title: Liberation of France

text: Established by ordinance on 17 September 1943 by the CFLN, it held its first meetings in Algiers, at the Palais Carnot (the former headquarters of the Financial Delegations), between 3 November 1943 and 25 July 1944. On 3 June 1944 it was placed under the authority of the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF), which succeeded the CFLN.


title: Liberation of France

text: In his inaugural speech, de Gaulle gave the body his imprimatur, as providing a means of representing the people of France as democratically and legally as possible under difficult and unparalleled circumstances, until such time as democracy could once again be restored. As an indication of the importance he attached to the body, de Gaulle participated in about twenty sessions of the Consultative Assembly in Algiers. On 26 June 1944, he came to report on the military situation after the D-Day landings, and on 25 July, he was present at its last session on African soil before its move to Paris.


title: Liberation of France

text: Restructured and expanded after the liberation of France, it held sessions in Paris at the Palais du Luxembourg between 7 November 1944 and 3 August 1945.


title: Liberation of France

text: The GPFR served as an interim government of Free France from June 1944 through liberation and lasted till 1946.


title: Liberation of France

text: The PGFR was created by the Committee of National Liberation on 3 June 1944, three days before D-day. It moved back to Paris after the liberation of the capital in August 1944.


title: Liberation of France

text: Most of the goals and activity of the GPFR are related to the post-Liberation period, so this subtopic is covered in more detail in the Aftermath section below, in section Provisional Government of the French Republic.


title: Liberation of France

text: The first military forces brought to bear in the liberation of France were the forces of Free France, made up of colonial regiments from French Africa. The Free French forces included 300,000 North African Arabs. Two of the Big Three Allies, the United States and the United Kingdom, were next with Operation Overlord, with Australian air support and Canadian infantry in the Normandy beach landings.


title: Liberation of France

text: Individual civilian efforts such as the Maquis de Saint-Marcel helped to harass the Germans. An OSE operation hid Allied servicemen. The many scattered cells of the French Resistance gradually consolidated into a fighting force after the Normandy landings and became known as the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). The FFI made major contributions, assisting Allied armies pushing the Germans east out of France and past the Rhine.


title: Liberation of France

text: The military forces involved in the liberation of France were under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). General Bernard Montgomery was named commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all of the land forces involved in the initial invasion. On 31 December 1943, Eisenhower and Montgomery first saw the outline plan the Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC) had prepared for an invasion, which proposed amphibious landings by three divisions, with two more divisions in support. The two generals immediately insisted on expanding the scale of the initial invasion to five divisions, with airborne descents by three additional divisions, to allow operations on a wider front and to speed up the capture of the port at Cherbourg. The need to acquire or produce extra landing craft for the expanded operation meant delaying the invasion until June 1944. Eventually the Allies committed 39 divisions to the Battle of Normandy: 22 American, 12 British, three Canadian, one Polish, and one French, totalling over a million troops, all under overall British command.


title: Liberation of France

text: Despite 's call to continue the struggle, few French forces initially pledged their support. By the end of July 1940, only about 7,000 soldiers had joined the Free French Forces in England. Three-quarters of French servicemen in Britain requested repatriation.


title: Liberation of France

text: France was bitterly divided by the conflict. Frenchmen everywhere were forced to choose sides, and often deeply resented those who had made a different choice. One French admiral, René-Émile Godfroy, voiced the opinion of many of those who decided not to join the Free French forces, when in June 1940 he explained to the exasperated British why he would not order his ships from their Alexandria harbour to join :


title: Liberation of France

text: Equally, few Frenchmen believed that Britain could stand alone. In June 1940, Pétain and his generals told Churchill that "in three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken". Of France's far-flung empire, only the 43 acres of French territory of the British island of St Helena (on 23 June at the initiative of Georges Colin, honorary consul of the domains) and the Franco-British ruled New Hebrides in the Pacific (on 20 July) answered 's call to arms. It was not until late August that Free France would gain significant support in French Equatorial Africa.


title: Liberation of France

text: Unlike the troops at Dunkirk or naval forces at sea, relatively few members of the French Air Force had the means or opportunity to escape. Like all military personnel trapped on the mainland, they were functionally subject to the Pétain government: "French authorities made it clear that those who acted on their own initiative would be classed as deserters, and guards were placed to thwart efforts to get on board ships." In the summer of 1940, around a dozen pilots made it to England and volunteered for the RAF to help fight the Luftwaffe. Many more, however, made their way through long and circuitous routes to Spain or to French territories overseas, eventually regrouping as the Free French Air Force.


title: Liberation of France

text: The French Navy was better able to immediately respond to 's call to arms. Most units initially stayed loyal to Vichy, but about 3,600 sailors operating 50 ships around the world joined with the Royal Navy and formed the nucleus of the Free French Naval Forces (FFNF; in French "Forces Navales Françaises Libres": FNFL). France's surrender found her only aircraft carrier, , en route from the United States loaded with American fighter and bomber aircraft. Unwilling to return to occupied France, but likewise reluctant to join , "Béarn" instead sought harbour in Martinique, her crew showing little inclination to side with the British in their continued fight against the Nazis. Already obsolete at the start of the war, she remained in Martinique for the next four years, her aircraft rusting in the tropical climate.


title: Liberation of France

text: Many men in the French colonies felt a special need to defend France, and eventually made up two-thirds of ’s Free French Forces. Among these volunteers, influential psychiatrist and decolonial philosopher Frantz Fanon from Martinique joined ’s troops at the age of 18, despite being deemed a ‘dissenter’ by Martinique's Vichy-controlled colonial government for doing so.


title: Liberation of France

text: The contribution to France's liberation made by African colonial soldiers, who comprised 9% of the French army, was long overlooked. The North African units, dating from 1830 and grouped into the XIX Army Corps in 1873, formed part of the French Metropolitan Army. De Gaulle made a base in African territory, from which he launched the military liberation. African troops who made the largest contribution by colonial troops to the liberation.


title: Liberation of France

text: On the eve of the Second World War, five regiments of Tirailleurs Sénégalais were stationed in France in addition to a brigade based in Algeria. The "2e division colonial senegalaise" was permanently deployed in the south of France due to the potential threat of invasion from Italy.


title: Liberation of France

text: The "Armée d’Afrique" (Army of Africa) was formally a separate army corps of the French metropolitan army, the 19th Army Corps ("19e Corps d'Armée") so named in 1873. The French Colonial Forces on the other hand came under the Ministry of the Navy and comprised both French and indigenous units serving in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the French colonial empire.


title: Liberation of France

text: set up his Free French intelligence system to combine both military and political roles, including covert operations. He selected journalist Pierre Brossolette (1903–44) to head the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA). The policy was reversed in 1943 by Emmanuel d'Astrier, the interior minister of the exile government, who insisted on civilian control of political intelligence.


title: Liberation of France

text: The "Big Three" Allies of World War II, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, all fought Germany in World War II, but Soviet Union fighting on the Eastern Front played no direct role in the liberation of France, but the second front contributed to Nazi defeat.


title: Liberation of France

text: The United Kingdom and the United States fought on the Western Front, with contributions from Canadian and Australian soldiers who landed in Normandy on D-Day, as well as Australian air support.


title: Liberation of France

text: French Forces of the Interior was the formal name given by General de Gaulle to French resistance fighters in the later stages of the war; the change occurred as France, the occupied nation, became France, being liberated by the Allied armies. Regional "maquis" became more formally organized into FFI light infantry and served as a valuable additional manpower for the regular Free French forces.


title: Liberation of France

text: After the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, at the request of the French Committee of National Liberation, SHAEF placed about 200,000 resistance fighters under the command of General Marie Pierre Kœnig on 23 June 1944 who attempted to unify resistance efforts against the Germans. General Eisenhower confirmed Koenig's command of the FFI .


title: Liberation of France

text: The FFI were mostly composed of resistance fighters who used their own weapons, although many FFI units included former French soldiers. They used civilian clothing and wore an armband with the letters "F.F.I."


title: Liberation of France

text: According to General Patton, the rapid advance of his army through France would have been impossible without the fighting aid of the FFI. General Patch estimated that from the time of the Mediterranean landings to the arrival of U.S. troops at Dijon, the help given to the operations by the FFI was equivalent to four full divisions.


title: Liberation of France

text: FFI units seized bridges, began the liberation of villages and towns as Allied units neared, and collected intelligence on German units in the areas entered by the Allied forces, easing the Allied advance through France in August 1944. According to a volume of the U.S. official history of the war, In Brittany, southern France, and the area of the Loire and Paris, French Resistance forces greatly aided the pursuit to the Seine in August. Specifically, they supported the U.S. Third Army in Brittany and the Seventh U.S. and First French Armies in the southern beachhead and the Rhône valley. In the advance to the Seine, the French Forces of the Interior helped protect the southern flank of the Third Army by interfering with enemy railroad and highway movements and enemy telecommunications, by developing open resistance on as wide a scale as possible, by providing tactical intelligence, by preserving installations of value to the Allied forces, and by mopping up bypassed enemy positions.


title: Liberation of France

text: As regions of France were liberated, the FFI provided a ready pool of semi-trained manpower with which France could rebuild the French Army. Estimated to have a strength of 100,000 in June 1944, the strength of the FFI grew rapidly, doubling by July 1944, and reaching 400,000 by October 1944. Although the amalgamation of the FFI was in some cases fraught with political difficulty, it was ultimately successful and allowed France to re-establish a reasonably large army of 1.3 million men by VE Day.


title: Liberation of France

text: Approximately 2,000 British and 3,000 American airmen downed in western Europe evaded German capture during the war. Airmen were assisted by many different escape lines, some of them large and organized, others informal and ephemeral. The Royal Air Forces Escaping Society estimated that 14,000 volunteers worked with the many escape and evasion lines during the war. Many others helped on an occasional basis, and the total number of people who, on one or more occasions helped downed airmen during the war, may have reached 100,000. One-half of the volunteer helpers were women, often young women, even teenagers.


