Word: choltitz
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Died. General Dietrich von Choltitz, 71, a stubby, impassive Junker who was known as the "smasher of cities" for leading blitzkriegs against Rotterdam and Sevastopol, became military chief of Paris in 1944, and was commanded by Hitler to repel the enemy or leave the city "a blackened field of ruins," but chose for the first time to disobey an order and secretly invited the Allies to enter Paris in order to save it, while Hitler angrily demanded, "Is Paris burn ing'?"-the words later made famous by the book and the movie, which will open in the U.S. this...
...material inherent in the story: World War II, Paris, a good-guy Nazi (and quite a few bad-guy Nazis), underground intrigues, and a triumphant deliverance. Hitler has ordered Paris destroyed if it cannot be held--the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, all of it. Even disciplined portly General von Choltitz (Gert Forbe) balks at the task. Finally (because he comes to the conclusion that Hitler is mad) he betrays the city to the Allies and it's all over but the shouting. Producer Ray Stark could have made a documentary or he could have made a movie about von Choltitz...
...Hollywood production unit has ground out the on-the-spot scenes for Is Paris Burning? The end is in sight, if Parisian nerves can stand up till then. This week, in perhaps the most chilling re-enactment of all, the Fiihrer himself confronts his Paris commandant, General Dietrich von Choltitz, and orders him-once he can no longer defend the City of Light -to leave it "nothing but a blackened field of ruins." The actor who plays Hitler, Billy Frick, is so exact a look-alike that he is afraid to leave the set except mustacheless and in mufti...
...cannot stand on my hands," he says, "but I feel certain that if I were acting a part which required me to stand on my hands, I could do it." His Paris Burning producers, he recalls, wanted him "to speak French or English for the Von Choltitz part, but I could not; it would change things." Probe's intuition has proved bang-on; his spitting out of the traditional Junker officer's accent is breathtakingly authentic...
...PARIS BURNING? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. The absorbing story of Hitler's determined, demented plot to blast the city of Paris to "a blackened field of ruins" rather than see it liberated. Following orders, General Dietrich von Choltitz went so far as to plant the explosives. But then he obeyed his conscience instead of his Fiihrer and delivered the city to the Allies...