In the early 1940s, a woman walks out of a Paris Metro station. Images like this were used in German propaganda to show (falsely) Paris as a bustling, active metropolis. Flickr is the source. In 1940, a flower store in Paris. This photo was used by the Germans in their propaganda to show that France was alive and thriving after being invaded by Germany. In fact, Paris was almost empty following the invasion. The French government had fled and so had most of the important people. Only those who could not escape the city stayed behind. The image above shows what Paris looked like in April 1944. You can see that there are only a few shops still open on the Champs-Élysées avenue. The rest are shuttered up because no one is around to shop in them. During World War II, more than 1 million German soldiers died in battles that ranged from France to Russia. Another 11 million people died in Nazi concentration camps. However, the war was not going well for the Germans. They suffered major setbacks when they tried to invade Britain and the United States. By 1945, the situation was so bad for the Germans that Hitler planned to kill himself but he was talked out of it. Instead, he decided to commit suicide publically.