Новини

British mobile phone operator EE on Thursday became the first in the country to launch a high-speed 5G service, but without smartphones from controversial Chinese technology giant Huawei.

EE, which is a division of British telecoms giant BT, has launched 5G in six major cities comprising Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London and Manchester — and more hubs will follow.

“From today, the U.K. will be able to discover 5G for the first time thanks to EE,” it announced in a statement, after an official launch featuring a performance from chart-topping grime act Stormzy on a boat on London’s River Thames.

Next-generation 5G mobile networks offer almost instantaneous data transfer that will become the nervous system of Europe’s economy in strategic sectors like energy, transport, banking and health care.

EE had announced last week that it would make its 5G network available to the public — but would not sell Huawei’s first 5G phone, the Mate 20 X 5G.

However, the Chinese company still provides 5G network infrastructure equipment to EE.

“We are very pleased to be one of the partners supporting EE with a new era of faster and more reliable mobile connectivity over 5G in the U.K.,” a Huawei spokesperson told AFP on Thursday.

Rival British mobile phone giant Vodafone will launch its own 5G services on July 3 in seven UK cities — but it has also paused the sale of the Huawei Mate 20 X 5G smartphone.

Vodafone does not use Huawei in its core UK network but uses a mixture of Ericsson and Huawei technology in its radio access network or masts, according to a company spokesman. He added that there are “multiple” layers of security between the masts and the core network.

Huawei faces pushback in some Western markets over fears that Beijing could spy on communications and gain access to critical infrastructure if allowed to develop foreign 5G networks.

The Chinese company flatly denies what it describes as “unsubstantiated claims” about being a security threat.

US internet titan Google has meanwhile started to cut ties between its Android operating system and Huawei, a move that affects hundreds of millions of smartphone users, after the U.S. government announced what amounts to a ban on selling or transferring technology to the company.

Earlier this week, Huawei asked a U.S. court to throw out US legislation that bars federal agencies from buying its products.

The U.S. moves against Huawei come as the Washington and Beijing are embroiled in a wider trade war.

 
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He is loathed and feted in equal measure.

But no one gainsays his star quality,’ his disarming knack at prompting chuckles from foes for his foibles and, until recently, shambolic appearance as well as his witticisms.

Nor to be discounted is his deftness at connecting with ‘Middle England’ — with the tweed-wearing middle-class Conservative faithful in the rural shires of the country, who are incensed that Britain has not already left the European Union.

Boris Johnson, who unlike most other British politicians has international name-recognition, is the front-runner to succeed Theresa May as Britain’s Conservative leader, and prime minister — that is as far as the bookmakers and many party activists are concerned.

He has made no secret over the years about his ravenous hunger for the job, announcing precociously when a teenager at Britain’s storied private boarding school, Eton, that one day he would be prime minister. The onetime journalist and former mayor of London was furious, reportedly, when David Cameron, an Eton contemporary but three years his junior, acceded to the party leadership.

Cameron, who campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union, resigned immediately after a slim majority of Britons voted to leave the bloc in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Johnson switched on the eve of the referendum campaign from being pro-EU to a Brexiter, an unabashed career-enhancing move, say his critics.

Crowded field

Johnson was seen as a shoo-in three years ago to replace Cameron. But he lost out to Theresa May, partly thanks to the defection of his Brexit ally Michael Gove, who withdrew as his campaign manager, stood against him, saying his friend and Oxford University contemporary was unfit for the highest office.

Gove, a brainy politician with greater ministerial experience than Johnson, is running again and is seen by some party insiders as the dark horse in the febrile contest to succeed May. The competition also features the current foreign minister Jeremy Hunt, who is running on his businessman credentials and positioning himself as a compromise candidate, and Dominic Raab, a former Brexit minister, who is trying to compete with Johnson as the man who can deliver Brexit.

With Gove, the current environment minister, in the race, the Conservative leadership contest, which will take nearly two months to conclude, has the whiff of fratricide about it.

