'It's a hidden story.' An invisible army set the stage for the liberation of Paris from the Nazis:
They didn't know about the bunker with a massive door as thick as a bank vault that served as a command post for the chief of the Resistance in the French capital. They didn't know all the secrets of an underground world defined by codes, assumed names and identities that covered the tracks of saboteurs and fighters.
The dank complex of cement rooms was built in the 1930s to serve as a shelter to ensure city services in the event of bombings that ultimately didn't occur. But on June 14, 1940, the Nazis moved into town, and hoisted their flag emblazoned with a swastika above the Eiffel Tower. "It's a hidden story," she said."If you're Resistance, you leave as few traces as possible. So there are pseudonyms ... there are double lives that are completely separate."
More invisible were the ordinary citizens who risked their lives to pass pamphlets or messages, or to kill and be killed. Riffaud was spotted as she escaped on her bicycle, then arrested, tortured and imprisoned before being freed in a prisoner exchange days before the liberation of the city."To carry out an action like that isn't playing with dolls," she said. But with Paris rising from its torpor following the Normandy D-Day landings in June — changing the tide of war — the message went out that acts"to encourage the population" were needed.On Aug.
The liberation of Paris was both joyous and chaotic, with competing forces even within the Resistance.
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