🇫🇷 A Christmas Day massacre
During the night of 25/26 December 1943, a group of young people held a clandestine Christmas dance party at the château d'Habère-Lullin in a small village in the hills of the Haute-Savoie region of France.
Dance parties had been banned by the occupation authorities. 1/6 Many of the young men present had refused to join the obligatory work service (STO) that saw thousands of young French men sent to work in German factories. Instead, they took to the hills, either hiding out in farms or joining maquis resistance groups. 2/6

🇺🇸 American justice - December 23, 1944 🧵

Three German soldiers who had been caught behind American lines in American uniforms, are tied to wooden stakes and shot near the village of Henri-Chapelle, Belgium.
1/5 The three German infiltrators, Unteroffizier Manfred Pernass, Oberfähnrich Günther Billing, and Gefreiter Wilhelm Schmidt had been part of Operation Greif under the leadership of Otto Skorzeny, the man who had led the daring mission to rescue Mussolini in September 1943.
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The other side of liberation

Most people are familiar with the images of civilians celebrating the end of four years of occupation as Allied forces broke out of Normandy and began pushing the Germans out of France.
There was, however, a dark side, seen in numerous photos of women being humiliated in public displays of vengeance, but also many extrajudicial killings. Here are some stories of the "epuration sauvage", or wild purges.
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#WW2 One of the best known photos is that taken by Robert Capa as American forces liberated Chartres in mid August 1944.
Simone Tousseau is seen being led through the city holding her baby.
She was accused of both "horizontal" and active collaboration. The baby's father was a soldier, killed in Belarus the previous month and she had worked for the local Sicherheitsdienst as a secretary and was believed to have denounced locals to the Gestapo.
In many ways she was lucky - after being roughed up and shorn, she was taken away by the police and served some time in prison before eventually being stripped of her civic rights for ten years.
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🇫🇷 Pour l'amour, Lyon, 21 October 1943.
Lucie Aubrac's husband Raymond has now been in the hands of the Gestapo for four months.
Time is running out and he will soon disappear into the night and fog of the Nazi concentration camp system... 1/8 Lucie was born into a working class family in Paris in June 1912. Her father, Louis Bernard, saw action in the Great War and was badly wounded in 1915.
Her parents supported Lucie and her sister in the pursuit of their studies and after studying at the Sorbonne, whilst at the same time working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, she passed the tough competitive examination for the recruitment of associate professors and found work at the University of Strasbourg.
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🇫🇷 A child in the Resistance

Josette Torrent seen here with her parents (left) and sister Micheline was nine years old when war broke out and her father Michel mobilised into the French army.
After the Armistice in June 1940, the family fled from St Malo in Brittany to where Michel was waiting in Perpignan.
1/5 The family settled back into life with their now demobbed father who had found a job in a large department store in the city.
On 1 September 1942, Josette returned home from school to find her father suffering from the pain of a stomach ulcer. He had an important job to do that day and now had no choice other than tell his beloved daughter a secret, he was in the Resistance.
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He died for England, 17 August 1940 🇺🇸

The previous day, the Luftwaffe had once more launched multiple attacks on southern England, hitting airfields and the Chain Home radar station at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.
During the attack on RAF Tangmere, American volunteer Pilot Officer William Fiske of No. 601 Squadron saw his Hurricane fighter hit and a fire broke out in the cockpit.
He crash landed at Tangmere and was brought out of the plane alive, but died the next day from surgical shock.
1/7 William "Billy" Fiske was born into a wealthy banking family in Chicago on 14 June 1911.
He travelled extensively at a young age, attending school in France, and discovered winter sports in Switzerland and, by the time he was 16, he had represented the USA at the St Moritz winter olympics and come away with a gold medal as driver of a five-man bobsled team.
He also took part in the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, USA and as driver of a four-man team, came away with a second gold.
An invitation to the 1936 Winter games in Germany was turned down as "Billy" was opposed to Hitler's regime.
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15 August 1945 - Japan
Sub-Lieutenant Fred Hockley RNVR, a Seafire pilot who had been shot down that day, is taken to the mountains near the town of Ichinomiya.
It is now nine hours since Emporer Hirohito announced Japan's surrender...
1/7 Born on 4 March 1923, he lived at 12 Hempfield Road in Littleport, Cambridgeshire with his parents George and Hannah and sister Kathleen.
Upon leaving the local grammar school he worked as a clerk at the nearby railway station and then joined the Royal Navy.
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🇺🇸 🇫🇷 Marseille, France, 14 August 1940

