Breakthrough: THE INVASION OF NORMANDY

 

The Germans preferred to occupy northern France themselves. The French had to pay costs for the 300,000-strong German occupation army, amounting to 20 million Reichmarks per day, paid at the artificial rate of twenty francs to the Mark. This was 50 times the actual costs of the occupation garrison. The French government also had responsibility for preventing citizens from escaping into exile. Article IV of the Armistice allowed for a small French army—the Army of the Armistice (Armée de l'Armistice)—stationed in the unoccupied zone, and for the military provision of the French colonial empire overseas. The function of these forces was to keep internal order and to defend French territories from Allied assault. The French forces were to remain under the overall direction of the German armed forces. The exact strength of the Vichy French Metropolitan Army was set at 3,768 officers, 15,072 non-commissioned officers, and 75,360 men. All members had to be volunteers. In addition to the army, the size of the Gendarmerie was fixed at 60,000 men plus an anti-aircraft force of 10,000 men. Despite the influx of trained soldiers from the colonial forces (reduced in size in accordance with the Armistice), there was a shortage of volunteers. As a result, 30,000 men of the "class of 1939" were retained to fill the quota. At the beginning of 1942 these conscripts were released, but there was still an insufficient number of men. This shortage would remain until the dissolution, despite Vichy appeals to the Germans for a regular form of conscription. Philippe Pétain (left) shaking hands with Hitler. The Vichy French Metropolitan Army was deprived of tanks and other armored vehicles, and was desperately short of motorized transport, a particular problem for cavalry units. Surviving recruiting posters stress the opportunities for athletic activities, including horsemanship - which reflects both the general emphasis placed by the Vichy regime on rural virtues and outdoor activities, and the realities of service in a small and technologically backward military force. Traditional features characteristic of the pre-1940 French Army, such as kepis and heavy capotes (buttoned-back greatcoats), were replaced by berets and simplified uniforms. After Liberation, some of its units would be merged with the Free French Army to form the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS, Republican Security Companies), France's main anti-riot force. Created in 1941, the Drancy internment camp, on the outskirts of Paris, was under control of the French police until 3 July 1943. The Nazis then took day-to-day control as part of the major stepping up at all facilities for the mass exterminations.SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunnerdirected it until August 1944. He was condemned in absentia in France in 2001 on charges of crimes against humanity, and is believed to be the world's highest-ranking Nazi fugitive still alive. Vichy's racial policies and collaboration. Further information: Révolution nationale French Police registering new inmates at the Pithiviers camp. French Milice guarding detainees. As soon as it was established, Pétain's government took measures against the so-called "undesirables": Jews, métèques (immigrants from Mediterranean countries),Freemasons, Communists, Gypsies, homosexuals,[citation needed] and left-wing activists. Inspired by Charles Maurras' conception of the "Anti-France" (which he defined as the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners"), Vichy imitated the racial policies of the Third Reich and engaged in natalist policies aimed at reviving the "French race".[citation needed] Although these policies never went as far as the eugenics program implemented by the Nazis, the results for their victims were often much the same. In July 1940, Vichy set up a special Commission charged with reviewing naturalizations granted since the 1927 reform of the nationality law. Between June 1940 and August 1944, 15,000 persons, mostly Jews, were denaturalized. This bureaucratic decision was instrumental in their subsequent internment. The internment camps already opened by the Third Republic were immediately put to new use, ultimately becoming transit camps for the implementation of the Holocaust and the extermination of all "undesirables", including the Roma people (who refer to the extermination of Gypsies as Porrajmos). A law of 4 October 1940 authorized internments of foreign Jews on the sole basis of a prefectoral order,[23] and the first raids took place in May 1941. Vichy imposed no restrictions on black people in the Unoccupied Zone; the regime even had a mulatto cabinet minister, the Martinique-born lawyer Henry Lemery.[24] The Third Republic had first opened concentration camps during World War One for the internment of enemy aliens, and later used them for other purposes. Camp Gurs, for example, had been set up in southwestern France after the fall of Spanish Catalonia, in the first months of 1939, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), to receive the Republican refugees, including Brigadists from all nations, fleeing the Francists. After Édouard Daladier's government (April 1938 – March 1940) took the decision to outlaw theFrench Communist Party (PCF) following the German-Soviet non-aggression pact (aka Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) signed in August 1939, these camps were also used to intern French communists. Drancy internment camp was founded in 1939 for this use; it later became the central transit camp through which all deportees passed on their way to concentration and extermination camps in the Third Reich and in Eastern Europe. When the Phoney War started with France's declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939, these camps were used to intern enemy aliens. These included German Jews and anti-fascists, but any German citizen (or Italian, Austrian, Polish, etc.) could also be interned in Camp Gurs and others. As the Wehrmacht advanced into Northern France, common prisoners evacuated from prisons were also interned in these camps. Camp Gurs received its first contingent of political prisoners in June 1940. It included left-wing activists (communists, anarchists, trade-unionists, anti-militarists, etc.) and pacifists, but also French fascists who supported the victory of Italy and Germany. Finally, after Pétain's proclamation of the "French state" and the beginning of the implementation of the "Révolution nationale" ("National Revolution"), the French administration opened up many concentration camps, to the point that, as historian Maurice Rajsfus wrote: "The quick opening of new camps created employment, and the Gendarmerienever ceased to hire during this period."    Don't look up: Cyclists in the Rue de Rivoli Besides the political prisoners already detained there, Gurs was then used to intern foreign Jews, stateless persons, Gypsies, homosexuals, and prostitutes. Vichy opened its first internment camp in the northern zone on 5 October 1940, in Aincourt, in the Seine-et-Oise department, which it quickly filled with PCF members.[26] The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, in the Doubs, was used to intern Gypsies.[27] The Camp des Milles, near Aix-en-Provence, was the largest internment camp in the Southeast of France; 2,500 Jews were deported from there following the August 1942 raids.[28] Spaniards were then deported, and 5,000 of them died in Mauthausen concentration camp.[29] In contrast, the French colonial soldiers were interned by the Germans on French territory instead of being deported.[29] Besides the concentration camps opened by Vichy, the Germans also opened some Ilags (Internierungslager), for the detainment enemy aliens, on French territory; in Alsace, which was under the direct administration of the Reich, they opened the Natzweiler camp, which was the only concentration camp created by the Nazis on French territory. Natzweiler included a gas chamber which was used to exterminate at least 86 detainees (mostly Jewish) with the aim obtaining a collection of undamaged skeletons (as this mode of execution did no damage to the skeletons themselves) for the use of Nazi professor August Hirt. The Vichy government enacted a number of racial laws. In August 1940, laws against antisemitism in the media (the Marchandeau Act) were repealed, while the decree n°1775 September 5, 1943, denaturalized a number of French citizens, in particular Jews from Eastern Europe.