'It was democracies that were fighting on the beaches'
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00:00How important are these kinds of commemorations?
00:03We've seen the commemorations yesterday in Portsmouth.
00:05Now we have the British ceremony that's wrapping up,
00:08and then we're going to have the Franco-American ceremony.
00:10So lots of pomp around, you know, this remembering.
00:14Yes, it's very important, this remembering.
00:17And you have to know that it was not the case since 1945.
00:23From 1945 until 1954, the commemorations were quite local.
00:29Sometimes a minister coming from Paris.
00:32It's only in 1954, the 10th anniversary,
00:36that you had the President of the Republic, René Coty, then.
00:40And 1964, 10 years later,
00:43de Gaulle did not want to come to the D-Day
00:47because he had many bad souvenirs of the D-Day,
00:49many bad souvenirs of his relations with Roosevelt and Churchill,
00:53who only told him the 4th of June, two days before.
00:59And he was furious because the Americans wanted to have occupation money,
01:04and he was in a row with Churchill, and he was complaining with Churchill.
01:08And Churchill said, if I have to choose between Roosevelt and de Gaulle,
01:11I'll always choose Roosevelt.
01:13If I have to choose between Europe and the open sea,
01:16I will always choose the open sea.
01:19And the Guardian, just a few days ago,
01:22delivered a letter which was not sent by Churchill,
01:25who wanted to dismiss de Gaulle.
01:27He wanted to say, well, planes are waiting for you,
01:30if the weather permits, you go,
01:32because you are at risk since four years.
01:36He didn't send the letter,
01:38because de Gaulle finally accepted to speak to the radio
01:41and finally sent a few instructors.
01:45It was only in 1984 that you have a big, big ceremony with François Mitterrand,
01:50and since 84, you have every 10 years a very big ceremony.
01:55The idea is to make understand the young people
01:59how young people lost their lives at 20 years old,
02:05and many lives, the souvenir.
02:08It's also, and of course, particularly this year with the Ukrainian war,
02:13the idea that it's democracies,
02:15which were fighting then on the beaches of Normandy,
02:19and democracies have to keep links,
02:23quite strong links against the aggression of Putin and Ukraine.
02:28I want to talk about the American role,
02:31because up until this point,
02:33America was quite isolationist 80 years ago,
02:36and then, of course, we saw their involvement
02:39back helping liberate Europe.
02:42Then we have the ceremony where we have the U.S. President Joe Biden,
02:45who's going to demonstrate essentially to America's allies that we have your back.
02:50Yes, that isolationism was not always a very good idea for America.
02:55You had isolationism before the First World War,
02:57and finally Americans came in 1917.
03:00You had a sort of isolationism in the 20s,
03:03but it changed in the 30s,
03:05and Americans were there again to fight, to defend democracy.
03:11And the context, the American context now,
03:14you have also quite the temptation for isolationism,
03:17and that's why Biden, he wants to show how important is America.
03:22You know, the paradox is that the D-Day,
03:26it was not the American soldier, the more numerous,
03:3040,000 on 138th, 80,000 British, 14,000 Canadians.
03:38So you don't have to forget, of course, the British.
03:42But, of course, for America it's very important
03:44because in the days coming afterwards,
03:46of course the Americans will be very, very numerous in the Battle of Normandy.