On the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth stood at the Normandy American Cemetery and told European leaders they were facing an “invasion” of “dangerous ideologies” arriving by sea — provoking a sharp rebuke from the British government and former defence officials.
“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said. “Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”
“Hegseth warns Europe faces 'invasion' of dangerous ideologies in D-Day speech as UK condemns Vance's migrant-linked remarks on Henry Nowak murder.”
The speech, at a ceremony marking the Allied operation to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, came a day after US vice-president JD Vance blamed the murder of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak on the West’s “politics of self-hatred” and “the mass invasion of migrants”. Vance had described the “only response” as “righteous anger”.
Nowak was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, who the Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed was born British. Downing Street hit back, saying: “The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes.”
Deputy prime minister David Lammy told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that “politicians should be very careful and very cautious” about their language. “We’re in this new online space that can rapidly become toxic,” he added, noting that concerns over Nowak’s case had become “global” because of “viral” footage of his arrest.
Former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace also condemned the Trump administration’s intervention, telling The Independent that Hegseth and Vance “would do well to not believe everything they read on X and to read the inspiring D-Day speech by Ronald Reagan on the 40th Anniversary.”
In his own remarks, Hegseth argued that some European capitals had grown too “comfortable” with their hard-fought freedoms. “The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,” he said. “That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters or what they fought for was merely temporary.”
He also pressed allies on defence spending, meeting French armed forces minister Catherine Vautrin to discuss the “urgent need for NATO allies to assume primary responsibility for the conventional defence of the European continent by increasing defence spending to 5 percent of GDP”.
The US National Security Strategy issued last year had already warned that Europe faced “civilisational erasure” driven by migration — language that now echoes directly from the podium of a D-Day memorial.