“I want the job! I want the job! I want the job!” Johnson reportedly told one Conservative lawmaker last week as his opening gambit when pleading for the parliamentarian’s vote in the crowded leadership race featuring nearly a dozen aspiring contenders. Naked ambition, though, may not be sufficient for Johnson, a short-lived and gaffe-prone foreign minister.

The 54-year-old has under the supervision of his latest partner, a 30-year-old former Conservative party communications official, spruced up his appearance, trimming his trademark tousled hair and modernizing his suits. But a neater appearance and ambition cannot compensate for seriousness and ability, say his foes.

What the critics say

In a devastating column in The Sunday Times, Dominic Lawson, a former national newspaper editor who gave Johnson a job, describes him as “epically unreliable.”

He noted his star quality, describing how once when walking with him in Britain’s capital city “men of no obvious Tory persuasion [and certainly not of Johnson’s class and background] called out to him as if he were their favorite drinking companion.” People, he noted swarmed around him “as if he were a soap opera star.”

But he added: “He manifests chaotic jollity. The jollity is, as so often, the mask of a depressive character. But the chaos is genuine — and the last we need in a new prime minister.”

Lawson’s public dismissal of Johnson’s steadfastness reflect the criticism expressed by Conservative lawmakers. They argue Johnson, popularly known just as Boris,’ is too reckless and unpredictable to plot a course out of the Brexit mess the country — and the fractious Conservative party — has been mired in for nearly three years.

His foes maintain he might light up a room, attract crowds and has a startling ability to recover from grave missteps, but he is too tumultuous to occupy Downing Street — especially at a time Britain is facing its thorniest and potentially biggest policy challenge since the 1954 Suez crisis, which risked Britain’s important ties with the U.S..

Conservatives in crisis

Last week, in the elections for the European Parliament the Conservatives were trounced by Nigel Farage’s newly-formed Brexit Party, suffering their worst ever electoral setback, attracting just over nine percent of votes cast.

With Brexit overturning traditional two-party politics, some Conservatives fear their party is in an existential crisis and could easily split in two. “The future survival of the Conservative party is at risk,” according to onetime deputy prime minister Damian Green. “Too much political blood has been spilt,” he argued.

As the Conservative leadership race accelerates, and more rivals enter, Johnson’s supporters, many firm Brexiters, counter he remains the best candidate for the job — and the only one able to match the blustery Farage for campaigning nous.

“With Boris what you see it’s what you get and some people find it very attractive and other people have concerns,” said Jacob Rees-Mogg, lawmaker and Brexiter. “Boris is the real deal,” he told a British broadcaster.

While acknowledging his shortcomings, the editor of the Conservative-supporting Spectator magazine agrees.

“In an era when exasperated voters seek mould-breaking politicians, he is the best candidate to present the Conservatives as a force for change,” argued Fraser Nelson. “In fact, he might be the only candidates able to do so.”

Potential court action

His supporters say Johnson’s inventiveness is what his party needs. But his creativity has got him in trouble in the past: he was fired while a journalist at The Times for making up a quote. This week a private prosecution against him was unveiled for lying during the referendum campaign, a court action that might cloud his leadership bid.

One sobering fact has Johnson and his backers nervous. No initial frontrunner has won in eight Conservative leadership races since 1965. And the knives are out for him. While opinion polls suggest Johnson is the favorite among Conservative activists to be the next leader, he is deeply unpopular among his fellow party lawmakers.

Many of them disdain his unbridled opportunism, envy his showmanship and worry about his chaotic private life, which include serial relationships, children fathered out of wedlock, terminated pregnancies and a couple of divorces, one of which is being wrapped up now.

But for all of that Johnson is the key candidate — the one his rivals know has to be knocked out of the race quickly or he will only get stronger. His backers say Johnson has the Midas touch when it comes to lifting party morale.

“The bottom line is that the only person who can deliver Brexit and defeat Labour is Boris Johnson,” said former defense secretary Gavin Williamson. “He reaches out to a lot of people,” he added.

