The 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and the commemorations of V-E Day and – much closer to home – V-J Day in 2025, will be the last big memorials of World War II with living veterans, from what many still call the Greatest Generation.

D-Day and the battle for Normandy was the last real chance for Nazi Germany to avoid total defeat. But it is a new war, not the old war, that really hangs over these events. Among the presidents, prime ministers and royals in Normandy this week, it was Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky who cut the most important figure. By far the most destructive war in Europe since 1945 is for him a daily reality, not history. The pledges of more aid to Ukraine from the nations that fought on D-Day are being made in the unspoken hope of rebuffing a tyrant so that the nations of Europe, North America, and beyond don’t have to do Normandy, or anything like it, all over again.