In France, it was fascinating and jarring to observe their narrative of World War II. While visiting museums and historic sites in France, I saw a distinct disconnect between the French view of themselves in war time and what American and British history generally portrays. In the World War II classes we took before the study tour, France is considered one of the great losers of the Second World War. The French army, ill equipped and poorly positioned, fell to the German Wehrmacht in only six weeks. The subsequent French government, located in Vichy, consistently collaborated with Nazi Germany throughout the war, especially in the government’s willingness to deport and persecute Jews. While there was a French resistance network in place throughout the war, it did not play significant role in the liberation of all of France.

I sound cynical, because in my opinion what we consistently saw in France was a distortion of the history of World War II. I base this claim according to the sources I read throughout Spring semester even though these sources carry their own mostly pro-American biases as well. The French narrative, incredibly, was one of victory and national triumph. This began at the D-day Museum in Caen, which had a large exhibit displaying walking through the timeline of WWII. This exhibit focused greatly on the French resistance]. The resistance was a small operation mostly concentrated in Paris and representative of neither the larger French government nor people during the war. The museum even went as far as to claim that “because of the success of French resistance, France should be considered a victor in World War II.” It also stated that because of the resistance, “with or without the help of the allies, France would have been liberated.” These outrageous claims have little basis in fact and were shocking to see. The museum also discussed the Holocaust without mentioning the mass deportations of Jews that occurred at the hands of the Vichy government. It was also fascinating to see the way that Charles De Gaulle was regarded and portrayed in France. De Gaulle was lauded as the French leader during and after WWII, given the same stature as Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. This was evident in the placement of his portrait physically among these leaders in multiple museums. Before this study tour, I had never heard the narrative of De Gaulle as a major leader of WWII.

I feel visiting France in person was extremely important in being able to see the discrepancy in narratives regarding the war. This also pushed me to examine my own biases regarding World War II that I carry as both an American and a Jew. I have continued to do this throughout the entire trip. In doing so, this has allowed me to look at World War II in a new way and go deeper into the history.

In the view of this American history student, France has been massaging the Anglo-American narrative of World War II to suit their purposes.  Rather than emphasizing their victimization by Germany, France’s national war museum, the Musee de l’Armee, plays up their involvement in the war after the capitulation of France.  I do not dispute that Free France fought in the war, but for them to call themselves a victor of the war and to include De Gaulle among the likes of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin misleads visitors of the museum.  The French view that they were a victor of World War II is very prevalent in the war museum in Paris, Les Invalides.  The building itself was once the military hospital and hospice for soldiers and veterans, but now houses the Musee de l’Armee, among other museums, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb.  The impressive World War I section showcased many of the weapons used by both sides and discussed broad strategy.  The information presented about World War II, starting with their interpretation of the Fall of France, convinced me less.  The Musee de l’Armee treats the German invasion of France as a conventional defeat, rather than the surrender of the nation and the creation of a collaborative French government.  It also emphasizes the small successes the French achieved during the invasion, like the Maginot Line not surrendering to the Germans or the escape of French troops from Europe.  The museum fails to mention that many of the French soldiers that escaped at Dunkirk returned to France soon after and were captured by the Germans or that the Maginot line was bypassed completely and rendered useless.  It also does not mention that while the French inflicted over 100,000 casualties among the Germans, they suffered almost twice as many, not including the 1.5 million troops taken prisoner after the surrender was made official.  There even is a lack of information that points to France’s reluctance to aid the Allies.  Events such as the British sinking a French fleet for refusing to join them against the Germans after the fall of France and the rise of the Vichy Regime are glossed over in the museum.  Pictured below is the part of Les Invalides containing Napoleon’s tomb.

Museums in Normandy tell a tale of World War II different from their Parisian counterparts.  Be it their strong connection to the Allied forces that came in June of 1944 or their dedication to the friends and family they lost during the liberation, the Norman museums adhere more closely to the narrative of World War II widely accepted by the US and UK.  Another possible explanation for this narrative being used in Normandy is that the D-Day invasion beaches are visited by large numbers of US and British citizens.  The Utah Beach museum was one of the most comprehensive  that I have been to.  Its small but detailed collection of artifacts, scale models and restored vehicles, including an absolutely beautiful B-26 Marauder medium bomber, really helped give a concrete sense of what the soldiers were dealing with in the campaign.  The narrative it tells follows closely with what I learned in my extensive research of the beach landing.  The Arromanches 360 Theater showed a film that gave a very good sense of the war by showing actual footage. While shorter than I expected, the film shows the Normandy campaign and highlights the hard fighting the Allied forces faced, but also the price the Normans paid during the bombings for their liberation.  Below is a picture of Utah Beach during a rising tide.  The picture highlights how little the troops landing on the beach had to work with as the tide rose.

