D-Day commemorations 80 years on

It was the largest such operation in history: Operation Overlord, the landing of Allied troops in German-occupied France, had been planned and practiced for months. Then, bad weather delayed the operation, but on June 6, 1944, the time had come: thousands of ships, supported from the air, took off from the southern English coast and brought around 150,000 soldiers from the US, United Kingdom, Canada and other allied countries to the beaches of Normandy. Their goal was to liberate France and then advance on Germany to put an end to Nazi rule throughout Europe.

When Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler learned of the invasion, he is said to have gleefully remarked: "As long as they were in England, we couldn't lay our hands on them. Now we finally have them where we can beat them."

The German army, the Wehrmacht, had indeed been preparing. The coast of occupied France had been heavily secured with bunkers and artillery emplacements, known as the Atlantic Wall. However, the largest German military units were waiting in the wrong place, near Calais, where the English Channel is at its narrowest. The Wehrmacht had fallen for a deliberate deception.

High blood toll

It was a battle with heavy losses — on both sides. The Germans fired from their positions at the soldiers coming ashore. Heavy fighting continued inland, behind the beaches and around the villages and towns in the hinterland.

The Germans were outnumbered and outgunned; the tank reserve was their only trump card. However, Hitler left it too late to give the go-ahead for tanks to intervene.

There was a very banal reason for this, says military historian Peter Lieb: Hitler's habit of staying up late and only getting up at midday. This was also the case on June 6, 1944.

"That morning, when the tanks should have been deployed quickly, Hitler was still asleep," Lieb told DW. "Nobody dared to wake him up, and the High Command of the Wehrmacht did not have the courage to disregard an order from the Führer and just go ahead and deploy the tanks."

Hitler's unconditional order to never retreat was also to prove fatal: "There is no evasion and operation here, it is a case of standing firm — hold or die," was his decree.

The German soldiers were worn down. "The Allies won," explains Lieb, "because they had air supremacy, because they had naval supremacy, because they had the element of surprise and because they had been practicing for this day for months."

On August 25, the Allied Forces liberated Paris. The German occupation of France came to an end soon afterward. The death toll in the few weeks after June 6, 1944, was extremely high on both sides — including among French civilians. Tens of thousands of German and Allied soldiers were killed, as well as thousands of civilians. World War Two would continue for more than nine months, claiming millions more lives.

Commemorating together with the former enemy

The commemoration of D-Day has its own history. For the former Allies, June 6 soon became a fixture for commemoration. The ceremonies in Normandy regularly brought together veterans, the British Queen, the American and French presidents and other heads of state and government.

German dignitaries were not invited for a long time — and German leaders had no objections. In 1984, Chancellor Helmut Kohl said "There is no reason for the German Chancellor to rejoice when others celebrate their victory in a battle in which tens of thousands of Germans perished miserably."

"Kohl came from a generation that had very much been shaped by the war," says military historian Peter Lieb. "He was close to members of the generation that had lived through the war. And for them, it would have been unthinkable to celebrate together with American, British and French soldiers."

Slowly, however, the narrative was established that "the landing in Normandy was also the beginning of the end of the German Reich and thus also the beginning of democracy in Germany."

The first German Chancellor to attend the D-Day celebrations was Gerhard Schröder in 2004. Today, the participation of the former enemy, Germany, has become widely accepted. Chancellor Olaf Scholz also intends to take part.

This year, one of the most sensitive issues was whether or not to invite a representative from Russia. D-Day was the beginning of a "second front" in the war, which Soviet leader Josef Stalin had been calling for urgently following the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. With an estimated 20 million, the Soviet Union had by far the highest number of casualties of all parties in the war.

German, Ukrainian and Russian leaders attended the D-Day commemoration in 2014Image: Guido Bergmann/Bundesregierung/picture alliance/dpa

To honor the Soviet contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, the French hosts invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the 60th and even the 70th D-Day anniversary. The latter took place in 2014, just weeks after the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

"After 1989/90, there was great euphoria that the world would be more peaceful, that Russia, as a democratic state, would adopt the Western model of society," says Peter Lieb. However in 2022 with Russia's full-fledged war on Ukraine, the situation changed completely, the historian says.

Despite this, French leaders considered inviting the Russian ambassador in Paris to attend the commemoration ceremony, despite criticism of the plan in Washington, London, and also in Berlin.

However, they finally changed their mind. "In view of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which has intensified in recent weeks, the conditions are simply not right," read a message from President Emmanuel Macron's office. Russia will now not be represented at all.

Instead, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will travel to France. Together with President Emmanuel Macron, US President Joe Biden, Prince William, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, some of the last surviving veterans, and other state guests, he will commemorate D-Day 80 years ago on the beach in Normandy.

This article was originally written in German.

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