[29] Foreigners were rounded-up in "Foreign Workers Groups" (groupements de travailleurs étrangers) and, as with the colonial troops, used by the Germans as manpower. The Statute on Jews excluded them from the civil administration. Vichy also enacted racial laws in its French territories in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). "The history of the Holocaust in France's three North African colonies (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) is intrinsically tied to France's fate during this period." With regard to economic contribution to the German economy it is estimated that France provided 42% of the total foreign aid. The Sigmaringen operation was based in the city's ancient castle. Following the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, Pétain and his ministers were taken to Germany by the German forces. There,Fernand de Brinon established a pseudo-government in exile at Sigmaringen. Pétain refused to participate and the Sigmaringen operation had little or no authority. Just imagine living in a world in which law and order have broken down completely: a world in which there is no authority, no rules and no sanctions. In the bombed-out ruins of Europe’s cities, feral gangs scavenge for food. Old men are murdered for their clothes, their watches or even their boots. Women are mercilessly raped, many several times a night. Neighbour turns on neighbour; old friends become deadly enemies. And the wrong surname, even the wrong accent, can get you killed. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares. But for hundreds of millions of Europeans, many of them now gentle, respectable pensioners, this was daily reality in the desperate months after the end of World War II. Humiliated: A French woman accused of sleeping with Germans has her head shaved by neighbors in a village near Marseilles Two Frenchmen train guns on a collaborator who kneels against a wooden fence with his hands raise while another cocks an arm to hit him, Rennes, France, in late August 1944. In Britain we remember the great crusade against the Nazis as our finest hour. But as the historian Keith Lowe shows in an extraordinary, disturbing and powerful new book, Savage Continent, it is time we thought again about the way the war ended. For millions of people across the Continent, he argues, VE Day marked not the end of a bad dream, but the beginning of a new nightmare. In central Europe, the Iron Curtain was already descending; even in the West, the rituals of recrimination were being played out. This is a story not of redemption but of revenge. And far from being ‘Zero Hour’, as the Germans call it, May 1945 marked the beginning of a terrible descent into anarchy. Of course World War II was that rare thing, a genuinely moral struggle against a terrible enemy who had plumbed the very depths of human cruelty. But precisely because we in Britain escaped the shame and trauma of occupation, we rarely reflect on what happened next. After years of bombing and bloodshed, much of Europe was physically and morally broken. Indeed, to contemplate the costs of war in Germany alone is simply mind-boggling. Across the shattered remains of Hitler’s Reich, some 20 million people were homeless, while 17 million ‘displaced persons’, many of them former PoWs and slave labourers, were roaming the land. Half of all houses in Berlin were in ruins; so were seven out of ten of those in Cologne. Not all the Germans who survived the war had supported Hitler. But in the vast swathes of his former empire conquered by Stalin’s Red Army, the terrible vengeance of the victors fell on them all, irrespective of their past record. In the little Prussian village of Nemmersdorf, the first German territory to fall to the Russians, every single man, woman and child was brutally murdered. ‘I will spare you the description of the mutilations and the ghastly condition of the corpses,’ a Swiss war correspondent told his readers. ‘These are impressions that go beyond even the wildest imagination.’ Near the East Prussian city of Königsberg — now the Russian city of Kaliningrad — the bodies of dead woman, who had been raped and then butchered, littered the roads. And in Gross Heydekrug, writes Keith Lowe, ‘a woman was crucified on the altar cross of the local church, with two German soldiers similarly strung up on either side’. Many Russian historians still deny accounts of the atrocities. But the evidence is overwhelming. Across much of Germany, Lowe explains, ‘thousands of women were raped and then killed in an orgy of truly medieval violence’. But the truth is that medieval warfare was nothing like as savage as what befell the German people in 1945. Wherever the Red Army came, women were gang-raped in their thousands. One woman in Berlin, caught hiding behind a pile of coal, recalled being raped by ‘twenty-three soldiers one after the other. I had to be stitched up in hospital. I never want to have anything to do with any man again’. Of course it is easy to say that the Germans, having perpetrated some of the most appalling atrocities in human history on the Eastern Front, had brought their suffering on themselves. Even so, no sane person could possibly read Lowe’s book without a shudder of horror. Are we more immune to the atrocities that occurred after the war ended on the continent because we did not suffer the indignity and pain of occupation? German refugees, civilians and soldiers, crowd platforms of the Berlin train station after being driven from Poland and Czechoslovakia following the defeat of Germany by Allied forces. The truth is that World War II, which we remember as a great moral campaign, had wreaked incalculable damage on Europe’s ethical sensibilities. And in the desperate struggle for survival, many people would do whatever it took to get food and shelter. In Allied-occupied Naples, the writer Norman Lewis watched as local women, their faces identifying them as ‘ordinary well-washed respectable shopping and gossiping housewives’, lined up to sell themselves to young American GIs for a few tins of food. Another observer, the war correspondent Alan Moorehead, wrote that he had seen ‘the moral collapse’ of the Italian people, who had lost all pride in their ‘animal struggle for existence’. Amid the trauma of war and occupation, the bounds of sexual decency had simply collapsed. In Holland one American soldier was propositioned by a 12-year-old girl. In Hungary scores of 13-year-old girls were admitted to hospital with venereal disease; in Greece, doctors treated VD-infected girls as young as ten. What was more, even in those countries liberated by the British and Americans, a deep tide of hatred swept through national life. Everybody had come out of the war with somebody to hate. In northern Italy, some 20,000 people were summarily murdered by their own countrymen in the last weeks of the war. And in French town squares, women accused of sleeping with German soldiers were stripped and shaved, their breasts marked with swastikas while mobs of men stood and laughed. Yet even today, many Frenchmen pretend these appalling scenes never happened. Her head shaved by angry neighbours, a tearful Corsican woman is stripped naked and taunted for consorting with German soldiers during their occupation It is easy to say that the Germans, having perpetrated some of the most appalling atrocities in human history, had brought their suffering on themselves. The general rule, though, was that the further east you went, the worse the horror became. In Prague, captured German soldiers were ‘beaten, doused in petrol and burned to death’. In the city’s sports stadium, Russian and Czech soldiers gang-raped German women. In the villages of Bohemia and Moravia, hundreds of German families were brutally butchered. And in Polish prisons, German inmates were drowned face down in manure, and one man reportedly choked to death after being forced to swallow a live toad. Yet at the time, many people saw this as just punishment for the Nazis’ crimes. Allied leaders refused to discuss the atrocities, far less condemn them, because they did not want to alienate public support. ‘When you chop wood,’ the future Czech president, Antonin Zapotocky, said dismissively, ‘the splinters fly.’ It is to Lowe’s great credit that he resists the temptation to sit in moral judgment. None of us can know how we would have behaved under similar circumstances; it is one of the great blessings of British history that, despite our sacrifice to beat the Nazis, our national experience was much less traumatic than that of our neighbours.  