Tanks of the Second French Armoured Division are the first of the Allies to enter and liberate Paris

General de Gaulle walks down the Champs Elysées, and then on to Notre Dame, to massive aclaim

The Germans stage a counter-attack in the Ardennes region before being pushed back in the Battle of the Bulge

Jean-Louis Barrault directs and stars in the film Les Enfants du Paradis

Le Corbusier's use of béton brut (raw concrete) introduces Brutalism

The four Allied powers (USA, UK, France, USSR) provide occupation forces for separate zones of Austria, Germany and Berlin

TheAllies celebrate V-J Day – victory over Japan and the end of the war

A death sentence for the 89-year-old Vichy leader Philippe Pétain is commuted by de Gaulle to life imprisonment

Ho Chi Minh proclaims the democratic republic of Vietnam, independent of the colonial power, France

Vichy leader Pierre Laval, sentenced in a French court as a collaborator, is executed

Sonatine, for flute and piano, brings early success to French composer Pierre Boulez

Capa, Cartier-Bresson and others found Magnum, a cooperative of leading photographers running their own picture agency

Francis Poulenc makes an opera of Guillaume Apollinaire's play Les Mamelles de Tirésias ('The Breasts of Tiresias')

French designer Christian Dior introduces the 'New Look', a lavish feminine style of dress welcomed by all after wartime austerity

Jean-Louis Barrault and his wife Madeleine Renaud establish their own company at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris

Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier introduces the Modulor, an architectural unit based on the Golden Section

French composer Pierre Schaeffer writes the first pieces of musique concrète, and coins the term

Olivier Messiaen completes Turangaîlila-symphonie, a symphony in ten movements for an orchestra including ondes martenot

Roland Petit's ballet Carmen, starring himself and his wife Zizi Jeanmaire, is a sensation at its London premiere

French ex-convict Jean Genet begins his literary career with an autobiographical Thief's Journal

French author Simone de Beauvoir publishes The Second Sex, a widely influential feminist polemic

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss publishes Elementary Structures of Kinship

French dramatist Eugène Ionesco's play The Bald Prima Donna launches the Theatre of the Absurd

Six European nations agree to joint coal and steel production through the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)

Henri Matisse completes the Chapel of the Rosary at Vence, with every detail designed by himself