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00:00Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Heads of States and Government,
00:14Distinguished Guests, Dear Veterans, Ladies and Gentlemen,
00:27Three years ago, on this very day and in this very place, these men went against all odds
00:39to liberate our land and our nation.
00:46It was here that they defied the elements, the harsh winds, the rain.
00:58They went and fulfilled their destiny.
01:03Hitler believed that the Atlantic was a wall that would protect them.
01:11He had laid mines and anti-tank defences along these beaches.
01:16Over 150,000 men were deployed on this marine front.
01:23Everywhere there were bunkers and barbed wire and walls that had been erected by Field Marshal Brommel.
01:40They had tried to invade and land in Dieppe some while earlier, but it turned into a massacre.
01:50They practised on the beaches of England to prepare for D-Day.
01:56And an attack by the German navy, the Kriegsmarine, had led to the death of over 200 Allied soldiers.
02:06Then yet, they found men and women, 80 years ago on this day, to join the French fighters overseas and in London,
02:19to work hand-in-hand with the French resistance in France to liberate our country.
02:25The Nazi enemy was being spent in the East by fighting the Red Army and was weakening in the West as well, fighting the internal resistance.
02:40In 1942, the French resistance fighter, René Juchez, who was working at the Commandantur in Caen,
02:50managed to steal away the plans, the maps, and the fortifications of the Normandy coast near Enfleur and here.
02:58And they were later sent to London.
03:01For many months, they prepared decoy tanks and vehicles and sent fake messages
03:16to make the Germans believe that the landings would take place in Norway and elsewhere.
03:23This was one of the greatest operations in history.
03:27An Operation Overlord was prepared in the shadows and under the greatest secret hush.
03:34The greatest armada in all history was assembled 80 years ago.
03:42On the night from the 5th to the 6th of June 1944, the impossible came to be against daunting odds.
03:56Behind us, the dark waters of the English Channel and facing it, France, sleeping in the long sleep since the defeat it had suffered in 1940.
04:14Europe, where democracy had been vanquished by Nazism four years earlier, and yet there was still hope thanks to the fight of the French resistance here.
04:26Eisenhower gave his orders during the night, let's go.
04:32The bombing started, over 20,000 paratroopers throw themselves out of 800 planes into the night sky without hesitation.
04:47Knowing full well that on that day, jumping onto Sainte-Mère-Église was jumping into the pages of history.
04:58Slowly, transport ships are moving towards the French coast, on which men are huddled together, shoulder against shoulder.
05:13Many are pale and one can't tell if the paleness is due to seasickness or because of the letters that they've written into little scribble books in their uniforms.
05:29Messages for their mothers, fathers, lovers, children.
05:34And in front of them, a coast that none of them, or almost none of them, had never seen before, and that will become perhaps the last thing they will ever see.
05:48The United States are here, 55,000 American soldiers are making their way to Utah and Omaha Beach, bloody Omaha.
05:59They have crossed an ocean to save a continent that is not theirs for a cause that is.
06:06The United Kingdom is here too, with 73,000 soldiers turned towards in the direction of Sword Beach and Gold Beach.
06:19And among them, there is Bill Milling, a bagpiper, holding his instrument in his hand in order to encourage the troops in their assault.
06:32Canada is also here with over 20,000 troops directed to Juneau Beach.
06:38Minute by minute, he sees the thin sliver of beach on the horizon coming closer.
06:48The sliver of the continent that they themselves had left or their ancestors had hundreds of years earlier.
07:01The first British soldiers would reach Sword Beach under Commander Kiefer.
07:11They would be the first, bringing French soldiers to France to be able to touch again their native soil, the soil of their homeland.
07:21And I'd like to think of those at Wistraham and at Saint-Goîtis.
07:27The skies are crisscrossed by squadrons piloted by French people, Americans, Danes, Greeks, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, South Africans, New Zealanders, Australians, among others.
07:56150,000 men land on D-Day and they do not speak a common language.
08:04They do not fight under the same banner or flag or wear the same uniform.
08:10What they share, however, is the will to free Europe from Nazi tyranny in order to let us live in a free world.
08:23It is a certain vision of a man that is worthy and noble, that carries freedom, freedom that they are risking to the peril of their very lives.
08:41What they share is also the fright and glory.
08:45It is the sands of this beach and the blood that they will spill here.
08:52This is their gold.
08:54And we spare a thought for them all with great gratitude.
09:00To these young men of 17 years or 18 years old, some of them older, who had left their homesteads in Kent or in America to come and fight here.
09:30To those who died here under the bullets, those who were killed in the skies before they even touched the ground, to those who survived, to those who are here with us still today.
09:43To those who told us about how they threw themselves into the sea with 30 kilo backpacks, to how they braved their fright under the machine gun fire, how they crossed the dunes and climbed the cliffs in order to fight the enemy.
10:02Moving forward, always and forever.
10:11You have told us about the lives of some of the 10,000 of your brothers in arms who fell that day, their bodies floating on the waters, lapped by the waves.
10:27Moving forward, moving forward against the odds in a red tide.
10:39Courage is not experiencing fear and ignoring it.
10:44Courage is to be afraid, but to go forth nevertheless.
