Immortalized by Hollywood films and critically-acclaimed books, the D-Day landings are often viewed in the West as an unprecedented military victory and operation that broke the back of Nazi Germany. However, a simple examination of the facts shows otherwise: an estimated 110,000 Nazi soldiers were killed, captured, or went missing during the battle for Normandy. For some sobering contrast, Nazi losses in Stalingrad totaled 1.5 million.

Then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described Stalingrad as the crucial moment of the war – but that’s now a distant memory for EU leaders.

RT examined how the West often forgets that there were two fronts in World War II, and certainly more than one “turning point.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/461200-dday-ww2-stalingrad-germany/

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http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/31386

BRUSSELS (Sputnik) – The French opposition is grilling President Emmanuel Macron for his refusal to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to a D-Day ceremony in Normandy marking 75 years since the Western Allies invasion and liberation of Nazi-occupied France.

Earlier in June, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov officially confirmed to reporters that Moscow had not received an invitation from Paris to attend the celebrations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later said that the country would only be represented by a diplomat from its Paris Embassy.

However, Macron invited his other cunterparts — the president's closest allies — from across the globe. He received US President Donald Trump, outgoing UK Prime Minister Theresa May and over a dozen other world leaders in Normandy to commemorate the historic event.

READ MORE: UK Royal Family Names Germany ‘Allied Nation That Took Part in D-Day’ (PHOTOS)

D-Day, or the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, was the largest seaborne invasion in history, carried out by the Western Allies during World War II, it marked the beginning of the liberation of German-occupied France and the opening of the second front.

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https://sputniknews.com/europe/201906071075705071-macron-in-hot-water-af...

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The Battle of Berezina (or Beresina) took place from 26 to 29 November 1812, between the French army of Napoleon, retreating after his invasion of Russia and crossing the Berezina (near Borisov, Belarus), and the Russian armies under Mikhail Kutuzov, Peter Wittgenstein and Admiral Pavel Chichagov. The battle ended with a mixed outcome. The French suffered very heavy losses but managed to cross the river and avoid being trapped. Since then "Bérézina" has been used in French as a synonym for "disaster."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berezina

For the Aussies, the equivalent of this disaster would be Galipoli that the Australian political boffins have churned into a glorious history...

Meanwhile:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said it is "not a problem" that he was not invited to join other world leaders marking the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in northern France.

Mr Putin, who was invited to the 70th anniversary event in 2014, said he had "enough business" of his own in Russia.

The comments came after his government claimed D-Day was "not a game-changer".

Russia often accuses the West of failing to properly acknowledge the Soviet Union's role in World War Two. 

• In pictures: D-Day anniversary events in France
• What were the D-Day landings?
• Veterans mark D-Day as leaders say 'thank you'

World leaders, including US President Donald Trump, attended Thursday's memorial, where they paid tribute to the Allied troops who attacked German forces on the coast of northern France on 6 June, 1944 in history's largest sea and air invasion.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48548200

We are all liars

by Thierry Meyssan

Thierry Meyssan reacts to the commemoration of D-Day in Normandy, the commemoration of the massacre at Tiananmen, and to the campaign for the election of the European Parliament. He points out that we continue to lie deliberately and even to take pride in it. Yet only the Truth will set us free.

Propaganda is a means of spreading ideas, whether they be true or false. But lying to ourselves is nothing other than refusing to admit our faults, attempting to convince ourselves that we are perfect – running away.

Turkey illustrates the paroxysm of this attitude. It persists in denying that it tried to get rid of the non-Muslim minorities, in several waves, during the space of a generation, from 1894 to 1923. The Israëlis are not too bad at this themselves, pretending that they created their state in order to offer a dignified life to the Jews who survived extermination by the Nazis, when in fact Woodrow Wilson agreed to found the state in 1917, and that today in their home land, more than 50,000 escapees from the death camps live miserably below the poverty line. But the Western powers are the only ones to build consensus on their lies, claiming them to be revealed truths.

The Normandy landings

We are presently celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings. According to the almost unanimous Press, it was here that the Allies launched the liberation of Europe from the Nazi occupation.

Yet we know this is untrue

- The landings were not the work of the Allies, but almost exclusively that of the British Empire and the US Expeditionary Force. 

- It was not aimed at « liberating Europe », but at « marching on Berlin», in order to grab those shreds of the Third Reich which could still be poached from the victorious Soviet armies. 

- The invasion was not welcomed with joy by the French, but on the contrary, with horror. Robert Jospin (father of ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin) denounced, on the front page of his newspaper, the Anglo-Saxon importation of war into France. The French buried their 20,000 dead, killed by Anglo-Saxon bombings, which were only intended as a diversion. An immense demonstration gathered in Lyon around the « head of state », ex-Maréchal Philippe Petain, to refuse Anglo-Saxon domination. And never, absolutely never, did the head of La France Libre, General Charles De Gaulle, accept to participate in any commemoration of this sinister invasion.

