“Is Paris burning?” is the question Hitler asked over and over as the French Second and American Fourth Divisions battered their way into the city.
Few moments in history are as stirring as the Allied liberation of Paris, yet few people are aware of how narrowly—and how miraculously—the city escaped Hitler’s secret plan to reduce it to ashes. Is Paris Burning? reconstructs, in meticulous and riveting detail, the network of fateful events—day by day, moment by moment—that saved the City of Light.
Bestselling authors and renowned journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre spent three years researching this book, drawing on French Resistance radio messages, German military records, countless interviews, and secret correspondence between de Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. Here they re-create the drama, the fervor, and the triumph that heralded one of the most dramatic events of our time.
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"Yet another riveting foray into nonfiction. Prior to reading this book, I did not know much about the liberation of Paris during WWII. I was fascinated to learn how desperate Hitler was to have the city destroyed before the Allies could take control of it. And, had it not been for the refusal of Dietrich von Cholitz, the general in charge of Paris, to become a scapegoat of history, he would have had his wish. The Nazis had mined all the bridges in Paris and all of the famous landmarks (The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral), and all it would have taken to decimate the city was the order from von Cholitz. Thank God he thought better of it!"
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Jennifer (4 out of 5 stars)