June 23, 1940

Hitler's tour of Paris

Hitler makes a dawn propaganda tour of occupied Paris

The most famous photograph of German victory was taken before much of the occupied city had woken up. The whole visit was over in roughly three hours.

04:05 to 10:30

Martin Bormann's contemporary diary records departure for the airfield at 04:05 on 23 June 1940, a flight to Paris, inspections of Les Invalides, La Madeleine and the Opéra, and a return flight to Hitler's field headquarters at 10:30.

The French institutional history puts the Paris portion at roughly 06:00 to 08:15; a USHMM archival-film description gives about three hours in the city.

This was not a public victory parade. Hitler toured an almost empty occupied city.

Two architects and a sculptor

The party included the sculptor Arno Breker, the architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler, senior officers and Nazi officials. They visited or passed the Opéra, Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe, Les Invalides and Napoleon's tomb, the Panthéon, Notre-Dame, the Louvre, Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur.

At the Trocadéro, Hitler posed with Speer and Breker against the Eiffel Tower while Heinrich Hoffmann's photographers and a German newsreel crew recorded the scene. He did not go up the tower — its lift cables had been severed before the occupation.

Why the date was argued about

Participants' postwar memoirs conflict: Breker, Christa Schroeder and Heinz Linge gave 23 June; Giesler gave 24 June; Speer and Nicolaus von Below gave 28 June. French institutional history accordingly lists 23 or 28 June.

The strongest evidence for the 23rd is Bormann's contemporaneous diary, which records the Paris trip under that date; the Deutsches Historisches Museum also dates it there.

The visit produced no military or administrative decision in the city. France had signed the armistice the previous day, though the ceasefire did not take effect until 25 June.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited Date disputed

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Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

The date has long been disputed because participants’ postwar memoirs conflict: Breker, Christa Schroeder and Heinz Linge gave 23 June; Giesler gave 24 June; Speer and Nicolaus von Below gave 28 June.
French institutional history consequently lists 23 or 28 June. The strongest evidence for 23 June is Bormann’s contemporaneous diary, which records the Paris trip under that date; the Deutsches Historisches Museum also dates it to 23 June.