title: Liberation of France

text: Escape and evasion lines created by the Allies specifically to assist their men, such as the Shelbourne or the Burgundy lines or those created by servicemen at large in occupied territory, such as the Pat O'Leary Line, usually focused on helping Allied servicemen. Other escape lines, grass-roots efforts by civilians to help those fleeing the Nazis, such as the Comet, Dutch-Paris, Service EVA or the Smit-van der Heijden lines, also helped servicemen but also compromised spies, resisters, men evading the forced labor impressments, civilians who wanted to join the governments-in-exile in London, and fleeing Jews.


title: Liberation of France

text: In the uplands and forests, considerable numbers of resistance fighters gathered, known as maquisards because of the maquis shrubland that sheltered them. These "redoubts" of FFI fighters initially kept a low profile, since overt acts of sabotage resulted in savage reprisals by German forces, or direct military action on a large scale. On 26 March 1944, the Maquis des Glières in Haute-Savoie were defeated by more than 3,000 troops followed by shootings and burnings of farms amongst the local population.


title: Liberation of France

text: Excluded from the planning for the Normandy Landings, and his staff devised an operation called "Plan Caïman" in which French paratroopers would join the maquisards of the Massif Central to liberate the surrounding area and from there establish contact with the invading British and US forces. The Allied planners rejected the plan on the grounds that they would not have the resources to support it. On 20 May 1944, the Maquis du Mont Mouchet in the Massif Central staged an open uprising on its own initiative and was crushed within three weeks with the usual reprisals. Despite this, on 6 June, broadcast an impassioned call to arms to the French people on the BBC, which the maquisards interpreted as a signal for overt action; a lower-key message from Eisenhower to avoid a "premature uprising" was widely ignored. As a direct consequence, in July the 4,000 FFI on the Vercors Plateau near Grenoble were attacked by a German force of 10,000 including paratroopers and troops in gliders. In the Battle of Vercors, the lightly armed French defences were overwhelmed, despite assistance from Allied agents, air-drops and special forces.


title: Liberation of France

text: Military strategy for the war as a whole was discussed among the Big Three powers, and especially among the United Kingdom and the United States, who were especially close, with numerous calls and meetings held between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In addition, the leaders of the Big Three met at conferences during the war to decide on overall military strategy.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Arcadia Conference held in Washington, D.C. from December 22, 1941, to January 14, 1942, followed the American and the British declarations of war on Japan; Japan's allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States. The main policy decisions of Arcadia included the "Germany First" (also known as "Europe first") policy that the defeat of Germany had higher priority than the war with Japan.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Second Washington Conference in June 1942 confirmed a decision not to open a second front in France but to first invade French North Africa as part of a joint Mediterranean strategy for an attack on Italy (described as the "soft under-belly" of the Axis).


title: Liberation of France

text: The decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion in 1944 was taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. General Eisenhower was appointed commander of SHAEF and General Bernard Montgomery was named as commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces involved in the invasion. The coast of Normandy in northwestern France was chosen as the site of the invasion.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Tehran Conference (28 November to 1 December 1943) a strategy meeting of the Big Three leaders Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill held at the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran had numerous objectives, and led to the commitment of the western Allies to open a second front in the war in the west.


title: Liberation of France

text: After the Fall of France, the battle to retake France began in Africa in November 1940. By September 1944, after the liberation of Paris and the southern France campaign and taking of Mediterranean ports in Marseille and Toulon, the country was largely liberated. The Allied Forces were driving into Germany from the west and the south. The liberation of France didn't finally end till the elimination of some pockets of German resistance along the Atlantic coast at the end of the war in May 1945.


title: Liberation of France

text: Militarily, the liberation of France was part of the Western Front of World War II. Other than scattered raids in 1942 and 1943, the reconquest began in earnest in the summer of 1944 in parallel campaigns in the north and south of France. On 6 June 1944, the Allies began Operation Overlord, the largest seaborne invasion in history, establishing a beachhead in Normandy, landing two million men in northern France and opening another front in western Europe against Germany. American forces broke out from Normandy at the end of July. At the Falaise Pocket the Allied armies destroyed German forces, opening the route to Paris. In the south, the Allies launched Operation Dragoon on 15 August, opening a new military front on the Mediterranean. In four weeks, the Germans retreated from southern France to Germany. This left French ports in Allied hands, resolving earlier supply problems in the south. Under the onslaught from both directions, the French Resistance organized a general uprising in Paris on 19 August. On 25 August 1944 Paris was liberated. The Allied forces began to push towards the Rhine. Initial rapid advances in the North stretched lines of supply in the autumn, and the advance slowed. German counteroffensives in the winter of 1944–45 such as the Battle of the Bulge slowed but did not stop the Allied armies, some crossing the Rhine in February, with heavy German losses. By late March several Allied armies had crossed and began advancing rapidly into Germany, with the end of the war not far away. With France mostly liberated, a few pockets of German resistance remained until the end of the war in May 1945.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Battle of Gabon resulted in the Free French Forces taking the colony of French Gabon and its capital, Libreville, from Vichy French forces. It was the only significant engagement in Central Africa during the war.


title: Liberation of France

text: Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa, was carried out to trap Axis forces in North Africa between two Allied armies – an Anglo-American one in the west and a British and Commonwealth one in the east; this would also permit an invasion of Italy and free the Mediterranean for shipping. It would be the first ground combat operations for American troops in the west. In a three-pronged Allied assault against Vichy régime targets in French North Africa, the landing forces of Operation Torch came in at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. Following Case Anton, French colonial governors had found themselves taking orders from the German military administration, and did so with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The American consul in Algiers believed that Vichy forces would welcome American soldiers.


title: Liberation of France

text: A Western Task Force (aimed at Casablanca) was composed of American units, with Major General George S. Patton in command and Rear Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt heading naval operations. This Western Task Force consisted of the U.S. 3rd and 9th Infantry Divisions, and two battalions from the U.S. 2nd Armored Division — 35,000 troops in a convoy of over 100 ships. They were transported directly from the United States in the first of a new series of UG convoys providing logistical support for the North African campaign.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Center Task Force, aimed at Oran, included the U.S. 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division and the U.S. 1st Armored Division—a total of 18,500 troops.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Eastern Task Force—aimed at Algiers—was commanded by Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson and consisted of a brigade from the British 78th and the U.S. 34th Infantry Divisions, along with two British commando units (No. 1 and No. 6 Commandos), together with the RAF Regiment providing five squadrons of infantry and five Light anti-aircraft flights, totalling 20,000 troops. During the landing, ground forces were commanded by U.S. Major General Charles W. Ryder, of the 34th Division and naval forces were commanded by Royal Navy Vice-Admiral Sir Harold Burrough.


title: Liberation of France

text: The plan to install Henri Giraud as governor of the freed territories did not get local support but the Vichy commander in chief of French armed forces François Darlan had been captured during the operation and was installed as High Commissioner, in return for which he ordered French forces in North Africa to cooperate with the Allies. Darlan was assassinated by an anti-Vichy monarchist and Giraud then took over. The Darlan deal triggered the invasion of Vichy France by Germany.


title: Liberation of France

text: French Tunisia had been a protectorate of France since 1881, when it became part of France's colonial empire.


title: Liberation of France

text: After the Operation Torch landings in Morocco and Algiers the Allied forces moved eastwards into Tunisia as British forces moved west following the Second Battle of El Alamein. The Axis forces in North Africa were reinforced but subsequently cut off from resupply and caught between the two armies. The Allies took Bizerte and Tunis in May 1943 and the remaining Italian and German forces in North Africa surrendered. The Allies now had all of North Africa as a base of operations against southern Europe.


title: Liberation of France

text: Except for a brief period, Corsica had been under the control of France since the Treaty of Versailles (1768). In World War II, Corsica was occupied by the Kingdom of Italy from November 1942, through September 1943. Italy initially occupied the island (as well as parts of France) as part of Nazi Germany's Case Anton on 11 November 1942. At its peak, Italy had 85,000 troops on the island. There was some native support among Corsican irredentists for the occupation. Benito Mussolini postponed the annexation of Corsica by Italy until after an assumed Axis victory in World War II, mainly because of German opposition to the irredentist claims.


title: Liberation of France

text: Although there was mild support for the occupation among collaborationists and resistance was initially limited, it grew after the Italian invasion and by April 1943 became united, and was armed by airdrop and shipments by the Free French submarine Casabianca and establish some territorial control.


title: Liberation of France

text: After Mussolini's imprisonment in July 1943, German troops took over the occupation of Corsica. The Allied invasion of Italy began 3 September 1943, leading to Italy's surrender to the Allies, with the main invasion force landing in Italy on 9 September. The local resistance signaled an uprising for the same day, beginning the liberation of Corsica (Operation Vesuvius).


title: Liberation of France

text: The Allies did not initially want such a movement, preferring to focus their forces on the invasion of Italy. However, in light of the insurrection, the Allies acquiesced to Free French troops landing on Corsica, starting with an elite detachment of the reconstituted French I Corps landing (again by the submarine "Casabianca") at Arone near the village of Piana in northwest Corsica. This prompted the German troops to attack Italian troops in Corsica as well as the Resistance. The Resistance, and the Italian 44 Infantry Division "Cremona" and 20 Infantry Division "Friuli" engaged in heavy combat with the German "Sturmbrigade Reichsführer SS". The "Sturmbrigade" was joined by the 90th Panzergrenadier Division and the Italian XII Paratroopers Battalion/ 184th Paratroopers Regiment 184th Paratroopers Division "Nembo", which were retreating from Sardinia through Corsica, from Bonifacio to the northern port of Bastia. There were now 30,000 German troops in Corsica withdrawing via Bastia. On 13 September elements of the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division landed in Ajaccio to try to stop the Germans. During the night of 3 to 4 October, the last German units evacuated Bastia, leaving behind 700 dead and 350 POWs.


