A war memorial the is a memorial set up to commemorate and honor the soldiers, and more generally the people, killed or missing by facts from Guerre. There exist several types:

  • the Cenotaph S (funeral monuments not sheltering any body), generally in the center of a city or a village, but which also were, after the First World War, raised in the hearths, the companies, schools attended by the missings of their alive;
  • national monuments high on the battle field (for example, with Douaumont), and which them shelter the tombs of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, including one strong proportion of unknown soldiers.

Before the First World War

The war memorials almost do not exist before the 20th century: the monuments commemorate the military victories, and seldom bear the names of the dead soldiers, unless they are not personalities. The Triumphal arch of the Star, inaugurated in 1806, bears only the name of senior officers, who did not die inevitably in the combat, and sometimes still alive during the construction of the monument. In the same way, the Column Nelson, in London, is associated only in the name of the hero éponyme, victorious of Trafalgar, the admiral Nelson.

The first monuments with the memory of the combatants appear after the American Civil War to the the United States, the German wars of unification (Guerre austro-Prussian and Franco-German Guerre of 1870), and the colonial wars.

In Germany

The monuments built at that time worry more to honor the combatants (even the alive ones) that deaths. In all the countries, the town halls, the schools, the places and the public gardens see flowering plates and monuments financed by associations of war veterans and the communes.

The reasons most frequently employed there are the Victoire, Germania, the eagle with the spread wings, or the Obélisque, traditional emblems of the winners. The monuments in the honor of deaths themselves are representations baroques of Sarcophage S, ballot box S or Gisant S.

This proliferation of monuments is supported by a law of 1890 which entrusts the responsibility for their erection to the communes. Starting from this date indeed one sees multiplying the new monuments with the war of 1870, in particular at the time of the day of the victory, or for the 25e and the 40e birthdays in 1896 and 1911. The communes had grown rich thanks to the repercussions by the Industrial revolution, and the war veterans, having reached the ripe age, do not hesitate either to be made build a monument. Many monuments with the war of 1870 set up after 1900 are also a sign of the remilitarization of the company under Guillaume II.

In France

Aristide Croisy is the author of many monuments, Mans, with Sedan, Mézières…

In Italy

The Monumento Nazionale Al Carabiniere with Turin belongs to the hundreds of war memorials set up in Italy after the Second world war. It is altered in 1948.

After the First World War

It is the principal war commemorated by the war memorials. The massive losses (in France, there were 1,4 million died and 3 million wounded on 8 million mobilized, for a population of 40 million inhabitants) bring, generally, not with glorifier the victory, but to honor those which lost the life. This aspect is important, because the very great majority of the monuments raised on this occasion are it on the initiative, or at least with the financial participation of the war veterans, who formed 90% of the men from 20 to 50 years in France. Their motivation to continue to fight was the hope which this war would be the last (the " DER of the ders"), and that their sacrifice would not be vain; the monuments are also there, to a certain extent, to point out this sacrifice. It is not thus astonishing to find a strong concentration of these places of memory in the areas where the engagements were held, for example in Lorraine.

The rumor mentions sometimes a village of which all the children would have returned and who would have raised war memorials virgin of any name of combatant. Although statistically this information is perfectly plausible, the name of this village - if as well is as it is single - is never quoted (one mentions sometimes that of Beauraing, but this characteristic would have related to for him the preceding war).

Their construction begins post-war period in the immediate future, but is prolonged throughout the 20th century (some small communes obtain a war memorial only in the years 1990, like Fountain-the-Count). In the majority of the countries, one adds to the list of dead of the Great War those of the Second world war, then following wars (wars of decolonization (Indo-China, Algérie in France) or Guerre of Vietnam to the the United States). In France, one finds there sometimes also a copy of the Appel of June 18th.

The principal period of construction is however the Années 1920, in the Western countries: 30  000 of 1918 to 1925 in France, is 15 inaugurations per day the first three years of post-war period. In 1924, for example, a double monument " With the heroes of the Army noire" is high with the memory of the African soldiers fallen during the Great War, one in Rheims, the other with Bamako (Mali). The first was destroyed by the troops of occupation in 1940.

