Ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day — the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944 — may also serve as a rally for the Western democracies of NATO as they seek to solidify their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It would not be the first time history served a purpose at the Normandy commemoration, as President Reagan invoked Cold War politics during his speech at Pointe du Hoc in 1984.
Memories of the invasion were not always so unifying. For generations, ordinary French citizens were made to repress certain memories of the liberation, as historian Kate Clarke Lemay explains in this episode of History As It Happens.
Official memorials to fallen French soldiers and civilians were not permitted in the immediate postwar years, as the defeat to Germany in 1940 still loomed heavily over society. The French instead sought solace at the thousands of graves of American and British Commonwealth soldiers who were buried in temporary cemeteries across the country.
“When I was living in Normandy researching the cemeteries through French newspapers, I started to see some patterns. In these photographs there were French women taking care of them. I started to wonder, why are French women taking care of American graves? It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection that these women — they were Norman — they had suffered. They had lost between 20,000 and 30,000 people during the bombardments of Normandy. … They had lost their men to deportation or maybe their fathers or husbands were prisoners of war,” said Ms. Lemay, the author of “Triumph of the Dead: American World War II Cemeteries, Monuments, and Diplomacy in France.”
These temporary graveyards were soon consolidated into the permanent cemeteries that attract dignitaries and tourists to this day. Over time, both Americans and the French would reshape their memories of the conflict to suit contemporary political imperatives, as when French President Charles de Gaulle did not attend the 20th anniversary D-Day ceremonies in 1964.
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