Two truths stand out starkly from the endless high-pitched television coverage of the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings to which the British were treated all through the weekend. First, all history is the victor’s version. Second, no one can compare with the British in believing implicitly in their own myths.
There is no doubt of course that the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, which Lord Mountbatten masterminded according to Churchill, marked the beginning of the end of World War II. Britain played a heroic role in that enterprise, losing 700 troops on the very first day of the landings. But it was unkind of a British writer to dismiss the French, whose country was supposedly being liberated, as being only “bit-part players” in the liberation drama.
The triumphalism of programmes dripping with romance, nostalgia and, yes, boastfulness, also overlook the resources of the empire Britain then ruled and mobilised for a war that didn’t directly affect Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The sacrifices of the colonies (including India) are not as readily admitted as are the Australian and Canadian contributions.
There may have been poetic justice therefore in a contemporary German report seemingly denying Britain any credit for the victory. “One hundred and fifty thousand American troops have landed in Normandy,” the Germans noted. Repeated last week, it would have struck a discordant note as Queen Elizabeth and Barack Obama exchanged fulsome compliments at the commemoration ceremonies if the avalanche of self-praise hadn’t quite overwhelmed the comment.
I wondered whether the victorious emotionalism at all embarrassed Angela Merkel who was also there attending the festivities among the 20 heads of state. Vladimir Putin, who was present, too, must have thought it all a bit one-sided. True, François Hollande and David Cameron both complimented the Soviet role, but was that sufficient recognition? Some believe the Soviet Union suffered the most in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. Their death toll is estimated at between 30 and 40 million.
Britain suffered 383,800 military casualties and 67,100 war-related civilian deaths. Indian deaths, incidentally, are estimated at 37,000 which, obviously, ignores the more than three million victims of the 1943 Bengal Famine which was hardly unrelated to the decision to conserve food and grain for soldiers and to the burned earth policy that was expected to thwart a Japanese invasion.
Mr Putin and Mr Obama barely recognised each other at the ceremony so that the audience burst out laughing at one point when the giant TV split screen showed them looking directly at each other. But White House aides say that at some point they did exchange civilities and that Mr Obama agreed not to saddle Russia with more sanctions if Mr Putin didn’t take more chunks of Ukraine territory.
The other encounter (or non-encounter) between Mr Putin and the just-elected President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, is believed to have resulted in a call to the rebels in eastern Ukraine to eschew violence.
No doubt both outcomes — sparing Russia more sanctions and the joint call to give up violence — will be attributed to the British landing 70 years ago. After all, there would have been no Putin-Obama and Putin-Poroshenko meetings if the British hadn’t provided the cause for celebration in 1944! But Russia has already annexed Crimea which previously belonged to Ukraine. And Mr Poroshenko’s writ doesn’t run in the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk which are peopled by ethnic Russians who want to either secede and become independent or join Russia. The rebels show no sign of giving up the town of Sloviansk which they seized some days ago.
Queen Elizabeth was Britain’s trump card throughout the week. The 88-year-old monarch certainly had to follow a punishing routine, and the French, like others, must have admired her stamina and devotion to duty. But British pride and possessiveness over the sovereign always jumps to the wrong conclusion abut the nature of foreign enthusiasm.
When Queen Victoria paid a state visit to France as guest of Emperor Napoleon III and his Empress Eugenie, the British press went overboard with reports that the French much preferred the dowdy English Queen to their glamorously beautiful empress. Apparently, they knew who was the true royal after the two national anthems were played: Eugenie turned round to draw up her chair while Victoria merely lowered herself staring straight ahead, confident in the knowledge there would always be a seat wherever her royal posterior chose to descend.
Another occasion for a demonstration of royalist aggressiveness arose during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in June 1897. The scale of American celebrations prompted the Times newspaper to ask why the United States didn’t return to Her Majesty’s fold. This time it was the turn of another conservative British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, to let imagination soar ahead.
“The Queen is revered sufficiently to suggest that, were she to emulate her predecessor, Edward III, and claim the throne of France, there’d be a decent vote in her favour,” burbled Anthony Peregrine, a Daily Telegraph columnist. In the event, the country that sent its own king and queen to the guillotine, renamed a flower market in Paris after Queen Elizabeth. The market on the Isle-de-la-Cite in the middle of the Seine river is now Le Marche Aux Fleurs Reine Elizabeth II.
A British monarch might not regard a flower market as grand compensation for not claiming the crown of France which Britain did for nearly 500 years.
As for a true assessment of the cause and effect of World War II, I cannot but recall Zhou Enlai’s alleged reply when asked about the impact of the French revolution. Two centuries after the event, he thought it was “too early to tell”.
The writer is a senior journalist, columnist
and author
