In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris,
Le Monde has a special 8-page insert on
Paris the Insurgent, the main article of which is called
The Victory of the People and of the Tanks ("the people", as in "the people of France" or "the French people", not as in "person" in the plural).
In those eight pages, replete with photographs, there is not a single picture of an American (or a British) soldier (although one can spot American or British flags in a picture or two)…
In the article The Men of August 25, there is not a single non-French allied leader mentioned (the four main "actors" being Charles de Gaulle, Philippe Leclerc, Rol-Tanguy, and Germany's Dietrich von Choltitz)
Of nine titles proposed in the suggested reading section, only two books concern the Allies as main characters, and one of those is in effect a book about the story of Robert Capa's D-Day pictures.
Not until the eighth and final page do we see articles concerning the United States, and they are ambivalent at best. The first concerns the common interests and the ambiguous relations between Paris and Washington, the second is an interview of historian Denis Peschanski, a research director at the CNRS, concerning the fact that "the way it was carried out, the liberation of Paris was not in the plans of General Eisenhower". Charles de Gaulle managed to change that, Dieu merci!
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