Well, actually, less than technically, it was liberated by a couple of crazed journalists who had rushed ahead in their jeep to get a good hotel room. Life photographer Robert Capa had encountered the French tanks just outside Paris, and discovered one crewed not by French but Spaniards -- veterans of the Spanish Civil War in which Capa had established his reputation. It had the name Teruel painted on it, and he climbed aboard, explaining he had been at that very battle in 1937. So on Teruel he rode into Paris.
However, on his arrival, Capa made a shocking discovery. "I wanted to spend my first night in the best of best hotels," he wrote in Slightly Out of Focus. "The Ritz. But the hotel was already occupied. Hemingway's army had come into Paris by a different road, and after a short and happy fight had taken their main objective and liberated the Ritz from the German yokels." Luckily for Capa, who had been feuding with Hemingway, they made up that night in the bar, and the famous writer made room in his hotel.
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