title: Liberation of France

text: Operation Overlord was launched on 6 June 1944 with troops landing in Normandy. Attacks by 1,200 planes preceded an amphibious assault by more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Battle of Normandy was won due to what is still today the largest ever military landing logistical operation; it brought three million soldiers, mostly American, British, and French, over the Channel from Britain.


title: Liberation of France

text: Some of the German Army units they met in this operation were "Ostlegionen", part of the German 243rd and 709th Static Infantry Divisions, near the Utah, Juno and Sword invasion beaches.


title: Liberation of France

text: The British intelligence organization, MI9, created Operation Marathon to gather downed airmen into isolated forest camps where they would await their rescue by allied military forces advancing after the Normandy Invasion of June 6, 1944. The Comet Line, a Belgian/French escape line, operated the forest camps with financial and logistical help from MI9, which also provided support for Operation Bonaparte, another escape and evasion line for downed airmen in Normandy.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Liberation of Paris was an urban military battle that took place over the period of a week from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. Paris had been ruled by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Armistice on 22 June 1940, after which the "Wehrmacht" occupied northern and western France.


title: Liberation of France

text: As the final phase of Operation Overlord was still going on in August 1944, Eisenhower was not considering the liberation of Paris to be a primary objective. The goal of the U.S. and Anglo-Canadian armed forces was to destroy the German forces, and end World War II in Europe, to allow the Allies to concentrate their efforts on the Pacific war.


title: Liberation of France

text: As the French Resistance began to rise in Paris against the Germans on 15 August, Eisenhower stated that it was too early for an assault on Paris. He was also aware that Hitler had ordered the German military to completely destroy the city in the event of an Allied attack, and Paris was considered to have too great a value, culturally and historically, to risk its destruction.


title: Liberation of France

text: On 15 August employees of the Paris Métro, the Gendarmerie, and National Police went on strike; postal workers followed the next day. They were soon joined by workers across the city, causing a general strike to break out on 18 August. Barricades began to appear on 20 August, with Resistance fighters organizing themselves to sustain a siege. Trucks were positioned, trees cut down, and trenches were dug in the pavement to free paving stones for consolidating the barricades.


title: Liberation of France

text: Skirmishes reached their peak on 22 August, when some German units tried to leave their fortifications. At 09:00 on 23 August, under the orders of Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison and military governor of Paris, the Germans opened fire on the Grand Palais, an FFI stronghold, and German tanks fired at the barricades in the streets. Adolf Hitler gave the order to inflict maximum damage on the city.


title: Liberation of France

text: The liberation began when the FFI staged an uprising against the German garrison upon the approach of General Patton's US Third Army. On the night of 24 August, elements of General Philippe Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division made their way into Paris and arrived at the Hôtel de Ville shortly before midnight. The next morning, 25 August, the bulk of the 2nd Armored Division and the US 4th Infantry Division and other allied units entered the city. von Choltitz surrendered to the French at the Hôtel Meurice, the newly established French headquarters. de Gaulle arrived to assume control of the city.


title: Liberation of France

text: It is estimated that between 800 and 1,000 Resistance fighters were killed during the Battle for Paris, and another 1,500 were wounded.


title: Liberation of France

text: Despite repeated orders from Adolf Hitler that the French capital be destroyed before being given up, Choltitz surrendered on 25 August at the Hôtel Meurice. He then signed the official surrender at the Paris Police Prefecture. Choltitz later described himself in "Is Paris Burning?" ("Brennt Paris?") as the saviour of Paris, for not blowing it up before surrendering.


title: Liberation of France

text: The same day, Charles , President of the Provisional Government of the French Republic moved back into the War Ministry and made a rousing speech to the crowd from the Hôtel de Ville. The day after 's speech, General Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division paraded down the Champs-Élysées, while marched down the boulevard and entered the Place de la Concorde. On 29 August, the U.S. Army's 28th Infantry Division paraded 24-abreast up the "Avenue Hoche" to the Arc de Triomphe, then down the Champs Élysées, greeted by joyous crowds.


title: Liberation of France

text: The uprising in Paris gave the newly established Free French government and , enough prestige and authority to establish a provisional French Republic, replacing the fallen Vichy regime, which had fled into exile.


title: Liberation of France

text: When first planned, the campaign in southern France and the landings in Normandy were to take place simultaneously—Operation Overlord in Normandy, and "Anvil" (as the southern campaign was originally called) in the south of France. A dual landing was soon recognized to be impossible; the southern campaign was postponed. The ports in Normandy had insufficient capacity to handle Allied military supply needs and French generals under pressed for a direct attack on southern France with the participation of French troops. Despite objections by Churchill, the operation was authorized by the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff on 14July and scheduled for 15August.


title: Liberation of France

text: The goal of the southern France campaign, now known as Operation Dragoon was to secure the vital ports on the French Mediterranean coast (of Marseille and Toulon.) and pressure German forces with another front. The US VI Corps landed on the beaches of the French Riviera () on 15 August 1944 shielded by a large naval task force, followed by several divisions of French Army B (commanded by Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.).


title: Liberation of France

text: They were opposed by the scattered forces of the German Army Group G, ("HeeresgruppeG") which had been weakened by the relocation of its divisions to other fronts and the replacement of its soldiers with third-rate men outfitted with obsolete equipment. The Army was understrength, most of the units having been sent north earlier. The units that were present were spread thinly, made up of second rate units from eastern Europe ("Ostlegionen") with low morale and poor equipment. The coastal defenses had been improved by the Vichy regime and later improved by the Germans after they took over in November 1942.


title: Liberation of France

text: The FFI played a major role in the fighting. The Allied ground and naval forces were supported by a fleet of 3470 planes, mostly stationed on Corsica and Sardinia.


title: Liberation of France

text: On 14 August, preliminary landings took place in the Hyères Islands by the First Special Service Force, a joint U.S.-Canadian special-forces unit, to secure a staging area and for amphibious landing training. After sporadic resistance, driving the German garrison to the western part of the island, the Germans surrendered on 17 August. The Force transferred to the mainland, becoming part of the First Airborne Task Force. Meanwhile, French commandos were active to the west in Operation Romeo and Operation Span.


title: Liberation of France

text: Hindered by Allied air supremacy and a large-scale uprising by the FFI, the weak German forces were swiftly defeated. The Germans withdrew to the north through the Rhône valley, to establish a stable defense line at Dijon. Allied mobile units were able to overtake the Germans and partially block their route at the town of Montélimar. The ensuing battle led to a stalemate, with neither side able to achieve a decisive breakthrough, until the Germans were finally able to complete their withdrawal and retreat from the town. While the Germans were retreating, the French managed to capture the important ports of Marseille and Toulon, putting them into operation soon after.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Germans were not able to hold Dijon and ordered a complete withdrawal from Southern France. Army GroupG retreated further north, pursued by Allied forces. The fighting ultimately came to a stop at the Vosges mountains, where Army GroupG was finally able to establish a stable defense line. After meeting with the Allied units from Operation Overlord, the Allied forces were in need of reorganizing and, facing stiffened German resistance, the offensive was halted on 14September. Operation Dragoon was considered a success by the Allies. It enabled them to liberate most of Southern France in just four weeks while inflicting heavy casualties on the German forces, although a substantial part of the best German units were able to escape. The captured French ports were put into operation, allowing the Allies to solve their supply problems soon after.


title: Liberation of France

text: The First Canadian Army liberated the French coast from Normandy to the Low Countries. Hitler had ordered the troops occupying them to hold them at all costs but using isolation and coordinated bombardment, the ports were reduced.


title: Liberation of France

text: Fighting on the Western front seemed to stabilize, and the Allied advance stalled in front of the Siegfried Line ("Westwall") and the southern reaches of the Rhine. Starting in early September, the Americans began slow and bloody fighting through the Hurtgen Forest (described by Ernest Hemingway as "Passchendaele with tree bursts"—) to breach the Line.


title: Liberation of France

text: American forces fought from September until mid-December to push the Germans out of Lorraine and from behind the Siegfried Line. The crossing of the Moselle River and the capture of the fortress of Metz proved difficult for the American troops in the face of German reinforcements, supply shortages, and unfavorable weather. During September and October, the Allied 6th Army Group (U.S. Seventh Army and French First Army) fought a difficult campaign through the Vosges Mountains that was marked by dogged German resistance and slow advances. In November, however, the German front snapped under the pressure, resulting in sudden Allied advances that liberated Belfort, Mulhouse, and Strasbourg, and placed Allied forces along the Rhine River. The Germans managed to hold a large bridgehead (the Colmar Pocket), on the western bank of the Rhine and centered around the city of Colmar. On 16 November the Allies started a large scale autumn offensive called Operation Queen. With its main thrust again through the Hürtgen Forest, the offensive drove the Allies to the Rur River, but failed in its core objectives to capture the Rur dams and pave the way towards the Rhine. The Allied operations were then succeeded by the German Ardennes offensive.


title: Liberation of France

text: The pocket of La Rochelle was a zone of German resistance at the end of the Second World War. It was made up of the city of La Rochelle, the submarine base at La Pallice, of the Île de Ré and of most of the Ile d'Oléron (the southern part of the island was part of the Royan pocket).


