Paris liberation came as an uncertain, dangerous, anticlimactic moment

Evidence

The sounds came closer and closer — and suddenly, one hot day in mid-August, the Germans had gone. Parisians were unsure at first what was happening, especially as they still heard gunfire scattered around the city. On Wednesday 23 August, Sartre and Beauvoir walked to the office of the Resistance journal Combat to meet Camus, now the paper’s literary editor: he wanted to commission a piece about the Liberation from them. They had to cross the Seine to get there; halfway across the bridge they heard the crack of gunshots and ran for their lives. But tricolours were now flying from windows, and the next day broadcasts from the BBC announced that Paris was officially liberated. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 520

Categorization

• CANDY: Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus nearly shot while crossing the Seine on Liberation day is a vivid, tellable anecdote.
• XREF: connects to: Some crises that nearly escalated to war ended peacefully through avoidance; The Great Blackout produced euphoria and solidarity rather than panic — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 983; The Phoney War felt eerily livable and distant rather than urgent — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 189

Broader Connections

• Some crises that nearly escalated to war ended peacefully through avoidance #exemplifies (0.82)
• The Great Blackout produced euphoria and solidarity rather than panic #complicates (0.78) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 983
• The Phoney War felt eerily livable and distant rather than urgent #complicates (0.78) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 189