We must be sure to never squander the lessons learned from D-Day

But today for a moment they might just pause, at least momentarily, and that’s how it should be as we take time to reflect on the events of 80 years ago on June 6, 1944, when arguably the most significant military operation of all time got underway to liberate Western Europe from fascist tyranny. 

It’s thought to have been the American author and journalist, Tom Brokaw, who first coined the phrase the “Greatest Generation” to describe those who fought in the Second World War. 

Though Brokaw’s 1998 book by the same name focuses on those Americans who engaged in the war years, the Allied forces that landed on Normandy’s beaches eight decades ago or supported the wider D-Day operation, also comprised British, Canadian, Australian, Belgian, Czech, Dutch, French, Greek, New Zealand, Norwegian, Rhodesian and Polish forces. 

READ MORE: The Scottish Highland infantryman who didn’t ‘dodge’ D-Day

The dual victory and tragedy of D-Day remains almost unique in human history. It goes without saying that the cause for which these men and women fought on the beaches and in the villages, towns and cities of Europe was a noble one. 

This was a military invasion the like of which had never been seen before and likely will never be seen again.

One that despite its name “Operation Overlord”, sought not to seize or subjugate but to liberate a continent darkened by dictatorship and authoritarianism.

That such a momentous operation was successful, is a testament to the courage, fortitude, resourcefulness, and tenacity of those that took part. 

Casting an eye across our deeply troubled world today as war rages from Gaza and Sudan to Ukraine, right now is as good a moment as any to ask what we in the democratic world are doing with the legacy that the Greatest Generation defended and entrusted to us.

As the population of those living Second World War survivors dwindles, this 80th anniversary stands out as perhaps the final major milestone where our leaders and future leaders may personally connect with and express their gratitude to D-Day’s survivors.

Today, as those world leaders gather in Normandy, US President Joe Biden, as well as paying his respects to surviving veterans, will visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery where those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice are buried. 

He will also though be seeking to reassure Washington’s European allies over security concerns of which they are rightly worried given the prospect of a return to the White House of Donald Trump after November’s presidential election.

It’s worth recalling that back in 2018 while as president, Trump (below) skipped plans to visit the same cemetery during his own commemorative trip to France, a decision that the White House blamed on the weather at the time. 

But as subsequent reporting was to embarrassingly reveal, Trump told aides he didn’t want to go because he viewed the dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”, something he later denied along with so many other denials during his term in office and since.

Trump of course is the very personification of that distasteful spirit and right-wing ideology that continues to spread across Europe from the UK to Hungary, Italy and France to Germany and beyond.

For those who espouse such noisome politics, the lessons of the Second World War and D-Day – it seems – are forgotten.

For them, the enormous sacrifices that made peace in Europe possible are conveniently ignored to further their own authoritarian ends.

All the more reason then that today we pause and reflect on that sacrifice and remember the millions of people around the world who joined together to stand up to fascism. 

READ MORE: The sleepy Scottish town that played crucial role in D-Day landings

If D-Day taught us anything it’s the value and need for multilateral cooperation when it comes to defending human rights, international law, civilised order and democracy as a whole.

By 1944, more than two million troops from more than 12 countries were in Britain in preparation for the invasion and those 150,000 Allied soldiers who took part in the Normandy landings all those years ago represent that cooperation regardless of nationality.

As a recent article in The New York Times reminded, every serviceman headed to Normandy was handed a “Pocket Guide To France” that read, in part: “We democracies aren’t just doing favours in fighting for each other when history gets tough. We’re all in the same boat. Take a look around you as you move into France and you’ll see what the Nazis do to a democracy.”

Such clear, unequivocal thinking. The kind of can-do thinking, that doesn’t shirk in the face of threats from despots or turn away from humanitarian responsibility. 

DURING election campaigning here in Britain in the coming weeks and in America over the next few months, we will doubtless be hearing a lot of argument about what both countries represent and stand for. 

For the likes of Nigel Farage, Trump, Suella Braverman and others of their ilk, the attempts to hijack, twist and manipulate the events of 80 years ago for their own opportunist political ends are already underway. 

Comments about “small boats” crossing the English Channel or Biden’s “cosying up” to Europe from right-wingers on both sides of the Atlantic are a measure of the divisive politics that is their pernicious trademark.

What, I wonder, did the likes of Farage and other adherents to Brexit make of the utter irony yesterday of seeing British Army paratroopers who after parachuting into Sannerville near Caen as part of D-Day commemoration, having to go through French passport control now that Britain is no longer part of the EU? 

It was former German chancellor Helmut Kohl who once observed that European unity was not only about economic cooperation, but rather, it was an existential question of war and peace. 

The dangers of forgetting this are obvious, not least given that in Ukraine we are witnessing the deadliest conflict on the continent since the Second World War. 

As we remember those D-Day landings today, we should pause and consider the politics of the future.

For just as those who participated in those momentous events are disappearing, so too is there a danger of the awareness of what they fought and died for vanishing too. 

Allowing that to happen would not only be a travesty but signal our failure to learn the bitter lessons of history.

That fight for democracy and freedom from authoritarianism is as vital today as it was for that generation who landed on Normandy’s cruel and bloody beaches all those years ago. I for one, thank and salute them.