Photo of the Day

It is June 23, 1940.

France has capitulated after Nazi Germany’s six-week assault.

An armistice was signed yesterday, ending the fighting.

Left: Hitler (hand on side) and German officials look at WWI French Marshal Ferdinand Foch's memorial statue before entering the railway carriage in order to start the negotiations for the 1940 armistice at Rethondes in the Compiègne Forest, France. The armistice will be signed the next day (June 22) and Hitler will not attend. Right: German officials prepare the railway carriage for the armistice signing.

The signing took place in the train carriage

in which German officials had signed the armistice ending World War I.

An intentional humiliation.

French officials sign the armistice with Germany in the same train carriage in which Germany had signed the armistice ending the fighting in WWI. German government photo, June 22, 1940.

Now, Hitler strolls down the Trocadéro,

in the heart of Paris,

and poses for a picture

in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler, and Arno Breker on Trocadéro in front of the Eiffel Tower, June 23,1940.

The Eiffel Tower had been the symbol of Paris

since its opening five decades before,

when it served as the centerpiece of the 1889 World’s Fair.

During the Fair,

the Tower was bathed in hundreds of gaslights in the evenings

and beacons beamed the colors of the French flag.

"Germany is victorious on all fronts." 1941

Now, the Tower will soon display Nazi symbols.

Another intentional humiliation.

The construction of the Tower had been a personal triumph

for its French engineer, Gustave Eiffel,

who had defied dire predictions that he would fail.

Eiffel had drawn inspiration for the Tower’s design

from a wooden tower built on New York’s 42nd Street

for the 1853 World’s Fair.

When his Tower opened, Eiffel exalted in the international acclaim.

Eiffel, left, with others at the Tower's summit during the World's Fair.

As all visitors to the Tower know,

the view of Paris from the top is exhilarating.

But it is a view that Hitler would never see.

Among the Eiffel Tower’s marvels were its unique diagonal elevators constructed by the European branch of New York’s Otis Elevator Company.

French partisans managed to sever the Tower’s elevator cables

prior to the Nazi entrance into Paris.

[A small, but potent act of symbolic defiance.]

So, Hitler had to content himself with a ground-level view.

Hitler's "Nero Decree" ordering the destruction of cultural landmarks and infrastructure in Nazi-occupied territories to prevent their use by advancing Allied forces, March 19, 1945.

And when he ordered the destruction of the Tower in March 1945,

with the fall of Nazi Germany imminent,

his order was refused.

Wermacht General Dietrich von Choltitz, center, the last German commander in occupied France, refused the order to destroy Parisian landmarks and notified Allied forces that he would surrender the city peaceably when they entered. These actions earned Choltitz the title, "Saviour of Paris."

Hitler would soon be gone from the Earth,

but the Eiffel Tower will remain.

Paris City Vision photo.

Vive la France!

******************************

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda