A Bridgehead of Democracy

The celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the Allies landing in Normandy have also shown how much the perception of this historic event has changed.

The interaction of historical memory and current political events made the 70th anniversary of the landing of the Allied troops in Normandy a moment of contemporary history, during which hardly any gesture went unnoticed. And of course it was appropriate for remembering the victims who gave their lives from the beginning to the end of Hitler’s regime.

In the newspaper der Welt, Til Biermann recalled what the military fought out in June 1944, and he appears to be still surprised at the lack of retribution. “The old SS cavaliers, many with experience of the Eastern Front and in the War of Extermination, killed fiercely and used their predominant, elevated position on the edge of the Atlantic in an ice-cold fashion. The Western Allies’ “Operation Overlord” ended on Aug. 30, 1944 with the German troop’s retreat across the Seine. At the end of the summer of the invasion, approximately 88,000 dead Brits, Canadians and Poles, and almost 125,000 dead Americans were being mourned. They were accompanied by 240,000 fallen German soldiers in France. Why should we be thankful? In the Book of Hosea in the Old Testament we read: ‘For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’ The Germans brought death to other nations, sowing a wind of decay. As punishment, the Germans did not receive a whirlwind but rather a gentle breeze. We could be thankful that the Allies did not repay like with like, instead stopping the slaughter for the most part as soon as military groups had surrendered.”

Daniel Kretschmar hints in the newspaper Taz at how much the perception of this historic event has changed. “As Helmut Kohl, together with Ronald Reagan, visited the German military graveyard in Bitburg in 1985 and held hands with veterans from both sides of the war over the graves of the SS troops, he redeemed the criminal organization as much as he could: as victims among victims of the Great War. The question of the difference between the offenders and the victims of the war and the question of historical guilt have been raised. What once triggered a tangible fight between historians is now registered with a simple shrug of the shoulders. Except, perhaps, in Russia.”

Berthold Kohler doesn’t want to miss out on the chance to use this context to refer to the political reality of the Ukraine crisis in the newspaper FAZ. “Prior to this, Obama named Omaha Beach, where an exceptional number of Americans fell, ‘a bridgehead of democracy.’ That may well be what people say about the beaches of Crimea. They have definitely become a bridgehead of autocracy.”