PARIS — For the first time since the armistice that ended World War I with Germany’s defeat in 1918, a German leader joined French officials here to mark the moment the guns fell silent on the Western Front after a war that killed millions.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France laid a floral wreath on Wednesday at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the soaring arches of the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, erected in 1835 to honor the army of Napoleon.
The moment came two days after Mr. Sarkozy traveled to Berlin for ceremonies marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago on Nov. 9, 1989. Mr. Sarkozy said Wednesday that remembrance of the past “is also to consolidate the present and prepare the future.”
Across Europe and other parts of the world, people gathered Wednesday to commemorate the end of four years of fighting between 1914 and 1918 in which millions of lives were lost in what are now depicted as strategically ineffective battles of the trenches in which neither side gained significant territory as each lashed the other with artillery fire and often futile infantry charges.
The precise number of dead from both sides in what is known as the Great War — or “the war to end all wars” — has never been precisely known, partly because of poor record-keeping. But most accounts put the number of military deaths at more than 8 million — including 1.4 million French and 2 million from Imperial Germany. Additionally, more than six million civilians were killed, and two million soldiers from all sides were reported missing in action.
France and Germany have reached out to each other to heal the wounds before.
In September 1984, the leaders of France and Germany, President François Mitterrand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, chose the site of the 1916 battle of Verdun for a symbolic day of reconciliation. But the ceremony in Paris on Wednesday marked the first time a German leader had attended the annual ceremony in Paris.
“I know that what has gone before cannot be erased,” Mrs. Merkel said. “But there is a power, a power which helps us and which can help us bear what has passed: reconciliation.”
In silence, the two leaders stood side by side before the flame that marks the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier after inspecting troops ringing the Arc de Triomphe. Mr. Sarkozy said later that the commemoration was not of one people’s victory over another but of an ordeal that was “equally terrible on both sides.”
“German orphans wept for their slain fathers in the same way as French orphans,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “German mothers felt the same pain as French mothers as they stood before the coffins of their fallen sons.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/world/europe/12france.html?hp
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France laid a floral wreath on Wednesday at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the soaring arches of the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, erected in 1835 to honor the army of Napoleon.
The moment came two days after Mr. Sarkozy traveled to Berlin for ceremonies marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago on Nov. 9, 1989. Mr. Sarkozy said Wednesday that remembrance of the past “is also to consolidate the present and prepare the future.”
Across Europe and other parts of the world, people gathered Wednesday to commemorate the end of four years of fighting between 1914 and 1918 in which millions of lives were lost in what are now depicted as strategically ineffective battles of the trenches in which neither side gained significant territory as each lashed the other with artillery fire and often futile infantry charges.
The precise number of dead from both sides in what is known as the Great War — or “the war to end all wars” — has never been precisely known, partly because of poor record-keeping. But most accounts put the number of military deaths at more than 8 million — including 1.4 million French and 2 million from Imperial Germany. Additionally, more than six million civilians were killed, and two million soldiers from all sides were reported missing in action.
France and Germany have reached out to each other to heal the wounds before.
In September 1984, the leaders of France and Germany, President François Mitterrand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, chose the site of the 1916 battle of Verdun for a symbolic day of reconciliation. But the ceremony in Paris on Wednesday marked the first time a German leader had attended the annual ceremony in Paris.
“I know that what has gone before cannot be erased,” Mrs. Merkel said. “But there is a power, a power which helps us and which can help us bear what has passed: reconciliation.”
In silence, the two leaders stood side by side before the flame that marks the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier after inspecting troops ringing the Arc de Triomphe. Mr. Sarkozy said later that the commemoration was not of one people’s victory over another but of an ordeal that was “equally terrible on both sides.”
“German orphans wept for their slain fathers in the same way as French orphans,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “German mothers felt the same pain as French mothers as they stood before the coffins of their fallen sons.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/world/europe/12france.html?hp
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