Never Forget
Sixty years ago today "the war ended" in Europe. Which war ? World War II, as the powers-that-be call it. It's V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, today, le 8 mai.
All over France, in almost every city, town, village and hamlet, there is a commemoration at the monument aux morts. Aged, beribboned veterans, former prisoners of war and surviving forced laborers line up as best they are able. A child, usually female, lays flowers, the amateur fanfare tootles a few bars of of martial music, and a local politico intones thanks for sacrifices made and hardships undergone. The media interview concentration camp survivors, resistance members, and sundry senior citizens who were but callow youths when the Allied forces rolled through France to the Rhine and well beyond. Documentaries with almost-forgotten, grainy footage are dusted off, shown on prime-time TV, and discussed by historians and journalists.
This is right, and as it should be, in spite of the imperfections, inaccuracies, and exaggerations.
George Santayana, the American philosopher, reportedly said "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". On the other hand, George Bernard Shaw opined "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history". Il y a de la marge, as the French say. The truth, if truth there be, lies somewhere between the two.
A few historians – with whom Amerloque wholeheartedly agrees - feel that "World War II" is a misnomer. The series of events between 1914 and 1945 should simply be called "The Great World War".
There are certainly grounds for the appellation. The so-called "World War I", the initial portion of the Great World War, resulted not only in rampant irredentism but in the outright disappearance of several powerful empires (Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman). One cannot isolate the Russian Civil War, the Weimar Republic, the advent of both Mussolini and Hitler, and the Spanish Civil War from their proximate cause: the first half of the Great World War and the disastrous, precarious peace which followed. Moreover, without an unstable, inward-looking Soviet Union, a staggering, impoverished Europe and politically-inspired civil war in China, would Japan have really dared to invade Manchuria in 1931 ?
Quite simply; what is called "World War II" sprung from the failed attempts to deal with the consequences of "World War I". Beginning with Gavrilo Princip's attack at Sarajevo in June, 1914 the globe was riven by strife for over thirty years, until that day in September, 1945, when General Douglas MacArthur on the battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay accepted the surrender of the Japanese Empire.
Some continental Europeans have a tendency to minimize this, even to dismiss it, just as they forget that the war went on for some months after V-E Day, all the way to V-J Day. As a matter of interest, an American who mentions the Chindits, the Hump, the Flying Tigers, Saipan or Tarawa to a continental European will probably be met with a blank stare, since the Asian Theatre is rarely emphasized in the media.
However, the British know - and solemnly remember every year - what cataclysms they endured for survival and what feats they accomplished to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today. After the bloodletting of the first part of the Great World War, they stood virtually alone against the Axis Powers, from September 1939 to August 1941.
Beyond all the hype and misinformation about la guerre and la fin de la guerre and l'Europe, one would do well to remember that without the British stand, things might have turned out much, much differently.
L'Amerloque
All over France, in almost every city, town, village and hamlet, there is a commemoration at the monument aux morts. Aged, beribboned veterans, former prisoners of war and surviving forced laborers line up as best they are able. A child, usually female, lays flowers, the amateur fanfare tootles a few bars of of martial music, and a local politico intones thanks for sacrifices made and hardships undergone. The media interview concentration camp survivors, resistance members, and sundry senior citizens who were but callow youths when the Allied forces rolled through France to the Rhine and well beyond. Documentaries with almost-forgotten, grainy footage are dusted off, shown on prime-time TV, and discussed by historians and journalists.
This is right, and as it should be, in spite of the imperfections, inaccuracies, and exaggerations.
George Santayana, the American philosopher, reportedly said "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". On the other hand, George Bernard Shaw opined "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history". Il y a de la marge, as the French say. The truth, if truth there be, lies somewhere between the two.
A few historians – with whom Amerloque wholeheartedly agrees - feel that "World War II" is a misnomer. The series of events between 1914 and 1945 should simply be called "The Great World War".
There are certainly grounds for the appellation. The so-called "World War I", the initial portion of the Great World War, resulted not only in rampant irredentism but in the outright disappearance of several powerful empires (Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, and Ottoman). One cannot isolate the Russian Civil War, the Weimar Republic, the advent of both Mussolini and Hitler, and the Spanish Civil War from their proximate cause: the first half of the Great World War and the disastrous, precarious peace which followed. Moreover, without an unstable, inward-looking Soviet Union, a staggering, impoverished Europe and politically-inspired civil war in China, would Japan have really dared to invade Manchuria in 1931 ?
