AP Was There: Allied forces liberate Paris from Nazis

This story was first published after Allied troops entered Paris on Aug. 25, 1944 to liberate the French capital from Nazi occupation. The Associated Press is republishing a version of the story to mark the 75th anniversary of the important moment in World War II, along with wartime photos . It was the first witness account published in the U.S. press, and was passed through field censors.

Street fighting raged through the heart of Paris today as American and French columns drove into the city from the south amid a tumultuous welcome from hundreds of thousands of Parisians.

The first French column to enter the city reached Luxembourg at 10:20 a.m. The Germans, the collaborationist militia and the French Gestapo organization opened fire with machine guns, rifles and pistols and the battle was on.

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 1944 file photo, French girls rush to greet American soldiers upon their arrival in Paris. The fighting for the liberation of Paris took place from August 19 to August 25, 1944. The French Resistance staged an uprising against the Nazis, leading attacks against German soldiers and vehicles and building barricades in the streets of the French capital. Towers of Notre Dame are in background at right. (AP Photo, File)

An American infantry column drove to Notre Dame at 11 a.m. in a spectacular ground attack to close in on strongholds still defended by the embattled Germans and the Vichy French militia.

The columns fought toward the center of the city where 5,000 French Forces of the Interior (the French Resistance) and city police have held out for the past week.

Machine guns and rifles cracked on all sides as the column I was with drove to within a block of the Luxembourg.

FILE - This Aug. 26, 1944 file photo shows members of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) shoot at German snipers from a window in Paris. The fighting for the liberation of Paris took place from August 19 to August 25, 1944. (AP PhotoPeter J. Carroll, File)

Joyous, happy throngs who greeted the entrance of the tanks and infantry with a thundering welcome fled to the safety of buildings, and within a few minutes the streets that had been choked with humanity, laughing and crying over the liberation, were bare battlegrounds.

As I write this story, the Germans are still holding out in the area on both sides of the Seine halfway along the Champs-Elysees, Place de la Concorde, Qua d'Orsay, Tuileries, gardens of the Louvre, the Madeleine, the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the Hotel Crillon.

French patriots have a grip on the Ile de la Cite, the Palais de Justice, the Prefecture of Police, the Prefecture of the Seine, most of the Mairies (neighborhood town halls) and the factory district.

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 1944 file photo, a truck load of Parisians waving flags and carrying Vive De Gaulle banners drives through the streets of a madly rejoicing Paris. The fighting for the liberation of Paris took place from August 19 to August 25, 1944. The French Resistance staged an uprising against the Nazis, leading attacks against German soldiers and vehicles and building barricades in the streets of the French capital. (AP Photo, File)

But Frenchmen are fighting Frenchmen as well as Germans in liberating a city wild with happiness over the freedom which they waited for four years.

There was so much confusion and excitement over the entrance into the city that it is difficult to give a coherent account of the events that moved so swiftly, once the French armored column began rolling through the heavy morning fog that made vehicles look like prehistoric monsters appearing out of the swamps of creation.

But when the last enemy resistance crumbled at the gate to Paris, then this heart of France went mad — wildly, violently mad with happiness.

FILE - In this Aug. 26, 1944 file photo, gendarmes and F.F.I. hold back crowds of people as they throng the streets to see General Charles De Gaulle in Paris. The fighting for the liberation of Paris took place from August 19 to August 25, 1944. (AP PhotoLaurence Harris, File)

All the emotions suppressed by four years of German domination surged through the people. The streets of the city as we entered were like a combined Mardi Gras, Fourth of July celebration, American Legion convention and New Year's Eve in Times Square all packed into one.

Our column began to roll at 7 a.m. from Longjumeau, six miles south of Paris. A French captain stopped all correspondents one mile from town and insisted he had orders that no one without a written permit could enter the city. He told three British correspondents they would be shot if they drove by without a pass.

As American colonel heard the story and said the captain was acting without proper authority. I drove to the blockade and suddenly my jeep lurched forward into the column (of troops). Unfortunately it was too late to turn back so I kept going.

