One of my three must-dos for Paris was to
revisit the Musée de l’Armée, the museum of French military history, to see
what they did to mark the centenary of the First World War. I’d not been to it
since the turn of the century, so it was time. (I don’t much care about the
previous centuries of French military might; after a while, one suit of armor
looks remarkably like all the rest in line, so…)
They had some very well-designed multimedia
displays, but they really hadn’t done much to incorporate recent historiography.
(There was a temporary exhibit, in another part of Les Invalides, on the
continuation of World War I in the East, meaning the combat in Eastern Europe
and the Middle East from 1918-1923, titled appropriately “À l’Est, Guerre sans
Fin”—In the East, War without End. I whizzed through that, but it’s not my area
of focus.) But not particularly illuminating.
But here are a few bits and bobs from my visit:
First of all, they concatenate both world wars
into a single exhibit—fair enough—which they start in 1871:
In other words, they date the world wars of the
20th Century from the defeat of the French by the Prussians in the
war of 1870-71. Which, I suppose, is valid, from a nationalistic perspective.
(If you go to the Imperial War Museum in London, you’ll discover that Britain
and her Empire pretty much won both world wars with its stiff upper lip, and
maybe a bit of assistance from, you know, everyone else. I haven’t been to any
US military museum—if we even have any—but I well recall all the retrospectives
on D-Day 50th, 60th and 70th anniversaries that
showed how Americans totally kicked German ass, and there were a few Brits,
Canadians and French guys scattered about the beaches. We all have our
historical lenses.)
The Franco-Prussian War ended with the humiliating
defeat of French armies at Sedan, the capture of the French emperor, the ceding
of Alsace and much of Lorraine to the Prussians, extraction of a ruinous
indemnity and the declaration of the Second German Empire via the coronation of
King Wilhelm of Prussia as Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany…in the Galerie des Glaces
at Versailles.
That seriously bites. I don’t think it’s
accidental at all that the post-WWI treaty that dismantled the Second Reich,
took back Alsace and Lorraine, imposed ruinous reparations on Germany and
placed guilt for causing the war squarely on Germany and her allies (among
other humiliations) was concluded in that very same Galerie des Glaces. These
things are like high school: they’re never over.
(The display notes the signing of the Armistice
and effective surrender of the Germans in Marshal Foch’s railway carriage in
the forest of Compiègne on 11 November 1918. It refrains, later on in the World
War II part of the exhibition, from mentioning that Hitler dredged up that very
car, hauled it to that very spot in Compiègne and forced the French to capitulate
on 22 June 1940 in it.)
One thing I had not previously known about was
that there was a Russian Expeditionary Force deployed along the Western Front,
in Champagne.
Following the February 1917 revolution in
Russia, as well as their participation in the catastrophic Nivelle offensive,
the soldiers mutinied in France; the brigade was disbanded by the end of the
year.
As I moved into the Second World War part of
the exhibition, I came across film clips of some of the concentration and
extermination camps as discovered by
liberating Allied forces. The films were not new. But I thought this warning
caught my eye:
This is what PBS should display before docus
that deal with difficult subjects and tell uncomfortable truths—they might be
too much for you if you’re utterly pig-ignorant fuckwits.
Okay, I did not go to any other parts of Les
Invalides, but I got a bit of a chuckle out of a few things I saw on the way to
the exhibit I wanted to see.
First, this row of probably 17th
Century cannon:
Yawn, right? But here’s some detail:
That was pretty. But what caught my attention was
this:
What do you suppose the royal porcupine is all about?
Also, the larger topiary in the background is
actually the home of a rather robust rabbit, which I saw bolt across the lawn
(too fast—despite his size—for me to get a shot):
And then there were these two ladies at the top
of a staircase:
I have no idea who they were meant to be, but the one on the right looked like she’s
checking Twitter on her mobile. I guess not:
I really am a culture vulture, non?
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