Although the French and English observations of the two world wars are often solemn and sometimes tragic, a bit of triumphalism does on occasion enter in. On Sunday, as I stood on the Champs d’Elysees, French President Emmanuel Macron recounted his version of World War I before 72 world leaders. He spoke of how soldiers came from around the world to fight here, “because France represented for them all that was beautiful in this world.”

This is, of course, as self-serving as it is demonstrably false. In the same speech, President spoke of how the French nation was a project, a carrier of universal values. This is a traditionally French understanding of their nation’s role in world history, World War I included.

It should go without saying, but such self-serving triumphalism is absolutely impossible in Germany. If Vichy collaboration during World War II sucked the air out of the French commemoration of World War I, just imagine what World War II did to the German understanding of their history.

A related question arose in conversations with friends after my post on the differences between French and English commemorations of World War I. How do Germans remember World War I? That is, what kind of commemorations, if any, do the German have for their millions of casualties in World War I?

The short answer: there are none.

This, of course, shouldn’t really cause any surprise. Between 1918 and 1990, Germany went through four different political systems, and five in the East. In the 1990s, lucid octogenarians and nonagenarians in Germany could tell you all kinds of crazy stories about the breathtaking events of their lifetimes…that is, of course, if you could ever get them to open up.

Last week, I asked most of my German friends how Germany was commemorating the centenary of the end of World War I. One replied, “In Oldenburg we always have the “Erinnerungsgang,” a walk to remember the Jews who were taken to concentration camps in the “Reichspogromnacht” on November 11. It’s a silent walk. They walk the route the Jews took back then when they were forced to walk right through the City Center.”

She, of course, had confused World War I with World War II and Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938) with the Armistice (November 11, 1918).

And she was not the only one. Other German friends also commented on Kristallnacht in response to my question about World War I. In Germany, the memory of the Holocaust simply crowds out other memories.

Jacob Eder, a historian who specializes in the German memory of World War II, told me, “World War I basically plays no role in Geschichtsbewusstsein [literally, “history-consciousness”] or debates about German identity…World War II and the Holocaust just overshadow everything.”

The reasons why November 9 is more important than November 11 in Germany go beyond just Kristallnacht. November 9 actually has a name in German: ‘Schicksalstag’ or ‘Day of Fate’. In the past two hundred years, momentous events in German history seem to have a habit of recurring on this date.

On November 9, 1848, Robert Blum, the left liberal leader of the revolts against the monarch, was executed, marking the symbolic end of the Revolution of 1848. On November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, thus paving the way for the end of World War I. On November 9, 1923, the Beer Hall Putsch failed, heralding the arrival of Adolf Hitler on the national stage. On November 9, 1938, or Kristallnacht, the Nazis systematically destroyed large amount of Jewish property and synagogues, killing hundreds of Jews in the process, presaging the Holocaust. And finally, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.

The Schicksalstag, November 9, looms large in the national consciousness. Even in 1918, November 11 was nothing more than the logical conclusion of Wilhelm II’s abdication on November 9.

And the Germans lost World War I. It’s always difficult to commemorate something when you lose, but, in this particular case, the end of World War I merely set the stage for World War II. Although General Pershing wanted to march on Berlin, Woodrow Wilson found an extension of the war excessive, too militaristic even. So the Armistice was signed before the advancing Allied troops arrived in German territory. Many Germans did not know what the generals and politicians did; they were not yet convinced they had to lose, which created fertile soil for the “stab-in-the-back” myth that Hitler used in his rise to power. In this sense, the German loss in World War I wasn’t just a loss in war. It also set the stage for the Nazi rise to power and another loss in a world war a couple decades later.

And who would want to remember that?

I’m not quite sure what possessed me to spend my vacation time this past month camping along the Western Front and visiting World War I sites.

To be quite honest, it’s absolutely depressing to find yet another cemetery filled with men who barely lived two decades tucked away in a field somewhere in France or Belgium. And the museum exhibits about advances in our technological capacity to kill, maim, and devastate the environment in the process all begin to add up after a while.

