There is nothing ludicrous or misplaced about referring to the internment camps as ‘landscapes’. Between 1939 and 1946, as many as 200 camps were set up, and it had a lot to do with their environment. But can one speak of ‘traces’ in the landscape outside that period?

From the Normandy beaches to the bombed, occupied, liberated cities, internment camps to ‘martyr’ villages, the landscapes inherited from the Second World War have been taken over once again by civil society and the authorities, to be made into sites that bear witness to events dating back more than 70 years.

Philippe Bréson is a photographer and visual artist and teaches photography at art schools. Based on seven years of research carried out across the former regions of the front, in 2017 and 2018 he put on a number of exhibitions on the landscapes of the First World War. Cicatrices (‘Scars’) was presented at the Centre André Malraux in Le Bourget and Mnémosis was shown at the French Embassy in the United States and at the international lycées of San Francisco and Washington.

Photographer and visual artist Sophie Zénon looks at the question of restoring the memory of Hartmannswillerkopf (HWK), the scene of fighting in the First World War, whose peculiarity is that its front line lay along the Franco-German border. In 2017, she became artist in residence at the Abri-Mémoire in Uffholtz, an educational space for the public where she undertook a creative project and gave a workshop.

The impact which the First World War had on the environment only began to be studied a few years ago. But as current research keeps on highlighting, its consequences extend beyond the devastated areas, and will go on being felt for years to come. This article proposes to chart the long history of consciousness of the ecological consequences of the First World War.

A favourite walk of Louis XV’s two daughters, the unique topography of the Chemin des Dames meant that it became a strategic sector in the fighting in the Aisne in 1914. This sector revealed how geology as a science could play a major role in shaping the events of the First World War.

Visitors who venture along the Meuse remembrance trails are amazed to discover villages that were completely destroyed in the Battle of Verdun and never rebuilt. Besides the commemorative events held here, these places of contemplation are key heritage sites, which archaeologists are today attempting to explore and safeguard for the future.

A witness to the suffering of men and animals in the First World War, writer Maurice Genevoix was also a sensitive witness to the destruction of the beautiful landscape of Les Éparges and its subsequent resurrection in peacetime. The landscape of war began as a war on the landscape, to become a landscape of remembrance.

The First World War centenary brought tens of thousands of French and foreign visitors to discover the landscapes left behind by the conflict. Yet some traces are barely visible today, and others need to be read in conjunction with the story of the battles that took place there. From the old front line and occupied areas, to ruined towns and restored woodlands, no landscape was spared by the Great War.

When you visit France, it is not unusual to come across former military forts, citadels or ramparts, either preserved as they were or renovated. So many sites that are the heritage of the Ministry of the Armed Forces. The transfer of ownership forces central and regional government to think about their new uses. The challenge of repurposing military heritage lies in the transformation – or not – of the landscape in which it is situated.

Across France, the memory of the Resistance is etched in the landscape in a variety of ways. The monumental structure of the Memorial of Combatant France, on Mont Valérien, became the first of the country’s “Major National Remembrance Sites”. It is without doubt one of the key symbols of the State heritage designation of historic Second World War sites.

In the collective imagination, the landscapes of the Resistance often make one think of the maquis, hilly or wooded areas where men and women sought refuge in order to organise their resistance against the Vichy authorities and the occupier. The Vercors massif, with its natural landscape, reconstructed villages and commemorative monuments, today preserves the memory of the maquisards of 1943-44.

Known by some as “the other Oradour-sur-Glane”, this village in Indre-et-Loire had an entirely different fate from its Limousin counterpart, as a memorial landscape. Following the Maillé massacre, even before the war was over, it was decided that the village should be completely rebuilt, a choice not without consequences for the preservation of its memory.

The memorial landscape of Oradour-sur-Glane is striking for its uniqueness. After the war, it was decided that the ruins of the village should be preserved “as they were”. Over the years that followed, many voluntary organisations and government agencies were faced with the challenge of maintaining the site, requiring them to reflect on the marks left in the landscape by the traumas of war.

Another emblematic site of the First World War fighting is the Bayonet Trench, whose very origins make it differ from Notre Dame de Lorette: here, the soldiers’ bodies have not been gathered together in a purpose-built cemetery, but remain where they fell – a fact that situates the story of the Bayonet Trench between myth and reality.

After the First World War, the scars of the fighting on the hill of Notre Dame de Lorette were erased from the surrounding landscape but, a century on, France’s largest military cemetery, the monument and the international memorial stand out as a site of remembrance, tribute and commemoration.

In peacetime, the battlefields, beaches, towns and cities affected by war are prepared to host ceremonies and other commemorative rituals for the purposes of passing on the memory of past events, remembering those who lived through them and giving them meaning. Naturally, the surrounding area and landscape are brought into play to ‘commit to memory’ the commemorated history.

The relationship between war landscapes and remembrance is complex. After the conflict, what remains of the ‘war landscape’? How do societies construct a special approach to places scarred by war? In what ways do contemporary values attributed to the landscape transform society’s relationship with remembrance?

Prior to any analysis of the reconstruction and redevelopment of landscapes post-conflict, it is worth looking at what the landscape represents to soldiers who make it the theatre of their confrontations with the enemy. An object of war, the landscape quickly becomes the subject of war, requiring belligerents to use their environment and its constraints, and to incorporate them in their overall military strategy.