For World War II buffs, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, followed by the battle for Europe and the final suffocation of Nazi Germany is a signal and gallant part of the war. It’s depressing, therefore, to read this:
Bomb-cratered landscapes can also tell the heartrending tale of the civilian cost of Allied air operations over Normandy. In the daily operational records of air squadrons, it is rare to find any acknowledgment that attacks on targets in towns, villages, and the surrounding countryside may have incurred civilian casualties, Passmore says. But it is becoming clear as research continues that as many as 60,000 to 70,000 French civilians died as a result of air attacks in support of the Normandy campaign and later operations across France. “This narrative warrants more attention,” says Passmore, “and archaeology can make a significant contribution by carefully documenting the survival of landscapes that testify to the extent, range, and intensity of the attacks that brought civilians in harm’s way tens, or even hundreds, of miles behind the front.” [“Letter from Normandy,” Archaeology (July/August 2020), page 5]
70,000 civilians dead as two ideologies struggled for supremacy, or even three, if we count the Soviets – although they were busy recovering Soviet territory and, if I remember my history properly, retaking Poland.
I’ve remarked that the roots of the Nazi Party were nourished by the soil of the Treaty of Versailles, a punitive treaty the French employed to exact their end; it’s my belief that without that treaty, the Weimar Republic, which succeeded the discredited German monarchy would have had a far better chance of success, and Hitler would have been dismissed as an impotent goof.
But it did exist, it discredited democracy in Germany, along with conventional morality, and in the end the Allies had to fight their way through every hedge in order to extirpate the Nazi Party – and, even then, Nazi ideology is still employed by some dead-enders.
This is what happens when ideology is clung to beyond reason and sanity, and it discourages me now. All of this is known, but sometimes it’s worth reiterating such points when we’re observing such obstinacy as with the Republican Party.