title: Liberation of France

text: Victory in Europe was achieved on 7 May 1945. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April during the Battle of Berlin and Germany's surrender was authorised by his successor, "Reichspräsident" Karl Dönitz leader of the rump administration Flensburg Government. The act of military surrender was first signed at 02:41 on 7 May in SHAEF HQ at Reims, and a slightly modified document, considered the definitive German Instrument of Surrender, was signed on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin at 21:20 local time.


title: Liberation of France

text: By the autumn of 1944, Paris and the northern part of France were in Allied hands following Normandy campaign, and the southern part of France was free in the wake of the success of Operation Dragoon. Except for a few Atlantic pockets, the Allies were in full control of France, freeing their military forces to push eastward across the Rhine into Germany and towards Berlin.


title: Liberation of France

text: Meanwhile, liberation of most of metropolitan France unleashed several other overlapping events. The Provisional Government, already in existence since June 1944, moved back to the capital after Paris was liberated in late August, where it piloted an orderly transition back to republican government. The Vichy regime held its last meeting on 17 August 1944, before fleeing into exile in Sigmaringen, Germany.


title: Liberation of France

text: Within France, a wave of assaults, extra-judicial executions, and public humiliations followed of suspected collaborators, particularly of women who had consorted with German men. This was known as the ("wild purge"). At least 20,000 French women had their heads shorn. Many women in Normandy reported rapes by American soldiers.


title: Liberation of France

text: A series of legal purges followed, ordered by courts set up for the purpose. The first free municipal elections since before the war were organized by the Provisional Government in May 1945, and women voted for the first time. The new Constitution of the Fourth French Republic was accepted in October 1946.


title: Liberation of France

text: Under pressure from the advancing Allied forces, Pierre Laval held the last government council on 17 August 1944, with five ministers. With permission from the Germans, he attempted to call back the prior National Assembly with the goal of giving it power and thus impeding the communists and . He obtained the agreement of German ambassador Otto Abetz to bring Édouard Herriot, (President of the Chamber of Deputies) back to Paris. But ultra-collaborationists Marcel Déat and Fernand de Brinon protested to the Germans, who changed their minds and took Laval to Belfort on 20 August 1944 along with the remains of his government, "to assure its legitimate security", along with Petain, and arrested Herriot.


title: Liberation of France

text: A governmental commission directed by Fernand de Brinon was proclaimed on 6 September. On 7 September, they were taken ahead of the advancing Allied Forces out of France to the town of Sigmaringen, where other Vichy officials were already present, arriving on the 8th.


title: Liberation of France

text: Sigmaringen Castle was occupied and used by the Vichy government-in-exile from September 1944 to April 1945. Pétain resided at the Castle, but refused to cooperate and kept mostly to himself, and ex-Prime Minister Laval also refused. Despite the efforts of the collaborationists and the Germans, Pétain never recognized the Sigmaringen Commission. The Germans, wanting to present a facade of legality, enlisted other Vichy officials such as Fernand de Brinon as president, along with Joseph Darnand, Jean Luchaire, Eugène Bridoux and Marcel Déat.


title: Liberation of France

text: On 7 September 1944, fleeing the advance of Allied troops into France, a thousand French collaborators (including a hundred officials of the Vichy regime, a few hundred members of the French Militia, collaborationist party militants, and the editorial staff of the newspaper "Je suis partout") but also waiting-game opportunists also went into exile in Sigmaringen.


title: Liberation of France

text: The commission had its own radio station () and an official press (, "Le Petit Parisien"), and hosted the embassies of the Axis powers: Germany, Italy and Japan. The population of the enclave was about 6,000, including known collaborationist journalists, the writers Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Lucien Rebatet, the actor Robert Le Vigan and their families, as well as 500 soldiers, 700 French SS, prisoners of war and STO workers. Inadequate housing, insufficient food, promiscuity among the paramilitaries, and lack of hygiene facilitated the spread of numerous illnesses including flu and tuberculosis, and a high mortality rate among children. The only two French doctors, Doctor Destouches, alias (Louis-Ferdinand Céline) and Bernard Ménétrel. treated these ailments as best they could.


title: Liberation of France

text: On 21 April 1945 General de Lattre ordered his forces to take Sigmaringen. The end came within days. By the 26th, Pétain was in the hands of French authorities in Switzerland, and Laval had fled to Spain. Brinon, Luchaire, and Darnand were captured, tried, and executed by 1947. Other members escaped to Italy or Spain.


title: Liberation of France

text: Immediately following the liberation, France was swept by a wave of executions, public humiliations, assaults and detentions of suspected collaborators, known as the "épuration sauvage" (wild purge). This period succeeded the German occupational administration but preceded the authority of the French Provisional Government and consequently lacked any form of institutional justice. Approximately 9,000 were executed, mostly without trial in summary executions, notably including members and leaders of the pro-Nazi "milices". In one case, as many as 77 milice members were summarily executed at once. An inquest into the issue of summary executions launched by Jules Moch, then Minister of the Interior, came to the conclusion that there had been 9,673 summary executions. A second inquiry in 1952 separated out 8,867 executions of suspected collaborators and 1,955 summary executions for which the motive of killing was not known, giving a total of 10,822 executions. Shaving the heads of women as a form of humiliation and shaming was a common feature of the purges, and between 10,000 and 30,000 women accused of having collaborated with the Germans or having had relationships with German soldiers or officers were subjected to the practice, becoming known as ().


title: Liberation of France

text: The official "épuration légale" ("legal purge") began following a June 1944 decree that established a three-tier system of judicial courts: a High Court of Justice which dealt with Vichy ministers and officials; Courts of Justice for other serious cases of alleged collaboration; and regular Civic Courts for lesser cases of alleged collaboration. Over 700 collaborators were executed following legal trials. The initial phase of purge trials ended with a series of amnesty laws passed between 1951 and 1953 which reduced the number of imprisoned collaborators from 40,000 to 62, and was followed by a period of official "repression" that lasted between 1954 and 1971.


title: Liberation of France

text: Reliable statistics of the death toll do not exist. At the low end, one estimate is that approximately 10,500 were executed, before and after liberation. "The courts of Justice pronounced about 6,760 death sentences, 3,910 in absentia and 2,853 in the presence of the accused. Of these 2,853, 73 percent were commuted by , and 767 carried out. In addition, about 770 executions were ordered by the military tribunals. Thus the total number of people executed before and after the Liberation was approximately 10,500, including those killed in the épuration sauvage", notably including members and leaders of the milices. US forces put the number of summary executions following liberation at 80,000. The French Minister of the Interior in March 1945 claimed that the number executed was 105,000.


title: Liberation of France

text: The French municipal elections of 1945 were held in two rounds on 29 April and 13 May 1945. These were the first elections since the liberation of France and the first in which women could vote. Elections did not take place in four departments (Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, Moselle and Territory of Belfort) with recent fighting that had . In Moselle, they were postponed to 23 and 30 September, at the same time as the cantonal elections, because the end of the fighting was too These difficulties made it very difficult to compile electoral lists that included women, and there were very few by-elections before these historic dates.


title: Liberation of France

text: While the war was not yet officially over (the German surrender of May 8, 1945 was signed between the two rounds of voting), the elections took place in a difficult political and social context: the economic situation remained very precarious, not all prisoners of war had returned, and many scores were being settled in local political life. (See section Justice and retribution below.)


title: Liberation of France

text: These elections were the first test for the validity of the provisional institutions that had emerged from the Resistance.


title: Liberation of France

text: The electoral system in force was the two-round majority system, except in Paris, where elections were held under the proportional system. This election was also marked by the participation of women for the first time in France. On April 21, 1944, the right to vote had been granted to women by the French Committee of National Liberation, and confirmed by the ordinance of October 5 under the Provisional Government of the French Republic. Given the absence of 2 1/2 million prisoners of war, deportees, STO workers, and the ban on voting by career soldiers, the electorate in this election was composed of up to 62% women (although the figure of 53% is also cited). Despite the novelty of women voters, there was no particular media reaction, partly because of the difficulties related to the immediate post-war period which were of greater concern, such as returned deportees, prisoner camps, food rationing, and so on.


title: Liberation of France

text: The referendum proposed to the French by the Provisional Government (GPRF) contained two questions. The first one proposed the drafting of a new Constitution and, consequently, the abandonment of the institutions of the Third Republic. Charles de Gaulle advocated for its support, as did all political parties, excepting the radicals, who remained faithful to the Third Republic. On 21 October 1945, 96 per cent of the French voted "yes" on the first question of the referendum in favor of changing the institutions: the Assembly elected that day would thus be constituent.


title: Liberation of France

text: The second referendum question concerned the powers of this Constituent Assembly. Fearing a preponderance of communists in control over it, which would allow them to legally install a power of their own choice, General de Gaulle provided a text strictly limiting its prerogatives: its duration was limited to seven months, the constitutional plans it would draft would be submitted to popular referendum, and finally it could only bring down the government by a motion of censure voted by an absolute majority of its members. Most parties supported de Gaulle in advocating a "yes" vote, including the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), the socialists and the moderates, while the communists and radicals pushed for "no". Nevertheless, 66 per cent of the electorate approved of limiting the powers of the Assembly by voting "yes" in the referendum.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Provisional Government of the French Republic was the successor organization to the French Committee of National Liberation. It served as an interim government of Free France between 1944 and 1946, and lasted until the establishment of the Fourth Republic. Its founding marked the official restoration and re-establishment of a provisional French Republic, assuring continuity with the defunct Third Republic which dissolved itself in 1940 with the advent of the Vichy regime.


title: Liberation of France

text: The PGFR was created by the Committee of National Liberation on 3 June 1944, the day before arrived in London from Algiers on Winston Churchill's invitation, and three days before D-day. It moved back to Paris after the liberation of the capital, where its war and foreign policy goals were to secure a French occupation zone in Germany and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. This was assured through a large military contribution on the .