Unlike most of his rivals, Johnson is upbeat when describing what he sees as post-Brexit benefits for Britain.

“He has a very bold vision for the country and very much wants to see the opportunities that Brexit can present realized,” said Williamson. His optimism fires up the party faithful. He is also liberal when it comes to social policy — a clear electoral benefit for the Conservatives, who have struggled to shake off the tag that they are the “nasty party.”

The resistance to him among fellow Conservative lawmakers is a possible race-killer.

Conservative lawmakers hold a series of knockout votes to reduce the field to a pair of candidates to present to the broader party membership in a head-to-head runoff. Currently Jermey Hunt has more public endorsements from lawmakers than Johnson.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to address Harvard University graduates.

The Ivy League school is hosting its 368th commencement ceremony Thursday with a keynote speech from Merkel.

It caps several days of activities that also included speeches from former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

The 64-year-old Merkel was elected to Germany’s top post in 2005 and is serving her fourth term, which she has said will be her last.

Harvard President Larry Bacow calls Merkel one of the most “influential statespeople of our time.”

Merkel comes to Harvard after her party finished first in Germany’s European Parliament election Sunday but had its worst showing in a nationwide vote since World War II.

Last year’s Harvard commencement speaker was U.S. Rep. John Lewis.
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The Norwegian government said Wednesday progress has been made in negotiations between representatives of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido.

The Foreign Ministry said the two sides “have demonstrated their willingness to move forward” toward a negotiated solution to the Venezuelan crisis.

A second round of talks in recent weeks were held in the capital, Oslo, in an effort to find solutions to the political and economic crises that have gripped the country for months.

The Foreign Ministry did not provide more information about the talks but urged both sides to exercise “utmost caution in their comments” about the negotiating process.

The talks are held amid growing tension between Maduro and Guaido, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly who declared himself president in January with the backing of the United States and about 50 other countries.

The declaration followed the May 2018 presidential elections which Guaido deems fraudulent.

The political crisis has been compounded by Venezuela’s worst economic crisis in recent memory, with food shortages and power outages common occurrences. The International Monetary Fund predicts inflation in the oil-rich country will reach 10 million percent this year.

Guaido agreed to talks in Norway after initially saying any dialogue should result in Maduro’s resignation and new elections.

Norway has a history of playing the role of facilitator in peace negotiations. The Scandinavian country hosted talks that led to the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords in the 1990s and a deal reached in 2016 between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
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France’s domestic intelligence service on Wednesday questioned a journalist who broke the story of a scandal that shook President Emmanuel Macron, the latest in a growing number of reporters to be quizzed in a trend that has disturbed press freedom activists.

Ariane Chemin, who works for the daily Le Monde, said she was questioned by the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) for some 45 minutes in the presence of her lawyer after being summoned last week.

“I explained that I only did my job as a journalist,” she told AFP after the meeting.

She added that she had insisted on her right to protect her sources while carrying out work in the public interest based on a law dating to 1881.

“They asked me many questions on the manner in which I checked my information, which was an indirect way of asking me about my sources,” Chemin said.

Le Monde’s managing director Louis Dreyfus was also questioned by the DGSI on Wednesday.

Chemin has written a series of articles over former presidential bodyguard Alexandre Benalla, who was fired last year after he was filmed roughing up a protester in one of the biggest scandals to shake Macron to date.

It was a July 18 article by Chemin that first reported that Benalla had beaten the May Day demonstrator while wearing a police helmet.

The summons stemmed in particular from articles about former air force officer Chokri Wakrim, the partner of Marie-Elodie Poitout, the ex-head of security at the prime minister’s office.

Poitout resigned her post after media revelations that she and Wakrim had welcomed Benalla to their home in July but insisted it had only been a social affair.

The Elysee has been accused of covering up the affair by failing to report Benalla to the authorities.

A Growing Pattern?

The secret service has already summoned seven reporters who published details over how French arms sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were being used in Yemen’s civil war, sparking an outcry by press freedom activists.

