Is Paris Burning?

Is Paris Burning? is a 1964 book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre that recounts the final days of the German occupation of Paris in August 1944 and the events leading up to the city's liberation by the Allied forces, the Free French Forces and the internal Resistance movements. Although it reads as a historical narrative, it rests on extensive research: the authors interviewed dozens of witnesses and participants and drew on military reports, war diaries and memoirs from all sides.

The title comes from the question Adolf Hitler reportedly asked his generals at the Rastenburg headquarters in East Prussia on 25 August 1944, when he refused to accept the loss of Paris after four years of occupation. The military situation had become untenable for the Germans. General Dietrich von Choltitz, the city's military governor, had been ordered to resist to the last man and to destroy the principal monuments with explosive charges, as well as to raze the districts where the German army met resistance or support.

The book is organised in three parts. The first examines the political and military situation at the start of August; the second narrates, day by day, the fighting between 19 and 25 August, when the German garrison surrendered; the third covers 26 and 27 August, when de Gaulle consolidated his position as leader of the liberated French state. The account is built from vignettes that show the conflict from many viewpoints: that of the Parisians, Leclerc's soldiers, Eisenhower, Hitler and, above all, Von Choltitz, whose refusal to carry out the order to destroy the city is regarded as decisive. The work is also noted for the everyday details that evoke the city's atmosphere in those days.

The book was widely read, and in 1966 René Clément adapted it into a film with a large international cast.