Did French civilians in Normandy not celebrate D-Day for decades?

Factual Questions
1

A claim ive seen here and there online for a few decades now is that “In the aftermath of D-Day most French civilians living in Normandy never celebrated or took part in memorials for American/Allied soldiers because of looting and Rapes they had taken part in in the immediate aftermath of the landings, and only once the generation that experienced it firsthand died off did those people living in Nomandy celebrated it”

Its a claim I’ve taken with a huge grain of salt because whoever saying it tends to be either someone on the far left or far right with an agenda but I realized now after seeing it again I have no idea if its true or not.

2

Why would they? After four years of German occupation, during which they were drafted for forced labour, and swathes of farmland seized - often flooded.

Then the allies bombed them to hell. "Some 15 towns were pummelled by Allied bombs on 6 June and the days that followed, including ones with no military targets to speak of. By 7 June, 3,000 people were dead – as many as on the beaches the day before.

The raids continued on and off into September, killing an estimated 20,000 civilians in all."

Remembering D-Day’s heavy toll on French civilians - RFI

3

Well Normandy Tourism certainly do.
82nd Anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy

4

The French also remember the civilians murdered by German SS soldiers at places like Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane, as a result of the D-Day invasion and help given to Allied forces by French resistance fighters.

5

That says they do now, not that they did in the past, though.

6

True enough.

But if the starting point of celebrations was “only once the generation that experienced it firsthand died off”, that period would extend into the 21st century.

The first D-Day celebration in Normandy, France was held June 6th 1945 which included modest reenactment of Allied landings at Bernières-sur-Mer, a couple of miles from Juno Beach.

Am sure some who copped the rough end of the pineapple during D-Day and aftermath could hold a grudge for more than half a century. But my feeble google-fu suggests that celebrations were held and generally low-key regional affairs through the '50s/'60s, before becoming a prominent international political event after 1984. An actuary might be able to give an estimate of the proportion of the population of Normandy at the time of the D-Day landings who were alive in 1984. I suspect it would be substantial.

7

May 8 is celebrated as a national holiday in France, marking the end of World War II. It marks the definitive end of a bad era, which applied to all French people, rather than the start of an indefinite process which, as others have said, meant additional burdens for people in one part of France. The significance of D-Day is not disputed but it does tend to celebrate a single point, rather than on-going resistance, much of which would have resulted in summary execution or torture for people for years before then.

8

Apparently, for the first anniversary, Eisenhower suggested that “formal ceremonies would be avoided” since the war still continued in the Pacific. So maybe minimal celebrations in 1945 influenced what some people thought later.

Also, since D-Day anniversaries are a much bigger thing these days than before, maybe that also colors how people today interpret any alleged lack of enthusiasm of the early years.

But here are 3 cites from local museums and a committee that seem to show the local contemporary populations of the day were in favor of ceremonies, memorials, museums, etc.

According to the Musée du Débarquement, the first D-Day museum which opened in Arromanches on the tenth anniversary:

As early as 1945, local councils in the area of the Landings were meeting regularly to coordinate the necessary reconstruction: the Prefect of Normandy was presented with their proposals for urban and regional planning and development, signal monuments and commemorative plaques, and the organisation of anniversary ceremonies. The D-Day Commemoration Committee, founded in 1945, was tasked with the commemoration of 6 June 1945.

The D-Day Landings Committee (which I assume is the same thing as the D-Day Commemoration Committee and I also think is a civic French non-profit as opposed to a government committee), says:

…the Landing Committee brought together mayors and elected officials from the landing coasts of Calvados and the English Channel.

And The Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mère-Église, which recently partnered with Musée du Débarquement, states:

They both have been created thanks to the inhabitants and the local elected representatives’ will with the support of the D-Day Landings Committee…

So maybe we can’t rule out some local people avoided early celebrations or memorials, but there seems to have been a considerable amount of involvement from local officials, representatives and councils — all of which probably would not have been in favor of doing so if there was any kind of widespread public anti-D-Day sentiment — as well as the local citizens. That civic involvement seems to have been present continuously from 1945 through today.

9

I’ve never heard of the blame for this being placed on “rapes and looting”, but the destruction visited upon towns and cities caught on or near the front lines during WWII was horrific. The only thing out of the ordinary about the 20,000 French civilians killed in Normandy was the concentration in such a relatively small area in space and time. Bombing cities and towns behind the frontlines to interdict enemy movements was SOP and the actual utility of it was questioned at the time by some. But the reality of the day and age was that “a town center” was about as pinpoint of a target as could be managed by tactical bombers of the day, the same as the city center was about as pinpoint as could be managed by strategic bombers, regardless of whether the alleged target was a factory or a trainyard (which was the fiction the US tried to maintain in its daylight bombing in Europe) or simply discarding the fiction with area bombing (as the Commonwealth did in Europe, and the US did against Japan).