The SNJ-CGT union called for a demonstration outside the headquarters of the DGSI on Wednesday “in support of those journalists summoned by the French state in violation of the law on press freedom.”

The association of Le Monde Reporters (SRM) said on their Twitter account that Chemin was simply “bringing to the attention of citizens information that was in the public interest and thus was only doing her job.”

But Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet told the French Senate on Wednesday that the summons should “in no way be seen as an attempt at intimidation or a threat”.

She said the summons for Chemin was issued as part of a preliminary enquiry carried out under the supervision of the Paris prosecutor following a complaint by a special forces member that his identity had been revealed by the paper.

Senior journalists from 37 French media outlets, including Agence France-Presse, Le Figaro daily, France 2 TV and Mediapart, signed a statement supporting the journalists who were questioned over the Yemen controversy, saying they were “just doing their jobs”.

Disclose has pressed ahead with its reporting on the issue, saying on Tuesday that a shipment of munitions for French Caesar cannons would be loaded at a Mediterranean port onto a Saudi ship.
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Serkan Golge, a Turkish-American scientist imprisoned in Turkey for nearly three years, has been released.

Morgan Ortagus, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman, welcomed the decision but declined to discuss why he was released.

However, he told reporters Wednesday it was the “right thing to do.”

Golge was on a family visit in southern Turkey when he was arrested in the aftermath of a failed coup, which Turkey blames on U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Golge was convicted in February 2018 for membership in a terror group and sentenced to 7 1/2 years, subsequently reduced to five by the appeals court.

His wife Kubra Golge told The Associated Press that she spoke on the phone with him upon his release and that he was very happy.

Golge denies links to Gulen’s network.
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Daredevil visitors to Paris will be able to leap off the second-floor balcony of the Eiffel Tower, albeit for a limited time. 

A zipline will allow some of the visitors to travel 800 meters in a minute at speeds of 90 kilometers an hour from the iconic tower to the 18th-century military complex of Ecole Militaire.

The zipline was set up by the French mineral water brand Perrier to celebrate the French Open and to coincide with the 130th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower.

The free ride will be available to thrill-seekers picked by an online lottery on social media and a select few who manage to get some spots set aside for an onsite drawing. 

One visitor to the tower posted a video of one of the zipline riders on Twitter saying, “Don’t try this at home.”

The zipline will be in place until June 11. 

 
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European leaders are in Brussels to choose their preferred candidates for top European Union positions after last week’s parliamentary elections, but already are divided on who should be the next president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-nation bloc.

The term of Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the commission ends in October. But Germany and France, two of the biggest economic forces on the continent, are at odds on who should replace him, a choice that must be ratified by the 751-member parliament when it assumes power in July.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel favors fellow countryman Manfred Weber, who has led the conservative European People’s Party group, the biggest in the EU assembly, since 2014. The EPP, even as it lost seats in the parliamentary elections, still constitutes the largest bloc of lawmakers and her support for Weber is in line with past practice in picking a European Commission president from the leading party in the parliament.

But the big centrist blocs in parliament will lose their majority in the new legislature, with nationalists and Greens gaining ground, leading to a more fragmented assembly and possibly more difficulty in picking a consensus nominee for president of the commission, which proposes EU laws and enforces them.

French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters he favors a nominee with “experience either in their country or in Europe that allows them to have credibility and savoir faire,” an apparent attack on the 46-year-old Weber, who has never served in government or a major institution like the commission.

Macron suggested two alternative nominees, Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition since 2014, and Frenchman Michael Barnier, who has led the EU’s so-far unsuccessful negotiations with Britain over London’s Brexit effort to divorce itself from the EU.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez suggested a fellow socialist, Dutchman Frans Timmermans, saying he “has the qualities and the experience.”

The European leaders are also picking a new leader of the EU Council, a body that defines the European Union’s overall political direction and is now headed by Poland’s Donald Tusk; the European Central Bank, now led by Italian Mario Draghi and a new foreign policy chief, currently Italian Federica Mogherini.

