Our Friends, the French

From the ABC :

Fewer than 50 per cent of French people think France has a moral debt to the United States 60 years after the Allied D-day landings, according to an opinion poll published on Saturday.

The poll of 1,000 people on May 25 and 26 showed 48 per cent of respondents thought France, which was liberated by US and other Allied forces during World War II, had a moral debt to the United States. Fifty per cent thought it did not.

The poll was published by Le Parisien newspaper hours before US President George W Bush was due to arrive in France for the anniversary of the D-day landings on June 6, 1944.

And from The Australian :

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the first German leader ever to take part in the D-Day commemorations, has said the momentous events on the beaches of northern France also represented a victory for Germany.

"The victory of the allies was not a victory over Germany, but a victory for Germany," Schroeder said in a letter due to be published in a German newspaper tomorrow.

The German leader said he regarded his participation in the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings due to take place tomorrow as "a great honour for my country and for (German) democracy".

He added in the letter, to be published in the weekly Bild am Sonntag, that Germany could commemorate the events with "its head held high".

He said that no one expected Germans to feel guilty for the crimes and the genocide created by an indescribable regime. But he said: "We are responsible for our history."