On August 24, 1944, the vanguard of the 2nd Armored Division of the US Army – a vanguard made up mostly of Spanish exiles – entered German-occupied Paris. The Parisians breathed a sigh of relief, not only because they had been under occupation for four years, but because they had risen up against the German garrison for eleven days, and they were beginning to run out of ammunition.
That would have ended in carnage, which would happen shortly after in Warsaw, if it were not for the audacity of Charles de Gaulle and General Leclerc, commander of the 2nd Armored Division, who accelerated the liberation of the city. With the former's support, Leclerc disobeyed his American superiors, who preferred to concentrate efforts on pursuing the Wehrmacht directly toward the Rhine border, and diverted his men toward Paris. Although displeased, Eisenhower had to change his plans and send the 4th Infantry Division after Leclerc's footsteps to prevent him from being left alone.
Thus we arrive at the morning of August 25, and a character named Lucien Sarniguet, a captain of the Fire Brigade. Sarniguet, who was 45 years old at the time, had been waiting for that moment for a long time; Like many, yes, but he had a more personal reason. He had not forgotten the morning of June 13, 1940, when the Germans forced him to go through the shame of having to remove the tricolor flag from the top of the Eiffel Tower to replace it with a Reichskriegsflagge, a war flag with a swastika in the center.
The monument was a national symbol, so the Nazis were quick to change its flag, turning it into a permanent and humiliating reminder of their rule over France. They prohibited access to the public, with Wehrmacht soldiers being the only ones who could enjoy the viewpoint and eat in the restaurant.
When Hitler made his triumphant visit, on June 23, 1940, he did not miss the opportunity to take a photo from the Chaillot palace, with the tower in the background. He would have liked to go up to the observation deck, but he gave up when they told him that the elevators were not working. Shortly before the fall of Paris, Étienne Marc, the director of the monument, cut the cables and destroyed all the electrical and mechanical equipment he could.
During the four years that the occupation lasted, that swastika over the sky of the capital was the obsession of firefighter Sarniguet. As his daughter, Jeanne-Marie Badoche, said in an interview on TV3 in 2019, she was not talking about anything else: “I have to be the one to return the flag, I have to be the one to return the flag…”.
And finally, in mid-August 1944, listening to the clandestine radio, he learned that the Leclerc Division was approaching the city. He didn't have a flag on hand, so he sewed one using some old sheets that he had dyed a rather dull red and blue, allowing for the dyes available in times of war. On the 25th, when they saw the first Sherman tanks appear, he and four companions left for the tower. It was a dangerous route, since here and there there was crossfire with the defenders, who were still resisting stationed in some buildings.
Upon arriving, at the pillar of the tower that faces the city, they warned some sentinels, so they discreetly crept to the west side, and from there they began the hasty ascent of the 1,671 steps. According to journalist Joseph Harris in his book The Tallest Tower: Eiffel and the Belle Epoque (1989), halfway there they were surprised by the sound of bullets whistling beside them and bouncing off the steel beams. They did not come from below, but from the École Militaire, where a German detachment had entrenched itself.
We do not know how much of this is true, since the Military School is at the other end of the Champ de Mars, perhaps too far away for them to be warned, and, furthermore, the shots would have alerted the sentinels below. This part of the story is confusing, but no less than the one that follows.
The official story is that it was Sarniguet who replaced the swastika, and this is stated on a commemorative plaque on the tower, but in his book Harris tells something else. According to him, they were almost at the top when they saw a couple of patriots who had gone ahead of them. The firefighter jumped the steps three at a time, but he could not prevent those two, who turned out to be officials from the Naval Museum, from hoisting the tricolor before him. The frustration lasted only a few seconds, and soon they were all hugging and cheering France around the mast.
It doesn't matter who raised the flag, or that it was small and poorly sewn. As Sarniguet's daughter said, the important thing is that on the 25th she was already there to receive the liberators. George Buis, a French tank captain, expressed the emotion the soldiers felt when they saw the tower for the first time: “We felt like the crusaders seeing the walls of Jerusalem.”
