Stalingrad, 1942. Soviet troops move through ruins.

followed by Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history involving more than 6,000 tanks, 4,000 aircraft and over 2 million men. All told, with a country in ruins, but held by an unconquerable spirit, the Russian people invested 27 million lives (civilian and military) in defeating Germany, a figure that easily dwarves the much ballyhooed losses suffered by the British (450,000), French (567,000) and American  (418,000), participants, the latter suffering the largest proportion of that figure in their push against Japan. In fact, a number of smaller nations absorbed far more dramatic losses, i.e., Poland (5,600,000), Yugoslavia (1,000,000).  Thus, if the Soviet Union easily emerges as the biggest victim of World War 2, in the Asian theater, where WW2 had begun not in 1939 but in 1937, when Japan attacked China, it is the latter that stands out for the sheer dimension of bloodletting. The People's Republic of China as of 2005 estimated the number of Chinese casualties in the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945 are 20 million dead and 15 million wounded.

Elementary decency, which Western elites totaly lack, would have dictated not only due mention of Russian sacrifice, but an invitation for the Russians to attend the ceremonies, since D-Day would have been impossible, or a veritable bloodbath for the allies, without the Soviet victories in Stalingrad and Kursk a year before. In this context, I am gratified that Paul Craig Roberts saw the matter in the same light, expressing repugnance at the blatant erasure of history in order to maintain the artificial russophobia required to justify the manufacturing of further sanguinary and unthinkable wars. Speaking of "unthinkable," this note would be incomplete if we failed to remind our audience of Operation Unthinkable, an abominable plan concocted by Winston Churchill, that paragon of British fortitude and supposed sterling qualities (or so the propaganda goes), who apparently thought nothing of prolonging Wold War 2, and betraying Britain's ally. Even the heavily CIA-redacted Wikipedia still maintains a page on this embarrassing, but hardly known topic:

Operation Unthinkable was a code name of two related, unrealised plans by the Western Allies against the Soviet Union. They were ordered by British prime minister Winston Churchill in 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II in Europe.

The first of the two assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany in order to "impose the will of the Western Allies" on the Soviets. "The will" was qualified as "square deal for Poland"^[1] (which probably meant enforcing the recently signed Yalta Agreement^{[citation needed]}). When the odds were judged "fanciful", the original plan was abandoned. The code name was used instead for a defensive scenario, in which the British were to defend against a Soviet drive towards the North Sea and the Atlantic following the withdrawal of the American forces from the continent.

The study became the first Cold War-era contingency plan for war with the Soviet Union.^[2]Both plans were highly secret at the time of their creation and it was not until 1998 that they were made public,^[3] although the British spy for the Soviets, Guy Burgess, had passed on some details at the time.^{[citation needed]
(Wikipedia, Operation Unthinkable)}

Since that time, Western standards of morality have tumbled even further, culminating in the horrid sociopathic chaos we inhabit today.  Meanwhile, as imperial propaganda never rests, the New York Times found in Trump's cloying speech at Colville-sur-mer grounds to lambaste him for "honoring D-Day sacrifices with some legacies unspoken".  Even today in a climate saturated with cynical lies and suffering from the toxic effects of the Russiagate hoax, which the Times has done so much to legitimate, one would be forgiven for thinking this article was referring to Trump's failure to mention the Russian contribution to the war effort. But no, the Times, as prominent mouthpiece for the US Deep State, was and remains fixated on bolstering the misnomered "Atlantic Alliance", vital to US imperialism's ability to operate in all latitudes. Describing Trump's customary deficits in truly Orwellian terms, the Times took the opportunity to defend NATO as an engine for peace, while putting in a good word for the bloodsoaked and by now wholly oxymoronic "postwar international order."

“To the men who sit behind me and to the boys who rest in the field before me,” Mr. Trump said, “your example will never, ever grow old, your legend will never tire, your spirit — brave, unyielding and true — will never die.”