 
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has reinstated the Ukrainian citizenship of Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president who served as governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region in 2015-16.

In a decree signed and posted on the presidential website on May 28, Zelenskiy annulled a portion of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko’s July 2017 decree that stripped Saakashvili of his citizenship.

Zelenskiy’s decree comes eight days after his inauguration and six days after Saakashvili’s lawyer, Ruslan Chornolutskiy, filed a request seeking restoration of Saakashvili’s citizenship.

Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship and appointed to the Odesa governor’s post in 2015 by Poroshenko, an acquaintance from their student days.

Authorities in Tbilisi stripped Saakashvili of his Georgian citizenship in December 2015 on grounds that Georgia does not allow dual citizenship.

Then, when relations between Poroshenko and Saakashvili soured over corruption allegations and slow reform efforts, Poroshenko in November 2016 sacked Saakashvili from the Odesa governor’s post.

In July 2017, after Saakashvili created an opposition party called the Movement of New Forces, Poroshenko issued a decree that stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship.

In February last year, Saakashvili was detained in Kyiv, taken to the airport, and flown to Poland.

Days later, Ukraine’s border service banned Saakashvili from entering Ukraine until February 13, 2021.

Saakashvili swept to power in Georgia after helping lead the peaceful Rose Revolution protests there in 2003, when he was mayor of Tbilisi.

His party was dislodged from power by an opposition force in 2012 parliamentary elections and his term as president expired in 2013.

Saakashvili currently resides in the Netherlands, his wife’s native country.

 
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An Iraqi court sentenced on Tuesday two more French members of the Islamic State group to death, bringing the total number of French former jihadis condemned to death this week to six.

The men were identified as Karam el-Harchaoui and Brahim Nejara. They are among a group of 12 French citizens who were detained by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in neighboring Syria and handed over to Iraq in January.

The Kurdish-led group spearheaded the fight against IS in Syria and has handed over to Iraq hundreds of suspected IS members in recent months.

France’s foreign minister said earlier Tuesday that his government is working to spare the group of condemned Frenchmen from execution after Iraq sentenced them to death — though France has made no effort to bring back captured French IS fighters.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also reiterated France’s position but said the IS militants should be tried where they committed their crimes.

“We are multiplying efforts to avoid the death penalty for these … French people,” he said on France-Inter radio. He didn’t elaborate, but said he spoke to Iraq’s president about the case.

France is outspoken against the death penalty globally. The sentencings in Iraq come amid a controversy about the legal treatment of thousands of foreign fighters who joined IS in Syria and Iraq.

 
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Russian military police last week reportedly carried out a raid against Iranian-backed militiamen stationed at Syria’s Aleppo international airport, local media reported. 

In the aftermath, several Iranian militia leaders were arrested in what was seen as the latest episode of tensions between Iranian and Russian forces in Syria.  

Since the beginning of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Russia and Iran have built a strong military presence in the country in support of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.  

Iran has since deployed thousands of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and allied Shiite militias to Syria, while Russia officially entered the Syrian conflict in September 2015 to help Assad’s regime.   

But as the war is waning, with Syrian regime forces reclaiming most of the territory once controlled by rebel forces, Russia and Iran seem to be vying for influence in the war-torn country.  

‘Slice of the pie’ 

Analysts say the protracted war in Syria has created a slight fissure between the two allies. 

“There are definite tensions that exist between Russia and Iran within Syria,” said Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who closely follows Iranian-backed militias in Syria.  

“You see things like this [raid in Aleppo] that occur in flashpoint zones because there’s criminal activity going on. Each country’s proxy wants a cut of that,” he told VOA.  

Similar incidents have been taking place throughout the country in the past two years.  

Recently, two divisions of the Syrian military were engaged in deadly clashes in different parts of the country, local reports said.  

This power struggle is the result of differences among Syrian military leaders who are either loyal to Russia or Iran, observers believe.  

“I do believe that it comes down to who controls what, what slice of the pie they all have. But I don’t necessarily believe that this is going to lead to some major conflagration between Iranian and Russian forces there,” analyst Smyth said.  

