[BenLurkin]

IIRC two of the three divisions defending Normandy were what the Germans called "static" divisions and were composed largely of non-Germans.

[Jeff Chandler]

Few Mourn The War’s Losers

You mean the dirty krauts?

[Blood of Tyrants]

Should we be celebrating the soldiers of the regime that caused the deaths of tens of millions of people?

[Twotone]

Time really needs to go out of business. I’m not going to mourn the loss of those who fought FOR evil, rather than against it.

[yarddog]

Around 20 years ago, I got to meet one of my childhood idols.

General Robert L. Scot was signing books at a historical society meeting with the proceeds going to the museum at Warner Robbins AFB.

One question I got to ask him is how he felt about the Japanese pilots he fought against. It was clear his attitude had changed as he said “they were fighting for their country just as I was mine”.

[Peter W. Kessler]

Photos of the German cemetery:

https://picasaweb.google.com/VictorySpeedway/DaySixDDayTour

Photos of the British cemetery in Bayeux:

https://picasaweb.google.com/VictorySpeedway/DaySevenNormandyBritishCemetery

The British cemetery is adjacent to the Normandy Museum, one of the best in France.

[centurion316]

It sucks to be the loser. Obama will have the particular distinction of having surrendered twice.

[Paladin2]

Well, the Nazis had a lot of Gaul.

[a fool in paradise]

Did Time Magazine mourn when they proclaimed God dead?

[dfwgator]

Remember all the heat Reagan took when he went to Bitburg?

[MuttTheHoople]

21,222 soldiers who fought on the losing side: The Germans

Good. Better dead Germans than Dead Allies.

[jumpingcholla34]

Most of the German soldiers were just kids fed into the meat grinder. They had no air cover and precious little of anything else, so they died in wholesale lots. If their leaders had been worthy of them, they would have sued for peace long before D-Day.

Also, when we celebrate D-Day, let's spare a thought for the 10,000 or so French civilians killed in Allied bombing raids before the landings.

We won. Good for us. But all recollections of war, win or lose, should be somber affairs.

[ops33]

When we went to Germany in 1979 we lived in a small village in the Saarland. I made friends with my neighbor who could speak very good English. He told me he learned to speak English in a British POW camp and that he was captured by the French partisans a couple of weeks after D Day. He thought the French were going to kill him but instead turned him over to the British. He also told me that on D Day he was assigned to a coastal artillery unit on one of the British beaches. Just like the German officer in “The Longest Day” who looks out his bunker to see the Allied ships from horizon to horizon, my neighbor had the same view. I recall him telling me that he was very scared. It was very interesting to listen to him tell his stories. We got to be pretty good friends and would sit in his garden and have a couple of beers. I always had the impression that he had never talked about his experiences to anyone. I didn’t pass judgment but rather just listened to him.