title: Liberation of France

text: Besides war and foreign policy goals, its principal mission was to prepare the transition to a new constitutional order, that ultimately resulted in the Fourth Republic. It also made several important reforms and political decisions, such as granting women the right to vote, founding the "École nationale d'administration", and laying the groundwork of social security in France.


title: Liberation of France

text: With regard to transition to a new Republic, the GPRF organized the 1945 French legislative election for 21 October 1945, drew up a Constitution to present to the public for approval, and organized the Constitutional referendum on 13 October 1946 in which it was adopted by the voters, thus bringing into existence the Fourth Republic.


title: Liberation of France

text: With most of the political class discredited and containing many members who had more or less collaborated with Nazi Germany, Gaullism and communism became the most popular political forces in France.


title: Liberation of France

text: The Provisional Government (GPRF) ruled from 1944 to 1946, with de Gaulle in charge. Meanwhile, negotiations took place over the proposed new constitution, which was to be put to a referendum. DeGaulle advocated a presidential system of government, and criticized the reinstatement of what he pejoratively called "the parties system". He resigned in January 1946 and was replaced by Felix Gouin of the French Section of the Workers' International (socialists; SFIO). Ultimately, only the French Communist Party (PCF) and the socialist SFIO supported the draft constitution, which envisaged a form of government based on unicameralism; but this was rejected in the referendum of 5 May 1946.


title: Liberation of France

text: For the 1946 elections, the Rally of Left Republicans (RGR), which encompassed the Radical Party, the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance and other conservative parties, unsuccessfully attempted to oppose the Christian democrat and socialist MRP–SFIO–PCF alliance. The new constituent assembly included 166 MRP deputies, 153 PCF deputies and 128 SFIO deputies, giving the tripartite alliance an absolute majority. Georges Bidault of the MRP replaced Felix Gouin as the head of government.


title: Liberation of France

text: A new draft of the Constitution was written, which this time proposed the establishment of a bicameral form of government. Leon Blum of the SFIO headed the GPRF from 1946 to 1947. After a new legislative election in June 1946, the Christian democrat Georges Bidault assumed leadership of the Cabinet. Despite DeGaulle's so-called discourse of Bayeux of 16 June 1946 in which he denounced the new institutions, the new draft was approved by 53% of voters voting in favor (with an abstention rate of 31%) in the referendum of 13 October 1946. This culminated in the establishment of the Fourth Republic two weeks later, an arrangement in which executive power essentially resided in the hands of the President of the Council (the prime minister). The President of the Republic was given a largely symbolic role, although he remained chief of the French Army and as a last resort could be called upon to resolve conflicts.


title: Liberation of France

text: France's losses during World War II totaled 600,000 people (1.44% of the population), including 210,000 military deaths from all causes, and 390,000 civilian deaths due to military activity and crimes against humanity. In addition they suffered 390,000 wounded military.


title: Liberation of France

text: Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps by the Vichy regime, where about 72,500 were killed.


title: Liberation of France

text: France emerged from World War II severely weakened economically. It had been in a period of economic stagnation even when the war broke out. By 1945 national income, in real terms, was little more than half what it had been in 1929.


title: Liberation of France

text: To aid economic recovery, the Chairman of the French Provisional Government, Charles de Gaulle, established the General Planning Commission () on 3 January 1946. The Commission implemented the Modernization and Re-equipment Plan, commonly known as the Monnet Plan after Jean Monnet, the chief advocate and the first head of the commission.


title: Liberation of France

text: To help finance imports of capital equipment and raw materials needed for France's recovery and modernization program, the country negotiated loans from the U.S. and the World Bank in 1946. Also, from 1948 to 1952, France received just under $3 billion in Marshall Plan aid.


title: Liberation of France

text: Yergin and Stanislaw argue France's post-war Modernization and Re-equipment Plan set it on the road to an "economic miracle" in the 1950s.


title: Liberation of France

text: Many leaders and collaborators of the Vichy regime were arrested, and some were imprisoned or sentenced to death. Marshall Petain's death sentence was commuted to life due to his status as a World War I hero. Pierre Laval was tried, and executed by firing squad in October 1945.


title: Liberation of France

text: Some former collaborators escaped immediate penalties or even continued conventional lives, such as Maurice Papon, who was arrested and convicted in 1998 of crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux. German war criminal Klaus Barbie, known as the "butcher of Lyon", was extradited from Bolivia in 1983. He was put on trial and sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment in Lyon.


title: Liberation of France

text: For decades prior to the 1970s modern period, French historiography was dominated by conservative or pro-Communist thinking, neither of them very inclined to consider the grass-roots pro-democracy developments at liberation.


title: Liberation of France

text: There was little recognition in French scholarship on the active participation of the Vichy regime in the deportation of French Jews, until American political scientist Robert Paxton's 1972 book, "Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944". The book received a French translation within a year and sold thousands of copies in France. In the words of French historian , the book "had the effect of a bombshell, because it showed, with supporting evidence, that the French state had participated in the deportation of Jews to the Nazi concentration camps, a fact that had been concealed by historians until then."


title: Liberation of France

text: The "Paxtonian revolution", as the French called it, had a profound effect on French historiography. In 1997, Paxton was called as an expert witness to testify about collaboration during the Vichy period, at the trial in France of Maurice Papon.


title: Liberation of France

text: Many were concerned with getting life back to the way it was, "a l'identique", as it was described, but leaders said that modernization was needed. As Jean Monnet said, "We have no choice. The only alternative to modernization is decadence." The question of what this would look like was not obvious, and was one of the core political issues, from liberation to Algerian independence.


title: Liberation of France

text: "Années folles" in 1920s Paris, as well as the many Jewish, émigré and refugee artists and writers who had formed the School of Paris between the two world wars. Marc Chagall escaped to safety in the US with the help of American journalist Varian Fry, but he was one of the lucky, and while he eventually returned to France, he never went back to Paris. The poet Max Jacob on the other hand had died of pneumonia in the camp at Drancy, and Chaïm Soutine died of a bleeding ulcer died while hiding from the Nazis in Paris.


title: Liberation of France

text: After the liberation of France, artists and writers returned, but for the most part they were other artists who made another kind of art. Their themes were no longer color, surrealism and Dada, but mirrored the industrialization of France in their exploration of abstract geometry and the influence of Rothko. Existentialist writers expressed absurdity not as a riot of surrealism but instead as an epistemology of ambiguous moral choices and rejection of outside moral authority.


title: Liberation of France

text: But Ernest Hemingway returned with the Allied army and left as a calling card a bucket of hand grenades at the door of Pablo Picasso, who had returned to Paris after the Germans overran his rural refuge; Guernica had made it impossible for him to consider a return to Franco’s Spain. Miles Davis lived in Paris after the war, and so did Norman Mailer and Samuel Beckett, Simone Signoret and Jean Cocteau. Charles de Gaulle appointed André Malraux as Minister of Information and then of Cultural Affairs.


title: Liberation of France

text: The provisional government maintained its position that the Vichy régime had been illegitimate, and therefore considered it a priority to put a Constitutional framework into place. The resulting document full-throatedly reaffirmed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and affirmed several additional rights, including the right of asylum, of unionization and of freedom of association. As of the very first municipal elections following the liberation of France, women had the right to vote, and from then forward under the Fourth Republic.


title: Liberation of France

text: The French Fifth Republic today is built upon the rights expressed in the preface to this document, which it incorporated into its 1958 constitution, and which is still in force today.


title: Liberation of France

text: The trained and disciplined Francs-Tireurs et Partisans brought into play by the Communist International after Hitler invaded Russia both helped to sway the fight and to dispel the previous perception of under the Third Republic of left-wing politicians as decadent and ineffectual, a disdain that to some extent had underlain the willingness of that government to seek the assistance of the paternalist and traditionalist Pétain, who had gained the heart of the French by prioritizing the conservation of French forces, following bloodying and bruising casualties in World War 1 on the Eastern front against Germany.


title: Liberation of France

text: Given the important role played by the Big Three in the eventual victory of the Allies, the liberation of France and of Europe led to the geopolitics of the Cold War, and to the decolonization of French and other European former colonies in Africa and elsewhere.


title: Liberation of France

text: The creation of the United Nations closely followed the end of World War II. As a successor to the League of Nations whose demise foreshadowed World War II, it did however share some of its flaws, in particular the lack of an army and therefore the means to enforce its charter.


title: Liberation of France

text: While Félix Éboué believed that his support of Free France would lead to a new relationship between France and French Africa, the French were initially inclined to dismiss the considerable contribution of African units to the war effort. In fact, on 1 December 1944, gendarmes mowed down a regiment of Tirailleurs Senegalais at the Thiaroye camp for complaining of poor conditions and demanding their back pay.


title: Liberation of France

text: Morocco and Tunisia, which were French protectorates in World War II, and with the exception of Casablanca, played a more limited role in the war, primarily in the Western Desert campaign, were able to negotiate their independence from France relatively quickly. Algeria, however, which had since 1848 been considered an integral part of France, and had a sizeable population of French settlers, suffered through an extensive and bloody war of independence.


title: Liberation of France

text: A series of events beginning 8 May 1945, the same day that Nazi Germany surrendered, triggered growing demand for independence. About 5,000 Muslims paraded in Sétif, a market town west of Constantine, to celebrate the victory. The local French gendarmerie tried to seize banners attacking colonial rule and rioting broke out. The ensuing indiscriminate French reprisals sparked further denunciations of colonial rule.


title: Terra Australis

text: Other names for the hypothetical continent have included "Terra Australis Ignota", "Terra Australis Incognit"' ("the unknown land of the south") or "Terra Australis Nondum Cognita" ("the southern land not yet known"). Other names were "Brasiliae Australis" ("the southern Brazil"), and "Magellanica" ("the land of Magellan"). Matthias Ringmann called it the "Ora antarctica" (antarctic land) in 1505, and Franciscus Monachus called it the "Australis orę" (Austral country). In Medieval times it was known as the Antipodes.


