Kids. Of the twenty thousand German soldiers buried at La Cambe German War Cemetery in Normandy, France, many were kids. Younger than me, living in a much crazier world than me, and influenced by evils incomprehensible to me. Why was the Nazi army so dependent on kids in the final stretch of the war, and should I mourn for them?

Many of the young boys who had been interacting with the Hitler Youth, the systematic effort to expose children to the ideologies and policies of the Third Reich, were of age to fight by the final years of the war. Kids from the Hitler Youth comprised most of the 12th SS Panzer Division, and they quickly unleashed a fierce rage upon their opponents, leaving civilians raped, towns pillaged, and prisoners massacred.

While I firmly believe many of these young soldiers were fervent Nazis themselves, I also recognize that some children, even those who spent almost a decade in the Hitler Youth, were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was rarely a child’s choice if they joined the Hitler Youth – their parents made that decision – and there was a whirlwind of influences that parents dealt with when they made such a choice. Given this nuance, how can I blame a child for his  response to the surrounding environment?

As I moved through the cemetery I thought of these circumstances and attempted to pull pieces of humanity out of the soldiers who lay there. But I questioned why I was trying so hard to find humanity in folks that – as far as I am concerned – refused to see any humanity in me. I was silent, wiping tears from my eyes as I read the graves of young men, unsure if I should mourn the loss of life when their demise might be the reason why I am alive. Ultimately, I couldn’t mourn the death of the soldiers in the German cemetery, not even the kids. A piece of me holds each of them responsible for their own actions regardless of the wild environment they grew up in. That same internal voice tells me that I would not be here if they were, even the sweet, young boys filled with amazing potential before being brainwashed by Nazi rage. I feel like my life is on the line when I wonder about theirs, and every time I must pick mine.

By  comparison, the serenity of the Normandy American Cemetery conveyed  reverence, respect, and admiration.  I felt as if  the sacrifice of these American soldiers guaranteed my life. The clean, white stone at the American cemetery created a serene feeling compared to the dark gray stone that covered the German cemetery, a stormy and gloomy look. Both cemeteries invoked emotion and gratitude, ultimately reminding me of those that came before me and how their deaths, unfortunate or not, gives me the opportunity to live.

           It’s interesting to view how history has been preserved and appreciated as time goes on. After learning so much about WWII, it was a surreal experience to be able to see the places we talked about and to step foot on the same land that so many soldiers risked their lives on.

            When the attack on Omaha Beach was occurring, German troops were hunting the Americans on the beaches from bunkers up in the bluffs of Point du Hoc. Systematically bombed before the landing, the area was quite literally a battle field strewn with explosions, guns, and bodies. Now, the bomb craters  are filled with grass and greenery, and the German bunkers are becoming rubble overtaken by nature. One thing that is still pretty much the same is the inside of the German bunkers that are still standing. When walking inside the bunker, I could see  bullet holes and small indentations made by grenades all throughout the surrounding walls. The wood on the ceiling is still charred, burned by flamethrowers, and you can look outside of viewpoints that the Germans once used to watch the Americans storming the beaches. Being able to stand in the same place where a Nazi soldier once had stood watch was a haunting experience. But it really helped me to put all that I’ve learned about the D-Day invasion into perspective.

            When I was walking the beaches, all I could think about was the weight of the sacrifices made here. While we were walking through a bunker, there was a group of about fifteen high school kids touring aside us. Despite the violence that happened here, they made jokes about shooting people and even made a TikTok of themselves re-enacting being shot against the wall.  They were simply disrespectful. When thinking about it more, I wonder if this “joke” shows how a historical site may become trivial to some as time passes. There were no bodies left on the land, no active fighting, and today we are raised around violence as entertainment. I wonder if this makes it hard to have the same appreciation for history, and whether these kids were simply uneducated about the horrors that occurred exactly where they were standing or whether they simply didn’t care.

