940.
Secondly, between the American, British and Canadian D-Day landings on and behind the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, and the liberation of Paris eleven weeks later, the only French division that fought was Gen. Philippe Leclerc's Second Armored.
The other 38 Allied divisions in this monumental World War II victory were Americans, 22; British, 12; Canadians, 3; and Poles, 1.
Of the approximately 230,000 Allied casualties in the Normandy Campaign, 135,000 were Americans, including 29,000 killed.
The United Kingdom suffered 65,000 casualties, including 11,000 killed.
Canadians incurred 18,000 casualties, including 5,000 killed.
France had approximately 1,000 fatal and nonfatal casualties in two weeks of combat.
(One of America's honored dead is my father’s first cousin, Simon Levy, who was killed in August 1944, and is buried beneath a Jewish Star in the American Brittany Cemetery.)
Furthermore, Gen. Leclerc's Second Armored Division didn't land in Normandy until Aug. 1, nearly two months after D-Day.
That same day, Gen. George Patton's Fourth and Sixth Armored divisions spearheaded the breakout from Normandy through Avranches, as this official U.S. Army map shows.
Many other U.S. divisions immediately joined the August 1944 blitzkrieg-in-reverse, which freed not only Normandy, but four other regions of France: Brittany; Land of the Loire; Central Loire Valley; and Isle of France.
(My father, Barney Schulte, fought with the crack Sixth Armored Division in France, Belgium and Germany.)
In sharp contrast, the French Second Armored Division only entered combat during the Battle of the Falaise Gap, which was waged between Aug. 11 and 20, 1944, and which saw Allied soldiers and airmen inflict tens of thousands of casualties on the German forces.
On Aug. 22, 1944, there were six American divisions on the outskirts of Paris, the same day that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower changed his mind about deliberately bypassing the French capital, after meeting with Gen. De Gaulle.
The supreme allied commander on the western front made the correct decision, as the American Army could not leave a German-occupied Paris in its rear, nor allow its destruction as occurred that same month in Warsaw.
Consequently, the French Second Armored Division was allowed to dash through 120 miles of American-controlled territory to free Paris.
De Gaulle's third unacceptable error on Liberation Day was that his nonexistent armies spearheaded France's liberation and anonymous allies played a secondary role:
"The enemy totters but he is not yet beaten . . . It would not even be enough, after what has happened, if with the help of our dear and admirable allies we chased him out of our country."
His fourth major falsehood concerned the composition and successes of the American and French soldiers who landed in southeast France on Aug. 15, 1944 in "Operation Dragoon."
Again, the misguided French leader seemingly exaggerated his country's role in this major battlefield victory and totally ignored the Americans’ predominant role:
"This is why the great French army from Italy has landed in the south and is advancing rapidly up the Rhone valley."
In fact, on Aug. 25, 1944, the three French divisions that were fighting were on the verge of capturing the main Mediterranean ports, Toulon, and Marseille.
Simultaneously, the U.S. 3rd, 36th and 45th infantry divisions, who were the first to storm ashore on D-Day (June 6, 1944), had advanced 70 miles up the Rhone valley to just south of Grenoble.
This lightning blitzkrieg campaign concluded in mid-September 1944 with these American veteran divisions having advanced 450 miles from the French Riviera to Germany's southwest border near Mulhouse.
In conclusion, Americans must regularly commemorate, and insist that our former and current allies acknowledge, the historical fact that roughly 90% of France was freed in the summer of 1944 by the superhuman heroism and ultimate sacrifices of our soldiers, pilots, and sailors.
Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Reports — More Here.
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