It is also true that repellent as we might find it, the desire for revenge was both instinctive and understandable — especially in those terrible places where the Nazis had slaughtered so many innocents. So it is  shocking, but not altogether surprising, to read that when the Americans liberated the Dachau death camp, a handful of GIs lined up scores of German guards and simply machine-gunned them. We in Britain are right to be proud of our record in the war. Yet it is time that we faced up to some of the unsettling moral ambiguities of those bloody, desperate years. By any standards this was a war crime; yet who among us can honestly say we would have behaved differently? Lowe notes how ‘a very small number’ of Jewish prisoners wreaked a bloody revenge on their former captors. Such claims, inevitably, are deeply controversial. When the veteran American war correspondent John Sack, himself Jewish, wrote a book about it in the 1990s, he was accused of Holocaust denial and his publishers cancelled the contract. Yet after the liberation of Theresienstadt camp, one Jewish man saw a mob of ex-inmates beating an SS man to death, and such scenes were not uncommon across the former Reich. ‘We all participated,’ another Jewish camp inmate, Szmulek Gontarz, remembered years later. ‘It was sweet. The only thing I’m sorry about is that I didn’t do more.’ Meanwhile, across great swathes of Eastern Europe, German communities who had lived quietly for centuries were being driven out. Some had blood on their hands; many others, though, were blameless. But they could not have paid a higher price for the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s imperial ambitions. In the months after the war ended, a staggering 7 million Germans were driven out of Poland, another 3 million from Czechoslovakia and almost 2 million more from other central European countries, often in appalling conditions of hunger, thirst and disease. Joyous: When we picture the end of the war, we imagine crowds in central London, cheering and singing. Today this looks like ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. Yet at the time, conscious of all they had endured under the Nazi jackboot, Polish and Czech politicians saw the expulsions as ‘the least worst’ way to avoid another war. Indeed, this ethnic savagery was not confined to the Germans. In eastern Poland and western Ukraine, rival nationalists carried out an undeclared war of horrifying brutality, raping and slaughtering women and children and forcing almost 2 million people to leave their homes. What these men wanted was not, in the end, so different from Hitler’s own ambitions: an ethnically homogenous national fatherland, cleansed of the last taints of foreign contamination. In 1947, in an enterprise nicknamed Operation Vistula, the Poles rounded up their remaining Ukrainian citizens and deported them to the far west of the country, which had formerly been part of Germany. There they were settled in deserted towns, whose old inhabitants had themselves been deported to West Germany. It was, Lowe writes, ‘the final act in a racial war begun by Hitler, continued by Stalin and completed by the Polish authorities’. To their immense credit, the Poles have had the courage to face up to what happened all those years ago. Indeed, ten years ago the Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, publicly apologised for Operation Vistula. Yet the supreme irony of the war is that in Poland, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, VE Day marked the end of one tyranny and the beginning of another. Justifiable: Conscious of all they had endured under the Nazi jackboot, Polish and Czech politicians saw the expulsion of Germans as 'the least worst' way to avoid another war.  Here in Britain, we too often forget that although we went to war to save Poland, we actually ended it by allowing Poland to fall under Stalin’s cruel despotism.  Perhaps we had no choice; there was no appetite for a war with the Russians in 1945, and we were exhausted in any case. Yet not everybody was prepared to accept surrender so meekly.  In one of the final chapters in Lowe’s deeply moving book, he reminds us that between 1944 and 1950 some 400,000 people were involved in anti-Soviet resistance activities in Ukraine. What was more, in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which Stalin had brutally absorbed into the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of nationalist guerillas known as the Forest Brothers struggled vainly for their independence, even fighting pitched battles against the Red Army and attacking government buildings in major cities. We think of the Cold War in Europe as a stalemate. Yet as late as 1965, Lithuanian partisans were still fighting gun battles with the Soviet police, while the last Estonian resistance fighter, the 69-year-old August Sabbe, was not killed until 1978, more than 30 years after the World War II had supposedly ended. We in Britain are right to be proud of our record in the war. Yet it is time, as this book shows, that we faced up to some of the unsettling moral ambiguities of those bloody, desperate years. When we picture the end of the war, we imagine crowds in central London, cheering and singing. We rarely think of the terrible suffering and slaughter that marked most Europeans’ daily lives at that time. But almost 70 years after the end of the conflict, it is time we acknowledged the hidden realities of perhaps the darkest chapter in all human history.

Three girls enjoy the sunshine in the latest a la mode sunglasses. Shoppers meander through a market piled high with fruit and veg. There is barely a seat to be had at the fashionable Cafe des Deux Magots in the chi-chi Paris quarter of Saint-Germain-de-Pres. At Longchamps, France's smartest racecourse, the It-girls of the day are parading in dazzling hats. It is hard to imagine that these fabulously vivid images of innocent Parisian fun have prompted one leading politician to declare that they make him want to "vomit". A ferocious national debate is under way. Amid demands for censorship, these photos now even come with their own official health warning. Does he look under threat? A lone unarmed German soldier walks down the Metro steps as Parisians get on with the hustle and bustle of their daily lives But then, it is equally hard to believe the dates on these photographs. Every one was taken during the hell of the Nazi regime. According to received wisdom among the French, the Occupation was a time of unspeakable deprivation and cruelty. That is the story France has been repeating to itself for 64 years, ever since General de Gaulle turned up in a Paris newly-liberated by the Americans and praised a "martyred" capital for bravely freeing itself. But it is not exactly the story which leaps out of these pictures. And that is why an exhibition of them in the basement of a Parisian library has attracted the wrath of the French establishment - as well as queues around the block. For some, like the deputy mayor of Paris, Christophe Girard, the explanation is simple: these images are a shameful case of Nazi propaganda. "It's complete manipulation. And it makes me vomit."   Luxury for some: Women enjoy the racing at Longchamps in high style. For others, it is an important reminder that many Parisians had a very cushy war, insulated from hardship by money and/or collaboration with the enemy. In a nation which has never been comfortable about its four years as a Nazi satellite state, it is time to squirm again. Paris was certainly not easy for everyone. In the same month these girls were photographed, the edict went out (from the French authorities) that all Jews should wear a yellow star.   Unknown image of a mysterious lone woman. The composition wows me. It's a profound experience for me, this image... Just look at it . Look at the woman, the way she stands. Paris, 6th Arrondissement, Hôtel Lutetia Soon after it opened in 1910, l'Hôtel Lutetia was home to artists and celebrities including Matisse, Gide, St-Exupéry, and Picasso. Charles de Gaulle stayed there on his honeymoon; and James Joyce wrote part of Ulysses while living there. In 1940, when the Germans occupied Paris during WWII, it was seized by Nazis who used it as their headquarters. Ironically, when the war in 1944, it became a repatriation center for rescued Jews and prisoners of war. Relatives hoping for reunification went to the Lutetia every day to read the lists of those saved, which is noted on a commemorative plaque outside the building. More recently, the long-time partner of Yves St-Laurent, Pierre Bergé, stayed there during a period when Yves was going through some destructive behaviors; it was just a few blocks from the apartment they shared for decades in the 7th. This building has seen a lot of history! oulin Rouge, Paris, Occupied France, WWII This is a German WWII image - a vintage military "found photo" in my collection. I left the image darker than I like to - lightening it washes out too much detail. It's odd for me, seeing German soldiers as tourists at the Moulin Rouge (though I'm sure it's not odd for anyone who is more exposed to images of occupied France). I mean, I'm well read on the war & the historical period, and am well aware of the occupation, the character of it and its aspects. It's just jarring to me to see a shot of someplace famous and a center of fun that's a portrait of people having that fun who are unwanted there - who have forced their way into the environment and dominate it without regard to those to whom the environment truly belongs. I know this is an awfully light rendition of the situation that was anything but light; yet it's how this image hit me. The French had fun at the Moulin Rouge, as did all others - all were invited to the Moulin Rouge to enjoy what there was to offer. Suddenly a bullying gang comes in and takes over, supplanting the original owners, taking over the rights to the fun, only allowing the original owners to partake by the new owners' dispensation...   