Charles de Gaulle was as large in height (at 6’4”) as he was in popularity among the French people. A hero of WW I, where he escaped German prisoner-of-war camps no less than four times, he was a tank commander in the defense of Paris in WW II and fled to Britain when the German government took over. From there, he continued to call on the French citizenry to resist the occupiers, though he could do little militarily to help them out until after the allies landed in Normandy beach to begin liberating Europe.

On this day, August 26, in 1944, de Gaulle entered a very newly liberated Paris — not even fully cleared yet, as he had to dodge bullets from a couple snipers lurking in the area. Braving the dangers, thousands of ecstatic Parisians came out to hail him.

The Allied plan since Normandy was to bypass and surround Paris without going deep into it — a lesson on urban warfare that was reinforced by the German debacle in Stalingrad in the the winter of 1942-43. But at the approach of the Allied armies, the French people rose up against the German occupiers, and one of the French generals under command of the allied forces decided to split his force off to make a run towards the city. The Allied high command had no choice but to follow him.