Not all museums in Normandy are so well done, however.  The town of St. Mere Eglise, a vital crossroads in the Utah Beach invasion, was seized by the 82^nd Airborne on D-Day and remained in their hands until relief from the beach reached the town.  US control over the town was vital for the survival of the beachhead at Utah and many of the 82^nd spent their lives taking and defending it.  The town currently makes this history  central to its identity, going so far as to hang a mannequin of a paratrooper from their church steeple.  The museum for the airborne, located in the town, is insensitive in the presentation of information by using interactive videos and games on tablets to disseminate the information.  This is great for children, as it keeps them engaged with subject matter and exploring the museum, but I fear that it makes the topics discussed seem light hearted.  The tablets make the Normandy invasion seem like part of a game and detract from the seriousness of the topic and I fear that many who visit the Airborne museum in St Mere Eglise will take away the wrong message, or worse, nothing at all.  The picture below is the church of St Mere Eglise.  If you look at the top left of the church, you can see the parachute of the mannequin, and below that is the mannequin itself.

Musée de L’Armée

The cliché that history is written by the victors of war appeared throughout our discussions before our departure to Europe. Now that we are here, I have found it important to filter all information for the biases each country has based on the experience of the country or current social and political reasons. As we navigated the different museums in France, The French had strategically worded their displays based on how they have recorded their history.

In particular, the museums enhanced the prevalence of the resistance movement in German-occupied France during the war. The Caen Memorial Museum claimed that France would have eventually freed itself from German rule without the help of the Allies. One passage said that although France fell so early in the war, their commitment to the resistance made them the equal victors as the United States and Britain. The literature we read prior to our departure never included that information nor gave enough evidence to support the alleged strength of the resistance movement. That is not to say that the information I was presented with did not include its own skewing of facts or biases. In addition, while at the Musée de L’Armée in Paris exaggerates the French involvement in Allied victories, while failing to mention any collaboration with the German deportation of French Jews to concentration camps.

While strolling through the Caen Memorial Museum, only a small plaque mentioned the Enigma code and gave credit to the Polish and some French code breakers, with no mention to the English code breakers at Bletchley Park. This information is not only biased but historically inaccurate. The French made little to no effort towards Enigma intelligence during the war. Considering the English were the most advanced code breakers, it is unfathomable that no information on their involvement would be mentioned. Of course, the French are not alone in misrepresenting Enigma, while at Bletchley Park in England the tour guide woefully understated the importance of Polish code breakers efforts towards breaking Enigma, instead giving mostly credit to English code breakers.

The French museums differed than other museums we had encountered in England however in how they addressed their own victimhood under the Germans. Much of the language alluded to Germany taking what they wanted from the French and holding the French captive in their own country. However, as was best demonstrated at Arromanches on the occupation and Allied liberation, the French were also the victims of their allies, Britain and the United States. The preparatory bombings prior to the invasion of France were necessary to ensure the break down of the German war machine. This left France in ruin and the French civilians in devastation. Mostly civilian lives, adults and children alike were lost in the bombings, leaving some tension between the Allies and the French who may have questioned the worth of the bombings.

The French museums in their recorded history skewed the facts to benefit national interests, such as separation from the horrors of the Third Reich. Yet, they also use their museums to bring about a different perspective than other Allied museums. The museums provide greater sympathy to all the lives devastated by the Allied bombing campaign to end the German war machine in France. The French museums are able to provide a different perspective than those from the other nations involved in the war who didn’t see the same level of destruction on their homeland. If I took any lesson away from France, it is that as historians it is important to filter everything we see for the potential biases they may hold for better or worse. In the future, I will be a more cognizant student of our own country’s reporting of history.