Tactical differences  

The strategic partnership between Russia and Iran in Syria goes beyond such disagreements, especially since Russia is still dependent on Iranian forces to hold territory and to provide manpower for Syrian regime troops, some experts say.  

“I never believe that Russia would separate from Iran,” said Anna Borshchevskaya, a research fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy who focuses on Russia’s policy in the Middle East. 

“The disagreements they’re having is that they’re trying to carve out spheres of influence in Syria, which is something that Russia understands very well,” she told VOA in a phone interview. “Their relationship is a complex one, for sure. But what holds them together is their anti-Americanism and a desire to reduce American influence in the region.”  

Borshchevskaya added that “on the tactical level, [Russia and Iran] are going to have differences sometimes. But they agree on the big picture.” 

The U.S. has been involved in the war against Islamic State militants since 2014, when the terror group announced its so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq.  

U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who declared victory over IS in March, now control more than a third of Syria’s territory.  

The United States has about 2,000 troops in areas under the control of the Kurdish-led SDF. But the U.S. administration has said it will keep only about 400 soldiers in those areas after the war against IS is over.  

Russia and Iran have constantly opposed the U.S. military presence in Syria. 

Economic competition  

Some analysts believe that, unlike when they became involved in Syria’s war, Russian and Iranian forces now control larger territories and both countries are searching for economic opportunities in the country.  

“Now there are more points of friction between the two countries than ever before,” said Jowan Hemo, a Syrian economist who follows the economic patterns of the war.  

“So naturally, you would see them compete to win contracts with the Syrian regime, including the energy and power sectors and other types of investments,” he told VOA. 

In 2018, Russia was awarded exclusive rights to produce Syria’s oil and gas. Russia has also signed a contract to use the Syrian port of Tartus for 49 years, while Iran won a bid to partially use the port of Latakia. 

Both countries want to economically monopolize Syria for the long term, because they each have given sizable loans to the Syrian regime throughout the war, economist Hemo said.  

“I believe this type of competition will continue in Syria, but eventually Russia’s economic dominance will prevail,” he added. 
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Kasey Turcol has just 75 minutes to explain to her high school students the importance of D-Day — and if this wasn’t the 75th anniversary of the turning point in World War II, she wouldn’t devote that much time to it.

D-Day is not part of the required curriculum in North Carolina — or in many other states.

Turcol reminds her students at Crossroads FLEX High School in Cary that D-Day was an Allied victory that saved Europe from Nazi tyranny and that the young men who fought and died were barely older than they are. She sprinkles her lesson with details about the number of men, ships and planes involved in the landing at Normandy while adding a few lesser-known facts about a Spanish spy and a deadly military practice conducted six months earlier in England.

Losing resonance

In the U.S. and other countries affected by the events on June 6, 1944, historians and educators worry that the World War II milestone is losing its resonance with today’s students.

In France, which was liberated from German occupation, D-Day isn’t a stand-alone topic in schools. German schools concentrate on the Holocaust and the Nazi dictatorship. And despite having been part of the Allied powers, in Russia, the schools avoid D-Day because they believe it was the victories on the Eastern Front that won the war.

“History has taken a back seat” in the U.S. because of the focus on science and math classes, said Cathy Gorn, executive director of National History Day in College Park, Md. 

In the U.S., teaching about World War II varies from state to state. It’s often up to the teachers to decide how much time they want to give to individual battles like D-Day.

California framework

California’s History-Social Science Framework, adopted in 2016, includes for sophomores an expansive unit on World War II that covers how the conflict was “a total war,” the goals of the Allied and Axis powers and how the fighting was fought on different fronts. The unit also includes a section on the Holocaust. 

In New York, school officials are using the D-Day anniversary to review the curriculum and “make recommendations on how the current average time of 90 minutes of World War II study in a school year can be strengthened, expanded and mandated.” 

There are special programs available to immerse select students in the history of D-Day. 