            Being able to stand in the same place where something so horribly important happened allowed me to have a better grasp on what I’ve learned while studying WWII. Seeing different reactions to a place like this brings up the question of whether or not these locations will be properly respected as time passes, or if contemporary social media will make it a trivial site of exploitation and dark comedy.

I had never been to Paris before coming on this trip, and the images in my mind had come from movies like Ratatouille and Midnight in Paris: a romantic city of lights with an enticing charisma. After roaming through the city center and seeing what it has to offer, I can say that that city definitely exists, but so does another that can be best summed up by what Linguini, the rat-controlled rising chef, says in Ratatouille while in a drunken stupor: Rat-patootie.

Evening in Paris

The city certainly has a majesty that exemplifies Parisian life. Cafés stand on every street corner, and impressive gothic buildings surround the Seine, which is dotted with stone bridges, some of which are very ornate, like the Pont Alexander III. The Louvre is a sight to behold, and I found myself admiring both the interior and exterior architecture as much as the paintings themselves.

The ceiling facades at the Louvre

However, there was another Paris that I experienced, one that felt like an ugly dose of reality. The poor, deteriorated air quality left my nose and throat a scratchy, volatile mess. I witnessed two examples of public urination in places with high foot traffic. Our coach driver into the city, Jean Louis, pointed to a homeless encampment crammed between the street and highway and said, “This is Paris.” The street edges were littered with cigarette butts, and annoying tourist scams clogged major sites like the Louvre and Eiffel Tower.

Paris has a distinct and well-known reputation for romance and grandeur, but my time there served as a reminder that the city is still a crowded urban center. It suffers from the same issues that affect other major tourist cities. But it also confirmed that the city has a flare that separates it from the rest. Despite all the rat-patootie, the energy of the city was exciting and alluring and I find it difficult to say that I will never come back and dine again.

Throughout the nine days the group spent in France, it was evident that the nation still has not come to terms with World War II. From the Mémorial de Caen to Les Invalides in Paris,  French museums attempted to create a narrative that resistance membership was not only omnipresent but was also successful. Most egregious, near the end of the Mémorial de Caen, a paragraph states “with or without the help of Allied forces, most of France had been liberated by August and September 1944.”

Pictured: the aforementioned quote at the Mémorial de Caen

While it is true that the resistance grew after the Allied Invasion of Normandy, minimizing the impact of the Allies in liberating France is completely dishonest. At Les Invalides, an English language poster welcoming the Allies to France was displayed. Though perhaps the French wanted to show the Allies that they supported their cause, one of its statements is also completely false. The poster states “each Frenchman, according to the means at his disposal, resisted the German oppression.” As the Nazi-aligned Vichy Regime existed, being the de jure government of much of France for a period in the war, collaboration was present and somewhat common among French people.

Pictured: aforementioned poster at Les Invalides

France’s desire to display continued support for the Allied cause is logical. As the impact of Nazi crimes and genocide throughout Europe became evident, French people made an attempt to distance themselves from the truth of their collaboration. Creating a narrative that relies on two central, opposing figures, Charles de Gaulle and Philippe Pétain, France attempts to create a story that aligns with its pre- and post-war republican values.  Claiming a widespread resistance movement inspired by Charles de Gaulle’s speech allows the French museums to convey that their people chose the moral side behind a strong, unifying leader. Additionally, pinning the most brutal French collaboration on Philippe Pétain allows France to downplay their amount of collaboration with Germany. Though both are inaccurate descriptions, it is logical that a historical and modern hub of democratic ideals desires to paint this picture of their wartime experience. France is a nation that is proud of its culture and history, the created wartime narrative allows the nation to be proud of something at arguably its weakest national period. Regardless, France should accurately depict its wartime experience rather than inaccurately inflating the participation of its citizens in a minority, albeit moral, movement.

