“It is clearly the most spectacular transfer operation in our national history: on August 25, 1944, the French Résistance offered its heroïsm and its dead to the entire Paris population and the whole Nation, thus allowing all French people to find solace and absolution in the mythology of a capital that had liberated itself, a military triumph of a unanimously resisting France. The relegation of American soldiers and other foreigners who had fought in the streets of Paris, the collective erasure of the triumphant welcome of Maréchal Pétain on the Champs-Elysées a mere four months earlier, and the hurried sanctification of a mostly unknown de Gaulle would participate in making such a massive mystification possible. There is not doubt that it was necessary in the context of a wounded nation and its traumatized capital city; after all, what national narrative is more compelling than one of a population that sets itself free?” Dov Alfon, Libération, 24 Aug 2024
