Rewriting the past to discredit enemies and stoke hatred

History is key to explaining the origins of conflicts, but instead it’s widely used to justify them. Pushing back against distorted narratives, especially official ones, is a constant battle, but a vital one.

In May 1945, soon after Germany surrendered, the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) asked people which country they felt had contributed the most to its defeat. At the time, respondents were highly conscious of the millions of Soviet troops who had died on the eastern front and their decisive role in weakening the Nazi forces, as well as the United States’ late entry into the war: 57% chose the Soviet Union and only 20% the US. When IFOP asked the same question this year, the ratio was inverted: the US scored 60% against 25% for the Soviet Union.

Collective memory changes over time, depending on the balance of power and political interests. Hollywood has of course portrayed the US as having saved the world in dozens of films celebrating the heroism of the GI, from The Longest Day (1962) to Patton (1970), The Big Red One (1980) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Today, the USSR is gone, and in France, the Communist Party, which helped preserve the memory of the Soviet sacrifice, has withered away; for the last 40 years French governments have commemorated the Normandy landings as the turning point of the second world war.

For many years, D-Day was seen as a relatively minor event: the ceremony to mark its fifth anniversary in 1949 was a modest affair with just a local bugle corps, two young women laying flowers on the beach and a flypast by a few bombers which dropped bouquets and fired rockets. Though later on the festivities grew, no US president ever considered making the trip to Normandy, and in 1964 De Gaulle himself refused to attend: ‘Why should I go and commemorate their landings when they were a prelude to a second occupation of France? I won’t do it!’

That all changed in 1984 amid growing US-Soviet tension. The D-Day commemoration, timed for live broadcast on breakfast TV in the US, became a major event with a lasting geopolitical dimension. French president François Mitterrand’s guest list included Ronald (...)

Full article: 2 716 words.

Benoît Bréville

Benoît Bréville is president and editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique.

(1) Terra Nova, ‘Gauche: quelle majorité électorale pour 2012?’ (The left: what electoral majority for 2012?), 10 May 2011.

(3) Antoine Léaument, Sud Radio, 8 November 2024.

(4) On 24 November, election results were still incomplete but indicated that Kamala Harris got 74.5 million votes (compared to Biden’s 81.3 million in 2020) and that Trump went from 74.2 million (2020) to 77 million (2024).

(5) Carine Fouteau, ‘Et maintenant, un “cinglé” fascisant aux manettes du monde’ (And now a fascist madman with his hands on the levers of power), Mediapart, 6 November 2024.

(6) See Serge Halimi and Pierre Rimbert, ‘The circus leaves town’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, March 2021.