Moving on from London, I spent about a week in Bayeux, France and a few days in Paris, France. During our time in France I was able to use my French language abilities to assist with translating for our professors and to get around day to day life. My travels in France interested me more than those in England, as the different language and the diverse types of spaces we saw made it a more fulfilling exploration. From the small town of Bayeux, the seaside villages near Caen and St. Marie Eglise, to the city of Paris, I feel I saw and learned quite a bit about France. I did not come onto this program with any particularly strong focus on the American involvement and experience in World War II, but my time in France- especially in the museums- bolstered a newfound expectation towards this.

Like many Americans, I have personal connections to the losses incurred during the war. Both of my [maternal] grandparents’ fathers served in the Army during the Second World War, coming from the same small, rural Ohio community. My grandmother lost her father to this at a very young age, and this is something that affected her deeply. Knowing this, and therefore valuing the memory of my late Great Grandfather, Joseph Ferrell, who was killed in action in Belgium, I found multiple French accounts of their version of history that did not do my family’s loss, nor those of other families, proper justice.

An example of this includes the framing of Allied Victory as French Victory in the Caen Memorial Museum (among others). One of the many text boxes adorning the artifact encasements, timelines, and portraits actually stated that the French would have liberated themselves (Paris) even if the Allies had not invaded. Many of my comrades also found this to be a shocking statement, as it goes against the facts. In addition, we came to this museum with the memory and images of the bloody destruction of American forces during the invasions (Utah and Omaha Beach, more specifically). Though the Free French Army was still in existence and moderately active (relative to not at all), it is not the case that the success of the invasions and of the defeat of Germany can be accredited to France at the level in which it was.

According to Sartre’s, “Paris Under Occupation,” the French’s misfortune under German occupation is understated because of their atypical experience. They escaped the fighting, so to many, including the British, they escaped sacrifice. However, the Parisians existed in a limbo where they lived in a skeleton of what used to be a lively city. During this time, Paris lost her identity to the Germans causing anguish among the already war-weary Parisians. Today, unsurprisingly, Paris has regained her status as the epicenter of French cultural and political life. However, like most countries affected by the war, the city is filled with artifacts and reminders of the war and its heroes. For instance, as evident from the abundance of things named after him, Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French during the war, is an integral figure in French history.

The Eiffel Tower, one of the most recognizable features of the city, stands as a national symbol of Parisian culture in the now thriving city.

In the Musée de l’Armée there is an apparent dichotomy between Vichy and the Free French. After France’s fall at the beginning of the war and the signing of an armistice, France was partitioned into a free and occupied zone. In the former, Phillipe Petain, a war hero and a political favorite among the rural conservatives and urban liberals alike, set up a new French state. Vichy France, the name of the new state, was set up in collaboration with their Nazi occupiers, adhering to and sometimes anticipating what they thought would please the Germans. Vichy executed anti-Semitic policies, deported thousands of French Jews, and implemented conscription laws that required French citizens to go to Germany to work. After the war, the collaborators of Vichy were denounced and punished. Although the French do not ignore the collaborationist state in their history, it seems they chose to emphasize the resistance led by Charles de Gaulle more than Vichy. Even more so, de Gaulle is often lumped into the Allied alliance with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.  A lot of the rhetoric used by the museums insists that de Gaulle’s contributions were as important, if not more important, than the Anglo-American contribution. One section of the museum boasts the role of French paratroopers on D-Day, something we had not previously studied in class. Finally, to tie together the WWII section of the museum, we watched a film in the Charles de Gaulle wing. The film, while educational and entertaining, had obvious biases towards the importance of the Free French and de Gaulle. The French emphasis on the resistance rather than collaboration implies the French remember the actions of side that won and ignore the cooperation with the Nazis and anti-Semitic policies of the other. Another instance of the French failing to come to terms with their involvement during the war is shown in their commemoration of those deported during the war. Although French Jews were largely deported to concentration camps, their Memorial des Martyrs de la Déportation fails to mention them and instead focuses deported people as a whole. Additionally, in the Musée de l’Armée, the Holocaust is all but skipped over. There is a tiny room that is very easily missed and focuses mainly on political prisoners.