American citizen, Varian Fry, opens the Centre Americain de Secours (American Center for Relief) in the port city of Marseille in the Vichy-government controlled unoccupied zone.
It will establish an escape network that goes on to save an estimated 2,000 Jewish and ant-Nazi refugees, many of whom were artists and intellectuals.
1/8 Fry was born in New York City on 15 October 1907 and by the age of nine, already showed a humanitarian streak when he held a fund raiser for the American Red Cross during World War One.
He went on to study at Harvard and whilst there, was introduced to Eileen Avery Hughes, his senior by seven years and editor of the Atlantic Monthly (now The Atlantic) who he married in 1931.
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The Great (SOE) Escape 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇺🇸

In the early hours of 16 July 1942, eleven French and British SOE agents, held in a French prison camp at Mauzac in the Dordogne, make a successful break for freedom. 1/8 A wave of arrests in October 1941 in the non-occupied zone saw many SOE agents fall into the hands of the Vichy police. Among them was Georges Bégué, the first SOE F Section agent to be parachuted into France in May 1941. 2/8

29 June 1940 - Hermann in Paris and the Rose thorn in his side...

It has now been two weeks since the Germans marched into Paris and people are slowly becoming accustomed to the sight of German troops enjoying a drink at the terrace cafés.
One of Paris' most famous restaurants, sees Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and his entourage arrive.
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Göring is in Paris to see what art he can loot, as he has already done in Amsterdam.
The French museums had already began evacuating some their most precious works, and in one, a French woman would become a particular thorn in the side of the Nazi plunderers.
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21 June 1940
Adolf Hitler flies in to Compiègne in northern France and is taken by car to a clearing in a nearby forest where, just 21 years and 7 months before, an armistice was signed to cease hostilities in a war that had seen so much death and destruction.
The clearing at Rethondes has been carefully prepared. SS troops line the road leading to the area where the railway carriage has been pulled out of its memorial building. A Nazi flag covers the Alsace-Lorraine memorial with its inscription
"TO THE HEROIC SOLDIERS OF FRANCE. DEFENDERS OF THE COUNTRY AND OF RIGHT. GLORIOUS LIBERATORS OF ALSACE-LORRAINE."
That of Maréchal Foch, is left uncovered, as if to witness the terrible defeat of France.
1/6 Present at the clearing is American journalist and writer William L. Shirer. He types down what he sees. He is seen here (left) under a tree with the building that housed the carriage in the background.

"The time is now, I see by my notes, 3:18 PM in the forest of Compiègne. Hitler's personal standard is run up on a small post in the center of the circular opening in the woods. Also in the center is a great granite block which stands some three feet above the ground. Hitler, followed by the others, walks slowly over to it, steps up, and reads the inscription engraved in great high letters on that block. Many of you will remember the words of that inscription. The Führer slowly reads them, and the inscription says: "HERE ON THE ELEVENTH OF NOVEMBER 1918 SUCCUMBED THE CRIMINAL PRIDE OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE. VANQUISHED BY THE FREE PEOPLES WHICH IT TRIED TO ENSLAVE."
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20 June 1940 - a day of Nazi infamy

German forces are now advancing towards the city of Lyon which has been declared an open city.
Général Olry, commanding the French Alpine army, sees the Lyon front as an essential lynchpin in the defence of the front line in the Alps that has been under attack from the Italians since 10 June.
Olry therefore orders units to the north and south of Lyon to fight to the end.
One such unit to do so in the village of Chasselay is the 25e Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais, made up of colonia7l troops with a white officer cadre.
1/ The Tirailleurs put up a staunch fight, holding up the Germans for a day. On the 20th, the fight is over and the French officers tell their men to lay down their arms. The Germans are furious as Lyon had been declared an open city and they were not expecting resistance.
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The eve of the 'Great Crusade' 5 June 1944

Like every day at 9.15 pm French time, the opening notes of Beethoven's 5th, forming the Morse for V for Victory, sound across the airwaves of BBC's Radio Londres.
The speaker of the 'Ici Londres, , Franck Bauer, then reads out personal messages that are known to individual Resistance groups...
1/8 BBC Radio Londres had begun using the message system back in September 1941 when SOE radio operator Georges Bégué sent back the first message of this type.
The idea was simple, at the start of the programme each evening, which brought general news from the Allied side of the war to people in occupied France, messages only known to specific groups or networks were read out in what were presented as personal messages.
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Hell in Paradis - 27 May 1940

After suffering heavy losses crossing the Aire canal in the Béthune sector. SS Totenkopf troops face a rearguard action by men of the 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment, 1st Royal Scots and the 8th Lancashire Fusiliers, along a defensive line in the hamlets of Riez du Vinage, Le Cornet Malo and Le Paradis.
Men of the Royal Norfolks hold out in a farmhouse and fight until out of ammunition before surrendering to SS troops of the Totenkopf division.... they are gathered and led down the road.....
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99 prisoners of war are lined up against a barn wall a little further down the road. In the meadow facing them are machine guns.
An order is barked out by the unit's commander, Fritz Knöchlein and the guns open up.
Only two men will survive, Privates William O'Callaghan and Albert Pooley, who play dead under the bodies of their comrades.
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A traitor's return