History is more complicated than a Western movie. There are no « good guys » or « bad guys », but men who attempt to save their own with as much humanity as possible. At best, we were able to dodge the drivel of Tony Blair who, during the commemorations of the 60th anniversary, provoked the anger of the British Press by pretending in his speech that the United Kingdom had entered the war to save Jews from the « Shoah » — but not to save the gypsies from the same massacre. The destruction of the European Jews did not begin until after the Wansee Conference in 1942.

The Tienanmen massacre

We celebrate the painful anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre. We read continually that the cruel Chinese Imperial régime massacred thousands of its own citizens who were peaceably gathered in Beijing’s main square, only because they were asking for a little freedom.

Yet we know this is untrue

- The sit-in on Tienanmen Square was not that of the Chinese among themselves, but an attempted coup d’état by partisans of ex-Premier Minister Zhao Ziyang. 

- Dozens of soldiers were lynched or burned alive on the Square by « peaceful demonstrators », and hundreds of military vehicles were destroyed, before any intervention by Den Xiaoping’s soldiers was implemented against them. 

- The US specialists of the « colour revolutions », including Gene Sharp*, were present on the Square to organise Zhao Ziyang’s men.

The European Union

We have just voted to nominate our deputies in the European Parliament. For weeks now, we have been bombarded by slogans assuring us that « Europe means peace and prosperity », and that the European Union is the pinnacle of the European dream.

Yet we know this is untrue

- Europe is a continent – reaching « from Brest to Vladivostok », according to Charles De Gaulle’s phrase - and it is a culture of openness and cooperation, unlike the European Union, which is no more than an anti-Russian administration which continues the march on Berlin in the wake of the Normandy landings. 

- The European Union is not peace in Cyprus, but cowardice in face of the Turkish military occupation. It is not prosperity, but economic stagnation, while the rest of the world develops with increasing rapidity. 

- The European Union has nothing to do with the European dream that existed between the two world wars. Our ancestors harboured the ambition of uniting the political régimes which served the general interest – the Republics, in the etymological sense of the word, in conformity with the European culture, whether they were situated on the continent or elsewhere. Aristide Briand therefore spoke in favour of Argentina (a country of European culture in Latin America), but not the United Kingdom (a class-based society).

Et cetera, etc…

We stumble on like the blind

We have to distinguish truth from falsehood. We can be pleased that Hitlerism failed, but without necessarily believing that the Anglo-Saxons saved us. We can denounce the brutality of Den Xiaoping without necessarily denying that in this bloody fashion he saved his country from the return of colonialism. We can celebrate the fact that we were not dominated by the Soviet Union without necessarily boasting about being vassals of the Anglo-Saxons.

We continually lie to ourselves in order to mask our cowardice and our crimes. And then we feign surprise that we are unable to solve human problems.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 

Pete Kimberley

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article206695.html

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*Despite his "peaceful views" Gene sharp has done the "quiet" work of "regime change" for the USA.

Gene Sharp has been accused of having strong links with a variety of US institutions including the CIA, the Pentagon and Republican-related institutions, i.e. International Republican Institute and RAND Corporation, National Endowment for Democracy.[19] The Voltaire Network has accused Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution of just promoting destabilization on countries disaligned with USA interests.[45] On the other hand, there has been debate around Sharp's works influencing the Arab Spring,[46] with a WikiLeaks cable citing his work in a US embassy in Damascus[47] while other media rejected such claims.[48]

The US and 15 other nations, including Britain, France, and Canada, also declared their commitment to “resolve international tensions peacefully.”

If the so-called D-Day proclamation sounds like a load of PR twaddle, that’s because it is.

Evidently, it was hurriedly put together for some feel-good effect as Trump and others commemorated Operation Overlord to the strains an army brass band and Vera Lynn’s wartime paean ‘We’ll Meet Again’. The noble sacrifices of soldiers and civilians in the defeat of Nazi fascism would have to be given some token of decorum in the form of a peaceful proclamation, so it seems.

However, the proclamation by Trump and his gang of NATO warmongers has to be seen as nothing but cynical lip-service.

While commemorating a past naval offensive “for peace,” the US has at the very same time deployed warships and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in the Persian Gulf in a blatant show of aggression towards Iran. Washington is flagrantly using military force to subjugate Tehran to its geopolitical demands. So much for “resolving international tensions peacefully.”

Trump this week told media that he did not want the stand-off with Iran to become an all-out military conflict. Yet he continues to threaten that the US is ready to deploy the military option against Iran. Last month, he cryptically warned about the “official end of Iran” while also offering “talks” with Tehran. Trump’s occasional words of peace are therefore meaningless.