A display from the Holocaust section of the Musée de l’Armée. In english it reads, “the deportation of political resistors, political hostages.” There was little mention of Jewish victims of the Holocaust and instead focused on political prisoners.

The Caen Memorial Museum in northern France mirrors a similar dichotomy between the Free French and Vichy. The museum begins with a broad overview of the interwar period down a winding decline to symbolize the deteriorating nature of the political state. Directly after this, without mention to anything specific about the French interwar period, France fell. Additionally, the museum posed the fall of France in a passive way, as if France was taken from them, despite the fact that an armistice was signed. Similar to the Musée de l’Armée, the museum mentioned Vichy and Petain once before moving on to an extensive discussion of the resistance. Finally, it seems that the French were again lumped together with the Allies, boasting when the Allies were doing well and disassociating themselves from the Allies’ mistakes. I believe this is the French’s way of avoiding responsibilities for the faults of World War II. While the French were certainly on the Allies power’s side, they were not an integral part of the D-Day landings and war effort as a while, as they portrayed themselves to be.

While it is apparent that they French have not entirely came to terms with the war, it is important to remember the comfort of the American experience. It is quite easy to become critical of other countries historical memory, especially because the United States benefitted from their involvement in the war. While the French must come to terms with their history on their own, there is an important lesson to be learned. Although the war experience was different in every country, in order to conduct meaningful and productive public history, one must take objective look at our own experience and convey it in an unbiased manner, something that even the United States has issues with.

A serene sunset on the Seine.

Staying in France opened my eyes to how perspective plays a role in remembering the war. I have learned about World War II in a way that I thought was universal; I have discovered that is not the case. I have studied the history of World War II all the way through high school and taken three college classes for my own interest, and each class was generally about the same. I started out by learning just the most basic parts of the war. I learned generally about battles and that was the extent of it. As I got older it became more specific, politics became more central and the approach more detailed. The way that I viewed not only the war but America was challenged during my time in France. I began to think about the role politics play a role in how things are taught and that just because I was taught something my entire life doesn’t mean it is correct. There is always more than one perspective to events.

When I went to the Arromanche’s 360 Theater, a 15-20-minute video showed the Battle of Normandy from a French perspective. I had not realized that I will probably see different perspectives of the war. We learned about the French perspective in class but it is one thing to read it and another to witness it.  At one point in this film showed, a map of France with flags of the invading and occupied countries and their movements as the battle progressed. The French flag was included in the invasion. When the Allies were surrounding Paris, the French flag was shown to be the first one advancing. Talking about the Battle of Normandy this past semester, we focused on Omaha and Utah Beach invasions. I never questioned learning more about these invasions than the others because I knew that these invasions were focused on because they were the bloodiest parts of Normandy. In the past, the French troops wasn’t focused on in the American school systems because they didn’t play a central role in the campaign as the other troops. However, the French made it look like they were more a part of the liberation of France than I have previously learned. The French portrays themselves more as victors than victims and align with the Allies even though they were the ones liberated by the Allies. The pride and ego of the French was seen in every museum that I entered and that portrayed themselves in the war.

In my time in Normandy I had the opportunity to visit German, American and British cemeteries. In each cemetery, you could see how the culture influences the design and structure of each location. The German cemetery was very simple. It had groups of larger headstones and the larger headstones were in groups of five stone crosses. The rest of the graves just had plaques. Then in the center of the cemetery there was a larger cross on a raised mound. In my opinion, this showed the German culture. The stone crosses aren’t the most beautiful things to look at but they do their job in memorializing the men who were lost. The German cemetery was very simple, to the point and very well kept. My dad’s side of the family is heavily German and the German cemeteries that my grandparents are buried in have a similar look to as the German cemetery that I walked through in France which is why I think it fits the culture.

The American cemetery was extremely emotional for me. I was moved by seeing the numbers of the dead in person and knowing that this is only a small portion of those who died in the war. The American cemetery is beautiful, massive and well kept; however, I think it was one of the flashier military cemeteries in Normandy, because I think its was design shows the people look at all our countrymen who died for you. This place overlooks the water and is designed very well, but I think that the intentions behind the design was that “we did this for you and we suffered saving you.”

