I was living in France, forty years ago, when Ronald Reagan came to Normandy to mark the fortieth anniversary of the D-Day landings. I didn’t like Reagan as a president, but he could give a good speech, and it was hard not to be moved by his words at the Pointe du Hoc, where US Army Rangers had scaled a steep cliff under terrible German fire. “These are the boys of the Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.” I wasn’t there in person to hear him, but I went to Normandy soon afterwards, and at every D-Day site—Omaha Beach, the American military cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, the Pointe du Hoc—you met middle-aged veterans returning to the places where they had fought, and where so many of their comrades had died.
Your article was a very interesting read for me. Being an Italian who's lived most of my life in America, when I go back to Italy it makes me realize how much of a mark WWII has left when I see old Mussolini era buildings that still stand in cities or monuments to those who died in the mountains. I can also agree that WWII has left a large impact in how we see things now. Even in a lot of discourse I hear a lot of terms coined in that era come up frequently and it's hard to look at things through a new lens without coming back to it.
Your article was a very interesting read for me. Being an Italian who's lived most of my life in America, when I go back to Italy it makes me realize how much of a mark WWII has left when I see old Mussolini era buildings that still stand in cities or monuments to those who died in the mountains. I can also agree that WWII has left a large impact in how we see things now. Even in a lot of discourse I hear a lot of terms coined in that era come up frequently and it's hard to look at things through a new lens without coming back to it.