Pictured: Arc de Triomphe, a national landmark of France

The sites and museums we visited enhanced my understanding of liberated and occupied France from what I researched during my spring studies. The D-Day beaches we visited were the most helpful to me, especially Utah and Omaha. My comrades and I walked all the way down to the shoreline of the beach at Omaha and just turned around to look back up at the sand and at the cliffs. We stared and talked about what it must have been like to run up the beaches under fire and carry large equipment. The low tide provided us with a somewhat accurate image of how grand the beach was on that day. The breadth of the beach showed how easy it was for the Germans to spot American soldiers Allies coming up the beach. Standing there, I could better understand how fearful they must have felt knowing they were out in the open with enemies up on the cliffs ready to fire at them. From where we stood, you could not see far up the cliffs, especially on a dark and foggy day like D-Day. Yet the Germans could look down on them and fire without even being spotted. It is one thing to learn about the beaches in a classroom, and another to be there entirely.

The Liberation Museum in Paris supposedly is dedicated to the French Resistance.  As we learned in spring semester, we learned that only a small minority of French participated in the Resistance.  Yet the museum made it appear as though all the French were resisting in some way; resistance, the displays seem to suggest, was universal.  And yet Charles de Gaulle was the focus, and they made it appear like all the people in France rallied around him. After seeing the museum, I understand better how the French used universalism to bring pride back to the people after their occupation. All the French resistants in the museum were spoken of with such pride for fighting against their occupiers. Along the wall at the start of the museum were about 1000 members of the Resistance that they wanted to showcase. The French people needed to feel that collectiveness after their ignominious defeat. Yet one problem with universalism is that specific and minority groups are left out of specific recognition, despite also being important resistors. For example, my spring studies focused predominately on the Communist Resistance, which did not support de Gaulle, but the museum suggests that all resistors did support him. The Liberation Museum in Paris clarified the mindset and impacts of French universalism post-WWII.

Unrest in the Streets of France

A Contemporary Blog of France

Meg Brosneck

An image of Karl Marx found in Bayeux

There is political and civil unrest in France, and one does not have to be a French native to understand this: it’s visible everywhere you look. Within an hour of arriving in Bayeux, France, I’d already stumbled upon a graffitied image of Karl Marx. I kept an eye out for more of this sort of imagery for the rest of my time in France. While I was never able to see an actual protest in person, just looking at the walls of buildings around allowed me to see how else the French showed their displeasure. Most of the graffiti centered around President Macron recently raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. However, this was far from the only topic presented. I found countless stickers placed on various bridges and lampposts opposing France funding wars, French Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin’s laws, and several generalized “anticapitaliste” and “antisexiste” ones too. They were all leftist in belief.

“Money for pensions and salaries not for the army nor for the war”

Through merely observing these writings as I walked through the streets, I was able to learn much about the state of politics in France. The people, in general, are restless. I could not have ignored this anger even if I tried; it’s painted on the walls, streets, and everywhere you look. Even if I had managed to ignore all of that, I couldn’t get away from the people themselves. Walking home on my last night in France, a homeless woman stopped me and introduced herself. Though she first tried to speak in French, she switched to English when she learned I understood it better, and she began to recount her story, She fumed about police corruption and injustice and told me all about how people in charge ruined her family’s lives and took away their homes. She blamed them for her siblings’ suicides. She spent several minutes speaking about the importance of women standing up for themselves and encouraged me to tell others the same. It was a strange but telling interaction about the current state of French politics. There was less of a heavy public divide between the right and left wing. As far as I could tell, there is no French equivalent to the widespread Trumpism present in the United States. The outspoken majority of the French, old and young, lean towards the Left.

“64 years —> 60 years”

In class, we learned about the French refusal to admit defeat against Germany and the overwhelming need to restore national pride to France after World War II. When visiting many museums and memorials in both Bayeux and Paris, we saw the over-exaggeration of the French role in military battles of WWII, resistance movements against the Reich, and even the liberation of many cities in France.

In some of these museums, there seems to be the justification of the Vichy government—who collaborated with the Nazis and were complicit in the genocide of Jews in occupied France—as the only choice to keep France from total annihilation by the Germans. Exhibits at the Caen Memorial Museum tell of the Free French Forces organized in France and their help in all fronts of the war. They also focus on the various resistance movements and their spontaneous acts of rebellion against the Third Reich. While it is true that there was French Resistance against the Nazis, the Resistance was not as strong as the museum exhibits often indicate.

