THE museum set up by the French authorities to commemorate the D-Day landings is struggling under a mountain of debt amid a sharp decline in the number of visitors.

The Memorial Museum in Caen, Normandy, has been accused of mismanagement for turning its back on the Second World War to concentrate on subjects from feminism to Father Christmas. In recent months the museum has focused efforts on transforming itself into a “place of reflection on the contemporary world”.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Claude Quétel, who was sacked as the museum’s chief historian last year after protesting that it had fallen victim to political correctness. “The vocation of this place was to become the great museum on the Second World War in France. It’s drifting away from that idea, and it’s a dramatic error.”

In the grounds, for instance, are gardens created as a homage to the British, Canadian and American soldiers who lost their lives “so that freedom could triumph”.

But the museum’s brochure talks in pacifist tones of the need to “combat the violence around us . . . Peace begins at home, in the office, with our neighbours.”

“It is bizarre,” said Alain Chesnel, who runs tours of Normandy battlefield sites for American visitors. “I don’t advise people to go there. They should be retracing a page of our history, not presenting exhibitions that have absolutely nothing to do with it.”

Opened by François Mitterrand in 1988, Le Mémorial de Caen was designed to commemorate the Second World War, and notably the Battle of Normandy, in which 53,000 Allied troops lost their lives. The late French President described the museum as an “act of vigilance, confidence and hope”.

“But there was an ambiguity because it was officially called a Museum of Peace and told to look at the whole of the 20th century and not just the war,” said M Quétel. “That’s where the problem comes from.”

In 2002 the museum, which is run by Caen town council, opened a €13.72 million (£9.4 million) extension that includes sections on “the principal disorders in the world today” and the need for “eco-responsibility”.

Stéphane Grimaldi, who was appointed director in October, said that it had lost €400,000 when the number of visitors fell to 400,000 from 560,000 in 2004, the 60th anniversary of D-Day.He announced cost-saving measures, including cuts to the guided tours of the D-Day landing beaches. His rescue plan includes exhibitions on Living without Petrol and on Father Christmas.

M Quétel said: “I think they are turning their backs on the war and that’s a shame.”

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