In that sad stupor, though, another message comes through. The monuments (and the governments who paid for them) tell me that the millions of men who died on the Western Front in World War I gave their lives for a reason. They will not be forgotten.

And indeed, in many cases they have not been forgotten. In reconstructed trenches near Verdun, French volunteers collect biographical information on those who died there, posting profiles of the long departed for visitors. The Royal British Legion organizes an elaborate system of poppy crosses, wreaths, and cards to be left at graves around the world. And then there are the solitary researchers, some professional historians and some just educated individuals with a great-grandparent who died, who have shared droves of information about individual soldiers online.

Thanks to their immense and tedious work, a large number of the WWI dead have now been documented. Their names have been read, their military service documented in detail. For them, we have answers to the questions: Who were they? Where did they come from? Where did they serve? How did they die?

But there is a bigger question that recurs: Why?

Why did all of those men have to die?

And that question, unfortunately, eludes easy answers.

Four years ago, I spent a lot of time reading books about the July Crisis and the outbreak of World War I. Should Serbia be put back at the center of the story? Could we have avoided the war if Wilhelm II didn’t have an inferiority complex? Is current Russian aggression more like Germany in World War I or like Germany in World War II?

In fact, back in 2014, a great deal of the commentary on World War I’s centenary seemed intent on deriving prophecies for the present. Did the inevitable end of America’s unipolar moment mean that great power conflict was back, as it was pre-1914? Were we sleepwalking into another world war? It goes without saying, but many of those think pieces have not aged well. History does not repeat itself. The July Crisis provides us a template for nothing except the July Crisis.

You can read dozens of books about World War I and never find a satisfying answer to the big question “why did all those men have to die?”

Sometimes I do grasp at answers, though: because European colonial rivalries ran out of territory to carve up, because the application of the Industrial Revolution to war is positively horrific, because of a series of diplomatic misunderstandings, because…

Eventually, I turn to the consequences of the war: the end of empires, the irreversible collapse of an old order, the beginning of something new and untried in Russia, the emergence of the United States as a great power, the triumph of democracy, a stupid and hypocritical application of self-determination as a criteria for national borders, the mass entrance of women into the workforce, the growing self-consciousness of colonized peoples…

But I am still no closer to an answer to the question: why did all those millions die a hundred years ago?

On Sunday, I stood in the rain for over three hours along the Champs d’Elysees and watched French President Emmanuel Macron provide his own elaborate answer centered around European unity and international cooperation. It’s better than most, but it still isn’t entirely satisfying.

Later in the day I walked over to the Cathedral of Notre Dame to attend the Royal British Legion’s centenary commemoration service. They played the same Te Deum they had played at Notre Dame a hundred years earlier, as well as a new piece by Malcolm Archer had been specifically commissioned for the service. I stood in mild stupefaction as Brits sang a rousing rendition of La Marseillaise (and this in a time of Brexit). It was moving, spectacular even. But it didn’t really answer the big question either.

As I was walking across the Seine on my way to the service at Notre Dame, I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between a French colonel in front of me and a Scottish veteran of the Falklands War. The French soldier asked him about the caliber of the weapons they carried in 1982. In the museums along the front, you hear this kind of talk as well. Many men revel in this kind of knowledge. For me, it’s not the case. As much as I love trivia, those kinds of historical details have never interested me. But I can see the fascination, not least because such details give a sense of comprehension of the conflict without ever answering the bigger question, which is political, diplomatic, philosophical even.

Another way is to escape is via a vague and ahistorical patriotism. This is the preferred option of my country. On Veterans Day, we honor “all men and women who have served in the military to protect our freedoms.” And yet, what freedom of mine has ever been threatened in Iraq or Afghanistan, in Vietnam or in Korea? And what does military service in the present have to do with November 11, that day when the dying stopped on the Western Front a hundred years ago?

The escapism of abstract patriotism has its benefits. It’s a lot easier than struggling to answer the big question. It has all the military pomp and none of the specifics of an actual war; all of the solemnity and none of the tragedy.