Lyons, Occupied France, WWII This is a German WWII image - a vintage military "found photo" in my collection. I figured the location was Lyons by the name above the corner door, Credit Lyonnais, so I might be wrong if this business' name isn't an indicator of its location. Whoever took this picture was good at composition - the composition is terrific. Note that the top floor of the building is in ruins. Also, besides the German soldiers on the motorcycle, there are two civilians and a dog in the shot. Paris, Cour du Commerce St-André Just a few blocks from our hotel in the lively St-Germain district, the Cour du Commerce St-André passage led the way to a delightful network of inviting restaurants and wine bars. Le Procope, founded in 1684 to serve coffee and sorbet, is one of the oldest restaurants in the city and is located on this passage. Paris, Cour du Commerce St-André Entry At 130, Boulevard St-Germain, you'll find the elegant entrance to Cour du Commerce St-André's cobblestone passageway. Although it has wrought iron gates, we never found them closed. Paris, Eglise St-Severin Façade The Flamboyant Gothic Eglise St-Severin is named for a hermit who lived on the banks of the Seine in the 5th century. The church that originally stood here was Romanesque in style and enshrined his tomb. The façade of the "newer" version, begun in the 13th century, is distinguished by many gargoyles and by this unusual arched window patterned with the symbols of this style, the licks of flame, instead of the typical circular Rose Window seen in many Gothic churches. By the war's end, France had sent 76,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, to their deaths. Millions of ordinary Frenchmen had also been deported to work in Germany. But you will see none of that among the 270 images in Paris's Bibliotheque Historique. Just two show people with yellow stars (moving freely). I find a long queue at the library. The exhibition can only accommodate 200 at a time and thousands have been turning up. It runs until July. Inside, there is silence as the people shuffle into the display. By order of the Mayor, each one is handed a leaflet explaining that the exhibition "doesn't show the reality of occupation". These are all the work of Andre Zucca, a photojournalist who had worked for big publications including Paris Match before the Second World War. After the fall of France in 1940, he was "requisitioned" to work for the Paris edition of a Nazi propaganda magazine called Signal. It gave him access to the latest German colour film. After the liberation, Zucca became a wedding photographer in the provinces. He died in 1973. Years later, the city bought his archive from his family. "These pictures provide a very important chronological connection to the present," says Jean Derens, the library's chief conservator. "But I was not expecting this sort of criticism." It was not long in coming. "It put me so ill at ease that I left," said Christophe Girard. "I immediately understood the manipulation behind these false happy images." His conclusion was that Zucca had worked for Signal magazine, Signal was propaganda and, thus, these images were propaganda - showing the world a contented Nazi Paris. Not so, insisted the curator and author of the accompanying book, Jean Baronnet. He pointed out that Zucca was not taking these images for his Nazi editors - not a single one of these photos was ever published. These were snapshots of Parisian life by a compulsive photographer. Still the city of love: In the Luxembourg Gardens None the less, the Mayor of Paris, Bernard Delanoe, duly asked Derens to hand every visitor a leaflet stressing Zucca's Nazi credentials. The exhibition had to be put "in context". The library answers to the Mayor so Derens has done as he was told. The leaflet could do with some context of its own. For instance, it warns that the pictures fail to show the Resistance which "had been active in Paris as early as 1940". Aside from the fact that its members could have met in a phone box in 1940, why would any Resistance member have allowed himself to be snapped at work? Since then, however, the debate has escalated. This week's edition of L'Express magazine has an Occupation image on the cover and plenty of wartime navel-gazing within. Some critics have demanded that the exhibition should be shut down. Only a small minority of images show a German presence and, even then, there is no obvious interaction between the occupiers and the hosts. France appears, simply, to be getting on with its life. So what do the French people themselves think? There is a well-thumbed comment book at the exit. Most entries commend the exhibition. "Down with censorship!" says one. Rose-tinted view? Three fashionable young female students model the latest eyewear in Luxembourg Gardens, Paris 1942. At the exit, I canvass opinion. "They are selective, yes, but it is very important that people see these pictures," says Charles Weissberg, 76. "Was it really like that?" I ask. "For some, yes. But not for me. I had to wear a yellow star." He tells me how he fled the Jewish round-ups, surviving as a farm boy while his father died at Auschwitz. "For many people, Paris was a nice place," says Helen Sukno. "But I just remember..." Her words tail off and then she splutters: "La peur! ('The fear!') La peur! La peur!" She, too, is Jewish, and was ten when her father was deported, never to be seen again. Yes, she says, some Parisians had an easy war. Why hide the fact? Another woman emerges. "Are we embarrassed? Everyone is embarrassed by our history," she announces. Despite these views, officialdom is obviously still very cross. I am summoned to meet the Mayor's cultural adviser. Colombe Brossel says the Mayor has now demanded all publicity is taken down and the panels next to the photographs are to be rewritten. "Visitors must know that this is a very narrow vision of the war." Shortages, what shortages? Shoppers stroll along the Rue de Belleville, while elsewhere in France, many are suffering deprivation. The next day, I meet M Baronnet. "I was here through the war as a child and it really was like this," he says. "There was great hunger and persecution for many. But others lived well. "These politicians complain about propaganda but they want to tell the public what to think about this exhibition before they have even seen it." I hire a bike and ride down the Rue de Rivoli, just like the cyclists in one of Zucca's pictures. The swastika flags have gone - to be replaced by those of the EU. But nothing else has changed. Paris had no Blitz. True, some of its citizens were incredibly brave but others behaved abominably. And while they committed their crimes against humanity, most people just got on with their lives as best they could. That might be an inconvenient truth. But it's well worth a look. Poster for exhibition of colour photos of wartime Paris Photo of exhibition about Jews in Nazi-occupied France. At the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial Paris. The wartime exhibition, organised by the Nazis, obviously had many interested French visitors (see the line) p004676 Deux GI's casqués entourent une jeune femme souriante, dans une rue avec des pavillons clôturés. A gauche un Captain, voir le garde à l'avant du casque Oradour-sur-Glane, France In this church on 10 June 1944 Nazi soldiers massacred the entire population of women and children from the town, with the exception of one woman who escaped through a small high window near the altar. Later that same day, the menfolk of the town were gathered in the town square and executed, leaving 642 people in all murdered. The old town now stands as a memorial to wartime atrocities.