In the case of the Charles De Gaulle exhibit, Vichy is indeed harshly criticized; being contrasted with De Gaulle’s help in French Resistance efforts. The Caen Museum also depicts resistance as any act along a broad spectrum—from reading a forbidden newspaper to planning armed assaults on German soldiers. The armed resistance that was stressed in almost all the museums we have seen in France, while not untrue, felt overemphasized. The French have also created a narrative that they would have liberated themselves and could have done so with or without the Allies’ help. This emphasis on their self-liberation, combined with the almost nonexistent mentions of the armistice with Germany, gives the impression that the French do not want to lose their sense of victory after WWII.

However, there were not many options for France at the time of occupation. While in retrospect it is easy to call for total resistance and to judge any form of complicity, the United States was fortunate enough to have not been put into that situation. From fear of social exile and self-preservation to pure survival and fear of death, there were many different reasons why most French people did not participate in resistance efforts. The Vichy government certainly committed atrocities such as the deportation and registration of Jews and other various initiatives that were taken by this government even without the prodding of the Nazis. Despite this, we still couldn’t imagine what we would do in that situation.

Though it is true France has been and seems to continue to attempt a restoration of their national pride after WWII. No matter the amount of resistance, the Vichy collaboration with Germany will never be forgotten. I feel it will be a long road for France to be able to finally prove to themselves and the rest of the world who they really are.

On the morning of May 16th, I visited a tiny church at Angoville-au-Plain in Normandy, where medics Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore cared for 80 combatants and a child during Operation Overlord. Wright was a paratrooper in the U.S. 101^st Airborne Division and an Ohio State Buckeye. By transforming the 900-year-old church into an aid station, Wright and Moore remembered their common humanity. They insisted on tending to both American and German soldiers who checked their weapons at the door. They draped the eglise (i.e. “church” in French) with a Red Cross banner from its steeple, making it neutral territory under the Geneva Convention on Warfare. Although Angoville changed hands several times during the heavy fighting, the medics risked their lives and remained in the church to treat wounded and dying soldiers. At one point, an artillery shell crashed through an aperture in the roof and thudded onto the stone floor. Luckily, it was a dud.

Like the church at Angoville, the crucifix above Gold Beach has palpable religious symbolism. I interpreted it as the redemptive value of suffering for something larger than one’s self.

Near Angoville, the town of Sainte-Mère-Église was an important crossroads in the plan to liberate Northern France. Operation Overlord demanded the capture of key transportation routes between Nazi-occupied Paris and the Cherbourg Peninsula. By capturing the town, American paratroopers prevented German reinforcements and controlled a vital causeway above Utah Beach, one of five Allied landing zones. If they did not secure the causeways leading through the high bluffs, then U.S. troops would have been trapped on the beaches.

Wright and Moore decided to operate out of Angoville because it was located between the heavy fighting at Utah Beach and Sainte-Mère-Église, where medics were sorely needed. They hauled injured combatants in wheel barrows and carried them out of the combat zone and into the sanctuary of the aid station, where the blood of American and German soldiers stained its wooden pews. These bloodstains cannot be washed out and must not be forgotten. They are the price of liberty from tyranny, of free religious expression, of democracy and equal justice under God. Although millions died without knowing the type of world that would be built from the horrors of war, men like Robert Wright eased their journey and lightened their heavy burden by practicing extraordinary works of mercy and compassion in the heat of battle.

Fittingly, Wright was laid to rest in the cemetery outside the church. Dr. Nick Breyfogle planted an OSU flag to commemorate Wright’s legacy as a Buckeye. It was a stirring moment for everyone present.

