Was Paris burned down?

Author: (American) Collins, (French) Lapierre, translated by Dong Leshan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: "Is Paris Burning?" This was the furious question Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, asked his Chief of Staff, General Jodl, in the "Wolf's Lair" bunker in East Prussia (Rastenburg) on August 25, 1944, the day Paris was liberated. In just two days, he had just ordered the newly assigned German commander of Paris, General von Choltitz, to hold Paris to the last man and die with the city; shortly before, he had sent explosives experts to the world's most beautiful city to plant mines and explosives, planning to implement scorched-earth policies in case of defeat, burning down the entire city along with its many historically significant magnificent buildings and artistic treasures to the ground. "Is Paris Burning?" vividly and detailedly depicts the entire battle for the liberation of Paris in August 1944. The two authors, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, are journalists for Newsweek in the United States and Paris Match in France. They strive for factual accuracy in their work, spending nearly three years collecting materials, reviewing military archives from the United States, France, and Germany, and interviewing more than 800 people from the highest-ranking officials like Eisenhower, de Gaulle's senior aide, and von Choltitz, to ordinary soldiers and Parisian civilians. They used the firsthand experiences of 536 of them, making this work verifiable in every detail, with every person accounted for and every sentence well-sourced. On the other hand, they leveraged their journalistic expertise to write engaging and captivating articles, making readers feel as if they are reading an exciting thriller that they can't put down. As a work of reportage, it can be considered a model of the genre.