In the months leading up to my departure to Europe, countless well-traveled persons told me “French people just don’t like Americans, don’t take it personally.” Yet, upon arrival in Bayeux, France the first thing I laid eyes on was a sign in a café window that read “We welcome our liberators.” I continued to encounter this paradox throughout my nine day stay in France. Bayeux, where we spent our first six days on French soil, is in the lower Normandy region of France. It is a quaint town that boasts a rich history as the home to the Bayeux tapestry, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, an imposing Romanesque-Gothic cathedral consecrated by William the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo of Bayeux in 1077, and, most recently, is known as the first major town liberated by the Allies during Operation Overlord in June 1944. The Norman peoples of this town, and indeed, the Normandy region, are a rather quiet, serious bunch. The looks that my fellow American comrades and I received while walking about, dining, and relaxing showed that they are not used to the clamor we Yank’s tend to make. Some of my group and I went to a football game one night in Caen, Normandy, and there were a few times that I noticed I was the only person in the entire section standing up and cheering. And yet I never felt uncomfortable, and especially not hated, by the French people.

However, what made me uncomfortable was the awkward way that the people, museums, and businesses of the area handled American involvement, invasion, and presence in and around Normandy during World War II. St. Mere Eglise, the landing spot of many Allied paratroopers landings in the early hours of 6 June 1944, had a dummy-paratrooper strung from the church tower. We watched a D-Day video at Arromanches that showed French toddlers and kittens back to back with Allied bombings of French towns and German armaments. At the end of this was a montage of French landscapes and attractions and in between flashes of Mont St. Michel and the Notre Dame was a quick image of the American Cemetery in Normandy. There were countless advertisements for an impending D-Day festival. Many of the memorials and museums overplayed France’s involvement in various military efforts during the war and downplayed American and British aid. The Caen memorial seemed to put the blame of collaboration on the backs of Phillippe Petain and Pierre Laval, leaving out the fact that collaboration was widespread during the German occupation and these men received great amounts of support at one point in time. In a shop window in Paris, a decal read “We are all collaborators.” This was the first time I saw these events glorified and the first time I saw the war being explained from the French point of view.

As a business student, I found the storefront advertisement particularly strange. The French typically chose to ignore or whitewash their collaborationist experiences during the war, yet here is a prominent advertisement using the idea of collaboration as a marketing device! And as an American citizen, compatriot to many of the men who fought and died to liberate France and greater Europe, I was shocked by the commercialization and celebration of D-Day and the Normandy landings. I believe that such promotions and statements are damaging to the memory and valor of those men. My comrades and I had a round-table discussion about these problems prior to entering the British War Cemetery. I understand that a nation must explain their history one way or another. The United States has a hard time of it ourselves, with our nation’s many historical shames. In my report on Charles Glass’s book American’s in Paris, I put forth the idea that it is easy to scoff at collaborators as a nation that has never experienced invasion and occupation. And so there must be a kind of middle ground between the American and French explanations of France during occupation and Operation Overlord that explains what truly happened. Yet, the French people need to come to an agreement on how they promote their national history. Were they a nation of helpless kittens, a nation of wily resistance and military valor, or do they simply seek profit from whichever history they see fit?

Storefront advertisement – Paris, France

Memorial at Angoville Church. “In honour and recognition of Robert E. Wright (a Buckeye!) Kenneth J. Moore Medics… 101st Airborne Division for Humane and Life saving care rendered … in this church in June 1944”

My experience in France challenged some of the knowledge I had going into the study abroad program. It often conflicted with American perspectives of the events of WWII, while it also offered opportunities to see the physical sites where WWII events took place for the first time. The first place we went to was the Caen Memorial Museum, which related to my personal expertise report of the French civilian perspective during the Allied liberation. Even before entering my first French museum, the idea that the French would shy away from discussing collaboration with the Nazis made me wonder what I was going to see or how bad it would be. Throughout the museum, the writing on the displays told the history from a biased French viewpoint. The creators of the Caen museum focused on the actions of Germany and Italy, devoting very little space to how France’s own political climate fell apart over the years from 1918 onward. I thought the wording was interesting on many of the displays, because they placed great emphasis on French innocence. They also did not mention much about the collaborationist aspect and described Germany’s 1940 takeover in a way that removed blame from France. For their displays on civilian and Allied interactions during the Battle of Normandy, I really tried to spend time looking at it to see how they would share that part of it. The writing indicated at one point that the French were more responsible for liberating towns on their own than we have interpreted or learned from our studies.

