International
World leaders on Friday paid tribute to troops who fell during the liberation of Europe from Nazi rule, with a number of ceremonies held around the Normandy beaches where Allied forces landed on June 6 seven decades ago.
Twenty-one leaders attended the commemorations, including French President François Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin, standing for the former Soviet Union, which suffered the heaviest casualties and shouldered the lion's share of the military campaign to defeat Hitler's Germany.
World War II's end marked the onset of the Cold War, with the division of Europe into U.S. and Soviet spheres of influence. Most of the countries of Western Europe that were liberated by U.S. and British forces eventually joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), facing off against the Soviet bloc (formally the Warsaw Treaty Organization), which consisted of most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe from which the Red Army had driven the Nazis.
Cold War tensions have echoed in recent months among the leaders gathered at Normandy on Friday, with the conflict between Moscow and Western powers over Ukraine a central focus of observers at the gathering. Affirmations of U.S.-European solidarity took on added meaning in light of recent events, and interactions among Obama, Putin and Merkel and an informal chat between Putin and Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko were carefully scrutinized for signs of a rapprochement in the conflict that has rattled Europe since February.
SLIDESHOW: RE-ENACTING D-DAY
Wreaths, parades, parachute drops and re-enactments paid homage to history's largest amphibious assault, in which 160,000 U.S., British and Canadian troops waded ashore to confront German forces and hasten Germany's defeat. The tide had turned decisively against Hitler at Stalingrad the previous summer, and the Normandy invasion coincided with a massive Red Army ground offensive against the bulk of the German military machine that drove all the way to Warsaw and positioned the Soviets for their assault on Berlin a year later.
This year will be the last major commemoration attended by most of the veterans of the battle, most of whom are in their late 80s and 90s. Not many of the 150,000 Allied troops who slogged onto storm-torn beaches or parachuted into Normandy remain alive to remember what German commander Field Marshall Erwin Rommel dubbed "the longest day."
Some survivors stood, somber and proud, alongside Obama and Hollande, having risen with difficulty. Thousands of onlookers applauded.
"France will never forget what it owes these soldiers, what it owes the United States," Hollande said at the Normandy American Cemetery, on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. "Vive l'Amerique! Vive la France! And long live the memory of those who fell here for our liberty."
Obama said the 50-mile stretch of Normandy coastline — where allied troops landed under fire on beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword and Juno — was a "tiny sliver of sand upon which hung more than the fate of a war but rather the course of human history."
"Omaha — Normandy — this was democracy's beachhead," he said. "And our victory in that war decided not just a century but shaped the security and well-being of all posterity."
Obama sought to link the sacrifices of World War II to those of U.S. troops killed in combat since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by Al-Qaeda. The "9/11 generation of service members" understood that "people cannot live in freedom unless free people are prepared to die for it," he said.
Hollande declared that France "would never forget the solidarity between our two nations, solidarity based on a shared ideal, an aspiration, a passion for freedom."
Wire services
Error
Sorry, your comment was not saved due to a technical problem. Please try again later or using a different browser.