Since the end of the Algerian War, the French armed forces have been deployed to many foreign theatres on peacekeeping and protection operations or to combat terrorist groups. These new forms of military involvement give rise to a new combatant memory, which the State has a duty to preserve and pass on.

An institutionalised commemoration of the experiences of the Bundeswehr in overseas operations is relatively recent in Germany. It is closely linked to its involvement in Afghanistan (2001-14), the overseas theatre where the German armed forces suffered their first losses. It is this reality that prompted the political authorities to support the construction of a new combatant remembrance.

Gildas Riant is a history and geography teacher. A member of CEREG (Research Centre on the German-speaking World), he is currently preparing a thesis in German Studies on “colonisation in French, German and Austrian school history textbooks since the late 1980s”, at Sorbonne Nouvelle University – Paris 3.

In France, the place of women in wartime memory can hardly be studied without considering the wider context, including an analysis of the role of women in contemporary history and the place they occupy among key national symbols like the Pantheon. That history is also the history of the feminists whose struggle has enabled women to gradually acquire a place in public remembrance.

In June 2019, the German parliament passed a motion to pay tribute to the women of the German resistance movement. It acknowledged the invisibility of women resistance fighters both in the public arena and in research, when actually women played a crucial role. But they became largely mediators of men’s memory, which contributed to concealing or diminishing their own role.

Some memories are destined to be short-lived. Such is the case of the armistice of 1940, which confirmed the French defeat and put an end to the fighting. Although Germany was delighted at the time, the episode would not lead on to regular commemorations. In France, if it was timidly celebrated by the Vichy regime, it was soon replaced by remembrance of the refusal. The call to arms of 18 June is today an important marker in the commemorative calendar.

In Germany, no specific memorial event is associated with Second World War remembrance. Political, social and historiographic changes over the last 80 years nevertheless offer an insight into commemorative practices linked to this remembrance, accounts the general public would give of the war or the resources mobilised by the State to represent the past over time.

The collective memory of the Second World War in France consists today of a series of elements, including the Resistance, the Jewish victims and the Vichy regime. These different memories have always been a part of the French landscape, with one at times prevailing over another as different remembrance models succeeded one another.

In France and Germany, the First World War centenary revived the memory of a conflict that left deep scars on the societies and landscapes of the two countries following the Armistice.  In reality, that memory has never stopped permeating French and German soil. It has been constructed and reconstructed over the course of more than a century, in the light of national histories and European integration.

The 150th anniversary of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) shed new light on a conflict which many believed had been forgotten by French and German national memory. As well as involving voluntary, cultural and remembrance organisations, it provided an opportunity to look at the traces of that memory, on both sides of the Rhine, and the mark it has left, still today, on the territories concerned.

In 75 years, the people of Alsace and Lorraine-Moselle lost four wars (1871, 1918, 1940 and 1945) and yet each time found themselves in the victor’s camp. This sums up the situation of a region on the margins of France and Germany, which was the focus of ongoing disputes between 1870 and 1945. Alsace-Lorraine, later renamed Alsace-Moselle, nevertheless ended up becoming the symbol of reconciliation between the two “hereditary enemies”, in the context of a European Union with one of its capitals in Strasbourg.

If the French have a definite taste for the history and remembrance of the events of their past, that taste varies according to the conflict and the people. It is expressed primarily through commemorative acts.

Despite the considerable convergence of experiences of contemporary conflicts in France and Germany, the introduction of remembrance policies in the two countries has been deeply asymmetrical, given their political systems – one a centralised State, the other a federal State.

What should we remember when we think of the major conflicts of the 20th century in Germany? Remembrance culture has its own unique importance across the Rhine. There is definitely a tragic past to be remembered, the country (East Germany, at any rate) having lived through two world wars and two totalitarian regimes. Today, however, the remembrance of these events differs in many aspects.

The obligation of the State to maintain the war graves of soldiers killed in combat arose immediately after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), the 150th anniversary of which has recently been celebrated. Since then, remembrance has continually evolved in its aims and form, in step with all the partners involved, whether public, private or voluntary.

© E. Rabot / SGACOM / Ministère des Armées

On 17 June every year, a ceremony is held at the Pantheon, in Paris,
corresponding to the date of Jean Moulin’s first act of resistance, on 17 June 1940.

Is sixty years enough, not only to remember without hurt, but, more importantly, to subject to the scrutiny of human reason a dramatic story of hatred and passion, contempt and impotent love, which shook and goes on shaking up people’s memories? Algeria is to celebrate 60 years of independence, and it is legitimate that it should do so. Pieds noirs and repatriated French Muslims seek to remember, to comprehend the incomprehensible: why did they leave under such circumstances?