World War II

In Normandy, we visited the beaches of the D-Day landings and also Pegasus Bridge, where just after midnight on the night before D-Day, the twin bridges that cross the river were the target of a daring glider assault. Getting them was a crucial objective for the Allies because they could then advance east but it also blocked potential German reinforcements.

The beaches are really interesting - now have a dual tourist attraction as landing sites and also seaside holidays. We went to a really good museum at Arromanches, where the Allies built the artificial harbour, "Port Winston", that facilitated the landings of 2.5 million men and half a million vehicles during the invasion. Two harbors were built in bits in Britain - very few workers knew what they were making. When finished, sections were submerged in rivers away from the prying eyes of German aircraft and finally towed across the Channel at 6kph as the invasion began. At the same time, the British 47 Royal Marine Commando was storming Arromanches to clear the way. Very daring do - fantastic! The remnants of the harbour are still in the sea and on the beach.

Further along the coast you can see the best preserved Germany defensive post to survive the war. There are four concrete Nazi pillboxes, with guns still pointing out across the Channel - very chilling. Easy to see how so many died - on both sides.

When we were in Alsace, we went to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp 60km south-west of Strasbourg. It's the only one on French soil but I guess Germany had annexed Alsace at that time. It's in the Vosges mountains, what was then a very popular spot for skiing and recreation. It was chosen by Himmler because of the nearby deposits of valuable pink granite and many inmates were worked to death to get it out. It's a surprisingly small camp and when you hear that 22,000 of the prisoners interned there died, it's horrendous to think of the numbers at the large camps. The camp provided the Reich University in Strasbourg with inmates for use in often lethal pseudo-medical experiments involving chemical warfare agents and infectious diseases. It's set in an area of such amazing natural beauty and it's so sobering to see the remains of the camp surrounded by guard towers and concentric electric fences. The crematorium oven, autopsy room and gas chamber really bear witness to the atrocities committed there. When you read about what went on, you wonder how anyone at all survived it.

And the last word. We went to Oradour-sur-Glane in the Dordogne, the scene of a brutal attack by a detachment of SS troops just four days after the announcement of the Allied landing in Normandy. At 2pm on Sat 10 June 1944, as a cordon of German soldiers closed all the exits to the town, a column of lorries and armoured cars entered the village. On Nazi orders, everyone gathered on the fairground. The women and children were locked in the church, the men in barns and garages. Grenade explosions and machine gun blasts killed many and fire and dynamite completed the massacre. 642 people died in that village that day. The town has been left as a burnt-out shell as a memorial. It's unclear why it happened - one school of thought is that the Nazis believed the village was sheltering resistance fighters but others say Oradour was chosen for its insignificance, the better to terrorise the French. Cars rust in the streets and the church where 500 women and children were killed is very moving. People were talking in the streets but there was complete silence in the church. I saw a number of elderly French women wiping their eyes.