Original color photographs of the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II. From British and American soldiers preparing for the invasion in England to German prisoners being marched through the streets after France’s liberation, these images are some of the only color photographs taken during the war. This set of photographs is primarily from the German Galerie Bilderwelt, part of Getty Image’s exclusive Hulton Archive collection. See more historic images from The Captured Blog: Photos: America in Color from 1939-1943 Photos: The Pacific and Adjacent Theaters in WWII 1 Some of the first American soldiers to attack the German defenses in Higgins Boats (LCVPs) approach Omaha Beach near Normandy, France on June 6, 1944. Plastic covers protect the soldier's weapons against from the water. (Photo by Robert F. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard/Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 2 Allied ships, boats and barrage balloons off Omaha Beach after the successful D-Day invasion, near Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France on June 9, 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 3 British Navy Landing Crafts (LCA-1377) carry United States Army Rangers to a ship near Weymouth in Southern England on June 1, 1944. British soldiers can be seen in the conning station. For safety measures, U.S. Rangers remained consigned on board English ships for five days prior to the invasion of Normandy, France. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 4 A U.S. Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) filled with invasion troops approaches the French coast from the sea in June of 1944. The GIs wear life vests in preparation for the landing. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 5 Planes from the 344th Bomb Group, which led the IX Bomber Command formations on D-Day on June 6, 2014. Operations started in March 1944 with attacks on targets in German-occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. After the beginning of the Normandy invasion, the Group was active at Cotentin Peninsula, Caen, Saint-Lo and the Falaise Gap. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 6 Private Clyde Peacock, 1st Military Police (MP) Platoon of the 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army in June 1944 in Dorset, United Kingdom. The 1st Division was one of the two divisions that stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day suffering high casualties. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 7 Troops from the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landing at Juno Beach on the outskirts of Bernieres-sur-Mer on D-Day, June 6, 1944. 14,000 Canadian soldiers were put ashore and 340 lost their lives in the battles for the beachhead. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) #   8 A general view of the scene on D-Day, WWII, at Normandy Beach, France on June 6, 1944. (Photo by Camerique/Getty Images) # 9 An Allied plane crash burns during the fighting in Normandy, France in June of 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 10 German Prisoners of War are kept behind barbed wire on Omaha Beach on June 10, 1944. Landing Ship, Tanks can be seen on the beach and barrage balloons in the air for protection. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 11 From left, Chief of the Imperial General Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and commander of the 21st Army Group, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in Normandy on June 12, 1944, six days after the D-Day landings during Operation Overlord Normandy in World War II. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 12 Trucks of the 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army are loaded into a Landing Ship Tank (LST) in Dorset, United Kingdom, on June 5th, 1944. The LST forms part of Group 30 of the LST Flotilla. The 1st Division was one of the two divisions that stormed Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on D-Day suffering high casualties. It secured Formigny and Caumont in the beachhead. D-Day is still one of the world's most gut-wrenching and consequential battles, as the Allied landing in Normandy led to the liberation of France which marked the turning point in the Western theater of World War II. (AFP PHOTO/Getty Images) # 13 Two American soldiers watch U. S. Army jeeps driving through the ruins in Saint-Lo in August of 1944. The town was almost totally destroyed by 2,000 Allied bombers when they attacked German troops stationed there during Operation Overlord Normandy in June. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 14 Jeeps and other U. S. Army vehicles drive through the ruins of Saint-Lo in August of 1944. The town was almost totally destroyed by 2,000 Allied bombers when they attacked German troops stationed there during Operation Overlord Normandy in June. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)# 15 German Prisoners of War are kept behind barbed wire in Normandy, France in June of 1944. More than 200,000 German soldiers were captured during the Battle of Normandy. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 16 A farmer and his son in front of their damaged house during the Allied invasion of France in July of 1944. Bombing of German positions caused damage throughout the area. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 17 Signal Corps photographer Sergeant Fred Bornet films a town in Normandy, France in June of 1944. Fred 'Freddy' Bornet was born in Scheveningen, Holland. Fluent in French, English and German, he migrated to the United States in 1939 as a 24 year old primarily to escape Hitler. He then became a member of the 163rd Signal Corps Company. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 18 American troops with German prisoners of war on board a Landing Craft Transport (LCT) in June of 1944. The prisoners will be taken to a Liberty Ship in the English Channel during the Allied invasion of Normandy. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 19 United States Rangers from E Company, 5th Ranger Battalion, on board a landing craft assault vessel (LCA) in Weymouth harbor, Dorset, on June 4, 1944. The ship is bound for the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy. Clockwise, from far left: First Sergeant Sandy Martin, who was killed during the landing, Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Markovich, Corporal John Loshiavo and Private First Class Frank E. Lockwood. They are holding a 60mm mortar, a Bazooka, a Garand rifle and a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 20 The 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army (The 'Big Red One') in Dorset, United Kingdom on June 5, 1944 before departing for Omaha Beach. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 21 U.S. Army Medics treating two GIs at a first aid post in southern England in 1944. The soldiers are among the troops due to embark for the invasion of Normandy. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 22 A truck from the 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army is loaded into the Landing Ship Tank in Dorset, United Kingdom in June of 1944. The LST forms part of Group 30 of the LST Flotilla. The 1st Division was one of the two divisions that stormed Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on D-Day suffering high casualties. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 23 U. S. Army trucks and jeeps from the invasion against the German troops enter a town in Normandy, France in June of 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 24 U.S. troops on the Esplanade at Weymouth, Dorset, on their way to ships bound for Omaha Beach for the D-Day landings in Normandy in June of 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 25 German Prisoners of War captured during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June of 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 26 German Prisoners of War who have arrived on HM Landing Ship Tank (LST-165) at Gosport, Hampshire, in June of 1944. This is the first transport with prisoners from the Allied invasion of Normandy. They will be interrogated and distributed to various camps according to their classification. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 27 1,096 German Prisoners of War are marched through the town of Gosport, Hampshire, guarded by British soldiers, in June of 1944. The prisoners arrived on HM Landing Ship Tank (LST-165), the first transport with prisoners from the Allied invasion of Normandy. They will be interrogated and distributed to various camps according to their classification. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 28 U. S. Army trucks and jeeps are driving through the ruins of Saint-Lo in July of 1944. A group of American soldiers walks along the street. The town was almost totally destroyed by 2,000 Allied bombers when they attacked German troops stationed there during Operation Overlord Normandy in June. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 29 Two U. S. Army trucks and two American jeeps are driving through the ruins of Saint-Lo in August of 1944. The town was almost totally destroyed by 2,000 Allied bombers when they attacked German troops stationed there during Operation Overlord Normandy in June. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) # 30 Two children watch an American Army jeep driving through the ruins of Saint-Lo in August of 1944. The town was almost totally destroyed by 2,000 Allied bombers when they attacked German troops stationed there during Operation Overlord Normandy in June. (Photo