title: Terra Australis

text: During the eighteenth century, today's Australia was not conflated with Terra Australis, as it sometimes was in the twentieth century. Captain Cook and his contemporaries knew that the sixth continent (today's Australia), which they called "New Holland", was entirely separate from the imagined (but still undiscovered) seventh continent (today's Antarctica).


title: Terra Australis

text: In the nineteenth century, the colonial authorities in Sydney re-allocated the name "Australia" to New Holland and its centuries-old Dutch name eventually disappeared. Meanwhile, having lost its name of "Australia", the south polar continent was nameless for decades until "Antarctica" was coined in the 1890s.


title: Terra Australis

text: In the early 1800s, British explorer Matthew Flinders popularized the naming of Australia after "Terra Australis", giving his rationale that there was "no probability" of finding any significant land mass anywhere more south than Australia. The continent that would come to be named Antarctica would be explored decades after Flinders' 1814 book on Australia, which he had titled "A Voyage to Terra Australis", and after his naming switch had gained popularity.


title: Terra Australis

text: Ptolemy (2nd century AD) believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land, and that the lands of the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south. Marcus Tullius Cicero used the term "cingulus australis" ("southern zone") in referring to the Antipodes in "Somnium Scipionis" ("Dream of Scipio"). The land ("terra" in Latin) in this zone was the "Terra Australis".


title: Terra Australis

text: Legends of Terra Australis Incognitaan "unknown land of the South"date back to Roman times and before, and were commonplace in medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of the continent. Ptolemy's maps, which became well known in Europe during the Renaissance, did not actually depict such a continent, but they did show an Africa which had no southern oceanic boundary (and which therefore might extend all the way to the South Pole), and also raised the possibility that the Indian Ocean was entirely enclosed by land. Christian thinkers did not discount the idea that there might be land beyond the southern seas, but the issue of whether it could be inhabited was controversial.


title: Terra Australis

text: The first depiction of Terra Australis on a globe was probably on Johannes Schöner's lost 1523 globe on which Oronce Fine is thought to have based his 1531 double cordiform (heart-shaped) map of the world. On this landmass he wrote "recently discovered but not yet completely explored". The body of water beyond the tip of South America is called the "Mare Magellanicum", one of the first uses of navigator Ferdinand Magellan's name in such a context.


title: Terra Australis

text: Schöner called the continent "Brasiliae Australis" in his 1533 tract, "Opusculum geographicum". In it, he explained: Brasilia Australis is an immense region toward Antarcticum, newly discovered but not yet fully surveyed, which extends as far as Melacha and somewhat beyond. The inhabitants of this region lead good, honest lives and are not Anthropophagi [cannibals] like other barbarian nations; they have no letters, nor do they have kings, but they venerate their elders and offer them obedience; they give the name Thomas to their children [after St Thomas the Apostle]; close to this region lies the great island of Zanzibar at 102.00 degrees and 27.30 degrees South.


title: Terra Australis

text: During medieval times Terra Australis was known by a different name, that being the Antipodes. First widely introduced to medieval western Europe by Isidore of Seville in his famous book the "Etymologiae", the idea gained popularity over Europe, and most scholars did not question its existence, instead debating if it was habitable for other humans. It would later be included on some zonal Mappa mundi and intrigue medieval scholars for centuries.


title: Terra Australis

text: Explorers of the Age of Discovery, from the late 15th century on, proved that Africa was almost entirely surrounded by sea, and that the Indian Ocean was accessible from both west and east. These discoveries reduced the area where the continent could be found; however, many cartographers held to Aristotle's opinion. Scientists such as Gerardus Mercator (1569) and Alexander Dalrymple as late as 1767 argued for its existence, with such arguments as that there should be a large landmass in the south as a counterweight to the known landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere. As new lands were discovered, they were often assumed to be parts of the hypothetical continent.


title: Terra Australis

text: The German cosmographer and mathematician Johannes Schöner (1477–1547) constructed a terrestrial globe in 1515, based on the world map and globe made by Martin Waldseemüller and his colleagues at St. Dié in Lorraine in 1507. Where Schöner departs most conspicuously from Waldseemüller is in his globe's depiction of an Antarctic continent, called by him Brasilie Regio. His continent is based, however tenuously, on the report of an actual voyage: that of the Portuguese merchants Nuno Manuel and Cristóvão de Haro to the River Plate, and related in the "Newe Zeytung auss Presillg Landt" ("New Tidings from the Land of Brazil") published in Augsburg in 1514. The "Zeytung" described the Portuguese voyagers passing through a strait between the southernmost point of America, or Brazil, and a land to the south west, referred to as "vndtere Presill" (or "Brasilia inferior").


title: Terra Australis

text: This supposed "strait" was in fact the Rio de la Plata (or the San Matias Gulf). By "vndtere Presill", the Zeytung meant that part of Brazil in the lower latitudes, but Schöner mistook it to mean the land on the southern side of the "strait", in higher latitudes, and so gave to it the opposite meaning. On this slender foundation he constructed his circum-Antarctic continent to which, for the reasons that he does not explain, he gave an annular, or ring shape. In an accompanying explanatory treatise, "Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio" ("A Most Lucid Description of All Lands"), he explained:The Portuguese, thus, sailed around this region, the Brasilie Regio, and discovered the passage very similar to that of our Europe (where we reside) and situated laterally between east and west. From one side the land on the other is visible; and the cape of this region about away, much as if one were sailing eastward through the Straits of Gibraltar or Seville and Barbary or Morocco in Africa, as our Globe shows toward the Antarctic Pole. Further, the distance is only moderate from this Region of Brazil to Malacca, where St. Thomas was crowned with martyrdom.


title: Terra Australis

text: On this scrap of information, united with the concept of the Antipodes inherited from Graeco-Roman antiquity, Schöner constructed his representation of the southern continent. His strait served as inspiration for Ferdinand Magellan's expedition to reach the Moluccas by a westward route.


title: Terra Australis

text: He took Magellan's discovery of Tierra del Fuego in 1520 as further confirmation of its existence, and on his globes of 1523 and 1533 he described it as "terra australis recenter inventa sed nondum plene cognita" ("Terra Australis, recently discovered but not yet fully known"). It was taken up by his followers, the French cosmographer Oronce Fine in his world map of 1531, and the Flemish cartographers Gerardus Mercator in 1538 and Abraham Ortelius in 1570. Schöner's concepts influenced the Dieppe school of mapmakers, notably in their representation of Jave la Grande.


title: Terra Australis

text: In 1539, the King of Spain, Charles V, created the Governorate of Terra Australis granted to Pedro Sancho de la Hoz, who in 1540 transferred the title to the conqueror Pedro de Valdivia and later was incorporated to Chile.


title: Terra Australis

text: "Terra Australis" was depicted on the mid-16th-century Dieppe maps, where its coastline appeared just south of the islands of the East Indies; it was often elaborately charted, with a wealth of fictitious detail. There was much interest in Terra Australis among Norman and Breton merchants at that time. In 1566 and 1570, Francisque and André d'Albaigne presented Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, with projects for establishing relations with the Austral lands. Although the Admiral gave favourable consideration to these initiatives, they came to nought when Coligny was killed in 1572.


title: Terra Australis

text: Gerardus Mercator believed in the existence of a large Southern continent on the basis of cosmographic reasoning, set out in the abstract of his "Atlas or Cosmographic Studies in Five Books," as related by his biographer, Walter Ghim, who said that even though Mercator was not ignorant that the Austral continent still lay hidden and unknown, he believed it could be "demonstrated and proved by solid reasons and arguments to yield in its geometric proportions, size and weight, and importance to neither of the other two, nor possibly to be lesser or smaller, otherwise the constitution of the world could not hold together at its centre".


title: Terra Australis

text: The Flemish geographer and cartographer, Cornelius Wytfliet, wrote concerning the "Terra Australis" in his 1597 book, "Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum":


title: Terra Australis

text: The terra Australis is therefore the southernmost of all other lands, directly beneath the antarctic circle; extending beyond the tropic of Capricorn to the West, it ends almost at the equator itself, and separated by a narrow strait lies on the East opposite to New Guinea, only known so far by a few shores because after one voyage and another that route has been given up and unless sailors are forced and driven by stress of winds it is seldom visited. The terra Australis begins at two or three degrees below the equator and it is said by some to be of such magnitude that if at any time it is fully discovered they think it will be the fifth part of the world.


title: Terra Australis

text: Adjoining Guinea on the right are the numerous and vast Solomon Islands which lately became famous by the voyage of Alvarus Mendanius.


title: Terra Australis

text: Juan Fernandez, sailing from Chile in 1576, claimed he had discovered the Southern Continent. The "Polus Antarcticus" map of 1641 by Henricus Hondius, bears the inscription: ""Insulas esse a Nova Guinea usque ad Fretum Magellanicum affirmat Hernandus Galego, qui ad eas explorandas missus fuit a Rege Hispaniae Anno 1576" (Hernando Gallego, who in the year 1576 was sent by the King of Spain to explore them, affirms that there are islands from New Guinea up to the Strait of Magellan)".


title: Terra Australis

text: Luís Vaz de Torres, a Spanish navigator who commanded the "San Pedro y San Pablo", the "San Pedrico" and the tender or yacht, "Los Tres Reyes Magos" during the 1605–1606 expedition led by Pedro Fernandes de Queiros in quest of the Southern Continent, proved the existence of a passage south of New Guinea, now known as Torres Strait. Commenting on this in 1622, the Dutch cartographer and publisher of Queiros' eighth memorial, Hessel Gerritsz, noted on his "Map of the Pacific Ocean:" "Those who sailed with the yacht of Pedro Fernando de Quiros in the neighbourhood of New Guinea to 10 degrees westward through many islands and shoals and over for as many as 40 days, estimated that Nova Guinea does not extend beyond 10 degrees to the south; if this be so, then the land from 9 to 14 degrees would be a separate land".