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 1944 file photo, General Charles De Gaulle, center, salutes the Tricolor after placing his wreath on the Tomb of the French Unknown Soldier of the last war, at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The fighting for the liberation of Paris took place from August 19 to August 25, 1944. The French Resistance staged an uprising against the Nazis, leading attacks against German soldiers and vehicles and building barricades in the streets of the French capital. (AP PhotoAndrew Lopez, File)

Two miles farther the column halted. Forward elements had run into a German strongpoint and mines on the road.

French Brig. Gen. Jacques Leclerc and his staff went into conference. Tanks wheeled and started to outflank the position, but after a while they returned because they ran into the route of an American infantry advance.

Then the column began to roll again. The strongpoint had been knocked out ahead of us. And at 9:57 a.m. my jeep rolled through the gates into Paris.

Never do I expect to see such scenes as I saw on the streets of Paris. There was only a narrow lane through which the armor could roll. Men and women cried with joy. They grabbed the arms and hands of soldiers and cheered until their voices were hoarse.

When the column stopped I was smothered, but pleasantly, with soft arms and lips giving not one kiss but the usual French double one. They hugged me and my jeep driver and pinned French tricolors on us, and left us exhausted, with our bosoms covered with emblems and ribbons.

One old man came up, saluted, and said with tears in his eyes: "God bless America. You have saved France."

Men and women, old and young, and children stormed the jeep every time the column stopped. And they were wild with emotion.

Crowds were banked from the center of the streets to the sidewalks in a colorful, cheering throng which stretched for miles. There seemed to be no end and apparently everyone in Paris except the Germans and collaborationists was standing there to cheer, shout, cry and leave themselves exhausted with happiness.

Our column moved to a point one block from the Luxembourg Gardens. Then from all sides burst machine-gun fire. From housetops and windows guns rattled. Machine guns of tanks opened up in reply. We leaped from the jeep and took cover behind a tank.

Jerry Beatson of Rockford, Ill., was beside me and leveled his carbine at the top of the building. The gun cracked in my ear.

"There's one ---- up there," he cried, and kept firing at the rooftop.

Bullets rattled on the streets and glanced off with ugly whines.

The crowds, which a few minutes before lined the streets, melted as if a blast from a furnace had hit a snowbank. Then the streets were terribly lonely and barren except for armor with guns clattering.

My driver and I leaped into a jeep and raced back down the street, but another burst of machine-gun fire sent us diving for the curb. We felt bare and exposed there in the street.

FFI resistance leaders crouched and ran from door to door, pointing to the rooftops and windows.

Up there, shooting down on us were the milice (Vichy collaborators) who were helping the Germans defend the city. One Frenchman said there were many German snipers in civilian clothes.

Red Cross aid men dressed in white ran out of a doorway with a stretcher. A nurse in starched white followed them. They picked up a wounded man and laid him on a stretcher while waving a Red Cross flag.

An FFI member ran up to me and cried in English: "Give us arms and ammunition. We want guns and bullets. That's all we ask. ... We haven't enough ammunition and most of us have only pistols."

Ahead of us, patriots crouched along the buildings and answered the enemy fire. Lying there, I felt lonely and lost in the city which all of us had dreamed of entering as a joyous occasion.

The drive on Paris began at 7 a.m. yesterday under sullen, drizzling skies. The French and American columns had moved into position on Wednesday afternoon facing the enemy's position west of Paris.

The Germans did not have much in front of us — but enough to make the armor move cautiously, and occasionally artillery would pound gun positions along the way.

Our column avoided the main road to Versailles and turned into a secondary road leading to the Grand National Highway running south of the city to Orleans. Other columns of armor, assault guns, half-tracks and supply trains fanned out on other roads. The historic move on paris was under way.

The column moved in lurches, going forward for short distances, then stopping, either for reconnaissance or for guns to engage strongpoints. Rain glistened on the dark green trees and hedges and gave the countryside a freshly washed appearance.

