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.

As we progressed onto France, we went and stayed at a hotel in Bayeux. Bayeux is a small country town in Normandy. The air was clear and the people there were hospitable and it was a good place to adjust to the French language. I felt like one of the international students on campus who are in a foreign environment and doesn’t understand the local language. The language barrier was difficult and I don’t know French and what Spanish I do know was unhelpful when trying to communicate with the locals.

Bayeux was the first town liberated from the Germans after the Allied invasion of France called Operation Overlord or also known as D-Day.  The D-Day invasion happened on the Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah beaches. While in Normandy we visited the Utah, Omaha and Gold beaches. The beaches were not what I expected when I learned about them. They were different from what I had imagined. The Utah Beach was the first we visited and it reminded me of the beaches of North Carolina.  With that in mind, I tried to imagine traversing the beach with all of the wet, heavy gear and weapons the soldiers of the D-Day invasion had to carry along.  The wet sand that they sunk into only made their assault harder under enemy fire. Later that week we went to Pont de Hoc, the small peninsula between the Utah and Omaha beaches. Pont de Hoc was where the Germans had heavy guns that could have affected the Allied navy’s assault and the Allied invasion. Pont de Hoc was covered in mass craters caused by the Navy shelling. Allied forces had to climb up the cliff face to surprise the enemy and capture the guns. The sight was beautiful but it was hard to think that it was a battlefield.  Later we went to Omaha and I had my biggest surprise. Most of the beach was flat and then there were tall hills instead of the rock faces that I thought that the soldiers had to climb. It turns out that I was thinking about Dog Green, the farthest west Pont of the beach closest to Pont de Hoc. Dog Green was the rockiest part of the beach while the rest was easier to advance on but the soldiers had to deal with heavy enemy crossfire from down the beach.  I learned that the amphibious transports dropped off there load to far from their intended target range. They were supposed to drop off the tanks 3 to 5 clicks off the beaches in low tide but they dropped them off almost 7 clicks and from there most of the heavy armor and tanks drowned. Through the actions of the transports, the Omaha assault had only 10 percent of their original tanks.  The last beach we saw was the Gold Beach. I didn’t expect to see that it had a town on the beach front. So that when the allies advanced on to the beach, they rolled right up to the town and had to face the enemy in an urban area.

Normandy underwent heavy strategic bombing, the allies destroyed the local’s homes and businesses, their communities and had to deal with all of it under the Nazi occupation. It was hard to think that the Normans were thankful to the allies for freeing them from occupation when these same people who freed them also destroyed their property and left their homes in ruins. It was a surprise to learn that the church in Bayeux was unharmed by the allied bombing. The church is called the Notre Dame de Bayeux and it was built in the 1100’s.

While we were in Normandy we went to the different cemeteries. We first visited the German cemetery. It was located near a highway and was not was I expected from a cemetery. The German soldiers who died in Normandy were buried there. Their tombstones were flat on the ground and when closer examined they had multiple names. Many of the graves were shared graves and many unknown soldiers. In the middle of the cemetery, there is a large mound that was actually a mass grave of unknown German soldiers. It was a very despondent sight. How the cemetery was arranged brings to mind trying to remember the fallen but not what they fought for. The other cemeteries we visited were the American and British cemeteries. The American cemetery was close to the ocean, with the well-known white crosses and star of Davis’s. The sheer scale of graves brings into perspective how many died. It is one thing to know the number of those who died and another to be there and see the graves.  The British cemetery was different in that they had tombstones for all who were involved because they believed that in death all of the soldiers deserve a proper grave. They also had the different designs of the soldier’s regiment on their tombstones. What they have written on them was left to the families to decide. This made the graves more personal and hopefully brought closer to the families.

One thing I really liked in Normandy was the airborne museum that had a building to show and inform people of Operation Neptune. Inside they had an area where people had to walk through a replica of a plane that dropped the paratroopers over France and had a small scale of what the paratroopers were dropped over under a glass walkway. It was really cool to see what the paratroopers experienced as they jumped. And then from Bayeux, the group travels to Paris.

Following London, our trip continued to northern France. We stayed in Bayeux and took daily excursions to the beaches of Operation Neptune, national cemeteries, and museums. The cemeteries and their distinct characteristics had the most profound impact on me. We visited cemeteries established by the United States, Great Britain, and Germany and each presented a different narrative of the war and how it is remembered. Observing these monuments, I was reminded of a quote that speaks to the idea of remembering the dead. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut said: “There’s is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead.” Each of these cemeteries says something about the massacre that was World War II.

The American cemetery was the one I knew most about prior to visiting. It is a grandiose display that pays tribute to the heroism of American soldiers who died during the liberation of Nazi-occupied Western Europe. To Americans, World War II is known as the Good War; we were victorious and came out of the war relatively unscathed. Fittingly, the cemetery is a celebration of the American war effort. It is not bombastic, but it is patriotic in a uniquely American way. The cemetery pays tribute to the good American boys who came across the sea to save the world from Hitler’s evil.

