Sixty years after Allied forces launched their assault on German troops on D-Day, the monumental battle for the Normandy beaches is living up to the historians' maxim that the past isn't what it used to be.

The anniversary celebrations on June 6 will bring together wartime victors United States and Britain and their former enemy Germany, smaller Allied nations whose soldiers were there on D-Day and a big one whose weren't -- Russia.

They won't all look back on "the longest day" as mainly a triumph of Allied military might. The Germans now talk about it as the dawn of their liberation from Nazism. Russians tend to rank D-Day below their 1943 victory at Stalingrad.

But with time moving on and veterans dying off, the daring invasion is settling back into the annals of historical events whose meaning can be moulded in the light of subsequent events.

French President Jacques Chirac set the tone for the 60th anniversary commemoration in January by saying it would stress "this community of values that unite democracies and transcend yesterday's rivalries" and announced Germany would attend.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told reporters that it was only right that Germany should take part because it was also liberated from Nazi tyranny thanks to D-Day.

"This day is much more than victory or defeat," he said. "This invitation shows the post-war period is over and done for good."

Some US and British veterans' groups have frowned on the invitation, which President Francois Mitterrand could not extend to Chancellor Helmut Kohl for the 50th anniversary in 1994 because it could have offended the ageing survivors.

(Agencies)