Quite simply; what is called "World War II" sprung from the failed attempts to deal with the consequences of "World War I". Beginning with Gavrilo Princip's attack at Sarajevo in June, 1914 the globe was riven by strife for over thirty years, until that day in September, 1945, when General Douglas MacArthur on the battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay accepted the surrender of the Japanese Empire.
Some continental Europeans have a tendency to minimize this, even to dismiss it, just as they forget that the war went on for some months after V-E Day, all the way to V-J Day. As a matter of interest, an American who mentions the Chindits, the Hump, the Flying Tigers, Saipan or Tarawa to a continental European will probably be met with a blank stare, since the Asian Theatre is rarely emphasized in the media.
However, the British know - and solemnly remember every year - what cataclysms they endured for survival and what feats they accomplished to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today. After the bloodletting of the first part of the Great World War, they stood virtually alone against the Axis Powers, from September 1939 to August 1941.
Beyond all the hype and misinformation about la guerre and la fin de la guerre and l'Europe, one would do well to remember that without the British stand, things might have turned out much, much differently.
L'Amerloque
Text © Copyright 2005 by L'Amerloque
posted by L'Amerloque at 1:12 AM
4 Comments:
I was really surprised by the amount of coverage on VE day here in France. I was glad to see that the day is taken so seriously over here.
I did not know that you had a blog! Yay! I, too, was very impressed with the coverage in France.
Hi Frania !
… just added a post-scriptum to a piece I posted a few days ago. However, I had forgotten something, so I edited it & sent it again, which means that my first PS should be deleted & only last one kept …
OK, I've deleted your comment #4 as requested, leaving only the second one ! (smile)
Rereading your first post, I immediately thought of la ligne bleue des Vosges and the huge patriotic fervor connected with Jeanne d'Arc in the years between 1871 and 1914. (smile) Your words put them clearly in context !
Other comments:
The Prussians took advantage of the upheaval to march on Paris & Versailles. The siege of Paris lasted five months ...
The French government moved to Versailles and the army was known as les versaillais. Although our (US) envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, Elihu B. Washburne, moved the US legation out to Versailles, too, on the rue Mademoiselle (it's in his two-volume memoir of the Franco-Prussian War, Recollections of a Minister to France, published in 1887), he commuted between Paris and Versailles during the Commune, and was reputed to be "the only foreign envoy who stuck to his post". As far as I am aware, there is no plaque on the building. (sigh)
For the people of Eastern Europe 1945 was not a year of Liberation, it was the year when the Western powers abandoned them to the big Russian bear. It was the beginning of World War III, also known as the Cold War. Every attempt to free themselves ended in blood baths & long years in the gulag.
Intermittent armed partisan anti-Soviet activity went on in some parts of Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Poland and the Ukraine well into the 1950s. That's one of the reasons the Soviets repressed the Hungarian uprising in 1956 with such ferocity.
Some of these monuments do not bear the names of the Allied soldiers & airmen who were killed because people do not know who they were, just that on such a date a jeep was destroyed & its occupants killed, or that on such other date, a plane fell in flame & the body of the pilot was retrieved & buried in the municipal cemetery. In other instances, people have done research to find out who these men were & when the names are known, they are inscribed on the steles or monuments.
Sometimes, too, the bodies were removed for reburial, either in one of the military cemeteries in Europe or even in the soldier's country of origin.
Another particularity is that these monuments are erected not in the middle of the main square of a town, but at the very spot, or very close to where the Allied soldiers lost their life: side of the road, forest ... I am unable to say how many such monuments have been erected in France, but there are many many & a few more are being built every year.
I checked with one of the Ministries here a few years ago to see if there was a master list, but no luck. There doesn't seem to be one, although one would think that it would be easy to make, given the number of veterans' and commemmorative organizations. One would simply have to combine the available lists, surely.
L'Amerloque
Hi Frania !
Contacting all veterans & commemorative organizations would not be that easy as they do not necessarily link one with another; they may even attend various ceremonies at the same place on different occasions. A friend of mine had a suggestion: send a letter to the Maire of every town & village of France asking if his/her commune has a monument erected to the memory of Allied soldiers killed for the liberation of France in World War II. I am wondering how many would answer out of the 36,851…
This sounds like an absolutely ideal project for an Association 1901. To keep postal charges to a minimum, it would certainly have to be organized with correspondants locaux, much in the manner of, say, Maisons Paysannes de France. A website could be implemented to collect information. Undoubtedly a small subsidy would be forthcoming from the relevant Ministries and les Conseils Généraux. A bit of money might be solicited aux USA.
If you start it up, I'd be quite happy to be a membre fondateur. My schedule wouldn't leave me time for much else … quoique … (smile)
L'Amerloque
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