On August 29, 1944, soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 28th Infantry Division marched through Paris in the Victory Parade held days after the city’s liberation from German occupation. The “Keystone Division,” formed 24 abreast after assembling in the Bois de Boulogne the previous night, moved up Avenue Hoche, passed the Arc de Triomphe, and proceeded down the Champs‑Élysées before continuing toward assigned combat positions northeast of the capital.
The march was more than a ceremony. Allied command routed the division through Paris as a public display of American military strength and Allied solidarity at a moment when the fighting was continuing east of the city. The 28th Infantry Division became the first American division to parade through Paris, while French troops, resistance fighters, and the French 2nd Armored Division had played central roles in the liberation itself.
Huge crowds lined the route and greeted the American columns with cheers, flowers, embraces, and cries of “Vive les Américains!” For troops who had entered combat in Normandy only weeks earlier, the procession offered a brief and extraordinary public celebration before the campaign resumed across northern France and eventually into Germany.
Photographs of the disciplined American ranks advancing beneath—or toward—the Arc de Triomphe remain among the enduring images of Paris’s liberation: a record of popular relief, Franco-American goodwill, and the Allied advance that was still driving toward the German border. The image is especially memorable because the soldiers were not simply on parade; they were moving through a liberated capital on their way back to war.
Image: U.S. Army soldiers of the 28th Infantry Division marching on the Champs‑Élysées during Paris’s Victory Parade, August 29, 1944. National Archives image credit is preferable to a generic Shutterstock credit when you are using a period photograph.
