Festung Groß-Paris is an Axis Infantry division in Back in Hell. Festung Groß-Paris regroups all the forces placed under general von Choltitz's authority to prevent Paris from falling to the Allies. Built around the weak 325. Sicherungs-Division, it amalgamated all units within the 'Greater Paris' area, a motley assortment of Flak units, disheartened desk-soldiers and die-hard SS, old Panzer I from security outfits and individual crack Panther or Tiger refitting from the Normandy campaign.
Insanely brave and blindly obedient, an experienced infantryman with airborne, urban fighting & armored warfare experience, von Chöltitz appeared to be the perfect man to carry any order without question. Enlisting as a cadet in the Saxon Army (German Third Army) just prior to WWI, von Chöltitz remained in the Reichswehr during the Interwar and was a lieutenant-colonel in the airlanding forces in 1938. He took part in the campaigns in the Netherlands in 1940, then fought in USSR from 1941 to 1944. Distinguished for his bravery in combat and blind obedience to orders, he was promoted to corps command in Italy, where he fought at Anzio, then Normandy. Looking for a cold-blooded general who would obey his orders to raze Paris to the ground rather than letting the Allies liberate it, Hitler personally promoted him as military governor of the French capital. Yet, when faced with the Paris' Résistance uprising, Chöltitz negotiated with the partisans and ultimately surrendered the city mostly intact to the Allies. Was it because, as he later claimed, he had come to realize Hitler's madness ? Or more pragmatically was he trying to save his head in the incoming trials for war crimes by styling himself as the Savior of Paris? Anyway, the French government paid its debt to him during the Nuremberg Trials, preventing a death sentence to be pronounced for his crimes on the Eastern Front.
There is hardly a more mismatched battlegroup than the one fighting for Paris. With a wide array of choices, from a lot of second-rate troops to individual elite units, it offers a little bit of everything to be cobbled together into a fighting unit. In order to be able to destroy the French capital city should it fall to the Allies, von Chöltitz requested, and obtained, command of a large number of bombers (7x Ju 188 Medium Bomber (50kg) for only 125 points each!) and even the dreaded 'Karl' super-heavy (600mm!) mortar to turn the city into a pile of ruins …