And war is a tragedy, make no mistake about it. In World War I we earned the right to sit at the head of the table at Versailles, only to see the world we tried to dictate come apart at the seams two decades later. And so after we helped end another world war, we never went back to our isolationist and anti-imperialist roots. And we still haven’t, at great cost to our own men and women who have served in the military, to say nothing of the local communities caught on the fault lines between us and our enemies around the world.

My entire adult life we have been at war. Almost twenty years now. I have no reason to believe that that those who died in Afghanistan and Iraq have purchased much of anything with their blood.

The big question haunts us still today.

The War to End All Wars, which came to an end a hundred years ago yesterday, was most certainly not that. And that’s a tragedy no matter how you look at it.

The commemoration of World War I differs markedly depending on which side of the English Channel you are on.

Even just in France, you can see the difference between the French and British World War I cemeteries. You also find it in the ceremonies (or lack thereof) and in the numbers and kinds of people you meet visiting WWI sites.

And the French I’ve met on this trip admit as much.

The French volunteers at WWI sites are passionate about “les poilus.” They would love to commemorate the Great War like the British. In fact, they rue the fact that they do not. But those who care deeply here in France are a small minority.

They inevitably tell me the same thing: they wish France was more like the United Kingdom.

Last week in the countryside surrounding Verdun, I visited a restored “ouvrage” or defense structure. It had been bought and restored by an association of five French friends. I spoke with their president, a stocky rugby fan in his 50s. At first he thought I was British and complimented us “Anglo-saxons” on our strong commemorative culture. He told me that he has been fascinated by the Third Republic era military structures around Verdun since he was a boy. So it was a dream come true to be able to restore one and turn it into a museum.

During the work, they found the French equivalent of doggie tags. With painstaking research they managed to track down the next of kin and contacted them. He told me that many simply hung up on him; they didn’t even care. Right now, he is experiencing a tourist boom, but his biggest fear, he told me, is that after this November 11 local interest will evaporate forever.

In the United Kingdom, wearing a poppy in the lead-up to November 11 is practically a social obligation. I have been told that there is an equivalent French tradition with the bleuet. If that is the case, in the seven years I have lived in France, I have not seen a single bleuet sold, bought, or worn. In contrast, you can’t walk down a single street in the United Kingdom right now without seeing a poppy.

Yesterday, I observed a similar dynamic as I watched my French friends react to the unveiling of a British work of art to commemorate the World War I dead at the Tower of London. Their response: “Why can’t we do anything like this?”

Clearly, something is different. I see something. The French themselves recognize there is a difference. But what exactly? And why?

After all, the French and British lost equivalent numbers of men during the war. They both fought together on the winning side. The war was even fought on French soil. You would think that the French would be more attached to those millions of men who died defending their country on their own soil.

And yet they’re not.

I’ve discussed this question with a few French historians, and the best answer about why World War I is commemorated differently actually has more to do with World War II than World War I itself.

In World War II, Britain was bombed but never capitulated. British soldiers fighting on the continent escaped the Nazis at Dunkirk and returned in Normandy four years later. Films are regularly made about both episodes.

Can you think of a single film about the French military effort in WWII?

There is a reason why no blockbuster has ever been made about the French military in WWII. France surrendered to Germany after a pitiful effort that has gone down in history as the “Phony War.” Thanks in large part to Charles de Gaulle and to the few French who made up the real Resistance, the majority of the French were able to save face. Because, in point of fact, the majority of the French collaborated with the Nazis, in small ways and big.

But that’s about it…the French managed to save face.

It comes as no surprise then that there is a collective amnesia about 1940–1945 in France. A while back, I bought a laminated study guide for French students that listed every leader in French history from Clovis in the 5th century to Emmanuel Macron today. I was surprised to note that they simply leave out the period 1940–1945. No note that it was under Nazi occupation. No mention of Vichy or Petain. Just a blank. Five years erased from 1500 years of continuous French history.

When I first studied abroad in France, our professor of French history and culture informed us in all seriousness that even if many French did not actively take part in the Resistance, they all “resisted in their heart.” One has to wonder how many Jewish schoolchildren were saved by the resistance in their hearts…

If you poke and prod too much beneath the myth of the Resistance, you will quickly find uncomfortable truths. And although time has made it easier, since 1945 it has generally been too hard for too many to confront those truths.

