In 1940, when German forces occupied France during the World War II, the news agency was taken over by the authorities and renamed "Office Français d'Information" (French Information Office); only the private advertising company retained the name Havas.[6] On August 20, 1944, as Allied forces moved on Paris, a group of journalists in the French Resistance seized the offices of the FIO and issued the first news dispatch from the liberated city under the name of Agence France-Presse.