CAEN, France (Reuters) -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder paid an historic visit to Normandy on Sunday, joining Germany's erstwhile enemies for the first time in a tribute to those killed on both sides of the pivotal World War Two battle.

Schroeder, an infant when the Allies stormed French beaches in the D-Day landings 60 years ago that hastened the war's end, kept a low profile before a Franco-German ceremony late in the day but wrote it was good Germany lost the battle and the war.

"The Allies' victory was not a victory over Germany, it was a victory for Germany," Schroeder wrote in a contribution for Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "It was a triumph over the criminal Nazi regime that had turned murder into an industrial process."

Schroeder's appearance was not without controversy -- both at home, where conservatives attacked him for avoiding a major German cemetery, and among Allied veteran groups, who questioned the wisdom of inviting the leader of the enemy they fought.

But Schroeder, two months old at the time, deflected the criticism, saying it proved the postwar era was finished...