It’s also worth noting the institutional structure behind most of the British commemoration of World War I. British WWI commemorations, whether selling poppies in the UK, commemorating the British dead daily at the Menin Gate in Ypres, or elsewhere are led by the Royal British Legion. Founded in 1921 for veterans of the First World War, it has a continuous history since then. British veterans of the second war, some of whom had fought in the first, had no desire to forget their service from 1939 to 1945.

This is simply not the case in France. There is no equivalent institution, and even if it existed, it would be tainted by the Phony War and the Nazi Occupation. The British Royal Legion has continued to support British veterans up to the current day in a way that is simply impossible in France.

So you may find French individuals — academics, researchers, family members — who care deeply about their ancestors who served and died in the Great War. But what happened in France from 1940 to 1945 has rendered impossible a French institution like the British Royal Legion, to say nothing of its commemorations. The years of the Nazi occupation created a black hole from which French historical memory and patriotism are hard-pressed to escape.

UPDATE (Nov 15, 2018):

I was in the Paris metro last week and a middle-aged woman stopped me as we got off together.

“You’re wearing a poppy,” she said as she gestured at the pin I had bought in Flanders.

“Yes.”

“I love the English. They do it so much better than we do. No one buys bleuets.”

I nodded, “I thought it would be different this year, given that it is the centenary.”

“Oh no, no one cares,” she replied. Then she continued. “My husband was in the military for 35 years. Rose to the rank of [I didn’t recognize the French term]. But he got out in 2015. The budget cuts were awful. And the new computerized pay system they put in place was an absolute disaster.”

“Ah,” I responded. “So that was before Macron?” in reference to Macron’s budget cuts which ended up inducing the resignation of the French head of the army.

“That’s right, it was under Hollande. But Macron doesn’t like the military either. You know de Villiers resigned because of him.”

By that point it was clear we were going different directions. This career military wife complimented me on the poppy once again and as we parted, added, “All that is to say, I really love the English.”

In Western Europe, the beginning of November is a time to remember the dead.

A few days ago was All Saints’ Day. Streets were a little deserted, although people were still out. For most people in traditionally Catholic countries like France and Belgium, it is one of a large number of public holidays — a day to relax, hang out with friends or family, perhaps take a trip over the long weekend. In France, with its supposedly strict secularism, I am hard-pressed to find anyone who can explain why All Saints’ is a public holiday.

The history of All Saints’ Day is fascinating, even before it gets to the bizarre syncretic combinations on the other side of the Atlantic that give us Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. In the early days of Christianity, the anniversary of a martyr’s death was the day on which the saint was venerated. Each saint was commemorated on the anniversary of their death. But the martyrs kept piling up. At a certain point, some time around the end of the fourth century, there were simply too many martyrs to venerate in this way.

So what did they do?

The Christian church decided to jointly commemorate all the martyrs’ deaths on a single day, All Saints’ Day. The day they chose was in spring, in the Easter season — a time to remember the death, but also the resurrection, of those martyrs. Today, All Saints’ Day is still in the Easter season in the Eastern Christian churches, but the Western Christian church has moved All Saints’ Day to the fall, on November 1. Reformation-era disagreements about saints muddied the waters some, but for Catholics, Anglicans, and a few other Protestant churches, November 1 is still the day on which Christian saints are commemorated.

The armistice ending World War I was signed a mere ten days after All Saints’ Day, and it almost immediately became a public holiday where a different kind of dead were commemorated: not saints but soldiers.

In the Anglican communion, the entire beginning of November is now a time of remembrance. This is the case even for non-Christians in the United Kingdom. The Royal British Legion is out in droves selling poppies to raise money for British veterans. Wearing a poppy in early November is practically a social obligation. In France, there is an equivalent if almost invisible tradition of selling bleuets to remember the WWI dead. Why the British are so much more public and consistent in their observation of November 11 is a subject for another post, but suffice it to say that the British and other members of the Commonwealth far surpass other countries in both the intensity and consistency of their WWI commemorations.

