Héring — Paris open city, 13 June

General Pierre Héring, military governor of Paris since late May 1940, commands the "fortified region of Paris" — on paper 200,000 men, in reality an exhausted and ill-equipped territorial infantry. On the morning of 13 June, German vanguards are reported at Senlis, some forty kilometres to the north.

Generalissimo Weygand settled the matter on 11 June: Paris is declared an open city. The troops are to evacuate without fighting, to spare the capital the fate of Warsaw in 1939 or Rotterdam on 14 May. Defending Paris in its suburbs would cost tens of thousands of civilian lives and the destruction of the city.

For an officer, the order carries a humiliating edge. But the practical stakes for Héring are now these: how to carry out this abandonment without provoking street fighting or a collapse of public order, while the remaining population must be held and the transition to the occupier managed without incident.