Regarding D-Day, From the History News Channel newsletter today:
"When President Barack Obama joins other heads of state in France to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, attention will focus on the Allied offensive’s main landing site, the beaches of Normandy.
"But on a continent that saw a generation slaughtered in combat and millions more perish in the concentration camps of Poland and Germany, there are many other poignant reminders of World War II.
"In a small town in France more than 300 miles south of Omaha Beach, people will gather to remember the worst Nazi atrocity on French soil. Although what happened here didn’t change the course of the war like the American arrival at Normandy, it’s important for how the war is remembered today.
"Three days after D-Day on June 9, 1944, an armed Waffen SS infantry unit from Hitler’s brutal Das Reich regiment rounded up this town’s entire population in an act of revenge for the alleged kidnapping of a Nazi commander by the French Resistance. The men were massacred with machine guns before their bodies, some still alive, were covered in hay and incinerated. Women and children who sought refuge in the church were locked in and the building set alight. Of the 500 people inside, only one child survived."
A very interesting book to read is A BITTER ROAD TO FREEDOM; A NEW HISTORY OF THE LIBERATION OF EUROPE by William I. Hitchcock (446 pp, 2008).
Per Booklist's review: "Americans often overlook the wartime experiences of European people themselves -- the very people for whom the war was fought. In this brilliant book, historian William I. Hitchcock surveys the European continent from D-Day to the final battles of the war and the first few months of the peace. Based on exhaustive research in five nations and dozens of archives, Hitchcock's groundbreaking account shows that the liberation of Europe was both a military triumph and a human tragedy of epic proportions. Hitchcock gives voice to those who were on the receiving end of liberation. This book recounts a surprising story, often jarring and uncomfortable, and one that has never been told with such richness and depth. Ranging from the ferocious battle for Normandy (where as many French civilians died on D-Day as U.S. servicemen) to the plains of Poland, from the icy ravines of the Ardennes to the shattered cities and refugee camps of occupied Germany, The Bitter Road to Freedomdepicts in searing detail the shocking price that Europeans paid for their freedom."
