Hollande Urges D-Day Unity in Recognizing WWII Sacrifices

Bloomberg: French President Francois Hollandecalled for recognition of all sacricifices made during the Normandy landings that paved the way for the liberation of westernEurope and the end of World War II.

Hollande, opening a day of commemorations to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, told a crowd at the Caen Memorial in northern France that the civilian victims of the war had long been obscured behind the heroism of the soldiers who fought. Some 20,000 civilians were killed in Normandy, he said.

“On this day I want the nation to pay homage to all, civilian and military, with no distinction to the clothes and uniform worn,” Hollande said. “Normandy opened its doors to its liberators, facilitated the victory, and paid a heavy price.”

The D-Day commemorations assume added significance this year with the attendance of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid a standoff with the U.S. and its European allies over the conflict in Ukraine. Hollande has stressed that leaders from all sides of conflicts, past and present, are welcome at today’s ceremonies to put aside their differences and pay their respects to those who helped defeat Nazi Germany and end the war.

Hollande will host 19 heads of state and government including U.S. President Barack Obama,Queen Elizabeth II, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko, who will be sworn in tomorrow in Kiev, was a last-minute invitee.

Russia’s Role

“France will welcome the world on the 5th and 6th of June to render homage to the people who sacrificed for our freedom, the Americans, the British, and many others, without forgetting the Russian people and their role in the Second World War,” Hollande said June 4 in Warsaw.

D-Day is being marked less than 24 hours after G-7 nations met in Brussels without Russia and threatened further sanctions if Putin doesn’t pull back more troops from the Ukraine border. Russia was excluded from the forum which it had been due to host this year after it annexed the Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March.

While backing the threat of renewed sanctions, Hollande insisted on maintaining Putin’s invitation to Normandy, citing the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany. Leaders are marking separate events before meeting for lunch at about 12:15 p.m., followed by a joint ceremony at 2:15 p.m.

‘Momentous Event’

“Russia’s attendance is a momentous event,” Putin said in an interview with French television aired June 4. “Russia and the anti-Hitler coalition countries, including France, were allies in that struggle for freedom, and my country played a vital and maybe even the decisive role in defeating Nazism.”

Some 5.8 million of the 8.7 million Soviet soldiers killed in action in World War II were Russian, according to estimates by Russian military expert Grigoriy Krivosheyev that are not universally accepted by historians. The U.S. lost 400,000 soldiers in the conflict, Britain 384,000, and France250,000.

The day began with the ceremony in Caen for French civilian deaths, a subject left aside in previous D-Day commemorations.

The landings and the subsequent six-week Battle of Normandy resulted in about 14,000 civilian deaths, according to the University of Caen. Most died in bombardments, though several hundred were shot by the retreating German army. The day of the landings, 75 members of the resistance were executed in the courtyard of Caen prison.

Sword Beach

Throughout today there will be separate commemorations for British, Canadian and Polish forces, with the Americans holding a morning ceremony at Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the landing beaches. At 2:15 p.m., all the leaders gather for a ceremony at Ouistreham, part of Sword Beach taken by British 3rd Infantry Division and a Free French commando unit. There are smaller ceremonies for Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Belgian forces.

Normandy expects 8 million visitors this year, compared with 5 million in a regular year, according to the French tourism ministry.

D-Day isn’t the only war event being remembered this year. Troops from 21 former French colonies inAfrica will be present at the Aug. 15 ceremonies for the 70th anniversary of the landings in the South of France, where unlike Normandy, the French military played a leading role.

This year also marks 100 years since the start World War I, and 80 countries that took part in what was termed “The Great War” will march in Paris on this year’s Bastille Day parade on July 14. The French and German presidents will take part in a ceremony in Eastern France on Aug. 3 to mark the declaration of war in 1914.

On Monday, June 9, Hollande will be in his constituency of Tulle to remember 120 men hung by a Waffen-SS unit making its way to the Normandy front.

reporter on this story: Gregory Viscusi in Paris