Another museum that helped explain the French perspective of WWII was Les Invalides, which is a military history museum that talked about the French history throughout various wars, ending with WWII. Les Invalides showed how the French remembered WWII in more detail than the Caen Memorial Museum and focused even less on the American efforts with the Allies. There was hardly any mention of wartime deportations and specifically the deportation of Jews. There was also only a small section on Vichy compared to the French Resistance, but was still more detailed than the Caen Memorial Museum was in this subject. Both Les Invalides and the Caen Memorial Museum forced me to question how Americans portray their own history and look at biases that are throughout it that I may have originally interpreted as solid facts. There were descriptions of French involvement in WWII that caused our class to discuss whether our own knowledge was actually correct. Ultimately, we tried to remove both American and French biases to internalize a more neutral version of WWII. For example, we wanted to determine more neutrally what kinds of roles the French had in their own liberation and in resistance to German occupation.

Outside of museum visits, it is important to acknowledge the work France has done to remember D-Day by preserving the beaches and memorializing those who lost their lives in the process. Visiting Utah Beach and Omaha Beach helped create concrete images in my mind of what the D-Day invasion was like. What really added to the experience of both beaches was Pointe du Hoc, where we were able to walk and crawl into old German bunkers and bomb craters. Instead of just reading about the war in written paragraphs on display boards, we got to see the physical representation of the war by standing on the beach and seeing the effects of the bombings.

As I stood on the sand at Omaha beach in France, I recalled the words of reporter Ernie Pyle, a reporter, as he described the sight of the beach just days after the initial D-Day landings there: “The wreckage was vast and startling. The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it. Anything and everything is expendable.” These words were published on June 16, 1944, in a dispatch Pyle titled “The Horrible Waste of War.” Today, nearly 74 years after the D-day landings, there is no sign of the tanks, weapons, equipment, fortifications, personal belongings, or human bodies that scattered the beach on June 6, 1944. Now, an empty stretch of sand meets a clear ocean and open skies, with only the contemporary monuments, museums and flags on the shores left to mark the monumental events that once took place there. These later additions—the American flag side by side with the French, the statues of fallen soldiers and the poppy wreaths carefully arranged around monuments to all who fought—serve both to commemorate the past and to offer a warning for the present and the future.

The American cemetery in Normandy

During my past week in Normandy, I have been faced with near constant reminders of the extraordinary price that thousands paid in France, both the Allies on their path to ultimate victory, as well as their German opponents. This was no more apparent than when I visited three of Normandy’s major cemeteries, the American, the German, and the British. These cemeteries were very distinct, and all seemed to embody the individual cultures and collective memories of the nations they represent. The American cemetery, for instance, immediately reminded me of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Thousands of white crosses sat atop neatly trimmed grass, aligned into careful rows. A large monument to freedom made up the base, with the American flag flying on each side and a pond resting in the middle. The grounds were impeccably maintained. Despite these distinctly American features, the sound of Omaha beach below brought home the fact that the men entombed there died in a foreign land, fighting an unpredictable battle without an assured outcome. As our class lay flags alongside the graves of the Ohio State alumni who perished in the Normandy campaign, I felt a deep connection to the men buried there, many of whom were my age when they landed on the beaches and lost their lives. However, beyond the personal connections I felt from my vantage point as an American, this cemetery was most striking because of its sheer size. The graves, extending for rows and rows in all directions, seemed to place emphasis on the scope of the American sacrifice in World War II, aligning in this way with one of the dominant American narratives of the war.

The British cemetery in Normandy

This American cemetery distinctly contrasted with the cemeteries of the British and the Germans. While the American cemetery, with its long rows of identical tombstones, gave me a sense of the extent of death during the second World War, the British cemetery brought home the individual lives of each solider who perished. At the British cemetery, the graves were highly personal. Each one included a unique inscription, many of which were personal statements of love and remembrance from the family members of the deceased. Additionally, each gravestone was situated within a bed of flowers. These features helped express Britain’s desire to commemorate the people involved in the war, the individual men who fought and lost their lives in Normandy. Meanwhile, the Germany cemetery offered insight into how the defeated are remembered. The cemetery consisted of flat gravestones that each denoted the names, birth and death dates of multiple soldiers. Groups of five stone crosses were interspersed throughout these grave markers, and in the center a grassy mound overlooked them all, bearing an inscription in German reading “God has the last word.” The simplicity of this cemetery seemed to make it all the more poignant, offering a somber reflection on the toll that war took on the enemy as well as the Allies. As I took a closer look at the some of the graves, I recalled the startling ages of the German soldiers in Normandy, many of whom were in their teens or late 30s or 40s. Many of the younger men had come from the Hitler Youth and been indoctrinated into the culture of the Third Reich, while others had deeply believed in the twisted ideology that would eventually bring about their downfall. Though certainly their beliefs and choices varied greatly, the soldiers buried in all three cemeteries prompted me to consider the overarching way in which these men had actually been alike, each of them human beings whom war destroyed.