For eight years, National History Day sent 15 pairs of students and teachers to Normandy to immerse them in the history of D-Day. The high school sophomores and juniors would research individual soldiers close to them — relatives or people from their hometowns — who died. On the last day, the group visited a cemetery where each student read a eulogy for his or her individual soldier. 

Teachers also have outside resources. The National World War II Museum offers an electronic field trip through D-Day and provides suggested lessons plans.

In North Carolina, history is taught through “conceptual design” with connections to themes such as geography, economics and politics, said Meghan Grant, coordinating teacher for secondary social studies in Wake County schools.  

The lessons are based on a method of teaching social studies that was developed in 2013 and used by about half the states, said Larry Paska, executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies. Paska said it may focus on asking students a question like, “What makes an event a turning point in the war?” Students then will use difference sources of evidence to back up their answers.

‘This is the moment’

As part of her D-Day lesson, Turcol tells her class of juniors and seniors that the Germans thought an attack from the Allied forces wouldn’t be possible.  

“It’s too stormy. It’s too risky,” she said. “And what do we do? Yeah, we find a glimmer of hope. On June 5th, the skies kind of clear. The moon kind of shines. And we’re like, ‘This is the moment. This is what is happening.’ ”

She tells students that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower kept D-Day plans on the “down low.”  

Turcol plays a few minutes of a documentary about D-Day to “show you the true humanity of the war,” she says.  

“You saw the German praying … asking for his mother, father, asking for this to be over. Not everybody is on the same message in Germany,” she says. “Everybody here is a father, a mother, a brother, a cousin, a friend. So every life matters.”

Students in Europe also receive dramatically different lessons on D-Day depending on where they live.

Because of Germany’s history, any hint of militarism remains a taboo. While battles like D-Day, Stalingrad and the Operation Barbarossa invasion of Russia might be mentioned briefly in schools, they tend to be lumped together in broad overviews of the war. Individual teachers do have leeway, however, to pursue topics that capture the attention of students. 

The curriculum is similar from state to state. In Berlin high schools, for example, curriculum guidelines include the history of the war under the overall focus on “the collapse of the first German democracy; Nazi tyranny,” which includes classes on Nazi ideology, resistance movements, the Holocaust and World War II.

Similarly, Bavaria’s ninth-grade curriculum focuses primarily on explaining how the Nazis came to power and their anti-Semitic ideology and genocidal policies, with the war taught briefly as part of their “expansion and conquest policies.”  In the 11th grade, the focus is even more directly on the Holocaust, and the curriculum guidelines note specific dates to be learned, including the anti-Jewish “Kristallnacht” pogrom in 1938.

The Russian narrative on D-Day has remained almost unchanged since the days of the Soviet Union. Historians and schoolbooks describe the invasion as a long-awaited move, happening after the course of WWII had already been shaped by Soviet victories in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and other battles on the Eastern Front.

Even in the country where D-Day occurred, the assault doesn’t have a central place in the teaching of World War II. The history of 20th century conflict is taught in France as a theme and no longer as a chronological list of major battles.

A week of lessons ‘not possible’

“We no longer teach as we did before, what we called ‘the history of battles,’ ” says Christine Guimonnet, who teaches history at a high school west of Paris and is secretary-general of the APHG, a French association of history and geography teachers. “Everyone will, of course, speak about June 6 because it was a major moment in the war, but we’re not going to spend a whole week on it. That’s not possible.” 

As long as they are still teaching the broader themes, French teachers may home in on specific events, like D-Day, to organize study projects and, if they have the budget, trips to Normandy beaches, museums or screenings of The Longest Day, a 1962 film about the events of D-Day. 

As cultural director at Normandy’s Caen Memorial, Isabelle Bournier deals daily with school groups that tour the museum. French children often aren’t familiar with the details of D-Day, partially because fewer families have relatives who lived through the war and can pass on their stories, she said.

Students from Normandy are different from the broader French student population, she said.

“All families are more or less impregnated by this history. It is part of us,” Bournier said. 
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