After four years of occupation and strife, Allied forces, including Free France, liberated France in 1944. Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944. On September 10, 1944 Charles de Gaulle installed his provisional government in Paris. This time he remained in Paris until the end of the war, refusing to abandon even when Paris was temporarily threatened by German troops during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. But France could now again participate as a nation in the war. In 1945, the French army numbered 1,300,000 men, 412,000 of whom were fighting in Germany and 40,000 in Italy.