The North of France under the Occupation, 1940-1944
Home /Background /Historical reminders /The Occupation

A lightning liberation

The Allied landings in Normandy on 6th June 1944 were hailed with relief.

On 13th June, the campaign to bomb London with German V1 rockets from ramps in the Pas-de-Calais began.

The Resistance multiplied their sabotage efforts, the Germans responded with executions and internment. On 1st September, when the Allied troops were close, a final convoy, the "train from Loos", took 870 men to the camps of the Reich.

The Nord and the Pas-de-Calais were basically liberated in five days (from 1st to 5th September 1944) by British, American, Canadian and Polish troops.

However, the Canadians had some very heavy fighting before they were able to seize the pockets of German resistance on the coast at the end of September (Boulogne, Cap Gris-Nez, Calais). Dunkirk remained under siege until 9th May 1945, and was the last French town to be liberated.

British tank in a street in Douai, the day of liberation (2nd September 1944).

March of Resistance fighters on the liberation of Arras (2nd September 1944).

Republican law was rapidly re-established.

The purging, carried out according to a legal framework, was moderate, which provoked frustration in public opinion. As in 1918, the two northern departments were among those which had suffered the most destruction. The Reconstruction, as twenty years earlier, was very quick.

However, the Nord—Pas-de-Calais, affected by the crisis in its traditional industries (mines, metallurgy, textiles), did not experience to the full the "30 glorious years" of the French economy.

Ruins in Boulogne-sur-Mer (1945).

Général de Gaulle visits Lille (October 1944); on the right of the photo, the Republic’s representative for the Nord—Pas-de-Calais, Francis-Louis Closon.