1. It can't be underlined enough how important the First World War is to France's national self-conception. Trump's failure to attend the memorial is a huge diplomatic insult.
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4. Partly its a matter of timing & of casualties. USA entered WWI very late (in 1917), missed the brutal years of trench warfare and ended up with 53,402 dead (as against 4 year of WWII with 291,557 dead.
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5. By contrast, for the European nations, military deaths (as agains civilian) were much larger in WWI. France lost 1,150,000 soldiers in WWI, 210,000 in WW2. England: 744,000 in WWI, 383,700 in WW2
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6. But beyond the sheer numbers of dead, the war played a major role in shaping national mythologies. Verdun carries a resonance in France that it doesn't in the USA. Marne. Vimy Ridge, Gallipoli, the Somme. These are sacred names in other lands.
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7. (Sorry, in tweet #5 I should've said Britain rather than England).
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8. To underscore the argument: the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War is a really big deal in France, much of Europe, and the Commonwealth. Imagine a foreign leader shrugging off attending similar anniversary of, say, Gettysburg.
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Wouldn't they be glad not have such an important commemoration besmirched by his presence?
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The fact that the US no longer commemorates Armistice Day may have something to do with this. While it’s important to acknowledge the sacrifices Veterans have made, we are also missing an opportunity to reflect on the horrors of war, especially one fought for dubious reasons.
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The "big war" for the USA is WWII, but I would say that the mountain under whose shadow we live, the war that was most traumatizing for Americans, and whose effects have influenced us most deeply in a similar way that WWI does for Europe, is the Civil War. trump shows it daily.
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Russia and other parts of the former Sov Union also see WW II as the BIG ONE (“Great Patriotic War”).
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The UK a bit different: WWI has a lot of emotional resonance (the centenary has been an enormous public event) but also gets conflated into the 'world wars', where WW2 mostly dominates. Wrote this in 2013 on how public can struggle to tell the wars aparthttps://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2013/08/from-sundersays.html …
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That caveat aside, your point (2) is valid and important. First World War perhaps has, in some ways, also some parallels to Vietnam in US in its cultural importance
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