title: Terra Australis

text: Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, another Portuguese navigator sailing for the Spanish Crown, saw a large island south of New Guinea in 1606, which he named La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. He represented this to the King of Spain as the Terra Australis incognita. In his 10th Memorial (1610), Queirós said: "New Guinea is the top end of the Austral Land of which I treat [discuss], and that people, and customs, with all the rest referred to, resemble them".


title: Terra Australis

text: Dutch father and son Isaac and Jacob Le Maire established the Australische Compagnie (Australian Company) in 1615 to trade with Terra Australis, which they called "Australia".


title: Terra Australis

text: The Dutch expedition to Valdivia of 1643 intended to round Cape Horn sailing through Le Maire Strait but strong winds made it instead drift south and east. The small fleet led by Hendrik Brouwer managed to enter the Pacific ocean sailing south of the island disproving earlier beliefs that it was part of Terra Australis.


title: Terra Australis

text: The cartographic depictions of the southern continent in the 16th and early 17th centuries, as might be expected for a concept based on such abundant conjecture and minimal data, varied wildly from map to map; in general, the continent shrank as potential locations were reinterpreted. At its largest, the continent included Tierra del Fuego, separated from South America by a small strait; New Guinea; and what would come to be called Australia. In Ortelius's atlas "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum", published in 1570, Terra Australis extends north of the Tropic of Capricorn in the Pacific Ocean.


title: Terra Australis

text: As long as it appeared on maps at all, the continent minimally included the unexplored lands around the South Pole, but generally much larger than the real Antarctica, spreading far north – especially in the Pacific Ocean. New Zealand, first seen by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, was regarded by some as a part of the continent.


title: Terra Australis

text: Alexander Dalrymple, the Examiner of Sea Journals for the English East India Company, whilst translating some Spanish documents captured in the Philippines in 1762, found de Torres's testimony. This discovery led Dalrymple to publish the "Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean" in 1770–1771. Dalrymple presented a beguiling tableau of the Terra Australis, or Southern Continent:


title: Terra Australis

text: The number of inhabitants in the Southern Continent is probably more than 50 millions, considering the extent, from the eastern part discovered by Juan Fernandez, to the western coast seen by Tasman, is about 100 deg. of longitude, which in the latitude of 40 deg. amounts to 4596 geographic, or 5323 stature miles [8567 km]. This is a greater extent than the whole civilized part of Asia, from Turkey to the eastern extremity of China. There is at present no trade from Europe thither, though the scraps from this table would be sufficient to maintain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain, by employing all its manufacturers and ships. Whoever considers the Peruvian empire, where arts and industry flourished under one of the wisest systems of government, which was founded by a stranger, must have very sanguine expectations of the southern continent, from whence it is more than probable Mango Capac, the first Inca, was derived, and must be convinced that the country, from whence Mango Capac introduced the comforts of civilized life, cannot fail of amply rewarding the fortunate people who shall bestow letters instead of quippos (quipus), and iron in place of more awkward substitutes.


title: Terra Australis

text: Dalrymple's claim of the existence of an unknown continent aroused widespread interest and prompted the British government in 1769 to order James Cook in HM Bark "Endeavour" to seek out the Southern Continent to the South and West of Tahiti, discovered in June 1767 by Samuel Wallis in and named by him King George Island. The London press reported in June 1768 that two ships would be sent to the newly discovered island and from there to "attempt the Discovery of the Southern Continent". A subsequent press report stated: "We are informed, that the Island which Captain Wallis has discovered in the South-Sea, and named George's Land, is about fifteen hundred Leagues to the Westward and to Leeward of the Coast of Peru, and about five-and-thirty Leagues in circumference; that its principal and almost sole national Advantage is, its Situation for exploring the Terra Incognita of the Southern Hemisphere. The Endeavour, a North-Country Cat, is purchased by the Government, and commanded by a Lieutenant of the Navy; she is fitting out at Deptford for the South-Sea, thought to be intended for the newly-discovered Island". The aims of the expedition were revealed in days following: "To-morrow morning Mr. Banks, Dr. Solano [sic], with Mr. Green, the Astronomer, will set out for Deal, to embark on board the Endeavour, Capt. Cook, for the South Seas, under the direction of the Royal Society, to observe the Transit of Venus next summer, and to make discoveries to the South and West of Cape Horn". The London "Gazetteer" was more explicit when it reported on 18 August 1768: "The gentlemen, who are to sail in a few days for George's Land, the new discovered island in the Pacific ocean, with an intention to observe the Transit of Venus, are likewise, we are credibly informed, to attempt some new discoveries in that vast unknown tract, above the latitude 40". The results of this first voyage of James Cook in respect of the quest for the Southern Continent were summed up by Cook himself. He wrote in his "Journal" on 31 March 1770 that the "Endeavour" voyage "must be allowed to have set aside the most, if not all, the Arguments and proofs that have been advanced by different Authors to prove that there must be a Southern Continent; I mean to the Northward of 40 degrees South, for what may lie to the Southward of that Latitude I know not".


title: Terra Australis

text: The second voyage of James Cook aboard explored the South Pacific for the landmass between 1772 and 1775 whilst also testing Larcum Kendall's K1 chronometer as a method for measuring longitude.


title: Terra Australis

text: Over the centuries the idea of Terra Australis gradually lost its hold. In 1616, Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten's rounding of Cape Horn proved that Tierra del Fuego was a relatively small island, while in 1642 Abel Tasman's first Pacific voyage proved that Australia was not part of the mythical southern continent. Much later, James Cook sailed around most of New Zealand in 1770, showing that even it could not be part of a large continent. On his second voyage he circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude, at some places even crossing the Antarctic Circle, showing that any possible southern continent must lie well within the cold polar areas. There could be no extension into regions with a temperate climate, as had been thought before. In 1814, Matthew Flinders published the book "A Voyage to Terra Australis." Flinders had concluded that the Terra Australis as hypothesized by Aristotle and Ptolemy did not exist, so he wanted the name applied to what he saw as the next best thing: "Australia", replacing the former name for the continent, New Holland. He wrote:


title: Terra Australis

text: There is no probability, that any other detached body of land, of nearly equal extent, will ever be found in a more southern latitude; the name Terra Australis will, therefore, remain descriptive of the geographical importance of this country, and of its situation on the globe: it has antiquity to recommend it; and, having no reference to either of the two claiming nations, appears to be less objectionable than any other which could have been selected.


title: Terra Australis

text: Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into AUSTRALIA; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.


title: Terra Australis

text: With the discovery of Antarctica his conclusion would soon be revealed as a mistake, but by that time the name had stuck.


title: Terra Australis

text: A land feature known as the "Province of Beach" or "Boeach" – from the Latin "Provincia boëach" – appears to have resulted from mistranscriptions of a name in Marco Polo's "Il Milione" (Book III). Polo described his journey by sea from China to India by way of Champa ("provincia ciamba"; modern southern Vietnam), "Java Major", "Locach" (modern Lop Buri), and Sumatra ("Java Minor"). In Cantonese, Lavo (an early name of Lop Buri) was pronounced "Lo-huk" 羅斛 and "Locach" was Marco Polo's transcription of this name. According to Polo, Locach was a kingdom where gold was "so plentiful that no one who did not see it could believe it". Polo's narrative describes the route southward from Champa toward Sumatra, but by a slip of the pen the name "Java" (which Polo did not himself visit) was substituted for "Champa" as the point of departure, thereby mis-locating Sumatra and Locach south of Java (rather than Champa). Consequently, some geographers believed that Sumatra and Locach were near, or extensions of, "Terra Australis".


title: Terra Australis

text: In the German cursive script, "Locach" and "Boeach" look similar. A feature known as the "Province of Beach" or "Boeach" – from the Latin "Provincia boëach" – appears on European maps as early as the 15th century. On a map of the world published in Florence in 1489 by Henricus Martellus, the Latin name "provincia boëach" is given to a southern neighbour of Champa. In a 1532 edition of Marco Polo's "Travels", Locach was changed to "Boëach", later shortened to "Beach".


title: Terra Australis

text: By the mid-16th century, according to Henry Yule, the editor of a modern (1921) edition of Polo's "Travels", some geographers and cartographers followed the error in older editions of Polo that "placed ... the land of "Boeach" (or Locac)" south-east of Java and "introduced in their maps a continent in that situation". Gerard Mercator did just that on his 1541 globe, placing "Beach provincia aurifera" ("Beach the gold-bearing province") in the northernmost part of the "Terra Australis" in accordance with the faulty text of Marco Polo's "Travels". The landmass of Beach remained in this location on Mercator's world map of 1569, with the amplified description, quoting Marco Polo, "Beach provincia aurifera quam pauci ex alienis regionibus adeunt propter gentis inhumanitatem" ("Beach the gold-bearing province, wither few go from other countries because of the inhumanity of its people") with "Lucach regnum" shown somewhat to its south west. Following Mercator, Abraham Ortelius also showed and in these locations on his world map of 1571.


title: Terra Australis

text: The 1596 map by Jan Huygen van Linschoten showed and , projecting from the map's southern edge as the northernmost parts of the "Terra Australis" long hypothesized by Europeans. An encounter by the Dutch vessel "Eendracht", commanded by Dirk Hartog, with Shark Bay, Western Australia in 1616, appeared to confirm that land existed where the maps showed "Beach"; Hartog named the wider landmass "Eendrachtsland", after his ship. In August 1642, the Council of the Dutch East India Company – evidently still relying on Linschoten's map – despatched Abel Tasman and Franchoijs Jacobszoon Visscher on a voyage of exploration, of which one of the objects was to obtain knowledge of "all the totally unknown provinces of Beach".


title: Terra Australis

text: The unexplored southern continent was a frequent subject of fantastic fiction in the 17th and 18th centuries in the imaginary voyages genre. Among the works which dealt with imaginary visits to the continent (which at the time was still believed to be real) were:


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: Quiet received a mixed reception. While she was praised for her characterization, many Western critics considered her design oversexualized, though some defended it by citing her backstory, including Joosten herself. In regards to the visual design, Kojima remarked that he was striving for a unique character, not simply eroticism. Quiet has become a popular character to cosplay.