The Americans are about as consistent in their observation of November 11 as the Brits, but the nature of that commemoration has changed significantly over the years. Even in the years right after World War I, it was never exactly the same. Woodrow Wilson’s on November 11, 1919 that instituted the holiday displayed a significantly less tragic view of the war than the British one: “The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men.”

High purposes, enduring conquests, just actions…none of the European powers could use such words in reference to World War I. In the United States, even if losses were substantial, the war didn’t destroy an entire generation of men as it did in France and the United Kingdom.

Instead, World War I signified the emergence of the United States as a great world power. At the Versailles Conference where the contours of the new post-war world were decided, it was Woodrow Wilson, the American President, who presided. No German Kaiser or Russian Czar or Austrian Emperor were at the table with him. There weren’t even any kings of the victorious nations. President Wilson was surrounded by the democratically elected leaders of the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. Even the American notion of governance had triumphed in the war.

And yet, the United States didn’t really want to acknowledge. its emergence as a world power. Wilson insisted that the American intervention and allied victory were selfless acts of sacrifice. Values had triumphed; not interests. They may have been American values like democracy and anti-colonialism, but perhaps those values were truly universal values. And so World War I just happened to be the moment when those values triumphed. Otherwise, it wasn’t that consequential, despite the sacrifices. No, for the Americans, World War I contained no deep loss, no sense of tragedy.

For obvious reasons, solemnity was necessary, but it was solemnity without tragedy. So when another world war came around, the Americans saw no need to preserve the unique nature of November 11 commemorations. Rather than commemorating the fallen of World War II on V-E Day (May 8th) as the Western European countries do, the Americans decided to expand November 11 to honor the soldiers of al wars, both living and dead. It became a day for veterans. Over the years, it has become difficult to distinguish it from other days meant to honor the American armed forces like Memorial Day or Armed Forces Day (or even, in some ways, the Fourth of July or Flag Day).

Early November is a time to remember the dead on both sides of the Atlantic. But there are very different and oftentimes irreconcilable ways to remember the dead. As close as the French, British, and Americans have been on so many issues over the last century, our memory of World War I is not the same. It marked an inflection point of decline for the French and British, but sounded the arrival of Americans on the world stage. And that difference shows in our commemorations of World War I.

Those different memories of World War I testify to other disagreements among allies — sometimes subtle, but very real — that structure our world today.

If you’re anything like me, you grew up assuming each country is its own discrete unit, with its own language, culture, music, and movies. Then you venture abroad for the first time only to discover that they play American pop music in your restaurant, and back in your hotel, when you flip on the TV, more often than not they’re showing American movies and American TV series.

I’ve lived abroad for so long that the dominance of the English language and of American pop culture are mere background noise. Being in Ypres, Flanders, though, brings it back to the fore. I don’t understand Flemish. I mean, I can guess at the meaning of a lot of Flemish, interpolating from German and English, but I don’t really know the language. And so as a result, English sticks out a lot more.

As I was walking my daughter over to the playground near our campsite, we passed a group of middle schools kids rotating through a series of what I can only surmise were cross country sprints. The groups not running were jabbering away in Flemish. I didn’t understand a word. But as we passed by one group, I heard a “fuck” and then a little later, “Oh my God!” and the old realization about the dominance of English came back to me again. Flemish kids’ curse words of choice are in English.

There is a reason for this.

When we got to the playground, my daughter quickly made friends with two other girls whose parents were clearly not from Flanders. Their mother wore a headscarf, and they spoke a language I later identified as Bulgarian (thanks to the help of linguistically gifted friend). Within minutes, however, the older of the two girls was speaking English with my daughter. Already, at the age of seven or eight, she has internalized the fact that no one speaks her mother tongue, and that when she meets kids who are not Flemish on the playground, English is the ticket. Later, I heard her speak a little French as well. This immigrant kid already speaks four languages, and she knows that with strangers, English is the key to communication, friendship, and fun.

There is a reason for this.

