It has been a taboo subject in France for 70 years but in his D-Day commemoration speech on 6 June, President Francois Hollande will pay tribute to the terrible civilian casualties suffered by the French due to Allied bombing up to and during the liberation of France, reports the BBC.
Historians believe Allied bombardments killed almost as many French people as German bombs killed Britons during the Blitz.
According to research carried out by Andrew Knapp, history professor at the UK's University of Reading, British, American and Canadian air raids resulted in 57,000 French civilian losses in World War Two.
"That's a figure slightly below, but comparable to, the 60,500 the British lost as a result of Luftwaffe bombing over the same period," says Knapp who is the co-author of Forgotten Blitzes and a book just published in France called Les francais sous les bombes alliees 1940-1945 (The French Under Allied Bombardment).
"It is also true that France took seven times the tonnage of [Allied] bombs that the UK took [from Nazi Germany]," says Knapp. "Roughly 75,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on the UK [including Hitler's V missiles]. In France, it's in the order of 518,000 tonnes," he says.
Winston Churchill, who addressed the French over the airwaves with confidence and even a certain relish in their own language, spoke to them as Allies despite the collaboration with the Nazis of a part of the French population.
Read more of this report from the BBC.