The British cemetery is not as flashy as the American cemetery but it personalizes the dead soldiers. The British cemetery is medium sized compared to the previous two. There was a plant or flower placed in front of each tombstone and most of them had a personalized statement written on it. The British designed this with the idea of memorializing these men in the most honorable way possible. They personalized it and brought a piece of home to France for the fallen, and it was a truly beautiful sight.

The French film that I watched and the cemeteries that I visited altered my perspective and helped me to accommodate other cultures and histories. Each culture, American, Germans, British and French, all have a different take on the war. It was a check on reality knowing that just because I learn something one way does not mean it is the only way. After visiting all the cemeteries, I could glimpse how each culture represented the war and how they honor their fallen. By doing this, I can get a better outlook of the war. This will allow my perspective and opinions on the war to grow more nuance over time.

Going into France, I knew that being an American would affect the experience I would have there. They speak a different language, one that I have not studied, and while the culture is similar to our own, there are distinct differences in societal norms. Americans often split the check when we go out to eat, which they don’t often do in Europe. In France it was also very apparent to our group that Americans are much louder than the French. Just by talking in our normal volume it felt as though we were disruptive in most of the places that we went. While these difference. They influenced the interactions that I had with the French people. I found myself constantly searching for ways to be less noticeable and stand out less as a “loud American” in public spaces.

Small cultural differences are also noticeable in the way that history is taught and presented in France. As I walked through Les Invalides in Paris and visited the Arromanches 360 Theater in Normandy, I noticed that the “facts” of World War II are presented differently in France than they are in the United States. In particular, I saw this in the way that they portray the involvement of the French in the liberation of France. At the Arromanches 360 Theater it was clear that they viewed, or wanted to show, that the French played a nearly equal role in the Battle of Normandy and the subsequent liberation of Paris. The focus of this video was very much on the French effort during Operation Overlord. The French flag was seen in every part of the video, quite often alongside the British and American flags. Towards the end, the focus of the video turned to the rebuilding of France and their rise out of the ashes of WWII. At Les Invalides these differences became very apparent in the emphasis placed on Charles de Gaulle and his role in the liberation of France. I also noticed that an in depth analysis of Vichy, France was really nowhere to be seen.  In my studies of World War II in America, this emphasis is almost opposite. Vichy, France is seen as a collaborationist state to Nazi Germany, and Charles de Gaulle played a minor role in Operation Overlord and the liberation of France. De Gaulle led the charge to liberate Paris because the Allies were more focused on chasing and defeating the Germans than liberating Paris. At Les Invalides his involvement was presented as though he led the charge into Paris because of his status among the Allied Powers.

My perspective as an American definitely influenced how I saw these differences in the portrayal of the history of WWII. Although the United States joined WWII late, they were one of the Allied Powers and played a major role in Operation Overlord, as well as the subsequent battles and the defeat of Nazi Germany. The French resistance did play a part in the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris, which I do not want to undervalue. However, I found it upsetting that they placed their efforts on the same playing field as that of the other major Allied Powers. It seemed to me that they had warped their own history out of pride, and that they wanted to be seen more as victors than as victims. This makes sense because culturally, France is a very proud nation. They are focused on having a cohesive national identity, which could be damaged by looking too far into the involvement of Vichy in the war or being seen as victims of Nazi oppression. When I take a step back from my own national identity, it makes me wonder about the things that I have been taught in school and how the American culture plays a role in how that history is portrayed.

At the cliffs of Arromanches with the remains of Port Winston in the background.

52 Raised Eyebrows

This French leg of our journey felt like a sort of pilgrimage for me. I began learning French, and adjacently, French History, eight years ago in the 7th grade and have been fascinated since. Those years, combined with building my expertise on the origins of Vichy France this past semester, meant that the nine days of speaking French and learning how the French presented their own narrative should have been some of my favorite. Those nine days were incredible, if not also incredibly cynical. Touring museums like a historian means asking “why” often, and always being willing to raise an eyebrow when a plaque or display makes an especially proud claim. The French museums we toured raised a lot of eyebrows.

