Lest our children forget, remember D-Day not just today, but every day

When we commemorate D-Day, what exactly are we doing?

We are remembering, with great reverence, the bravery and sacrifice of an event 80 years ago: the largest amphibious invasion in history, which precipitated the liberation of France, and Nazi Germany’s surrender, 11 months later.

We are giving thanks for a moment “when tyranny was replaced with freedom” – and saluting those who “did not flinch when the moment came” and who passed the “supreme test”, as King Charles reminded us in his heartfelt address to the world leaders and D-Day veterans who gathered in Normandy.

His presence at the commemorations also recalled his own beloved grandfather George VI, who had delivered a stirring message to the people of Britain and the Empire eight decades earlier.

Most vitally, we are also reminded of the audacious military operation – a combined naval, air and land assault on the Nazis’ western defences – that marked a decisive turning point in the Second World War, and the beginning of the end of the most evil empire in history.

It must never be forgotten that Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich were responsible for a war that cost the lives of 50 million men, women and children. They overturned a democratic country and made it into a police state, with arbitrary imprisoning, torturing and exterminating of their own people, before turning on the rest of Europe. Six million Jews were killed in concentration camps, and countless others brutally murdered by a vile regime that seduced even good men and women.

And yet, fewer than half of young people today know what happened on D-Day. According to a survey by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, only 48 per cent of 18-to-34-year-olds recognised D-Day as the date that Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June, 1944; one in 10 thought it was “the day that Germany surrendered to the Allied Forces unconditionally”.

Lest we forget indeed. Over the last decade, we have seen our own vanquishing wartime leader, Winston Churchill, re-evaluated from a figure on a pedestal to one whose name is routinely besmirched by those ignorant of history. Yes, Churchill made mistakes and had beliefs, typical of many of his age, that sit uneasily with modern sensibility. But this should not detract from the fact that he was the figure who rallied Britain at its darkest hour, to believe that it could take on the overwhelming might of Germany and its allies. We must evaluate him in the round.

It was Churchill who helped build the relationship with the United States that – beginning at D-Day – defeated Hitler and Nazism, and forged from the ashes a Germany that has turned its back on the fascist past.

Today, on the Normandy shore, where the valour of the past meets the virtue of the present, it is also clear that the forces of darkness that engulfed Germany and so much of Europe in the 1930s are alive today.

It seems that democracy everywhere is in retreat. Will it survive in Hong Kong, in India, in South Africa and in Pakistan? Will it survive in the United States, where Donald Trump is attacking the independence of the US judiciary, the impartiality of the electoral process, and is whipping up the American people with untruths – using techniques pioneered by Joseph Goebbels, who masterminded the Third Reich’s propaganda machine and executed its murderous agenda?

D-Day might not have been quite such a success; as Wellington said of the Battle of Waterloo, it was “a damn close-run thing”. Towards the end of the First World War, it still took the allies many months to defeat Germany, when it had all the advantages of attacking from land, and with the might of US forces behind them. How much more difficult it was, therefore, to attack from the sea, with all the difficulties of moving soldiers and equipment on land. Operation Overlord was an absolutely extraordinary accomplishment.

Many soldiers never came home from the D-Day landings. Many families and lives were broken because of it. But we are able to live in a Europe which, for 80 years, has seen democracy and the rule of law dominate. We should most certainly remember them, and teach the lessons of D-Day – not just today, but every day.

Sir Anthony Seldon is headmaster of Epsom College, historian and author