The German cemetery in Normandy

Together, these three cemeteries seemed to speak to Pyle’s reflections on the expendable nature of war. Looking at the countless graves of named and unnamed men on both sides of the front, it was hard to avoid thinking about the enormous human waste that is so intrinsic to wars to this day. The cemeteries therefore seemed to act above all as a call for peace, bespeaking a warning against the consequence of vast military conflicts. This notion was made explicit in the visitor’s center connected to the German cemetery. In this room, an entire wall was dedicated to images from the gruesome conflicts that have occurred since World War II, interspersed with quotes that speak to the destructive nature of war and express deeply anti-war sentiments. These images included photographs from many of today’s ongoing conflicts, including the turbulent climate of the Middle East. This contemporary reflection on the cyclical nature of war and death added a new layer to the cemeteries, indicating that they serve not just to memorialize the past, but also to strive for a more positive and peaceful future. At the top of this panel of wall, a large quote from Omar Bradley read “We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than about living.” These words seemed to echo the emotions I felt as I looked out at the rows and rows of tombs and reflected on the contemporary implications of advanced warfare. War takes as its victims the victors as well as the defeated. This immense drain on human resources and lives is embodied in the cemeteries of Normandy. Their long rows of gravestones seem to denote an urgent call to learn from the mistakes of the past in the hopes of preventing future headlines that declare “the horrible waste of war.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi says “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.” This quote offers a lot of commentary on the historical and national biases that I encountered in France. My classmates and I visited many sites in France that left us wondering: “Is this what the French are taught in schools? I this really what they believe?” Sites like the French Military Museum and the Caen museum and memorial left me with questions about how history is taught worldwide.
During the interwar period, countries spent a lot of time and money preserving the war. Countries like the United States and Germany spent a great deal of time researching technology and war tactics during this time. The French did not spend nearly as much time or money in their research. The German Army captured Paris in May of 1940, forcing the surrender of France. With Paris and France under German rule the French were now out of the fight. The truth of the French War was that they lost early. This fact was what struck me as we walked through the French museums praising the work their country did.
Within the French Military museum, Les Invalides, the text on the walls praised the French army for helping with the Dunkirk evacuations The Dunkirk evacuations took place in 1940 when the German Army forced the French north to the Dunkirk pocket. The British came to aid the evacuation of French and British troops from the country. The museum said that thanks to the French resistance the British were able to rally and later fight the German forces in Africa and Italy. We never learned about this, and I found it very shocking that the French took credit. The French were defeated and relied heavily on the British Navy to save thousands of their men. The museum also discussed the concept of “Free France.” The museum explained that the Free French state offered help to the Allies. There really was no “Free French State.” Charles De Gaulle was the leader of the resistance in France but he did not have an organized state to back him up. While the resistance did help liberate France they did not play as much of a role as this museum said.
At the Caen museum the exhibits gave off the impression that the French were the victims of the war. The museum tried to downplay French collaboration with the Nazis. The museum gave great insight into the resistance and less about the government that they had during the time of the war. I was expecting them to take credit for Vichy but they hardly mentioned it. They cared a lot about the resistance and how they hoped to defeat the Germans. The glossing over the Vichy regime was very shocking to me.
These differences in the French view of history made me think about how history is taught depending on location. The French likely do not want to be seen as the country who lost the world war within weeks. The French said these things in the museums because they believed that what they did was enough for the war effort. I think this also shows that what we are taught in America could also be nationally biased. We are taught things that we did correctly in our history classes. We fail to mention some of our moral downfalls during the Second World War, because they reflect poorly on our nation. One needs to think and analyze the author they are reading to determine the biases they might have. The French are just like any other country; they are just telling the truth based on their point of view.