75 years after D-Day, Angoville remains a beautiful French hamlet of less than 100 residents, and it still memorializes the struggle for liberation. The town’s mayor and his spouse graciously received our large tour group, no doubt larger and louder than the usual foot traffic. At first, he thanked us for coming and highlighted the generosity of Americans in preserving the church as a historical landmark. He went on to express deep concern about future generations forgetting about the history of World War II and repeating the mistakes of past generations. His reception was a touching and inspiring example of French historical memory and its relationship to the United States. Although Angoville was one stop on our long journey, I will never forget my experience there. The church deserves to be visited, because it captures something beautiful, somber, and serene about the Second World War and its legacy today.

The British Cemetery at Bayeux (photo by Ian Mintz)

Some of the most emotional sites that we visited in France were the British, American, and German cemeteries for those lost in World War II.  The differences in the designs of the cemeteries revealed a lot about the intent of the builders and the nations that commissioned them.  The British cemetery was made up of thousands of personalized headstones for soldiers who hailed from all corners of the British Empire and died in France.  Each headstone included information about where the soldier was from, what unit he served in, when he was born, and when he died.  There was also an individualized quote from family members, friends, or the military if the soldier had no close connections.  The British cemetery felt incredibly personalized and seemed to be a place of mourning both for the nation as a whole and individual families of soldiers who had been laid to rest there.

The American and German cemeteries were much more uniform than the British cemetery.  While the British cemetery allowed

Max D. Clark’s grave, where I had the honor of planting an Ohio State flag alongside my roommate and friend Ashton Cole

unique inscriptions on the headstones, the American and German cemeteries included only standardized information on the largely identical grave markers of the soldiers buried there.  The American graves were labeled only with the soldier’s name, regiment, state of enlistment, and date of death.  Each gravestone was either a cross, if the soldier identified as Christian or Protestant, or a Star of David, if the soldier identified as Jewish (these were the only three choices of religion). The German cemetery had only small square grave markers laying flat on the earth that simply dictated the soldier’s name and dates of birth and death.  These less personal, more standardized  tombstones made the American and German cemeteries feel more like wartime monuments than the final resting place of people’s loved ones.

Overall, I think the intended function of the British cemetery as opposed to those of the American and German cemeteries are different.  British families were and are more likely to visit their nation’s cemetery and mourn those they lost in France due to their proximity to northern France, so the British cemetery was designed to be more welcoming and personal, while still retaining a militaristic dignity.  The British remember World War II as the “People’s War”, one in which each person’s sacrifice mattered, which is reflected in the design of their cemetery.

The American Cemetery at Normandy

American families were and are less able to visit the cemetery frequently, and even if they do make the pilgrimage to their loved one’s burial site, the cemetery workers remove anything placed at the headstones once a week to maintain the graves’ neat and uniform appearance.  It seems as if the American cemetery therefore was designed more as a military monument for the nation, rather than a place for mourning a family member or friend.  Instead of treating each soldier as an individual, the Americans chose to remember its lost military members en masse.  This layout seems to speak more to American military worship than to the supposed passion for individualism that the United States claimed made it superior to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The German cemetery is similarly uniform, as German culture is historically militaristic, and the French government likely did not feel compelled at the time to allow Germany to represent its fallen soldiers as anything more than that –

soldiers.  Remembering them as people who were loved and died for a lost cause would have been more painful for both nations.  Germany struggled to cope with the loss of the war and another generation of men.  Its simple cemetery reflects the nations destroyed hopes for greatness while maintaining the need to remember each soldier, as many a grave was inscribed with “Ein Deutscher Soldat” – a German soldier, anonymous in death but still worth memorializing.

Using these cemeteries as primary sources that provide insight into the objectives of each nation allowed me to better speculate on each nation’s intention for their wartime dead.  Whether they were to be remembered as individuals with complex lives that were tragically cut short or as soldiers honoring their country by giving their lives revealed to me how each country wanted to memorialize the fighting in northern France directly after the war.  While each cemetery was emotional for me to visit – seeing the tombstones of people my age and younger really drove home how terrible the war was – it was also interesting to consider their differences and analyze why each cemetery might be so unique.