Earlier in the day we visited the Menin Gate, where tens of thousands of British (and Commonwealth) dead are commemorated. It is the main entrance on the eastern side of the old city of Ypres. For almost the entirety of World War I, the Western Front was just kilometers east of the Menin Gate, and so British soldiers would leave for the front through the gate to pass over the Kasteelgracht, the old castle canal that marks the old city’s barrier.

When Ypres was reconstructed after the war, the British were granted the right to rebuild the Menin Gate as a memorial. They chose to honor the names of all those soldiers whose bodies were never found or properly identified. 54,395 names are inscribed on the monument. (And those are just the soldiers who died before the arbitrary cut-off date of August 15, 1917; there are 34,984 more commemorated at the British cemetery Tyne Cot outside of the city.) And remember, these are just the soldiers whose bodies were never found or properly identified. There are hundreds of thousands more whose bodies were correctly identified and buried with tombstones etched with their names, many of whom marched off to die through the Menin Gate during the four years of World War I.

At 8 PM every evening since July 2, 1928 (with the small exception of the Nazi occupation during World War II, of course), the Flemish police have stopped traffic entering the city through the Menin Gate and the British have commemorated these tens of thousands war missing with a short ceremony that involves wreath-laying and a bugler playing “Last Post.”

Every single evening…

The Menin Gate is a sacred and solemn place. For the Belgians who are not a province of Germany, and for the English who gave so many lives in defense of Belgian neutrality in the face of German aggression.

Which is why it came as such a surprise to see a Happy Halloween sign above Menenstraat directly after entering the city through the Menin Gate. Not the Flemish or even French translation of “Happy Halloween”, and not some reference in this traditionally very Catholic country to All Hallow’s Eve on the liturgical calendar, but the English wording for the very American, very consumerist, and not terribly sacred holiday.

There is a reason for this as well.

In 1914 when World War I began, a global triumph of English, French, or German were all envisageable. Each could have triumphed as the language of prestige on the international stage. French had been the language of culture and diplomacy for centuries. German was the language of science, technology, and scholarship. In the United States, an educated lady or gentleman spoke, or at least could read, both French and German. Today, that is no longer the case. English has triumphed. And American pop culture — music, movies, and holidays like Halloween — have spread the world over.

In 1914, that outcome was far from certain.

And even if the English language was dominant in some quarters then, it was because of the United Kingdom and its global empire, not because of the fledgling Anglophone power on the other side of the Atlantic. But by the end of the war, both the French and English were stretched beyond their means, heavily indebted to the Americans. Neither country ever completely recovered from the body blow that WWI dealt them both.

The short century from 1914 to 1991 is often called “The American Century.” And so it was. We rose from an isolationist offshoot of Europe to surpass all European powers and become the dominant power of the world.

So if Flemish kids curse in English to be cool and Halloween signs grace the principal streets of Ypres, the events of World War I set us on that path.

If World War I was not “the war to end all wars” that many hoped it would be, it has a lot to do with the instability of the post-WWI settlement. These past hundred years, in different ways and to varying degrees of success, we have been trying to pick pieces from the rubble to construct something new and lasting.

World War II brought a more stable settlement to Western Europe; and the end of the Cold War to parts of Eastern Europe. But many former European colonies the world over, awakened by World War I and given independence in the wake of World War II, are far from stable and successful political entities. In both the Balkans and the Middle East, former regions of the Ottoman Empire are still in search of a lasting settlement to what WWI broke open.

The Syrian Civil War, now in its seventh year, is only the most recent in a long line of conflicts produced by the unstable outcome of World War I. Whether its conclusion will bring a stable political, social, and religious configuration to this former region of the Ottoman Empire remains an open question, but the war itself unquestionably flows from the WWI victors’ awkward partition of the Middle East following the war.

I live within a three hour drive of every major site on the Western Front. Since 2014, when the centenary commemorations of the war began, I have been meaning to visit the battlefields, museums, and cemeteries that dot the landscape from the French-Swiss border, all throughout the northeast of France, up through Belgium, and to the English Channel. For a variety of reasons, that trip had to wait until now.

In the weeks leading up to the centenary of the armistice, though, I am traveling along the Western Front and sharing some thoughts on the war, its significance, and how it is remembered.

I hope they prove of interest.