D-Day!

This is coolbert:

This is the 65th anniversary of the landings in Normandy. D-Day, June 6, 1944.

The usual commemorations have been held. With all the assembled dignitaries making speeches about the sacrifices made by those that had to wade ashore!

How D-Day was a significant turning point in the war. Even acknowledged so by Hitler himself.

But of course, some folks are never happy.

The revisionists of the west and east at hard at work, attempting to debunk established "myth"!

1. "Revisionists challenge D-Day story"

"A revisionist theme seems to have settled on this year's 65th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings."

Those persons liberated from the German occupation, French citizens and residents of Normandy, were NOT universally grateful to the liberators. The American, Canadian, and British troops were NOT always seen as paragons of virtue? Rather, as persons who wrought destruction on a massive scale to the cities and villages of Normandy, and RAPISTS WHOSE BEHAVIOR WAS ON MANY OCCASIONS SORELY WANTING?

"And far from being universally welcomed as liberators, many troops had a distinctly surly reception from the people of Normandy."

"The reason for this was simple. Many Normandy towns and villages had been literally obliterated by Allied bombing."

This was primarily the saturation bombing that preceded Operation Cobra. Hundreds of tons of bombs dropped by the massed strategic allied air forces! NOT ONLY WERE THE GERMAN MILITARY UNITS THAT WERE THE TARGETS OF THE BOMBARDMENT OBLITERATED, BUT SO TOO WERE ANY FRENCH VILLAGES AND TOWNS "IN THE WAY"!

"Some 20,000 French civilians were killed in the two-and-a-half months from D-Day, 3,000 of them during the actual landings."

Rape too - - was fairly common practice engaged in by the allied "liberators"? Unseemly behavior - - taking advantage of a situation and abusing those very same people [French] you can to "save" from the German.

"According to American historian J Robert Lilly, there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war."

That figure of 3,500 rapes is very high when one considers that in all of the four year occupation of France by German troops, the TOTAL number of Frenchwomen raped by the occupier [German] was SEVERAL hundred.

2. "Russia: West Slighted Soviets in D-Day Ceremonies"

"MOSCOW -- Russia on Thursday accused Western leaders of slighting the Soviet role in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in their remarks this month commemorating the D-Day landings in Normandy."

Once more, the clear and persistent pattern emerges. The Russians feel slighted. NO criticism of the Soviet role in victory over the German in WW2 can be tolerated! And too, the Soviet role must always be mentioned and included in all ceremonies.

I know this is HARD for the Russian to understand, but the D-Day commemorative ceremonies were to commemorate D-Day and nothing more than that. The Russian/Soviet was NOT involved in the D-Day landings, plain, pure and simple. These ceremonies held this last 6th of June were to honor those nations that actually participated in the campaign in Normandy, and nothing else!

Russia has taken offense where no offense is intended. It is preposterous to think of it any other way? NO offense was intended, and none should be taken. But it has been.

Always has to be, some folks, whether it is in the west or the east, that must always make a stir, be a gadfly, be a revisionist. Much to-do has been made where it is not needed?

coolbert.