Who Needs Concorde? We've Got Dakotas

Memorialising the Holocaust is all very well, of course; but even leaving aside the unsanitary fact that genuine Zionists were often accompanied to the camps by less reputable victims, the liberation of Auschwitz was carried out by Soviet troops and therefore, at this moment of Cold War renewal, can hardly be considered part of the war proper. Hence, no doubt, the hurry to get on with the genuine rah, huzzah and rah-rah-rah that is the approaching anniversary of D-Day. Aside from some forgettable business at Stalingrad and Kursk, the Normandy landings three-quarters of a century ago marked the beginning of Europe's liberation from the Nazi yoke, and the British Commonwealth of Imperial War Museums is determined that Europe should have yet another chance to show its gratitude. Attendance is expected from what Britain's leading liberal newspaper tactfully refers to as "many Allied heads of state", which appears to translate as the Trumpster, his head-tribble and a tabloid-pleasing spatter of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. It remains as yet unclear whether anyone from Her Majesty's present Government will be interested in commemorating the defeat of an authoritarian and racist régime whose leader spent a good deal of time ranting in a bunker about the will of the people and giving orders that were impossible to carry out. Nor has the British Commonwealth of Imperial War Museums indicated what proportion of the festivities will celebrate the steadfast refusal by one Winston Churchill to countenance the landings before June 1944, which prolonged the war by at least a year and helped to ensure that there was so much more Holocaust to commemorate.