In the days ahead we can confidently expect a burst of fervour around the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings. But this will sit oddly with two other tendencies of the moment: first world war mania and the wave of Europhobia. By contrast with the comforting power of the D-day myth, we still do not know what to do with 1914. We are even less clear about our current position in the world, awash as we are with anti-Europeanism.
History is as much a matter of forgetting as remembering. In the current moment, it has become too easy to see the two world wars as wars of Britishers against Europe. The inconvenient truth about D-day for today's little Englanders is that fighting and winning the second world war was a horribly cosmopolitan business. Yugoslavs, Greeks, Poles, Czechs, Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians and French mixed and mingled, along with cohorts from all over the empire. Added to which the entire country was overrun by Yanks. For this multinational alliance, securing the UK's independence was not a goal in itself. It was a launching pad for a wider campaign to liberate the continent and to build a better Europe.
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