The cemetery overlooks Omaha beach where many American soldiers came ashore to liberate Western Europe.

Its rows of orderly, white headstones serve to impress the magnitude of American losses.

Rows of headstones at the American cemetery.

Memorials placed throughout the cemetery reinforce the narrative of good vs evil. This narrative is a celebration of the American cause for entering the war. The Americans helped win the war and did so at a comparably low cost. This is not to disparage the losses of American families related to the war, but the absence of civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure compared to other nations participating in the war are the reason why America remembers a Good War. American losses were important and meaningful, but they were also a magnitude of order lower than that of nations who saw their countryside ravaged and their civilian populations devastated. The American massacre, while tragic, is one that ultimately has a happy ending. These men died to secure a world safe for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their sacrifice, while tragic, achieved the end it set out to.

John O. Fry, Jr. one of the Buckeye Twelve, Ohio State alumni who are buried at the American cemetery.

The German cemetery offers a stark contrast. Here there are rows of small, sober grave markers of the German soldiers who died during the Normandy landings. It is a much more somber place that seeks not to celebrate but to remember. Here there is nothing of the Nazi cause, only dead men. Little is said of the dead; those whose names are known are marked accordingly and those who unknown are simply labeled “A German Soldier.”

The German cemetery.

Among them, there are likely Nazi fanatics who were fully devoted to Hitler’s cause. However, there are likely also those men, young and old, who were sucked into the German war machine without much devotion at all to the cause they died for. Here these things do not matter. The cemetery only seeks to mark those among the many killed in World War II who were German and died at Normandy. This cemetery celebrates neither cause nor combatant. Instead it remembers the men who died because of their participation in the war, regardless of circumstance. I will be able to speak to this more fully after visiting Berlin but I believe this is reminiscent of the general German perspective of World War II. Germany was host to a hateful regime that perpetrated horrendous crimes against the world. As it emerged from occupation as a new nation, this history demanded to be dealt with. The Germans do not celebrate the war but they do not ignore it. Rather they mark the tragedy of the massacre so that it is not forgotten.

Finally, the British cemetery commemorates both a cause and cost of the war. Here the headstones are more personal; they bear the emblem of a soldier’s unit, his name, date of death, age, and a personal inscription from his loved ones.

F. H. Rigg. Age 26. Killed July 23, 1944.
“To the world he was just one but to us he was all the world. Wife and family.”

The British fought the People’s War and in their cemetery the fallen seem the most like people. Each headstone offers an intimate connection with the fallen and the family they left behind. The British cemetery also contains graves of Polish, Czech, Soviet, and German soldiers in addition to those dead from the British Empire. The inclusion of foreign graves shows that the People’s War isn’t exclusive to British people. Instead, the narrative focuses on the personal cost the war wrought on people throughout the world. The cemetery seeks to remind us that wars are fought by people and that each of those people leaves behind a life full of family and friends, some never to be seen again.

Central monument at the British cemetery.

Of all three, I found the British cemetery the most moving because of its articulation of loss at this much more personal level. This cemetery speaks not only to a massacre of soldiers and civilians but also the ravaged families that massacre left in its wake.

The three cemeteries all serve as a reminder of World War II, a massacre that claimed a terrible cost. Today, as every day since the war, we must wrestle with what and how we say of this massacre. We must be careful in this regard to do proper justice to the many facets of the war. The sacrifice of young men and civilians the world over should be commemorated and remembered. These tragedies define much of our world today but we must be careful not to idolize war. Idolizing war only leads to more war and more dead. Rather we should honor these dead by living for peace and a world with fewer massacres.

Graves of unknown soldiers at each cemetery.

In addition to the cemeteries, we visited several others sites in Bayeux, a small town in the north of France. We then moved on to Paris. Here are some pictures from both:

Pegasus Bridge

A crater at Pointe du Hoc

OHIO picture at Utah Beach

Mont-Saint-Michel

Centre Pompidou museum of modern art.

“International Klein Blue” by Yves Klein

Musée d’Orsay

Sunset OHIO along the Seine

“Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead.” Paris catacombs

The catacombs

Grand Musée de l’Armée (French Armed Forces Museum) at Les Invalides

The Louvre

“Winged Victory of Samothrace”

“Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix

L’Arc de Triomphe

With this blog, I write about my experiences in France, where we stayed in Bayeux and Paris. Bayeux is a sleepy town in the Normandy region, with old, thin streets and stores that mainly close by 10 pm. Paris is the polar opposite, and is the cultural capital of France. Bayeux mainly feeds on tourism brought on from the D-Day Invasion, while Paris has moved on, and is a business capital of the world. In this blog I will talk about many things, like the invasion beaches we saw, Pointe du Hoc, war cemeteries, and museums.

Bayeux in World War Two is a rather interesting case. The Germans stationed here were not a cutthroat division, and retreated from the Allied Invasion, leaving the town nearly unscathed, although I’m not sure of what happened in regards to bombing raids. Paris also went relatively untouched and was occupied by Nazi Germany for much of the war.

