LONDON -- The 60th anniversary commemoration of the D-Day landings focused attention on the nature of the relationship between Europe and America. The liberation of France and the overthrow of the Nazis in 1944-45 could not have been achieved without American forces. Britain had stood alone against Adolf Hitler in 1940 and 1941, and British power had ebbed away despite the resolution of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the British people who gave him their backing. U.S. President Roosevelt had done what he could to help, but he could not declare war on Germany without a direct threat to the United States. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into the war with Germany as well as with Japan.
Europeans hoped that U.S. isolationism, which had undermined the League of Nations, was at an end. But in 1945, as American forces began to return home and Europe was divided and impoverished, the future looked bleak. U.S. President Harry Truman, however, backed the Marshall Plan and gradually Europe recovered.
The United Nations was established with full U.S. backing and with its headquarters in New York. Europeans realized that, after the two catastrophes of 1914-18 and 1939-45, another war in Europe was unthinkable. The process of reconciliation and European partnership was begun with American backing. The Soviet threat galvanized the Europeans and the Americans, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed.