How We Should Remember D-Day and the Struggle Against Nazism
On the 76th anniversary of D-Day, to honor those who perished in the struggle against fascism, we could do little better than to combat imperial hubris wherever we find it, including at home.
American troops approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Today marks the 76 anniversary of D-Day: the day Allied powers initiated the ground invasion to liberate Western Europe from Nazi domination.
Though the United States had been involved in World War II for years — sending Lend-Lease aid to the United Kingdom and Soviet Union; “island-hopping” in the Pacific; fighting in North Africa; and participating in Europe’s bombing — it’s D-Day and the campaign it initiated that crystallized the war as a so-called “Good War” in the American imagination.
More than any other episode from World War II, D-Day permeates popular American culture. In Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s 1998 World War II epic, the first twenty-minutes are given over to a grisly, if ultimately triumphant, reenactment of the fighting on Omaha Beach. Countless videogame series, from Medal of Honor to Call of Duty, have recreated the storming of Normandy, putting players in the roles of infantrymen or paratroopers who slaughter Nazi soldiers in the thousands.
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