That is what Nazi leader Adolf Hitler shouted at his military commander in occupied Paris as the U.S.-led Allies advanced on the German occupied city after breaking out of Normandy in the summer of 1944. "Brennt Paris?"
French President Emmanuel Macron, calling from the recent G-20 conference in Argentina during the outbreaks of riots in Paris and elsewhere in France, could have asked the mayor of Paris the same thing. Is Paris burning?
In the first case, it was not. In the second instance, it was yes. Paris was burning, and it still is.
Back in August 1944, German Gen. Dietrich Hugo Hermann von Choltitz, Hitler's Paris commander -- and an admirer of French culture -- disobeyed Hitler's order and prevented the destruction of the famous city. He was hailed as the "Savior of Paris."
And Macron, the one-time wonder boy of French politics, and a climate-change visionary, was the villain. He lit the match.
Working-class rioters for the fourth week in a row launched violent protests against the Macron government over increased anti-global warming fuel and gas prices as well as their diminished economic status.
It is called the "Yellow Vest" protest in that many of protesters wear high visibility yellow safety vests that motorists carry in their vehicles.
By the time they were through last weekend Paris looked like a war zone. And the protests are not yet over even after Macron caved and promised tax cuts and increased wages.
Macron's Paris is a mess.
Its wide, elegant boulevards around the Arc de Triomphe are littered with overturned and burned cars, glass and debris from smashed store windows and empty tear gas canisters. Restaurants and shops are closed, stores are looted, and the whiff of tear gas is in the air. Tourists have fled.
French police have arrested hundreds, both in Paris and in other cities where similar protests took place. One person was killed and hundreds more injured.
In the City of Light, the city is nightly lit up with the burning hulks of more than a hundred cars. Their still smoking carcasses are on hand to greet Macron whenever he makes a rare appearance.
Indeed, the iconic Arc de Triomphe itself, a symbol of all that is France, has been vandalized and scarred with anti-Macron graffiti. And the violent protests continue.
The protesting French working-class rioters have done more damage to Paris than the retreating German army, leaving one to wonder where Gen. Choltitz was now that you needed him.
It is a bitter pill for Macron, the globalist, to swallow. He wanted to run the world. But if you can't run Paris, let alone France, how can you possibly rule the world?
Only four weeks earlier, Macron had used the site of the Arc de Triomphe to take a shot at President Donald Trump, who was sitting stone-faced nearby, during the Armistice Day ceremonies.
Now, heavily guarded, he watches workmen defend the historic edifice from destruction.
A month earlier flanked by guards in glittering Napoleonic-era uniforms, Macron used the occasion to criticize the nationalism -- as opposed to globalism -- that Trump has espoused in his "America First" doctrine.
The nationalism that Trump believes in is not patriotism, Macron said. "Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism," he lectured. "Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism."
If that sounds like gobbledygook, that is what it is. The opposite of nationalism is not patriotism, but globalism, the globalism that Trump opposes.
Yet, Macron's remarks rankled. Here was Trump, a guest, being lectured to by Macron, whose country was rescued by the United States from the Germans in World War I and II.
Maybe next time Germany invades France, which it has a habit of doing, Macron can call on his phantom European army, rather than ask the U.S. to come rescue him.
Which reminds me of a German joke. Asked by an American tourist how long it would take to drive from Munich to the French border, the German replied, "By car or by Panzer?"
European politicians like Macron mock President Trump for his "America First" view of the world.
But as globalists they have destabilized their countries with global-warming taxes and with the influx of millions of unassimilated refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere.
And when it comes to Russian aggression against them -- or the Ukraine -- the person they depend on is not Macron and his phony European army, but Trump and the United States. Right now, Vladimir Putin could walk right in.
Next time Macron calls, Trump should ask, "Who is burning Paris?"