Remembering the Normandy landings

To some American visitors, this is unexpected. “American tourists often ask us whether we really like Americans,” says a French tour-bus driver in Normandy: “They are surprised, because they think we don’t.” In 1966 Charles de Gaulle, founder of the modern French republic, ordered American and allied forces off French soil when he pulled France out of NATO’s integrated military command. French political leaders of all stripes regularly rail against excessive American might. Jean-François Revel, a French writer, once published a book entitled “The Anti-American Obsession”. Even Mr Macron, a political centrist, periodically urges Europe not to become an American “vassal”.