The defense of democracy against authoritarianism and support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression is the message that will emerge from the beaches of Normandy this Thursday, exactly 80 years after the landing of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and his allies to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany.
US President Joe Biden and host Emmanuel Macron will each give speeches at memorial ceremonies taking place in Normandy cemeteries and beaches. This year, the presence as a special guest of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, seeks to update the message of June 1944. As then, Europe is threatened, the leaders seem to say; As then, a war is fought in defense of freedom. As then – this is another message that comes out of these celebrations – it is the unity between the United States and the European democracies that is at stake, and the key to success on the battlefield, then and now.
“How can we not think of our brothers in Ukraine who fight like our elders 80 years ago,” said the mayor of Caen, Joël Bruneau, at an international ceremony at the memorial of this city devastated by Allied bombing during the Battle of Normandy. In the act, the multiple memories of the landing were superimposed: that of the heroism of the liberators, that of the bombing of civilians by the liberators themselves, that of the resistance. “When the past stops illuminating the future, the spirit walks in darkness,” said the mayor, quoting an illustrious Norman, Alexis de Tocqueville.
But today neither the US nor the EU fights on the ground, although countries like France propose sending military instructors. Even this debate – that of the deployment of European military in the attacked country – divides Westerners, and there are doubts about the extent of the commitment to the Ukrainians. And concern, among supporters of the transatlantic alliance on both sides of the pond, about the viability of this alliance if Donald Trump wins the presidential elections in November. Who knows if in 5 years, or 10, an American president will once again celebrate transatlantic friendship on Omaha Beach.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who was present 10 years ago, was not in Normandy this time, nor was any diplomatic representative of Russia. In 2014, Putin had just annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the Normandy commemoration was used to organize a meeting with the then Ukrainian president Petro Porochenko. On that occasion, negotiations were opened to resolve the conflict, which evidently failed.
There was an air of the end of the era this Thursday on the beaches during the tributes, in which the real protagonists—beyond Zelensky, Biden, Macron, King Charles III and other invited leaders—were the few dozen veterans still alive. All, centenarians or almost: most of those who were there this Thursday will be absent from the 90th anniversary ceremonies. All, or almost all, in wheelchairs. All, heroes of the ‘longest day’, the largest naval invasion in history, a bloody sacrifice that contributed, along with the Soviet sacrifices on the Eastern Front, to Hitler’s defeat. An iron thread, but at the same time fragile, between the world of yesterday and today, in which war, for many Europeans, has ceased to be a chapter in the history books and is now an everyday occurrence.
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