A meeting between President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz took an awkward turn on Thursday when he suggested that Germans might not view the anniversary of D-Day — commemorating the U.S.-led invasion of Europe that was the beginning of the end for the Nazis — in a favorable light.
Sitting in the Oval Office, Merz and Trump were discussing the death toll from Russia’s three-year-old war against Ukraine, the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the end of World War II, when the German leader noted that tomorrow marks the 81st anniversary of Operation Overlord, the allied amphibious assault on Adolf Hitler’s European stranglehold that began with American, British, Canadian and Free French troops storming the beaches of Normandy.