10:52That is what the G.I.s do in their planes, having covered their face in dark coal, ready to jump, saying it's a long way to go.
11:06It's Bill Mullins playing his bagpipes on the ridge here as the Germans are shocked to see him, afraid to shoot what they consider to be a madman.
11:22It's Mr. McGregor, the Canadian sharpshooter who blew up a bunker and managed to single-handedly capture 93 prisoners of war.
11:35It is the chaplain under Commandant Kiefer who gave the last rites to people dying and breathing their last breaths under the bullets.
11:51The American soldiers who climbed the cliff and fought hand to hand using a knife under German fire.
12:00All these men were scared.
12:03There is no doubt about that.
12:06But they knew that the war they were fighting was a just war.
12:10They knew that it might lead to their death.
12:15But they went forth because each of their steps brought humanity closer to freedom.
12:27Our freedom, our liberation, was not something that was won in a day, even if that day was the longest one.
12:36It is something that was prepared for many months, for years, by the fighters of the resistance, by the fighters on the Eastern Front and prepared by the Allies.
12:52It took time to win back Europe.
12:59It took many sacrifices to do this, sacrifices that one is able to do for love of freedom.
13:08The French freedom fighters who disembarked in Italy in 1943 in Corsica, the fighters inside the country who would sabotage infrastructures and disrupt communications, harass German troops,
13:33Allied reinforcements who landed in Normandy during the months of July and August, as well as Norwegians, the Piron Brigade made of Luxembourgers and Belgians wearing a golden lion insignia on their chest,
13:52the Dutch under Princess Irene, the second French tank division under General Leclerc, the Polish tank division, that of Czechoslovakia, then the Allies landed in Provence.
14:13Over 250,000 free Frenchmen as well joined them there, together with Pierre Noir from North Africa, with volunteers from the Maghreb, from West Africa, from Equatorial Africa, our colonial forces, Moroccan Goumiers, Senegalese Tirailleurs, who would together work to open up a new front in the West and the South.
14:41We also needed the engagement and relentlessness of the Red Army in the East and the people of the Soviet Empire that did their bit too, these millions of soldiers who sacrificed themselves in order to push back 180 German divisions along the Eastern Front, and paying for this with a tribute of blood, leaving their lives there.
15:06By the convergence of all the efforts of all these men, by all these efforts, Cherbourg fell, then Orléans, then Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Metz, Calais, finally Strasbourg at the end of November,
15:28and then Germany and Berlin, which led to the capitulation of the Reich in May 1945.
15:37And then we had to rebuild our Europe, thanks to peace and friendship among nations, by forgiving and by promising, according to Hannah Arendt's words.
15:51Europe has defended democratic values for over 70 years, even though during that time, part of Europe was still kidnapped in the central and eastern parts of it.
16:12Europe, founded on values that were set in Philadelphia and San Francisco, enabled us to find our way and build friendship and to have a shared ambition with Germany, which is the foundation to our union.
16:30We have strengthened ourselves by bringing our countries and our nations together, like the veterans of D-Day have shown us the way, we have followed it.
16:41And so, dear Chancellor Olaf Scholz, I think also about Johannes Boerner, a young German paratrooper, 19 years old, who was on the other side of the beach on D-Day.
16:57He was taken prisoner. Later on, he came back and decided to move to Normandy.
17:07He applied for French nationality and married Thérèse, a Norman girl, and he became a true European.
17:19At Wistraheim, he opened a restaurant and Johannes Boerner met Mr Gautier, who also fought under Commander Kieffer.
17:31A deep friendship was born between these two men who had been enemies before.
17:38This is a true metaphor of the reconciliation between our nations.
17:45We are all, gathered here today, children of the Normandy landings.
17:52Those who landed here on the 6th of June were not fighting on their home soil, and they were not fighting for their home villages.
18:12They were fighting against an evil, deadly ideology, a culture of hatred that had crushed Jews underfoot, as well as people with disabilities, homosexuals, Freemasons, gypsies, communists, all the people who thought or lived or believed differently.
18:36The silence of our beaches at this moment is filled with the echoes, the sounds of bullets and screams of these men who came from so many different nations, those who are sleeping under the beaches, under the sands of Normandy or under the ocean waves, who are buried at the bottom of the seas here or in the Norman landscape.
19:04There are many who also went home but left part of themselves here.
19:16So, war is returning to our continent now, and facing this situation, we need to remember everything that these people fought for.
19:27In the case of those who are trying to change borders by force of arms and who are trying to rewrite history, we have to be worthy of those who fought for us in this place.
19:40Your presence here with us today, Mr. President of Ukraine, says all of this.
21:28I would like to thank the Ukrainian people for their bravery, for the taste they have of freedom. We are here with you and we will not waver.
21:40And so it's true, when threatened with amnesia, when our consciences fall asleep,
22:01it is this memory that pushes us and makes us fearless, and that is why we are gathered here today, knowing that freedom is a cause that needs to be fought for every single morning.
22:30And so, for all people who everywhere on this planet live in hope of living freely, for freedom, equality and fraternity, for these people, the 6th of June is a struggle that is continuously renewed.
22:51Thank you to all of you. Long live the Republic. Long live France.