This week’s events marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day are a welcome reminder of the importance of properly commemorating World War Two.
In March 2017 the Chancellor Phil Hammond and Prime Minister Theresa May rightly gave £20m in LIBOR fines to the D-Day memorial, however, our campaign to build Britain’s national memorial to the Battle of the Atlantic in Liverpool has so far not even received a reply from the Chancellor Phillip
Hammond to our appeal. As a result we have written to Mr Hammond again and urge him to correct this egregious oversight and remember that D-Day would never have happened without the Battle of the Atlantic – the longest running battle of the World War Two, which was headquartered in Liverpool. While D-Day saw an estimated 4400 allied armed forces killed the Battle of the Atlantic saw an estimated 68,000 killed including 25,600 British merchant seamen, 23,000 Royal Navy seamen with a further 20,000 killed from Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, Norway, Holland, Greece, Belgium, Russia, India and China.
In total 3500 merchant ships and 175 warships were sunk by U-boats whose losses were also huge with 28,000 Germans killed and 648 of the 859 U-boats sunk in large part due to the critical cracking of the Enigma code. Churchill said: “The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land at sea or in the air, depended ultimately on its outcome.” So we urge Phillip Hammond and the Government to show greater respect to honouring the Battle of the Atlantic and help us build a permanent memorial to the lionhearted men and women who died and served so D-Day could happen and we can live in freedom today.
