 There's two parts to the significance of D&D. I think there's an emotional story which I think we need to engage with. So 1940 the defeat in France, the humiliation of Dunkirk was shocking to an extent. I think it's hard even today to grapple with, to emotionally connect with. So the return to the continent was a moment where Britain demonstrated to the world its latent strength. It was a disaster to victory story, a dramatic story. It showed the extent not only that Britain was strong itself, but the degree to which it had deep connections around the world through empire and its overseas allies such as the United States. So it was a moment where Britain gets back on the horse and really shows to the world that it is a force to be reckoned with in the 1940s. There's also a really practical aspect I guess to the significance of D&D. Germany needs to be defeated on the continent of Europe. Unlike 1918 the German forces fight to the bitter end in the Second World War, to the last man, the last round. And so the only way to defeat an enemy such as that is to grapple it in battle on the continent of Europe. D&D is a necessary step towards defeating the Wehrmacht on the continent and returning freedom to Europe tonight. So D&D is significant in other ways too. It speaks to the necessity for cooperation and teamwork and imagination. So when the United States entered the conflict in 1941 Britain and the United States created a kind of a team, a joint way of structuring its approach to the war. Everything would be done together. But even the closest families bicker and fall out over how they should go about their business. So the debate over when Britain and its allies should return to the continent in a great battle was long enduring and complex. The Americans initially wanted to get onto the continent and take on the Wehrmacht immediately. The British having had their fingers burnt in 1940 were less inclined. So there was a long kind of struggle over when and where the allies should return to Europe to face the Wehrmacht in this climactic battle to finish off the Second World War. So the story of D&D is a fairly familiar one, right? A lot of people have gone through the decisions that led up to the operation, the decisions of the great men. In my own research in fighting the People's War I tried to insert the ordinary citizen soldier into that story. So I was less lucky I managed to find censorship summaries for D-Day and the Normandy Campaign. So soldiers who were about to assault fortress Europe were writing home to their loved ones, right? Their families, their wives, their children and their friends. And telling them how they were experiencing the run-up to D-Day and how they experienced the day itself and the combat that followed the 6th of June. And these letters were turned into bi-weekly reports that summarized the attitudes, emotions and feelings of the troops. They are credible sources and no one has had a sight of them before. And what they bring to bear is the experience of the ordinary soldier, the sense of tension and fear and concern in the weeks running up to D-Day. At times the censorship reports talked about morale dipping because of the sheer strain on the troops as they were, you know, bottled up in these camps waiting and waiting and waiting for this great operation. And so we can only really understand some of the big decisions when we also take account of how they played out for ordinary troops. So the decision to launch D-Day in spite of the very, very poor weather was in part influenced by the fact that the troops were going berserk almost in their encampments, ready to go, wanting to go. And if there was a delay, the censorship summary said morale could well plummet. So they went, they took the risk and it worked out. But those decisions were taken with the morale and experience of the young men who had to assault the beaches in mind. We must never lose sight of their agency, the significance of the ordinary soldier when it comes to military events and outcomes. So there are multiple consequences of allied victory in the Second World War. What's worth maybe exploring too very quickly here, the geopolitical consequences were immense. So over the course of the campaign in Northwest Europe, two powers in particular begin to do the heavy lifting, the armed forces of the United States and the Red Army, the armed forces of the Soviet Union. So whereas Britain is playing a relatively equal role on the 6th of June on D-Day itself, by the time we're well into the Normandy campaign and pushing beyond Normandy into the center of Europe, the Americans are really doing a vast majority of the fighting. And so this plays out post-1945, because they'd done the majority of the heavy lifting, they were now the central part of the global power system post-1945. So the world post-1945 is an American universe and it's a Soviet universe. During the global superpower of the pre-war years, Great Britain had to accept that reality. So there's a geopolitical element to the events that unfold between June 1944 and the end of the war in 1945. There's also a very powerful kind of social dynamic that emerges. So the consequence of fighting radicalizes many of the young men who were in Northwest Europe. War is like a lens on society, it speeds up all things, it focuses the attention on society. The state learns about its society as a consequence of war. And so for many of the young men who fought they realized that doctrines of individualism that perhaps have been dominant in the interwar years no longer made sense to them. Imagine you're in a slit trench somewhere in Normandy and you look to your right and you look to your left. You recognize that your existence, your welfare is dependent on other people. You recognize that the tools you're using have been built in factories far, far away in Bradford or Birmingham or elsewhere. So you can't make an argument that individuals can stand alone. Individuals are part of a community. So in the years post-1945 we get a fairly substantial shift to the left across many, many countries. The growth of the welfare states, even certainly in Europe, Great Britain and the Empire and even to a certain extent in North America too. So the war radicalizes and politicizes and therefore it also leads to social change. We can't for a minute understand the civil rights movement in North America post-1945 without taking into consideration the experience of black servicemen as part of the United States forces in the Second World War. They're asked to fight for democracy and freedom and they look at their universe in the southern states of the United States and they say, well that doesn't apply to me. So these individuals again are radicalized by the war and they learn organizational skills that allow them to organize and direct in the years post-1945. So they play a constructive role in the civil rights movement. In Asia, in Africa, a similar dynamic, right? You're fighting for freedom in the Second World War. Well, an Indian can say, how free am I? An African might say, how free am I? So the war brings to the surface the disconnect between the narratives of the war and the reality that they're faced with. It also again teaches them about organizational skills. They go back and they play central roles in the decolonization movements in Asia and indeed in Africa. And the role of women is fundamentally changed. Millions and millions of women take over roles traditionally associated with men. And although the struggle for gender rights, equal rights takes many, many decades, a big step forward again is taken in the period 1939 to 1945 as women show that they are well able to take on these roles and excel. So the war is a dynamic moment. It's dynamic in terms of geopolitics but it's also dynamic in terms of societal change, social change, sociopolitical change. It's a fulcrum, a profound moment of change in the 20th century. So in spite of the incredible and terrible cost of D. Day Normandy and the whole of the Second World War, the conflict speaks perhaps ironically to international cooperation rather than conflict. So in a picture in 1944 and 1945, the great global power of the second half of the 20th century, the United States, is in alliance with the great regional, rising regional powers of the 20th century, the bricks of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. So it's a moment of cooperation. And we have to also see and recognize that the global order that we live in today is not a theoretical construct. It was forged in the fire of misery and pain and suffering. So the United Nations at the centre point for global cooperation was the birth child of the Second World War. The financial system based on the dollar, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariff and Trades all comes out of the Second World War. The decline in nationalism and the necessity for European cooperation was also in many ways related to the Second World War. So the war kind of reminds us of these things. It teaches us the art of the possible. It teaches us the centrality and importance of cooperation. So as we remember the sacrifices of those many thousands of young men on the 6th of June, 1944, we could remember what they were fighting for. They were fighting for peace on this planet. They were fighting for domestic order based on fairness and justice. And they were fighting for an international order based on cooperation, not necessarily competition and disagreement.