It was the first trip to Europe since he called America’s allies there “PATHETIC” in a private Signal group chat, and said that he shared the vice president’s “loathing of European freeloading.”

So there was some anxiety and nervous trepidation about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s visit to the French beaches of Normandy on Friday to commemorate the 81st anniversary of D-Day.

But on this day, delivering a speech before the 9,389 graves of American soldiers lying beneath rows of white crosses in the Normandy American cemetery, all of whom died after the June 6, 1944, assault, Mr. Hegseth offered no offense. He described the successful assault on Nazi-occupied France, which proved a turning point in the war, as a victory of many allied countries, including even the French resistance.

“The enemy underestimated the strength of the Allied war cause,” he said from a podium before a modest international crowd and about two dozen American World War II veterans, most around 100 years old, watching from wheelchairs nearby.

“Without the sacrifices of American, French, British and other Allied powers, we would not have a free world,” he said.

To many, the speech came as a relief. But still, there was an elephant on the perfectly kept cemetery lawn.