Then and now: This unique set of photographs shows D-Day locations as you have never seen them before One photographer armed with a handful of D-Day photographs went out to find the original locations Then, using the exact spot used 70 years ago, a new photograph of the same scene was taken From troops loading in Weymouth, Dorset, to the aftermath of the battle for Caen there is a striking similarity As thousands of veterans remember the sacrifice of their fallen comrades who gave their lives during the opening days of Operation Overlord, life at many of the locations that saw the heaviest fighting continues as normal. In a fitting tribute to the fight against Nazi tyranny, young children are enjoying the freedom secured by those brave men and women on those dark days 70 years ago as the allies struggled for a foot-hold on mainland Europe. By the end of the first day, in the region of 160,00 allied troops had made it ashore along a 50 mile stretch of the Normandy coastline at a cost of 4,000 lives. Scroll down for video +22 US Army Rangers marching to their landing craft on June 5, 1944 in Weymouth, Dorset on their way to capture a coastal defence battery protecting Omaha Beach +22 The barbed wire has long since been removed from the Dorset holiday town of Weymouth, which one of the launchpads for the invasion of Europe +22 In the middle of the chaos of Omaha beach, US troops struggle ashore after their landing craft is sunk by murderous German fire from the cliffs above +22 Today, tourists enjoy the sunshine on the beach near Colleville sur Mer although a bucket and spade has replaced the M1 Garand rifle as the tool of choice Omaha Beach, which was protected by overhanging cliffs had some of the most intense fighting of D-Day. Yesterday President Barack Obama visited the area as a 'powerful manifestation of America's commitment to human freedom'. President Obama said that 'by daybreak, blood soaked the water' and 'thousands of rounds bit into flesh and sand'. He also spent time at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial where almost 10,000 white marble tombstones overlook the battle site. +22 After the success of the initial assault, US troops flooded Omaha to reinforce the beach head and break out into the French countryside before a counter attack +22 Today the only threat of counter-attack comes during a game of beach football on the sands where the second front in Europe against Adolf Hitler was opened At the time of D-Day, supreme commander of the Allied invasion forces was smoking four packets of camel cigarettes a day. During the preparations for the invasion, cartographers printed 17 million maps. The invasion was a logistical nightmare, with industry spending months preparing seven million jerry cans to carry fuel as troops advanced from the beach head. Special tanks were deployed on D-Day to destroy some of the four million mines which had been deployed to kill and maim soldiers and disable armour. +22 Elements of the US 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division are dug in behind a concrete wall on Utah beach preparing to advance towards La Madeleine +22 Over the past 70 years the concrete wall has crumbled allowing easier access for families going home after an enjoyable day in the surf U US paratroops who dropped into Normandy carried almost 55 kg of equipment, including two morphine syringes, 'one for pain, two for eternity'. They also carried 24 sheets of toilet paper in their emergency ration packs, as well as four chocolate bars and some tobacco.     +22 In the aftermath of D-Day a lone soldier stands guard beside the remains of US fighter aircraft which has crash landed on Juno Beach during the assault +22 Two rubbish bins mark the spot where a US fighter aircraft crashed on D-Day, while changing huts have replaced the broken ammunition crates strewn across the sand On Juno Beach, British and Canadian reinforcements are faced with wading past the bodies of hundreds of dead soldiers, killed during the opening attacks. Soldiers are warned they must clear the beach without stopping, leaving behind injured comrades because of the intense fire from the defending Germans. +22 US troops march up a hill overlooking Omaha Beach passing concrete bunker which had been earlier raking machine gun fire across the first troops to hit the sand +22 The concrete bunker remains as a reminder of the occupation while visitors to the beach today arrive in family saloons rather than amphibious tanks and landing craft By the end of D-Day, the allies had landed 156,000 troops in Normandy suffering 10,000 casualties. Of the casualties, an estimated 4,000 lost their lives. Within five days, almost 330,000 troops had crossed the English Channel supported by 54,186 vehicles carrying 104,428 tonnes of supplies.             The carnage after D-Day: Last week Britain celebrated the epic heroism. But few remember the blood-soaked battles that came next - brought to life in a gripping book by one of our greatest historians Enemy artillery shells were crashing above the heads of Lieutenant Alastair Bannerman and his men of the Royal  Warwickshire Regiment as they sped in a troop carrier through the Normandy countryside. It was June 7, 1944, the day after D-Day, and they had fought their way inland from the beachhead eight miles away to the village of Lebisey, on the outskirts of the strategically vital city of Caen. They drove almost blind along a typical Normandy sunken road with high banks and hedges before emerging suddenly into the sunlight and the middle of a formation of enemy tanks. Turning into a wheat field, they deployed their anti-tank guns, the men swearing volubly as they fired. But then a shell knocked out the carrier, and as the survivors tried to slip back to their own lines, they were captured. +4 Slow progress: Allied troops in the fight for Caen fire on the dogged German soldiers holding the town The Germans were friendly enough, offering their prisoners wine even as shells came whistling over from the armada of Allied ships out in the Channel. ‘I think we’d better dig a hole, don’t you?’ a German soldier suggested to Bannerman, and the two of them began scraping furiously. Sitting side by side in the trench they’d made, showing each other photographs of their wives in between cowering from the bombardment, the German insisted: ‘You British will be back in the sea in a few days.’ ‘No, I’m sorry,’ Bannerman replied just as forcefully. ‘We will be in Paris in a week.’ Both were spectacularly wrong in their predictions. The Allies would cling on to their foothold in France; in that sense, the invasion was a success. But equally, any hopes of a swift advance and a German rout were dashed. In the three months ahead, a desperate war would be fought in Normandy, with close to half a million casualties on all sides. In last weekend’s 70th anniversary D-Day celebrations, there was understandably a focus on the beaches and what it must have been like for Allied soldiers coming ashore in their landing craft under heavy fire, sick with fear and thrown around by  the waves. But the truth often overlooked is that casualties on D-Day were far fewer than expected. The real carnage came later, and further inland, during the battle for Normandy. The German threat to throw what one general contemptuously described as ‘the little fishes’ back into the Channel was a ridiculous boast that was soon overtaken by events. But Paris would remain out of reach of the Allies until the end of August. In between, all hell broke out. The problem for the Allies was that, though they established a firm beachhead on D-Day, they failed in their further objective. The plan for General Bernard Montgomery’s Second Army was to take Caen by midnight on June 6, leaving the door wide open into the country beyond. But, as Lt Bannerman was discovering in the makeshift shelter he shared with his German captor, Caen was heavily defended and out of reach, for now at least. The German commanders, Rundstedt and Rommel, had second-guessed Montgomery. They did not have the men or tanks for a full-on counter-attack, but realised that if Caen fell, so might the town of Falaise 30 miles further on, and then there would be the real possibility not only of an Allied dash for Paris but that all German forces in Normandy and Brittany would be cut off. So they positioned a panzer division on the high ground in front of Caen, from which it inflicted heavy losses on advancing forces. The pattern for the Normandy battle was set in which slow and painful Allied attacks were met by German forces rushing like a fire brigade to plug the gaps. In these circumstances, the Germans could never hope to win a major victory. But they retained an extraordinary ability to thwart their opponents and inflict heavy casualties. British commanders soon began to fear they might even run out of manpower if they could not find a way to break out of this battle of attrition. It didn’t help that the failure to expand the beachhead as planned was leaving far too little room to bring in urgently needed reinforcements and supplies. Almost every orchard and field in the rear area was crammed with fuel depots, supply dumps, repair workshops, base camps, field hospitals and vehicle parks. +4 Easier than had been expected: After the initial landings on Sword Beach, round the port of Ouistreham, British troops prepare to move off the beach and push inland towards Caen - but then they ran into trouble Meanwhile, the RAF was furious that its operations harassing the enemy were being hampered because there were no forward airfields for Spitfires and Typhoons that were not within the range of German artillery. As the bloody stalemate in front of Caen became clear, Montgomery, his master plan scuppered, spread out a map on the bonnet of his Humber staff car and devised a new one — a pincer movement to encircle the city. He decided to send his two ‘best batsmen’ into play on June 11. On the left flank he placed the 51st Highland Division and on the right the 7th Armoured Division, the famed Desert Rats. Both had distinguished themselves under his command in North Africa — but they were to receive a rude shock in Normandy. Going into battle, the 51st could not make headway and were completely disorientated by the small, sharp actions of the Germans as they blocked the way with sudden deadly mortar ‘stonks’ and artillery barrages. ‘The fury of artillery is a cold, mechanical fury,’ wrote a Highlander, ‘but its intent is personal. When  you are under its fire you are the sole  target. All of that shrieking, whining venom is directed at you and at  no one else. ‘You hunch in your hole in the ground, reduce yourself into as small a thing as you can become, and you harden your muscles in a pitiful attempt at defying the jagged, burning teeth of the shrapnel. Involuntarily you curl up into the foetal position, except that your hands go down to protect your genitalia.’ The same soldier graphically described the psychological collapse of the most warlike member of his company under this barrage. In the cellar of a farmhouse, he curled up on the floor, howling and sobbing, ‘his face smeared with tears and snot as he bleated for his mother in a shameless surrender’. He was far from alone. A battalion commander of the Black Watch broke down and had to be relieved of his command after losing 200 men in a single attack. Meanwhile, the Desert Rats were  faring no better as they advanced through bocage country along sunken lanes and high hedges between the woods and fields. Despite all the months of training for the invasion, the Allies were totally unprepared for this beautiful but claustrophobic terrain. Hedgerows were at least three times the height of English ones,  heavily banked and far too dense for even a tank to smash through. Attacking through the leafy green tunnels ‘gives you the bloody creeps’, said one trooper. ‘In the desert, we could see them, and they could see us. Here they can see us, but I’ll be buggered if we can see them.’ The Desert Rats’ immediate goal was the town of Villers-Bocage, which they entered in their Cromwell tanks on the morning of June 13 to an ecstatic reception. Gendarmes in their best uniforms held back the crowds, who threw flowers on to the tanks and offered presents of cider and butter. The only enemy presence was a German eight-wheeled armoured car which was sighted but quickly disappeared. So the triumphant Desert Rats rolled on somewhat nonchalantly towards their next objective, without bothering to send scouts up ahead. In a small wood close to the road up which they were advancing, five German Tiger tanks lay hidden. They had just reached the front after a long haul from north of Paris. Their commander was a panzer ace credited with 137 tank ‘kills’ on the Russian front. He watched as the first squadron of British tanks halted as the crews got out to stretch their legs. They were behaving, one of his gunners thought, as if they had won the war. Suddenly the panzer commander, Michael Wittman, swung out of the wood, took aim and fired at the Cromwells, destroying each one in turn. The British tanks did not stand a chance. Badly designed, under-armoured and under-gunned, they even found it hard to back out of danger, since their reverse speed was little more than 2mph. +4 Hard fought: A wounded eighteen-year-old German sniper taken prisoner in the Caen-Tilly sector. The German Tigers then lumbered into the main street of the town, where more British tanks were lined up with many of their crews dismounted. Once more Wittman took aim. Even those Cromwells that were manned and capable of replying had little effect. Some managed to score direct hits  on the Tiger but their low-velocity 75mm guns made no impression. With Villers-Bocage lost so soon after being won, the advance came to a halt. British forces withdrew into defensive positions as their attempt to break the deadlock in Normandy failed humiliatingly. It was a devastating blow to morale. But the most unsettling aspect of the lost battle was the inability of the Cromwell to knock out a Tiger tank, even at point-blank range. The British tank was fast going forwards and had a low profile, but its flat front left it vulnerable and it had an ineffective gun. The 88mm gun on the German Tigers could pick off Allied tanks before they were able to get within range. British generals were well aware of its ‘design fault’, though Montgomery tried to stamp out any idea of tank inferiority for fear of his men developing ‘a Tiger complex’. Yet he himself had criticised the Cromwell the previous August, when he complained: ‘We are outshot by the German tanks.’ To try to suppress the problem nearly a year later was flying in the face of reality. The diary of a British officer found in a shot-up Cromwell posed the pertinent question. Its penultimate entry on June 11 read: ‘After four years of preparation for the invasion, why are our machines inferior?’ On June 12, Churchill boarded a destroyer at Portsmouth to pay a prime-ministerial visit to Normandy. He came ashore in an amphibious craft, right up onto the beach, and was then driven to Army headquarters in the Chateau de Creully. His trip took him through countryside which had escaped destruction. ‘We are surrounded by fat cattle lying in luscious pastures with their paws crossed,’ he purred. His companion, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke,  noted, however, that ‘the French population did not seem in any way pleased to see us.’ Which was hardly surprising, given the terrible destruction being meted out to large swathes of Normandy. Caen continued to suffer abominably from bombs and shelling. Rats grew fat on the corpses buried underground and stray dogs searched for an arm or leg sticking out of the rubble. ‘I simply cannot look at any more blood,’ a surgeon in the hospital was heard to say, so weary he had no idea what day it was. Even for those French now behind Allied lines, life was hard. The invading soldiers had distributed chocolate, sweets and cigarettes, but there was no electricity or water, except from wells. For food, most survived off their market gardens. Often the sweets and cigarettes were not given but bartered for milk, eggs and meat from fallen livestock. This trading extended to other commodities with astonishing rapidity. Allied military police raided a brothel set up on a beach in a wrecked landing craft by three ladies on the evening of  D-Day and confiscated the army-issue chocolate, sweets and cigarettes they had amassed in ‘currency’. Meanwhile, the very worst was happening for the Allies in terms of getting the job done. Everywhere, instead of pushing forward, the front line was coagulating as troops who should have been aggressively on the move dug in. ‘Musical chairs with gunfire and slit trenches’ was how one lieutenant described his life at this point. Trench warfare and the quite arbitrary chance of death which went with it led to numerous superstitions. Few dared fate by saying that they would do this or that ‘when I get home’. A medal was all very well, but they preferred somebody else to play the role of hero, ‘winning the war single-handed’. Most just wanted to return home alive. Here was a telling point. It was primarily a conscript army that was thrown into the battle for Normandy, against a German military that was far more professional, mainly as a result of their training system, their experience on the Russian front and their doctrine of Auftragstaktik. This was a commander’s obligation to achieve an objective on his own initiative rather than stick blindly to orders, and it gave them a much greater flexibility. The Germans were also deeply influenced by the idea promoted through propaganda that they were fighting to defend their country from annihilation, while the Americans and British just wanted to get the war over with and go home. ‘The Germans are staying in there just by the guts of their soldiers,’ an American general observed. ‘We outnumber them ten to 1 in infantry, 50  to 1 in artillery and an infinite number in the air.’ He wanted his officers to convince their men ‘that we have got to fight for our country just as hard as the Germans are fighting for theirs’. But he was fighting an uphill battle. +4 American troops injured while storming Omaha Beach: American and Canadian observers were amazed by the British expectation of regular tea and smoke breaks - even just after reaching the beaches on D-Day In conscript armies such as the British and American, it was not possible to exert the same sort of pitiless discipline to overcome fear as the Nazi regime used. The average citizen from a western democracy could not be expected to fight in the same way as a member of the Wehrmacht or the Red Army, let alone an SS officer or a member of the Hitler Youth. But the difference this made was crucial. Americans, Britons and Canadians did not regard it as shameful to give up after a certain level of suffering or hopelessness was reached. Phrases like ‘Fight to the last man!’ were seen as rhetorical, not literal. And we should be thankful that was the case. We would be most uneasy today if they had fought in Normandy in the same way as the brutal and feared Waffen-SS. But there were also systemic flaws in the British Army that affected how it performed in that immediate post- D-Day period. Many private soldiers and NCOs had been marked by social and political tensions of the inter-war years and become far more politicised than their fathers, the generation that fought World War I. Sometimes a trade-union mentality influenced attitudes of what could be expected of them. American and Canadian observers were amazed by the British soldier’s expectation of regular tea and smoke breaks. Sometimes a trade-union mentality influenced attitudes of what could be expected of them. American and Canadian observers were amazed by the British soldier’s expectation of regular tea and smoke breaks. On D-Day itself, an astonishing number felt tired after wading ashore and believed there was time for a cigarette and even a brew up instead of getting on with the task of  knocking out the enemy defences and pushing inland. Another British failing came from a demarcation mentality, of not doing anything that was not strictly your job. A Canadian observed that  sappers did not believe it was their task to fire at the enemy when not engaged on an engineering task, and infantry refused to help fill a crater or get a vehicle out of difficulties. There was little of that attitude in either the German or the American army. The Germans also believed that the British were very brave in defence, but often over-cautious in attack. One reason may be that British military myths always focused on heroic defence — at Corunna, Waterloo, Lucknow and Rorke’s Drift. Glorification of attack was much rarer. Then again, it must also be remembered that in 1944 Britain had been at war for nearly five years, so there was considerable war-weariness. And, as the end came in sight, men wanted to survive. They became reluctant to take risks, especially those who had fought in North Africa and Italy. All this contributed to the situation the Allied armies found themselves in after fighting their way ashore in Normandy 70 years ago and facing an enemy dug in and determined to try to stop them in their tracks. Now, with two weeks gone since the first landings and progress flagging, even the weather — that had relented like a godsend to make D-Day possible — turned against Allies. On June 19, the most violent storm for 40 years blew up in the Channel. Gale force winds along the coast were, in the Norman saying, enough ‘to take the horns off a cow’, while temperatures felt like a cold November. Locals had never seen anything like it. Landing craft were hurled by the waves high on to the beaches, smashing against each other. One Mulberry artificial port was destroyed beyond repair. When the storm subsided on June  22, the destruction on the beaches defied belief. More ships and material had been lost than during the invasion itself. It badly affected reinforcements and supplies. Many Allied divisions ready to cross to France were delayed by a week, as were shipments of artillery ammunition. It also forced the cancellation of Allied air operations, which allowed the Germans to accelerate their own reinforcement of the Normandy front. Yet those involved in the planning of D-Day could not help remembering with grateful relief the decision to go ahead on June 6. If the invasion had been postponed for two weeks, as had been a possibility at the time, the fleet would have sailed into one of the worst storms in Channel history. Fortune had been on the Allies’ side then — and it was about to be again when, from a distance, Hitler decided he knew better than his generals how to eject the Allies from Normandy.

