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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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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Americans generally behave like european history began in 1945
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It's a great thread - but it's REALLY important you don't confuse England and Britain in this context. Please fix. Thanks.
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Americans don't comprehend that Europe literally lost a generation of men. It's imbued in national psyches of European powers in a way that maybe not even WWII registers for Americans.
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and 1.7m Germans, 1.8m Russians and 1m Austrians. We don’t tend to just think of the allies. It’s just that Turkey and Austria signed their armistices several days earlier and the 11th is the final armistice.
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UK mate. Not England.
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I honestly had no idea France lost over a million soldiers in WWI. That’s incredible. Thanks for this educational thread.
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Not to mention newly 4m wounded, many crippled. This loss, roughly 5m out of a pop of ~45m, absolutely destroyed France demographically, especially as that group consisted of young men in the prime of their lives.
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