Ins small towns people crowded along the streets despite the rain, to wave tricolors and to cheer each vehicle that passed. Never have I seen more joyous faces than those along the road to Paris. It was a triumphal, exciting and colorful march.

Pretty girls stood on the roadside and tossed flowers at the vehicles. As the column would stop, they would deck the tanks and armored trucks with flowers until they seemed to be camouflaged as mobile flower pots. Farmers tossed fresh tomatoes and apples to the troops.

Sergt. Bob Fraley of Des Moines, Iowa; Private Ray Rooney of Glen Ellyn, Ill. And Pvt Harry Grant of Hamburg, Ark., sat in a jeep watching this outburst of emotion at the edge of the war.

"This is the first real holiday I've had in weeks," Farley said. "We've been doing reconnaissance up where the fighting really was tough. But this is like a circus."

Suddenly there was an uproar in the streets. Down the road came the French in lightweight summer uniforms which I last saw in the desert and Sicily. Most of them were middle-aged or older, but they looked well-fed and in excellent physical condition.

A ripple of excitement ran through the crowds.

The Maquis marched down the street with four women whose heads were bald as babies. The crowd jeered and heaped scorn on these women because they had kept company with German soldiers. One of the women glared defiantly at the crowds.

"That woman," someone said, "had a husband in Germany as a prisoner. He escaped and returned to her but she betrayed him to the Germans and was shot."

The other women hung their heads and stumbled along with their faces ashen and ugly from fear and embarrassment.

Late in the day the Germans shelled the town and sent the crowds scurrying to cover. Two shells burst squarely in the main street but the casualties fortunately were light among the civilians.

All night the guns dueled, but this was the enemy's last stand before Paris.

For more AP coverage of World War II: https://www.apnews.com/WorldWarII

KISKUNHALAS, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar says a crucial election next week where he's facing pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will be a “referendum” on whether Hungary continues on its drift toward Eastern autocracies, or can retake its place among the democratic societies of Europe.

Magyar, once an Orbán ally, poses the most serious threat to the nationalist prime minister's hold on power since he took office in 2010.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Magyar said the European Union's longest-serving leader has led the country on a “180-degree turn” in recent years, endangering its Western orientation while cozying up to Moscow.

Yet despite that drift, “Hungarians still see that Hungary’s peace and development are guaranteed by membership of the European Union and NATO,” Magyar said. “I think this really will be a referendum on our country's place in the world.”

Magyar spoke to the AP on Thursday following an election rally by his center-right Tisza party in Kiskunhalas, a small city of around 25,000 on Hungary's southern great plain. It was one of hundreds of rallies he's held in settlements big and small across the country, a campaign blitz that has him visiting up to six towns a day ahead of the April 12 election.

Orbán has gained a reputation as an inveterate disruptor within the EU for his frequent vetoes of important decisions. He has campaigned by sounding the alarm on a myriad of external dangers he says are threatening Hungarians — the war in Ukraine, a cabal of EU bureaucrats and financial elites aligned against Hungary, and an immigration crisis ever on the horizon.

Magyar, who is leading in most polls, has focused on issues that affect voters' everyday lives, like Hungary’s faltering state health care and public transportation sectors and what he describes as rampant government corruption.

At each of his rallies, he charges Orbán and his nationalist-populist Fidesz party with making Hungary the “poorest and most corrupt” country in the EU — and depicts a “peaceful, humane and functioning” country that is within reach.

Yet alongside that domestic message, Magyar has increasingly portrayed Orbán’s brinksmanship with the EU, and his drift toward Russia, as matters of critical importance for the country’s future.

“I think that Tisza will have an overwhelming electoral victory, because even Fidesz voters do not want our country to be a Russian puppet state, a colony, an assembly plant, instead of belonging to Europe,” he said.

Magyar and his party's meteoric rise caught many Hungarians by surprise. For nearly a decade and a half, a broad slate of fractured opposition parties had tried and failed to mount a serious threat to Orbán's hold on power.

