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When world leaders gather for D-Day commemorations, the absence of Vladimir Putin will testify to how the immense sacrifices made by Russia during the Second World War have disappeared in most French minds.
This is a startling reversal compared to 75 years ago, when the Soviet contribution, which cost 27 million deaths and civilians, was hailed by the French as the main factor in the defeat of Germany.
Just after the end of the fighting in Europe in May 1945, a poll by French group Ifop revealed that 57% of French people thought that Moscow had contributed the most to the war effort, compared to only 20% of the United States.
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But on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings by Allied forces in 2004, when Putin first represented Russia, the numbers were reversed, with only 20% putting the Soviet Union in the forefront.
Instead, 58% praised the United States even though its total losses of 400,000 people in the theaters of Europe and the Pacific accounted for only a small fraction of the dead in the Soviet Union.
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"From a purely historical point of view, it is absurd to neglect the absolutely crucial role of the Soviet Union," said Denis Peschanski, researcher at the French Institute of the CNRS, who has long studied the evolution of memory French collective war.
– Hollywood effect –
While the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact initially established neutrality between Moscow and Berlin, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 provoked clashes and sieges in Russian cities until Stalin managed to launch a counter-attack. attack.
Russia's violent offensives have undermined Germany's military might while immobilizing millions of Nazi soldiers to strengthen the Atlantic coast.
"In 1945, the great ally was Stalin and the USSR. Their role was absolutely clear to the French, "said Stéphane Grimaldi, director of the Caen Memorial Museum for the Second World War in Normandy.
"But 50 years later, it was the United States that won, for the simple reason that we had in the meantime the Cold War," he said.
Hollywood also helped change perceptions with a series of blockbuster movies beginning in the 1960s showing brave Americans fighting away from home.
"If you look at how this was described in popular culture, it's all about battle in France and the battle of England, but World War II was mbadively murderous between Germans and Russians," he said. Jeremy Shapiro from the European Council of Foreign Policy Reports.
– Hearts and spirits –
For decades, the French presidents have not officially commemorated the D-Day landings, when 150,000 Allied soldiers stormed the Atlantic coast of France by sea and by air.
Heroes of the French Resistance and President Charles de Gaulle refused to honor the Allied operation in which he was relegated to a secondary role.
When he entered Paris in 1944, he acclaimed a city "liberated by itself, liberated by its people" – despite the lines of British and American tanks behind him.
"De Gaulle wanted above all to restore the sovereignty of France, which meant bringing out the Americans," said Grimaldi.
His anti-American tendencies were echoed by the French Communist Party, which exerted considerable influence after the war thanks to its role in the Resistance.
The communists regularly reminded the voters of the post-war period of the contribution of the Red Army.
But Soviet repression behind the Iron Curtain gradually eroded their support – just as the United States shaped their own story of how the war was won on the big screen.
"A film that had an absolutely essential role in the '60s was" The Longest Day, "said Peschanski," It highlights the Americans and the French Resistance, and it was a phenomenal success. "
A little more than 30 years later, another D-Day film offered the heroic story of the United States to new generations on both sides of the Atlantic: Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" from 1998.
"The cold war has isolated the Russians and the history of Russia," said Grimaldi.
"The hero is now the kind American, it's John Wayne, and he's the one who's going to save Europe, not the Russians."
– "should be in first place" –
The role of the United States in the liberation of Europe was further strengthened when President François Mitterrand became the first French head of state to organize D-Day ceremonies on the beaches of Normandy in 1984.
US President Ronald Reagan attended the commemoration, which was to become a major world event just as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Even if the war ended, gratitude to Russia had not completely overshadowed France's admiration for the United States, with the GIs receiving an enthusiastic welcome as they made their way across the country.
In a survey conducted in 1944 on a country they would visit if they could, 43% of Parisians chose the United States, while 13% chose the Soviet Union.
The image of Russia was further tarnished under Putin, whose relations with the West failed after ordering troops in Ukraine in 2014 to annex Crimea.
"The fact that Putin is not invited has nothing to do with the Second World War, it is today," said Peschanski.
"If the goal was to talk about the past, the Soviet Union and its heirs, namely Putin, should be at the forefront alongside the Americans and the British."
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