Dietrich von Choltitz

Dietrich von Choltitz was the German general who commanded Paris in August 1944 and surrendered the city instead of destroying it. He came from an aristocratic Prussian military family and served in the Royal Saxon Army in the First World War. He was in Rundstedt's Army Group South during the invasion of Poland, and in 1940 his regiment took part in the airborne assault on Rotterdam, which was bombed flat. He commanded at the siege of Sevastopol in 1942, where his regiment was reduced to a fraction of its strength, and later served in Italy and Normandy. He described himself afterwards as having carried out destruction on the Eastern Front, and there is nothing in his earlier record to suggest squeamishness. Hitler appointed him military governor of Paris on 7 August 1944 with orders to hold it and, if it could not be held, to leave it a field of ruins. Demolition charges were placed at the bridges and principal monuments. Choltitz did not fire them. He surrendered to Free French forces at the Hôtel Meurice on 25 August. Why he refused has been argued ever since. He claimed he had judged Hitler insane and had acted to spare a great city, and the Swedish consul Raoul Nordling negotiated with him throughout. Critics note that he lacked the troops and explosives to carry out the order in full, that his family was hostage to the regime under Sippenhaft, and that his memoirs were written for a postwar audience. He spent two years as a prisoner and died in Baden-Baden in 1966.

• Lived: 1894 CE – 1966 CE
• Nationality: German
• Roles: military