Heads of state, kings and princes by the dozens, journalists by the hundreds and, of course, the media with all their arsenal will be there to celebrate the D-Day landings or, more precisely, this script seeking to present the United States as the sole artisans of the freedom regained in Europe, as the almost solitary heroes of the victory over Nazism. This year, the mystification is likely to be even louder on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of this event.

Far be it from us to minimize the bravery and courage of these young Americans, Britons, French and Canadians, often teenagers, who were dropped from planes or disembarked from ships and had to dive into a hostile sea with an average of 60 kg of equipment on their shoulders to fight the army of the Third Reich. On the contrary, their memory deserves every respect.

But to attempt to turn history on its head and forget that it was the Soviet Union, with the combined action of its people''s resistance, organized in thousands of partisan groups, and the heroism of its army, which had the merit of containing and then completely smashing Hitler''s steamroller in memorable battles, to seek to reverse roles so grossly is an enterprise worthy of a Goebbels. Yet this is what characterizes the practice of the Western mass media, which follow their governments'' instructions on how to treat the D-Day landings and, beyond that, all the facts of the Second World War.

That''s why they ignore the fact that 75% of German losses prior to D-Day were sustained by the Red Army, and that the battle of Stalingrad alone eliminated twice as many German divisions as all the operations carried out in the West between D-Day and the Nazi surrender.

Two sides of the coin

In other words, it was the Soviet Union and its army that turned the tide, with Soviet troops reclaiming occupied territory kilometer by kilometer in a victorious offensive that ended only at Hitler''s own bunker, at the cost of enormous losses. Thus, to stay with the comparison of US-USSR contributions to the war, it is estimated that around 410,000 Americans died in the confrontation, including some ten thousand civilians, compared with around 27 million on the Soviet side, most of whom were civilians. A sacrifice without parallel in the history of conflict, and without the slightest compensation.

Can the same be said for US involvement in the war? Can we ignore, for example, that major US corporations such as Du Pont, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, Esso, General Motors, etc., contributed to the German military effort, reaping juicy dividends? That the latter company''s trucks, fuelled by the fuel of the last-but-one, were particularly useful for the German army''s blitzkrieg operations? And that the famous Marshall Plan was essentially a gigantic investment and financial operation aimed at fortifying American penetration of Europe to ensure its perpetual domination, while seeking to thwart the evolution towards socialism of many countries where the fight against the invader was, in most cases, waged by Communist resistance fighters?

A parenthesis of dignity

It''s no coincidence that General de Gaulle never wanted to take part in these commemorations. When asked by his biographer Alain Peyrefitte about the reasons for his absence, de Gaulle recounted how Churchill had informed him of this operation, organized behind France''s back and yet involving its territory: “Churchill summoned me to London on June 4, as a squire summons his butler. And he told me about the landings, without any French unit having been scheduled to take part. I criticized him for taking orders from Roosevelt, instead of imposing a European will on him. He then shouted at me with all the force of his lungs: "De Gaulle, tell yourself that when I have to choose between you and Roosevelt, I''ll always prefer Roosevelt. When we have to choose between the French and the Americans, we''ll always prefer the Americans!”

And the general explained his reasons to Peyrefitte: “The June 6th landings were an Anglo-Saxon affair, from which France was excluded. They were determined to settle in France as if it were enemy territory! Just as they had just done in Italy and were about to do in Germany! [...] And then, it would contribute to the belief that, if we had been liberated, we owed it solely to the Americans. That would be tantamount to treating the Resistance as null and void. Our natural defeatism is all too prone to adopting such views. We mustn''t give in to it! And he concludes: "And you''d like me to go and commemorate their landing, when it was the prelude to a second occupation of the country? No, no, don''t count on me”. We can, however, count on Biden, von der Leyen, Stoltenberg and their many subjects, including Emmanuel Macron, the most obedient of them all.

Of course, you won''t hear or read such stories or reflections in said "free press" because they are far too embarrassing for their presentation of history. Perhaps because, to parody an illustrious thinker, capitalism carries lies like clouds carry storms.

Alain Peyrefitte “C’était de Gaulle, Tome 2 (Édition de Fallois Fayard 1997), fragments, pages 84 to 87