Sunday's Armistice centenary tells a tale of two wars
(Photo by Julien Mattia/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
President Macron has drawn the world to France for the centenary of the Armistice. Sixty heads of state including Presidents Trump, Putin and Erdogan will attend Sunday’s Arc de Triomphe commemoration, before (with the exception of Trump) being whisked to the Paris Peace Forum, Macron’s bid to lead the cause of a rules-based global order.
Macron’s grandstanding on a 14-stop tour of World War One battlefields, however, has managed to alienate domestic audiences across the political spectrum. His call for a European Army and a stand against populism was cast as an ill-conceived attack on patriotic voters by Marine Le Pen – “empires that were at the origin of World War I, not nations” she said. The next day, his tribute to Marshal Pétain on the grounds he was a hero of the Great War exasperated almost everyone, and had historians on the Comité Scientifique advising on war centenary events furiously emailing each other, with some clearly wishing to dissociate themselves from the President.
St Andrews Professor Hew Strachan, who sits on both the Comité Scientifique and its UK equivalent, thinks “perhaps over-confidence” led to the Pétain remarks, pointing out that while Macron appeared to use De Gaulle’s formula in differentiating Pétain at Verdun from his collaborator role, much more is known now about the treatment of French Jews. Socialist senator and Veterans Minister under Francois Hollande Jean-Marc Todeschini is certain there was no strategy to the Pétain comments – it was a “political gaffe, stupidity”.
Former Republican deputy Jacques Myard – not offended by the Pétain tribute – dismisses Macron as a romantic with obsolete ideas about European sovereignty: “every time he speaks he loses popularity”. With little personal following in Amiens, his home town, the President further disappointed by not turning up to the August 8th centenary service for the crucial Allied victory there.
The bleuet, the cornflower that symbolises war sacrifice in France, may be outsold by the British Legion’s poppy by a factor of almost 40 to 1; but there is no measure of the intensity of the French experience of 14-18 as a war of self-defence or their gratitude to the other Allies. In the Hauts-de-France region, there are services in the smallest villages to remember French, British and Commonwealth combatants; children take a starring role, often reading out the story of what happened. Expat Briton Anne Towler, who runs a British Legion branch near Arras, says the commemorations start about a month before November 11th; by the start of this week, she had been to 14.
Denis MacShane, a Europe minister under Tony Blair says that in France the war is “only seen as a giant sacrifice, not a moment of huge national pride”. During the Battle of Verdun, which lasted almost ten months and cost more than 350,000 French lives, Pétain ensured every village in France sent soldiers. Patricia Chagnon of the Rassemblement National (formerly the National Front) in Abbeville is inspired by war for its “patriotism, solidarity, having a goal bigger than yourself”. She protests at the political spin put on events over the Armistice period – “anything that takes away from national unity should not be discussed today”. She adds, “I think a lot of people would agree with me”.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the Prime Minister is using the war as a political platform in only the most conciliatory way. Having found common ground with Macron over his British great-grandfather who fought at the Somme, on Remembrance Sunday, Theresa May will host Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who will become the first German President to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph – a day after Macron gets down to business with Angela Merkel at a summit in Compiègne, where the Armistice was signed. There’s more heat for us around familiar cultural battles – on the fairness of the BBC’s coverage of the anniversary; the annual saga around the poppy’s symbolism.
A 2014 British Future survey highlighted how many people are woefully ignorant about the war, confusing facts about the Second World War with the first. Yet it’s striking how aspects of the First World War, such as the war poets and the callousness of the attrition strategy sit deep in the national psyche: the ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ interpretation being “the defining myth of Englishness”, for History Today editor Paul Lay. Advocates of white poppies – of which no equivalent exists in France – and Corbyn supporter Aaron Bastani’s attack on the British Legion’s “sickening” priorities come in a long tradition, originating from the mass 1930s peace movement to Greenham Common, and they are as distinctly British as crowds queuing to see the Tower of London’s poppies.
As British Future’s Sunder Katwala observes, shortcomings in public knowledge have been combined with both a desire to know more – with significant growth in numbers aware for example that Indian soldiers took part in the war – and enthusiasm to participate. More than ten million people took part in over 2000 local heritage projects over the past four years. 10,000 people will walk past the Cenotaph in a people’s procession on Sunday.
As for Brexit’s impact on the commemorations – when discussions for the centenary got underway, certain hard Eurosceptic MPs made their lack of interest clear, because it meant engaging with the French and others. It has turned out that the anniversary has been an opportunity to talk to Europe in a more positive way, away from the political negotiations. In the field of broader policy issues, arguments about a European Army, European security co-operation and Britain’s capacity as an independent military power raged before the referendum and continue now. Given the war’s formative influence on European national mindsets, the more useful exercise may be using the World War One experience to understand the forces behind Brexit.
With all traditional notions of the war up for question, the continued focus on Britain and France might seem strange. As well as fully accounting for the Americans’ contribution, shouldn’t we give parity to the German experience, and the other Central Powers? It’s curious, as Professor David Reynolds suggests in The Long Shadow, that 11th November is seen as a definitive end date – despite the number of Eastern Europeans in the UK, Poland’s war with the USSR and struggles in successor states to the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires haven’t been brought within the Anglophone concept of the war.
Another question hangs over how long large-scale commemorations will continue past the centenary. As the number of surviving Second World War veterans diminishes, will we begin to see the two world wars as a single process? Most ominously, will they come to look like part of a rhythm of struggle and destruction centred on Europe, rather than a terrible exception?