In the other countries, the monuments remain collective: the lists of names are very rare in the the USSR, the China or the Japan.

World wars, the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-45 made victims in the whole world. They are also commemorated in the old colonies of the various belligerent European countries or at their allies. One can quote the Australian War Memorial with Canberra (Australia), built in 1941 and altered several times since; the National War Memorial with Wellington (New Zealand) with the memory of the combatants of the War of Boers, the two world wars, the War of Korea and the War of Vietnam, Tamaki Paenga Hira , the memorial of died with the combat with Auckland (New Zealand) (in the past Auckland' S War Memorial ).

War memorials modern

With the appearance of the bombardments, use of the nuclear force (Hiroshima) or terrorism, and the legal recognition of the Genocide, appear monuments commemorating of the civilian victims. There existed already monuments with nationalist aiming (Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria). It is monument are commemorative for silence.

In several places, instead of setting up a monument, the authorities let the ruins be used as memorial. It is the case of Oradour-on-Glanes, of the truncated bell-tower of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis Kirche with Berlin, or of the monument for the peace of Hiroshima (Dôme of Genbaku).

A new sensitivity develops around the idea of Duty to remember. It is not a question any more a glorifier of the heroic acts nor even of honouring the dead soldiers with the combat, but of keeping in memory the errors of the past. German creates besides the term of Mahnmal . Retrospective monuments are high with the victims of the holocaust (Mémorial of the Holocaust (Berlin), Mémorial of Yad Vashem (Israel), of slavery or other proven genocides, like the Armenian genocide.

Also retrospective, the memorial of the Afro-américains soldiers died during the American Civil War (1861-1868) opens to the public in 1999 with Washington D.C It is devoted to the memory of the 209  145 soldiers and marine black American who fought for the Union during the American Civil War.

The World Trade Center Memorial , in New York, which commemorates the victims of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, is still in construction.

Types

Forms

Inspired by architectural stereotypes, the first momuments with deaths réemploient the same devices. Nevertheless each country and each culture offer alternatives.

In France, one of the privileged forms is the Obélisque. It relates to primarily the communal monuments, placed at the center of public space (on the principal place) or in symbolic systems places: close to the town hall or close to the school, to the church or the Cemetery. War memorials, in the form of commemorative plaque, were also placed in all the places attended by the victims:

  • schools;
  • work places (one can see in the majority of the stations of France a plate listing the railwaymen died during the two world wars);
  • in many hearths, the widows of war arrange a space perpetuating the memory of their husband died in the war: a photograph carrying decorations, framed candles, there too acts as war memorial.

Certain communes choose to brick up a wall forming a monumental stele, a column (taking again the ancient reason for the civic column), a statue, or a broken Colonne, war memorial set up in dispute with this cursed war .

These monuments are subsidized by the State, partly financed by the municipalities, but generally a public subscription represents an important part of the sum necessary to the rise in the monument. Ruined, Germany does not have public funds to set up monuments with the memory of the million died of the war 1914-18. Initially, in fact the churches generally take the initiative to collect funds and to make engrave lists of names on marble plates exposed inside the places of worship. One also finds in the big cities of the books of the memory , and a certain number of collective monuments in the villages.

The situation changes into 1933, where one sees appearing monuments which exaltent the spirit of sacrifice to the German nation.

Ornaments

In France, the most current ornaments are:
  • the crown of sheets of Oak (or oak connects it), symbol of the civic virtues;
  • the crown of sheets of bay-tree (or bay-tree connects it), symbol of the military virtues;

See also: List of war memorials French surmounted by a Military Cross

See also: List of war memorials French surmounted by a funeral urn

See also: List of war memorials French surmounted by a cock

  • the helmet of the Hairy .