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: Quiet was modeled after, motion captured and voiced by Dutch model Stefanie Joosten. She received a phone call from her agency to audition as a motion capture actress for an unspecified video game. However, being a big fan of video games, she recognized game director Hideo Kojima at the audition and suspected it was for a new "Metal Gear" game. After getting the role and beginning the motion capture and 3D scanning process, Joosten was shown artwork of the character, which she said looked almost exactly the same as the finished product, but was not told specifically what character she would be playing. The process took two years and, having never held a gun before, she received professional combat training in order to handle several weapons. Although the character does not speak during most of the game, Kojima was so satisfied with Joosten's work that he asked her to "voice" the character by expressing range of emotions through only groans and hums. "Quiet's Theme", a humming vocal piece composed by Akihiro Honda and written by Ludvig Forrsell, was sung by Joosten for the game's original soundtrack; she also performed it on stage at The Game Awards 2015.


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: When asked about Quiet, Kojima replied: "In the game, Quiet is the main heroine. Whether she is friend or foe has yet to be revealed so I had to be careful when casting her role. "MGS" normally has old timers and old guys (laughs). Stefanie is very skilled in action but since she never held that type of gun, we asked her to do some training at home." Speaking about Quiet's design just days after her full reveal in September 2013, Kojima tweeted that he asked lead designer Yoji Shinkawa for a "more erotic" character; in fact, his original idea of her was her being naked. In response to the reaction to this statement, he clarified: "Maybe the phrase 'erotic' wasn't really [the correct word for] what I was trying to say. What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters. One of those is, of course, Quiet. She's a really unique character, I wanted to add that sexiness to her. It wasn't really supposed to be erotic, but sexy." He also said, "You're going to notice [when you play,] but there's limited dialogue with [characters], and for that reason we really want to show the characteristic from each character. Sexy could be for guys, weapons, vehicles, it's really that characteristic." Shinkawa added, "From my perspective, it's not just the characters, but often I look at a weapon or a vehicle and think 'That's really sexy.' It's not just the characters, but the mechs and weapons [as well]."


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: Kojima stated Quiet's design was to appeal to cosplayers and to sell figures; he also made further tweets to demonstrate details of the character to early cosplayers. Kojima said about her clothing, "Once you see how she fits into the story, you will understand why she looks the way she does. Without any of this background I can certainly understand why there are concerns. I will say there's a reason she looks the way she does and wears those clothes. And it's all a part of the game, learning those reasons one by one." As noted by Kojima himself, Quiet is the only heroic female character of "Metal Gear Solid V", contrasting with the usual three of four in most of his earlier works; he described her as powerful yet vulnerable. He also later compared Quiet to Matilda Lutz's protagonist character from the 2017 rape and revenge action-thriller film "Revenge".


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: Joosten herself was surprised with the controversy (see below), but said, "When I got to see her design, I was shocked too. But everybody didn't get to hear her story yet so I can understand people are angry about it or saying she is showing too much. But I am not bothered by it." Joosten also talked of pre-release fan theories such as these of Quiet being a sex-changed Chico from the previous prequel games or a young Sniper Wolf, both of which she denied. Kojima later stated in 2015, "I know there's people concerning about 'Quiet' but don't worry. I created her character as an antithesis to the women characters appeared in the past fighting game who are excessively exposed. 'Quiet' who doesn't have a word will be teased in the story as well. But once you recognize the secret reason for her exposure, you will feel ashamed of your words & deeds." He added, "The response of 'Quiet' disclosure few days ago incited by the net is exactly what "MGSV" itself is."


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: Within the "Metal Gear" series, Quiet appears only in "". When Big Boss awakens in a Cyprus hospital from a coma in 1984, Quiet is one of many soldiers sent by Cipher to kill him. As she is about to kill her target, a man calling himself Ishmael helps fight her off. She is covered in medical grade ethanol and other chemicals and lit on fire until she escapes via a window.


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: Quiet is then seen deployed to Afghanistan by Skull Face and tasked with eliminating Soviet officers who are against his development of Metal Gear Sahelanthropus. After Venom Snake walks into her line of sight, she proceeds to open fire on him. After defeating her in a fight, the player can choose to kill her or capture her and bring her back to their base. If the latter is chosen, she is tortured in an interrogation but Revolver Ocelot convinces Master Miller not to execute her. Speaking to Code Talker in Navajo, Quiet reveals that Skull Face intended to use her against Venom Snake and his army; she would allow herself to be captured and taken to Mother Base, then infect everyone there with the English-language strain of vocal chord parasites implanted in her. These parasites would spread to and ultimately kill anyone on the base that spoke English (essentially all members of Diamond Dogs), including herself. She was further subjected to "parasite therapy" prior to her deployment, whereby parasites were introduced to her body to keep her alive after she was set on fire. They also give her enhanced strength, mobility and speed as well as inhuman resilience, durability and recovery abilities. Unlike the Skulls unit of parasite-enhanced soldiers encountered through the game, Quiet retains an outwardly-human appearance. Due to her injuries, the parasites compensated for her burned epidermis, giving her the ability to 'breathe' through her skin, requiring her to wear as little clothes as possible, as covering her skin would suffocate her. However, her time spent with Diamond Dogs led her to defect from XOF, and she retained her silence to prevent infection. After a second parasite outbreak occurs on Diamond Dogs' base due to a mutation, Quiet disappears into Afghanistan, realizing that she could never guarantee the safety of Diamond Dogs. Believing that she has betrayed them, Venom Snake follows to investigate. Snake helps her fight off a Soviet regiment, but she is forced to speak English to save him when he is bitten by a venomous snake. Quiet disappears to avoid causing another epidemic; walking alone in the desert, her fate is unknown.


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: If Quiet is recruited into Diamond Dogs, it is possible for the player to use her as a Buddy character on missions. When chosen, Quiet is most useful as a support providing covering fire during infiltration missions. Quiet's interactions and skills depends on the bond level between her and Venom Snake; she can be equipped with either her standard rifle named Wicked Butterfly, a non-lethal rifle named Guilty Butterfly, firing tranquilizer rounds, or a high-powered lethal rifle named Sinful Butterfly. An unlockable allows the player to unlock Sniper Wolf's uniform from the original "Metal Gear Solid" for Quiet to wear.


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: The November 2015 release of the Version 1.06 update adds the ability to bring Quiet back in the game. The player needs to complete "Mission 11: Cloaked in Silence" seven times in a row without killing or leaving Quiet, to unlock a version of the mission titled "[Reunion]: Cloaked in Silence". Completing this new version of the mission will have Quiet return permanently with all of the equipment she had at the time she left. A 2018 update has turned Quiet into an optional player character in FOB missions online. The playable Quiet's primary weapon remains a sniper rifle. Her superhuman abilities enable her to perform special dashes; she can also drop safely from any height and climb in an instant.


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: Before the release of the game, the presentation of Quiet was criticized for being what was perceived by some as oversexualization and an affirmation of the negative stereotype of the video game industry. Square Enix released Quiet's action figure in the Play Arts KAI series in May 2015. The figure's soft, pliable breasts demonstrated on Twitter by Kojima and Shinkawa, the latter of whom did serve as its production supervisor, were criticized in social media and in the press in the West. She was generally well received in Japan. AOL Japan noted that the announcement of the "erotic" figure caused a buzz on Twitter. "Famitsu" positively commented on the "realistic fleshiness" of the figure, in addition to focusing on the beauty of the "real Quiet" Stefanie Joosten and how well the "super sexy" game character was made to resemble her. A more conventional, 1/6 scale statue of Quiet was released by Gecco Corp in 2016; its review by "Dengeki Hobby" praised this figure for its high quality and for showing the various aspects of the character's attractiveness and an attention to detail. Another Quiet figure was released by Octohead in 2018.


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: The finished game drew more Western criticism of Quiet's portrayal in both reviews and opinion pieces. GamesRadar David Roberts described Quiet as "one of the most complex and conflicted characters in "MGS5"", but that her depiction was an example of a "juvenile approach to sexuality" that typifies Kojima's work and the "Metal Gear" series as a whole. Michael McWhertor of Polygon described the justification for Quiet's lack of clothing as "inextricably tied to the game's convoluted story", and criticized how the game presented other female characters by "zeroing in on their jiggling breasts and panning across their asses in a silly, oversexualized way."


title: Quiet (Metal Gear)

text: On the other hand, GameZone's James Wynne felt that the game's story explanation was a valid enough reason for her scantily-clad appearance and succeeds in Kojima's aim to make Quiet "a true antithesis to sexy-just-because female characters." He wrote that "Fan service doesn't erase the fact that Quiet is a strong, well-written character that doesn't need a man to save her. That puts her on a level comparable to The Boss, who was the most impressive female character to ever grace a video game." Vince Ingenito of IGN called Quiet the most interesting character in the game, writing that her "warm, childlike sincerity and battlefield ferocity cause her to steal every scene she's in." He did feel disappointed that she was also "required to be a lust-object."