HOW PARIS DIDN'T BURN

AS THE ALLIES APPROACHED PARIS HITLER NEEDED A COMMANDER OF WHOM HE COULD BE SURE. 

He chose General Dietrich von Choltitz, who razed Rotterdam and laughed as he forced Russians to bombard their own homes:

Photo from a Polish account

When Parisians rose up to free their city themselves...

    Is Paris Burning? Trailer

...Hitler ordered Choltitz to destroy it, Notre-Dame and the Louvre included.

The commander had mines placed everywhere, including under the bridges. Blowing them up would flood the city and drown one or two million of its three million people:

 -- According to the Franco-German movie Diplomacy 

by Volker Shlondorff with Niels Arestrup and Andre Dussolier, 2014

Diplomacy trailer

Hitler telephoned Choltitz eight times, screaming, Paris brennt?
("Is Paris burning?"). A few days later ordered Warsaw blown up meter by meter, as punishment for its uprising:

Start of the Polish film Kanal by Andrej Wajda, 1958

Choltitz eluded the order: "Ja, mein Fuhrer, I'm going to do it,

as soon as I've evacuated the German wounded..." "I'm still evacuating them..."

He passed a message to the Allies, imploring them to come immediately before Hitler replaced him:

Is Paris Burning? trailer

 They had meant to skirt Paris, but changed their plan:

Zoom

Crowds of French patriots line the Champs Elysees to view General Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division passes through the Arc du Triomphe, after Paris was liberated on August 26, 1944 (by Jack Downey, U.S. Office of War Information)

Choltitz survived the war. When asked 20 years later why he broke his oath of obedience, he answered, 

"I was a soldier, not a criminal. If I had thought that destroying Paris would help Germany win the war, I would have done it without a second's hesitation. But I knew it was lost, and I did not wish to go down in History as the person who destroyed such beauty."

# # #

He lived on the fourth floor of the Hôtel Meurice, minutes from place Vendôme. From his windows he viewed this sublime panorama:  

Claude Abron

The view extends beyond the Eiffel Tower.

The ripples of the past are endless:

• Choltitz saves Paris because its beauty moves him.

• The view from his hotel windows allows that contemplation. 

• The hotel is on that site to be near the jewelers' wealthy patrons. 

• The jewelers are there to be near their international clientele.  

• For many of those visitors a tryst with a ballerina is part of the Parisian experience.

The ballerinas demand jewels...

So we should say,

"Thank Heaven for little girls!"

Degas ballet exhibit at the musée d'Orsay

End of this chapter 
and almost the end of the blook. 

*     *     *

But first, two stories

VI.

"Don't you have an agenda?"