German forces entered Paris on June 14, 1940, meeting no resistance; the French government had already evacuated, declaring the capital an open city to spare it destruction. Swastika banners rose over the Eiffel Tower within hours. The occupation that followed reshaped French politics, spawned the Vichy collaborationist regime, and ignited a resistance movement that would fight in shadows until liberation in August 1944.
Parisians woke on June 14, 1940, to an eerie quiet. Millions had already fled south in the exodus of previous weeks, and those who remained watched from shuttered windows as German columns rolled down empty boulevards. The French government, unwilling to see the city reduced to rubble as Warsaw had been, declared Paris open and abandoned it without a fight.
By afternoon, a swastika flag flew from the Eiffel Tower, visible for miles. German soldiers posed for photographs at the Arc de Triomphe and along the Champs-Élysées, tourists in uniform. Adolf Hitler himself would visit weeks later, touring Napoleon's tomb and the Opéra Garnier in a brief, triumphant sightseeing trip.
The occupation installed a puppet government at Vichy under Marshal Pétain and imposed curfews, rationing, and the machinery of the Holocaust that would deport over 75,000 French Jews. Yet Paris also became a crucible of resistance—clandestine newspapers, sabotage networks, and escape lines for downed Allied airmen all took root beneath the occupiers' boots, setting the stage for the city's jubilant liberation four years later.