See also: List of war memorials French surmounted by a helmet

Hairy itself can be represented, in bust or with the real size (with its equipment, and in various attitudes). Enough often, can be reproduced of the civilians (such as a widowed woman and one (E) child) leaning on a tomb or holding a bouquet. In some cases, a combatant is shown supporting the body of his brother in arms. In Germany, the disappearance of the empire and the dissolution of the imperial army coinciding with the end of the war of 1914-18, the national reasons disappear; remain the warlike emblems (helmet, sword) or Christians (cross).

Regional idiosyncracies

In the French areas which underwent the engagements, the monuments insist more on misfortunes of the war (ruins, mourning, orphans), in a kind of indictment against the German crimes.

In the Alsace-Moselle the inscription " died for France" who follows the list of the names is replaced by formulas more " neutres" (" The commune of… with its enfants" , or " Died for Patrie"). Indeed the monuments gather on the same stele the names of the soldiers originating in the village whatever was their uniform. At the time of the First World War, the Alsace-Moselle being German, military deaths were it often under German uniform. It was still the case at the time of the second world war, during which the many Alsatian ones and Natives of the Moselle region were built-in of force (" In spite of us "). These villages often more than others are struck by the nonsense of the war, having seen their children entretuer under different uniforms.

Inscriptions

Traditional inscriptions

  • the commune of… with his/her dead children for (France/la Patrie)
  • the Latin proverb If screw pacem, para bellum , or its French translation If you want peace, prepares the war

Pacifist inscriptions

There exists some War memorials pacifist.

  • the union of the workers will make the peace of the world quotation of Anatole France on the monument of Mazaugues
  • Maudite is the war and its authors
  • Guerre with the war - Fraternity between the people
  • the war with the war
  • human Fraternité
  • Against the war and its victims, the fraternity of the people
  • the war is the massacre of people who do not know each other with the profit of people who know each other but do not massacre between them quotation of Paul Valéry on the monument of Saint-Appolinaire .
  • Denies wieder Krieg (never the war)

Calendar of the commemorations

The war memorials are the place of ceremonies, regular or exceptional, which commemorate the events to which they are devoted.
  • November 11th: Remembrance Day (the United Kingdom, Canada) Poppy Day (South Africa), Veterans' day (the USA), Day of the war veterans (France): date birthday the Armistice from the war of 1914-1918.
  • December 5th: Died for France of the War of Algeria and the combat of Morocco and Tunisia.
  • April 25th ANZAC Day (Australia and Nouvelle Zealand) commemorates the engagement of the Australian and New Zealand troops in the two world wars (but also of other conflicts) at the date anniversary of the Normandy landing of Gallipoli (1915).

Monuments on the battle field

Certain monuments, or memorials were built not on the national territory, but directly on foreign battle fields or near those.

It is the case in France of a great number of monuments to the memory of the allied or enemy troops (German cemetery in Normandy).

; France

Collective international monuments

Collective national monuments

Monuments anti-war

Some war memorials carry a pacifist message, is written ( That cursed is the war! ), is by their form even:

See also: War memorials pacifist

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • war memorials pacifist
  • For descriptions of war memorials pacifist
  • '' Recensement of the military steles '', (collaboratif project " MemorialGenWeb" association FranceGenWeb)
  • '' the fatherland in mourning '', article of Annette Becker
  • list of the memorials of the Armenian genocide.
  • List of the principal war memorials in India * '' Photos of war memorials set up in memory of Hairy of 1914-1918 ''
  • '' war memorials of the Pas-de-Calais ''
  • War memorial of 1914-1918 with [[Penzance]]
  • '' War memorials, photographs and lists of the soldiers '', (war memorials of the Basin of Montlucon - To combine and of the departments bordering Expensive, Creuse and Puy de Dôme - /Listes Photographs of the soldiers/birth date, of death, places & circumstances - Realized by pupils of the College Madam de Staël - 03100 Montlucon)
  • '' the War memorial of the Commune of Estival (Corrèze 19) - Nécrologe with accompanying notes - course of the Regiment - burials

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