We began at the Caen memorial museum, which guides its visitors down a descending spiral hallway representing the downward spiral of the political climate leading up to the war. The symbolism was impressive, but the exhibit skips from the invasion of Poland to France’s capitulation, curiously omitting any explanation for France’s fall. Later, the museum’s only mention of the Vichy Government, France’s constitutional governing body between 1940-1944, was relegated to two small displays, only summarizing that they existed. This was especially striking, because it came right before an entire room, with a much higher budget, dedicated to the Resistance. These were all presented in French, English, and German, which was not a consistency throughout the museum.

Our group was lucky enough to have a few who could read French, which was helpful when we came across the few displays left untranslated for some reason. The reason raised all fifty-two eyebrows on our trip, because the Caen Memorial Museum presented different stories away from anglophone eyes. The biggest was a claim about the Allies’ superfluousness in liberation, because, according to the museum, the French were able to, and did, liberate themselves. This pattern repeated itself on a much bigger scale at Les Invalides in Paris.

France’s national military museum describes a history nothing short of valiant, heroic, and any other similar adjective which hadn’t been used too recently. Like the Caen museum, Vichy received a single section of displays out of the three floors concerned with WWII. None of the displays discuss Vichy’s politics, origins, or goals, but they did feature three cases of Petain memorabilia that compared his worship to Hitler. These displays were unironically surrounded by two other floors of ephemera worshiping DeGaulle. Les Invalides also, luckily in English this time, made some questionable claims about France’s participation. Namely that the French forces inflicted a staggering 160,000 casualties during the 1940 battle for France, forgetting to mention they suffered over one million, and that the Maginot Line “never capitulated,” because the Germans simply went around it. A full summary of these dubious displays would be longer than the entirety of this post, but suffice to say we found many more.

None of this is to say that I feel like my dreams of visiting Paris were dashed. I can honestly say that every day in France helped me to grow as a historian. Whether we were at the German, American, or British cemeteries to appreciate their symbolism and those buried there, or visiting Saint-Mère-Eglise, a vital town to U.S. D-Day paratroopers that has become a theme-park of a museum, I learned how to become a more responsible history consumer. I realized I’ve never been to the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. while touring Les Invalides. Seeing their national museum made me ask, how many of these same questions or raised eyebrows would I have at home?

Being in France made me feel like I was in a country unlike my own for the first time. In Bayeux, the difficulty resulting from the language barrier shocked me. By the end, I got the hang of it, but the first few days were difficult. I had to guess and hope they weren’t saying anything important. As an American, I ignorantly believed most things would be in English in other countries. Most of the exhibits we visited displayed French commentary with some English descriptions. This left me feeling disconnected from the experience because I didn’t know what they were trying to present with each object. I think this expectation is unique to an American because English is such a universal language. Thus, I assumed that it would be more prevalent in other countries. The realization that a place could be so different from my home sparked a new way of interpreting different cultures.

One thing I have noticed that differs between France and the United States is how we treat spoken language. The French are much quieter than we are. Perhaps traveling in a large group makes a difference, but wherever we go we are the loudest in the room, reaffirming the loud American stereotype one city at a time. It startled me in Bayeux because it’s such a peaceful, country town. I think this can be attributed to a difference in our cultures.

While in France, the stereotype that the French don’t like Americans popped up in my head a couple times. When our group went through security at the Caen museum, the security guard told us that bags of any kind were not allowed – not even purses. This wasn’t a big deal – all of us with a bag returned to the bus and put them in our seats. Once we returned to the security line, a couple in front of us had their bags checked by the same security guard and gained entrance. I ventured that maybe the rule only applied to school groups, but upon entrance to the museum, we saw two French school groups with their purses and backpacks. What I felt to be discrimination shocked me because I have never been discriminated against before for being an American. I encountered discrimination against Americans on a personal level at our hotel in Bayeux. I was talking in the lobby with two other girls at a conversational level when we were shushed by one of the employees. Not only were we shushed, but there were other people in the lobby that were talking at the same level but not reprimanded.

These experiences of discrimination in France have caused me to have a different outlook on France and other countries. Although this effected my time in France, I’m grateful I had this experience because it isn’t something I would experience at home. This is part of experiencing a different country and understanding a new culture. In France, this consisted of understanding French social expectations and how they interact with each other. My experiences did not match up with my expectations but instead taught me the valuable lessons of understanding new cultures and adapting to a new language.

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.”