In the weeks following the German capitulation, French POWs, forced labourers and deportees started to be repatriated.
Some, like Paul Pradier, tried to slip back into France pretending to be someone else because they had a dark past to hide....
1/6 Pradier decided not only to become a collaborator, but aged 19 became a policeman for the SS Sipo-SD in the Dordogne, infilitrating maquis resistance groups and then denouncing them, as well as finding Jewish people that were hiding out in the countryside.
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Forgiveness. 10 June 1944 - 12 May 1945

On the evening of Friday 9 June, 19-year old André Désourteaux waved goodbye to his parents and siblings and set off from his village to stay in Limoges where he was starting work early the next day.
It would be the last time he saw them, because after lunch SS troops arrived and by the time they had left, 643 men, women and children were dead. 18 of them were members of Andrés family.
The village was called Oradour-sur-Glane.
1/6 When André finished his shift at the end of the afternoon, he waited for the tram to arrive to take him back to Oradour.
It never arrived.
Instead he went to the train station and put his bike on a train that took him to a village five miles away.
Cresting a hill, he saw that the church had burned down, and people warned him that the Germans had been, but the scale of the events were as yet unknown.
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🇬🇧 The Dame of Sark
On 10 May 1945, a small British delegation of three officers arrived on the small island of Sark in the Channel Islands to take the German surrender.
Sibyl Hathaway, the feudal lady of the island, was present and the officers asked her if, as they were short of men, if she would take command of the 275 men of the German garrison.
Lieutenant Colonel K. Allen asked her if she could manage a few days without British troops. Her answer was.... “As I have been left for nearly five years,” she said, “I can stand a few more days.”
1/8 When France fell in June 1940, the Channel Islands were demilitarised, deemed as having no strategic importance. Some people chose to take the offer of evacuation, but on Sark, Sibyl Hathaway and her husband held a public meeting to state that they would remain, and many local people decided to do the same.
The Germans arrived on 3 July 1940. It was an easy catch, as the island's sole defender was 70-year old John Perrio, a donkey-borne old soldier armed with an ancient rifle.
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4 May 1945 - The race to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
Units of the US 3rd ID and 101st Airborne, and the French 2nd Armored Div are engaged in a race to be the first to Berchtesgaden.
During the night, the French form a column of the 12 Company Régiment de marche du Tchad (RMT), and Sherman tanks of the Régiment de chars de combat (RCC).
On board the Sherman named Bautzen, is 25-year old Robert Constant, originally from the French city of Limoges and who has been in action from Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the Colmar Pocket and the advance across southern Germany. 1/4 At 2 p.m., the French column reaches the river Saalach, the last barrier before Berchtesgaden which is now only 15 kilometres away.
However, the bridge has been blown and in front are Americans from the 3rd ID in the process of bridging the river and who, of course, are not going to let the French be first across... 2/4

21 April 1945 - Meeting a monster

Norbert Masur, a German-born Jew and Swedish representative to the World Jewish Congress flew in to Germany to meet with the architect of the Holocaust Heinrich Himmler.
His plane landed at Tempelhof airport Berlin on 19 April at the same time as Soviet forces were pushing into the capital's eastern and southern suburbs. 1/4 Masur was taken to Hartzwalde some fifty miles north of Berlin and not far from the women's concentration camp of Ravensbrück.
The meeting was set up by, and at the estate, of Himmler's physio therapist, Felix Kersten.
Kersten had used his unique access to Himmler throughout the war to intervene and save some Jews and homosexuals from extermination. 2/4

A surprise attack - and a link to the Titanic
Granville, the night of 8/9 March 1945 was one like many others since the small port town's liberation by US forces on 31 August 1944.
However, out at sea, a German seaborne force led by Kapitänleutnant Carl-Friedrich Mohr from the occupied Channel Islands, was approaching to raid the town. 1/7
The German garrisons on the Channel Islands had been cut off since the end of the Battle of Normandy and supplies, as well as morale, were low. In December, four German paratroopers and a sailor, held in the Granville POW camp had made a daring escape to Jersey by taking a landing craft from the harbour. 2/7

🇺🇸 Iwo Jima - the morning of 23 February 1945
Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal takes what is arguably the most iconic photo of the Second World War as a group of Marines attach the Star Spangled Banner to a pole and raise it on the summit of Mount Suribachi. Today we are going to focus on the story of the Marine seen on the left, a man who, like so many, stuggled in the post war years to shake off the demons he had encountered in combat. 1/10 PFC Ira Hamilton Hayes was born in 1923 into the Akimel O'odham (Pima) Native American people in Arizona. He enlisted into the USMC Reserve in August 1942 and went on to see combat on the Solomon Island of Bougainville before taking part in the bloody landings on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945. 2/10