While opposition politicians often slammed Orbán during debates in parliament, they rarely made efforts to win over his base of support in the rural countryside. Frustrated after a string of bitter losses, many opposition voters descended into political apathy.

Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer and former Fidesz insider, was previously married to an Orbán ally who served as Hungary’s justice minister. After working for several years as a diplomat in Brussels, he returned to Hungary and took positions in state institutions, gaining familiarity with the workings of Orbán's system.

But then, in the wake of a political scandal in 2024 involving a presidential pardon to an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case, Magyar publicly broke with Orbán's party, accusing it of overseeing entrenched corruption and capturing Hungary's institutions.

He quickly founded the center-right Tisza party — named for Hungary's second-largest river — which, only four months after Magyar's break into electoral politics, won 30% of the vote in European Parliament elections.

As Tisza's popularity grew, a chant heard at its rallies became a motto for its rise: “The Tisza is flooding.”

While Magyar has cast his task in the election as dismantling Orbán's autocratic system, he has promised to keep some of the prime minister's policies he views as positive, such as a fence along the southern border to keep out migrants, and a popular utility reduction program.

Still, his party — a member of the European Parliament's largest, center-right group — diverges from the constellation of far-right political movements in Europe and beyond that view Orbán as a shining example of nationalist populism in action.

In a sign of U.S. President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's admiration for Orbán, Vice President JD Vance is set to visit Budapest on Tuesday in support of his reelection.

Many EU leaders are watching Hungary's election in the hopes that Orbán will be defeated.

His frequent vetoes — which most recently included blocking a major, 90-bill euro ($104-billion) EU loan for Ukraine — have often been to please his euroskeptic base, Magyar said, “vetoing just to veto so he can say at home that he is vetoing.”

The prime minister's conduct has led to renewed calls within the EU to reform the bloc’s foundational treaties by reducing the number of decisions that require unanimity — a way to buttress against the paralysis that can be caused by intransigent member states.

Magyar said that under a Tisza government, European leaders can expect a “constructive position,” but one that is “critical and willing to debate. We want to be there at the table.”

Despite Orbán's exploitation of the EU's unanimity rules, the ability to veto important decisions is a “valid option,” he continued, adding: “I think the European leaders have no problem with this, they have a problem with the unnecessary troublemaker role.”

“The task of a Hungarian prime minister at any given time is to represent Hungarian interests, and if necessary, to represent them forcefully,” he said. “Whatever it costs.”

Orbán has confounded, and even angered, nearly every other EU leader with his conciliatory approach to Russia and closeness to President Vladimir Putin. Some EU officials, and many of his opponents at home, have accused him of forsaking his commitments to the bloc on Moscow’s behalf.

As nearly every EU country cut off supplies of Russian fossil fuels following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary, along with Slovakia, maintained and even increased supplies — drawing ire from many countries who accused them of helping finance the war.

While Magyar has condemned Hungary's drift toward Moscow, as well as reports that Russian secret services are meddling in the election to tip it in Orbán's favor, he said his future government will pursue a “pragmatic” approach toward Russia.

“Pragmatism means that we have no say in Russia’s internal affairs, and they don’t have any say in our affairs,” he said. “We are both sovereign countries, and we respect each other, but we don’t have to like each other.”

Magyar has criticized Orbán's government for failing to diversify its energy mix, and advocated for reaching new agreements and constructing new infrastructure to bring oil and gas from other sources into landlocked Hungary.

Still, he said, “this does not mean that we must stop using Russian oil tomorrow. It means that the European Union’s resources must be used well.”

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar addresses people during an election rally in Kiskunhalas, Hungary, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar addresses people during an election rally in Kiskunhalas, Hungary, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar speaks during an interview with the Associated Press, Thursday, April 2, 2026, in Kiskunhalas, Hungary. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar speaks during an interview with the Associated Press, Thursday, April 2, 2026, in Kiskunhalas, Hungary. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)