Skies above Normandy filled with 1,000 paratroopers in culmination of 70th anniversary D-day commemorations Thousands gather at Sainte-Mere-Eglise to observe aerial drop of 1,000 paratroopers - reenacting their assault on the French town hours before D-Day armada launched Veterans of the attack flew in restored C-47 US military transport plane that dropped American, British and Canadian troops over Normandy Final commemoration of 70th anniversary of D-Day which launched on June 6, 1944 to liberate Western Europe Nearly 1,000 paratroopers dropped out of the sky in Normandy on Sunday - but this time they did so in peace, instead of to wrest western France from the Nazis as they did during World War II. Drawing huge crowds who braved hot weather and lined the historic landing area at La Fiere, the aerial spectacle re-enacted the drama of the Normandy landings and served to cap commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Among the planes ferrying paratroopers for the event was a restored C-47 US military transport plane that dropped Allied troops on the village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise - a stone's throw from La Fiere - on June 6, 1944. +14 Skies filled: Paratroopers are dropped near the Normandy village of Sainte Mere Eglise, western France, during a mass air drop, on Sunday June 8, 2014, as part of commemorations of the 70 anniversary of the D-Day landing And the pilots who originally flew it took the controls again last week, 70 years later, remembering their experiences. Sunday saw dozens of veterans escorted down a sandy path to a special section to watch the show alongside thousands of spectators - most of whom lined two sides of the field. Others took shelter in the shade as the lack of wind caused the sun to beat down hard. +14 Reenactment: A paratrooper parachuting from a plane in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, northern France, during a D-Day commemoration event marking the 70th anniversary of the World War II Allied landings in Normandy +14 +14 Historic: A French soldier walks in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, northern France, during a D-Day commemoration with paratroopers to mark the 70th anniversary of the World War II Allied landings in Normandy +14 Musical: An US orchestra conductor is seen on June 8, 2014 as paratroopers parachuting from a plane in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, northern France, during a D-Day commemoration event marking the 70th anniversary of the World War II Allied landings in Normandy +14 Away: AParatroopers parachuting from a plane in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, northern France on Sunday at the culmination of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day celebrations +14 Mark of respect: The paratroopers float towards the ground after leaping out of the American plane over the French town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise in Normandy on Sunday +14 +14 Safe jump: Paratroopers prepare to land near the Normandy village of Sainte Mere Eglise, western France, during a mass air drop, Sunday June 8, 2014, as part of commemorations of the 70 anniversary of the D-Day landing +14 Display: Paratroopers watched by the crowd, prepare to land near the Normandy village of Sainte Mere Eglise, western France Planes including the C-47 aircraft flew by loudly overhead several times, with two dozen military paratroopers - from countries including the U.S., Britain, France and Germany - jumping with each passage. They were scenes reminiscent of the pivotal event, when around 15,000 Allied paratroopers were dropped in and around the village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise on D-Day. It became the first to be liberated by the Allies and remains one of the enduring symbols of the Normandy invasion. Veteran Julian 'Bud' Rice, a C-47 pilot who participated in the airdrops of Normandy on D-Day, watched the show. 'It's good to see 800 paratroopers jump here today, but the night that we came in, we had 800 airplanes with 10,000 paratroopers that we dropped that night, so it was a little more,' he said. +14 Drawing huge crowds who braved hot weather and lined the historic landing area at La Fiere, the aerial spectacle re-enacted the drama of the Normandy landings and served to cap commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day +14 Reconciliation: World War II German veteran Kurt Keller, right, of Homburg, Germany, 89, who fought against the Allied landing on Omaha Beach on the 6 June 1944, speaks with World War II Dutch resistance and veteran Adriaan de Winter, 87, of Milsbeek, from the Netherlands, who fought the Nazis, in Belgium and Netherlands, during a remembrance ceremony at the German cemetery of La Cambe, France, Sunday, June 8, 2014, as part of D-Day commemorations +14 +14 Remarkable: World War II German veteran Kurt Keller, right, of Homburg, Germany, 89, who fought against the Allied landing on Omaha Beach on the 6 June 1944, holds the hand of World War II Dutch resistance and veteran Adriaan de Winter, 87, of Milsbeek, the Netherlands Rice flew in a C-47 aircraft earlier in the week, similar to the one he flew on D-Day. With him was veteran pilot Bill Prindible, with whom he watched the show. 'Very impressive,' Prindible said. 'You just have to imagine there'd be a squadron of 72 aircraft, 36 aircraft going by every time one of those guys went by.' At the invitation of the French government, this restored Douglas C-47 - known as Whiskey 7 - flew for the festivities and released paratroopers as it did when it dropped troops behind enemy lines under German fire. The plane has almost as a rich a story to tell as the pilots who flew it. Although the twin-prop Whiskey 7, so named because of its W-7 squadron marking, looks much the same today as it did on June 6, 1944. It looked very different when it arrived at the National Warplane Museum in western New York as a donation eight years ago. It had been converted to a corporate passenger plane. The museum's president said that for its restoration they had to take out the interior because it then had a dry bar, lounge seats and a table with a map of the Bahamas. And it has moved with the times - now sporting two GPS systems to keep the aircraft on course.