In American memory, Omaha seems to be one of the most remembered beaches, with the opening of Saving Private Ryan being there (it was filmed in Ireland), and more casualties happening here than others. So, what was found was a bit surprising: beachfront properties. The land wasn’t preserved much, but a monument opens to the beach. There’s no museum accompanying the land, but restaurants are named after it nearby.

Utah Beach was a more preserved beach, with sand dunes marking the nearly untouched area. Surrounding the beach were a museum, monuments, and decaying war memorabilia (like a German Flak gun). The water was also at a lower tide when we arrived, meaning the water was receded like it would have been on June 6, 1944. Standing at the edge of the water watching the waves ebb and flow, one could not help but to think that we were seeing what an American soldier would have seen over 70 years ago. Needless to say, Utah Beach was a very touching place to be.

Pointe du Hoc was a German controlled area invaded by Army Rangers on D-Day. These Rangers were tasked with disabling artillery guns which could have been problematic in the beach invasion. Once these men scaled the nearly vertical rock face, the guns were not found in the expected site, but were found and disabled soon thereafter using thermite grenades. The site is now an American monument site and is pocked by huge craters from shelling and Nazi bunkers. Actually being there and seeing the effects of naval bombardment was mesmerizing, as I had always seen footage of ships firing cannons and not thought about the effects on the the receiving end of the firing. Besides going into the craters, going into the bunkers that were occupied with Nazis also had another humanizing feature. Hearing our own voices reverberate against the concrete, it is hard to imagine how deafening the shelling would have been.

View of Pointe Du Hoc

In our time in Bayeux we were also able to tour cemeteries for America, Britain, and Germany. The American Cemetery was gorgeous, with views of the Norman coast and pine trees dotting the land. The markers are also phenomenal, with either a white cross or Star Of David marking burials. Inscribed on each is the name of the soldier, rank, division, state, and date of death. While there, I was blessed to place an Ohio State flag on the grave of John W. Atkinson Jr.,  First Lieutenant with the 101st Airborne Division who was killed on June 8th, 1944. He grew up in Portsmouth (very close to Chillicothe, my own hometown) and attended The Ohio State University. There are twelve Buckeyes buried in the cemetery.

The British Cemetery was a jarring experience, because according to British belief, all soldiers deserve a respectful burial. These led to graves for not only Britt, but also Americans, Australians, Canadians, Czechs, Germans, Italians, Muslims, Poles, Russians, and likely more that I did not see. This display led to a remind that World War Two was a truly global conflict. The tombstones also included an inscription from the family of the lost, which was especially jarring.

The last cemetery I can discuss is the German War Cemetery, which was very different from the other two. The cemetery had to play the line of how to honor war dead from a country, when the country was under one of the worst regimes in history. This complex question has raked my mind often, and I think that the best answer is in the cemetery we toured. The tombstones are flat at ground level, typically with two soldiers buried in each plot. In the middle of a cemetery there is a hill with a cross with two Germanic figures underneath it, and the hill has unidentified bodies interred in it. As we walked past it, a French teenager stood at the peak and sang a Whitney Houston song at the top of his lungs. Even though this was a cemetery for Germans who defended Norman beaches from Allied forces, I could not help but to be extremely bothered by the disrespect I witnessed.

German Cemetary

The last part of the French portion I want to discuss are the museums that we saw. Generally, these museums shared a common thread of discussing the war and showing artifacts. Typically, the French museums offered portions on the French resistance and the Free French Forces. In nearly every one of them, a picture of Jean Moulin (who briefly united Resistance forces under General de Gaulle) is shown. What was missing bothered me, there was barely a mention of the Vichy government, of France’s surrender in 1940, or many things that could paint France in a negative light. If you did not have background knowledge of the war and toured some of the museums, you would think that France fought gallantly, then some years passed, and General de Gaulle led forces into the heart of Paris and drove out the Germans singlehandedly.

In one example at the Caen Museum, there is only one picture from the roundup of Jews in the Paris Velodrome d’Hiver. Accompanying it is only a small description and no further explanation of the role that the French played in the Nazi regime. 13,152 Jews were arrested by French police in the two day round up, and they were then sent to extermination camps. The Caen museum was the only one that I saw that mentioned this; not even the Musée de l’Armée in Paris spoke of it. In a later discussion, we learned to be aware of who designs museums, as they may slant the museum to shine lights on some things and ignore others. It seems victims of French-Nazi collaborators are a group that has had the light taken away from them in the collective French memory, which I find to be a travesty.

We now go eastwards to Krakow, Poland. After learning more about D-Day and the Normandy campaign than I ever thought I would learn, I look forward to seeing a different viewpoint of the War. In my eyes, the Norman region thrives off tourism related to the 1944 invasion. Paris enjoys being one of the most renowned cities in the world, with barely a mention of a world war two in sight (asides from occasional plaques commemorating the heroic efforts of the French resistance).  I look forward to portraying my experience to you all again soon.

Au revoir,

Beau Bilek