Washington’s apparent problem with Iran is based on claims that the latter is “supporting regional terrorism” and has “ambitions to build nuclear weapons.” That amounts to paranoid hearsay, sourced from the Israelis and Saudis. It is hardly the grounds for justified military force. In reality, the US is simply using aggression – which is a war crime – in order to exert its political will on Iran.

Another contemporary case that flies in the face of the D-Day Proclamation is the Trump administration’s threat to use military force against Venezuela. That threat is wielded because Washington doesn’t want the elected socialist president Nicolas Maduro in power, and instead wants to replace him with their preferred pro-Washington opposition figure who has never been elected by the people. This is not even a case of “resolving tensions peacefully”. It is a straight leap to militarism by the Trump administration towards a sovereign country whose internal affairs should be none of Washington’s business.

If Britain, France, Germany, Canada and other members of the NATO military alliance were genuinely committed to this week’s D-Day Proclamation they would be forthrightly telling the US to halt its aggression towards Iran and Venezuela. But none of them have. The Europeans may have expressed concern about US tensions with Iran, owing to their selfish instincts for their own safety, but they have not been nearly as robust enough in censuring Washington to cease its criminal use of aggression. Their mealy-mouthed attitude is in effect a cowardly form of passive aggression.

No surprise there, however. Every illegal war and covert operation launched by the US has been supported by the NATO alliance ever since its formation in 1949. When did the bloc ever oppose any American military intervention, no matter how egregiously unlawful and destructive? It automatically issues a blank cheque of seeming “multilateralism” to cover for US war crimes, the most recent of which include the wars in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and covertly in Syria, where the NATO powers covertly sponsored jihadist terror proxies in a bid for regime change against President Assad.

Some of the NATO minions go off on their own national adventures. France’s President Emmanuel Macron, who likes to pontificate about “saving the planet”, has currently ordered French troops to “fight terrorism” in Mali, Niger, Cameroon and other former colonies in Africa.

Maybe if France stopped looting those countries with its control over their national finances through the colonial-era African Franc system whereby those countries are mandated to deposit their gold reserves in Paris, then many internal African “tensions could be resolved peacefully.” As is it, the military option is the preferred one because it flatters the French national ego on the world stage and makes huge profits for France’s weapons industry.

What NATO member has ever stood up and questioned the Washington-led policy of aggression towards Russia and China? All 29 members of this militarist club indulge the US ringmaster and its gung-ho strategy of encircling Russia and China with missile systems, encroaching bases, warships, and warplanes.

Just last month in an address to West Point graduates, Vice President Mike Pence “promised” that US soldiers would one day be on a battlefield “for America”. He said it was a “certainty.” Ominously, Pence mentioned China as a potential target because it has the audacity to “rival American power.” Again, so much for commitment to resolve tensions peacefully.

Here is the stupendous irony. NATO was formed in the ashes of World War Two, not because the US and Britain defeated Nazi Germany. It was the Soviet Union that largely destroyed the Nazi war machine. The overdue D-Day landings in June 1944 were finally ordered by American and British rulers because they feared the Soviets would conquer all of Germany singlehandedly. The Red Army at that stage in the war was rolling up the Third Reich, eventually taking Hitler’s Berlin in May 1945.

Before the outbreak of the war, American and British capitalism had fostered the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1930s as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and the spread of socialism among their own working classes. Nazi Germany would not have become the fearsome force were it not for massive foreign investment from Wall Street and American corporations like Ford, General Motors, Du Pont, ITT and others, as documented by historian Jacques Pauwels. When the Nazi regime went rogue, Western powers were obliged to liquidate it, as they usually do, as seen with other client regimes down through history. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein being a choice case.

The D-Day event is therefore not at all what it seems. There is no disputing the courage and conviction of ordinary American and British soldiers who went to war against fascism. But that principled motivation did not apply to their ruling classes. A concomitant of the ambiguity and contradictions is demonstrated in the way that NATO was promptly set up after the war, and for the primary purpose of confronting the West’s supposed wartime ally, the Soviet Union.

Another concomitant is the way the US and NATO powers have in the decades after the war continued to use militarism and aggression as a matter of policy to achieve their geopolitical interests. The US and other Western powers never really had a problem with Nazi Germany based on political, legal or moral principle. The latter’s termination came to be a matter of pragmatic urgency in order to safeguard Western geopolitical interests of stability and spheres of influence. The root problem for Western capitalist powers was always Russia as a power perceived to be in defiance of their objectives.

That’s why the D-Day Proclamation of peaceful intent issued by the US and its gang of NATO warmongers is a travesty. It’s the exact opposite of their policy and practice of aggression.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/461242-ww2-nato-peace-dday/