It is disturbing to recall the moving ceremony on the beaches of Normandy, held 11 months ago to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, a celebration of the steadfast alliance between the United States and Europe and their shared determination to meet the “test of the ages” and defend Ukraine.
The statement by former United States President Joseph Biden, while standing shoulder to shoulder with French President Emmanuel Macron, was part of an address in which he declared NATO “more united than ever” and promised that “we will not give up, because if we do, Ukraine will be subdued, and there will be no end to it.”
I stood in the Normandy sun, thinking about the young men from Kansas City, St. Paul, and elsewhere who, on June 6, 1944, landed under a hail of Nazi bullets from the cliffs above Normandy, and listened to words that drew a clear parallel between their extraordinary courage in the defense of freedom and today's struggle to defeat another "tyrant obsessed with domination."
That “tyrant,” for Biden, was Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was exonerated by U.S. President Donald Trump of responsibility for the war he started in Ukraine. Trump, an “America First” leader, has long been known as a protector of autocrats, a detractor of NATO and an opponent of the European Union, which he said was founded to “screw up the United States.”
I could not have imagined less than a year ago that so much, so precious to so many people, could fall apart so quickly. Nor that the 80th anniversary of VE Day would come at a time when many Europeans are no longer sure whether to consider Trump's America an ally or an adversary.
“It's like night and day,” said Rima Abdul-Malak, a former French culture minister. “Trump has completely taken over our minds, and the world looks alarmingly different.”
Whatever else he has brought under his avalanche of executive orders, the tumultuous start to Trump’s second term has been marked by a major breakdown in the transatlantic ties that, by historical standards, have brought peace and prosperity of unprecedented scale and duration. He has thrown a wrecking ball at the postwar order, and it is unclear what order will emerge from the chaos.
Sudden revolutions or counter-revolutions are a frequent theme in history. Just four years before the heroic Allied landings in Normandy, reflecting on the debacle of France's almost overnight defeat by Hitler's Wehrmacht in June 1940, Paul Valéry, a French poet and essayist, wrote:
"We are on a terrifying and unstoppable downward spiral. None of what we fear is impossible. We can fear and imagine almost anything."
The same could be said today, even in a globalized world. Certainties have disintegrated, ghosts of the past have reappeared. Fear has spread, both in Europe and in the US. Europeans are buying disposable phones, without any content, for trips to the US, as if they were going to Iran.
The tumultuous start to Trump's second term as president has been marked by a major breakdown in the transatlantic relationship that, by historical standards, has brought peace and prosperity of unprecedented scale and duration. He has thrown a wrecking ball at the post-war order, and it is unclear what order will emerge from the chaos.
Trump's targeted actions against leading universities, First Amendment-protected speech, international students, immigrants, judicial independence, and the truth itself, in an effort to assert almost unlimited executive power, have led to talk of "the creation of a police state," as Bruno Fuchs, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the French National Assembly, put it after a recent visit to Washington.
“This will be great for television,” Trump said after publicly humiliating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on February 28. If America were to establish an autocracy under his leadership, it would be made for television. The world, or at least a good part of it, watched intently as Trump accused Zelensky of ingratitude and of risking World War III by fighting an aggressor at a time when he “has no cards in his hands.”
This presidential performance marked a turning point for many in Europe, where numerous leaders saw it as a moral capitulation.
A few days later, on March 5, Macron declared: “Peace can no longer be guaranteed on our continent.”
Trump, in his familiar wavering manner, has since tried to mend ties with Zelensky, even as he expresses his antipathy toward him. A U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal was also signed, the details of which remain unclear. This looks set to keep America tied to Ukraine for some time to come, even if Trump's eager pursuit of a peace deal is currently stalled.
Europe is not waiting for Trump’s next twist. It has seen enough to move decisively on the path to freeing itself from what US Vice President J.D. Vance called its “vassal” status, one of a series of insults directed at NATO allies. One of those allies, Trump says, should cede Greenland to him, while the other should voluntarily join the United States.
After taking office as Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz immediately flew to Paris on Wednesday to meet with Macron. The two leaders are united in their goal of what Merz calls “independence” and Macron calls “strategic autonomy” from Washington, a dramatic shift. Writing in the French daily Le Figaro, they declared that they “will never accept an imposed peace and will continue to support Ukraine against Russian aggression.”
One of the ideas being discussed, according to the daily newspaper "Le Monde", is a return to the beaches of Normandy, 80 years after the capitulation of the Third Reich, for a joint photo that would resonate like that of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, former leaders of France and Germany who held hands on the World War I battlefield of Verdun.
That image from 1984, along with a photograph of German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling in front of the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial in 1970, represents one of the most powerful symbols of the rebirth of a united Europe.
The Franco-German alliance has always been the engine of the European Union. If it is now launched at full force, the rearmament of Europe, not only as a military power but also as a guardian of the values for which the Americans fought in World War II, seems achievable in the medium term.
“Audacity, again audacity, always audacity!” said Georges Jacques Danton, a prominent figure of the French Revolution. If nothing else, Trump has demonstrated it. People are hypnotized, reduced to a state of amnesic stupor, by the torrent of his outbursts.
Europe will need to respond with a different kind of boldness if it is to develop a strategic power that matches its long-standing status as an economic giant. Germany, which has been forced to demilitarize by history but is aware that this stance is outdated, almost certainly holds the key to any such transformation. It faces the enormous challenge of adapting to the consequences of a new world of raw power, in which rules and laws seem, for now at least, to have less and less relevance.
But Europe is far from united, despite the resolve in Paris and Berlin. The nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-science and anti-transgender wave that brought Trump to power last year is also powerful across the continent, where it has empowered Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Giorgi Meloni in Italy, among others.
The rise of far-right parties, including the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the National Rally in France, reflects the anger of Europeans who feel invisible, isolated, impoverished and neglected by urban elites, just like people of similar standing in America.
However, there is a fundamental difference. Most of Europe knows how fragile freedom is, how possible dictatorship is, and the mass murders that go with it, with a collective memory of the horrors of the twentieth century.
Precisely to overcome this descent into brutality, racism, and genocide, the United States, although far from Europe but aware that its fate was linked to the fate of all humanity, sent its young men to fight their way to the shores of France in 1944. At the American Cemetery in Normandy, the 9.389 graves are a solemn reminder of their devotion.
In the days, weeks, and years since Paul Valéry’s 1940 musings, France has indeed succumbed to the unthinkable. I write now from Vichy, a small town in central France, from where the authoritarian regime of Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain ruled a truncated France, collaborated with the Nazi occupiers, and deported more than 70.000 Jews to their deaths in Hitler’s concentration camps.
Such was France's shame over Vichy and the devastation it represented for the values and ideals of the Republic, that it took decades for the truth to be fully faced.
The name of this pleasant spa town, far from the beaches of Normandy, will forever remain associated with shame.
At the end of his monumental book “Vichy France,” which brought France a deeper understanding of its darkest moments, Robert Paxton, an American historian, writes:
"The actions of the occupier and the occupied together suggest that there are harsh times when, in order to preserve the deepest values of a nation, man must stand up to the state. France after 1940 represented just such a time."
These words deserve special consideration today, eight decades after peace, with the crucial help of America, returned to the devastated European continent.
Translation: A. Š.
Bonus video:
