A reenactment of a D-Day battle was cancelled amid claims that the group playing the role of German soldiers contained Nazi sympathisers.

Members of Vent d’Europe (Wind of Europe) were due to participate in a reenactment of the battle for the German heavy gun battery at Crisbecq overlooking Utah Beach in Normandy, where Allied troops landed to liberate France in June 1944.

But the event, part of a Heritage Days programme, was scrapped after the group was denounced by Admiral Christian Brac de la Perrière, chairman of Normandie Mémoire, which seeks to preserve the memory of D-Day. “It is intolerable to use such a site to serve such a repugnant ideology,” he said, adding that D-Day reenactments were often in bad taste.

“History is not a circus. We must never forget that the Battle of Normandy, in which two million men fought each other, was caused by an abominable regime.”

Vent d’Europe, based in France, claims to specialise in “exhibitions and historical documentaries about World War Two by professionals and amateurs of the German Army”. It denies any sympathy for Hitler.

However, Luc Douillard, a history teacher in Nantes, western France, who first alerted the authorities to the group’s activities, said: “They come close to justifying the Nazi regime.”

The group’s website, for instance, praised Hitler’s troops for “defending the values of the West against the barbarous Bolshevik hordes”. It went on to vaunt the merits of the feared Nazi Waffen SS, “steeped in a European ideal”. In a section about the Cossacks who fought for the Nazis, Sir Winston Churchill was described as “the drunkard who thought he was running Great Britain”. Many passages were edited out after the admiral spoke out.

Philippe Tanne, who renovated the Crisbecq gun battery and opened a museum there in 2004, asked Vent d’Europe to play the part of German troops at an reenactment last year. They were reported to have driven around in imitation Nazi vehicles and uniforms after the event and Mr Tann says now: “I don’t want anything to do with them.” Vent d’Europe said suggestions that it had neo-Nazi sympathies was a lie. Its site was “purely historical information” and “in no way justified Nazi Germany”.

Vent d’Europe is also at the centre of a second row after it emerged its members advised an official film about the Resistance hero Guy Moquet. The revelation has embarrassed French authorities, who say they were unaware of the nature of the group. The producer of the two-minute film – to be shown in schools next month on the orders of President Sarkozy – has expressed similar indignation.

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