Unscathed to face the oncoming attackers. The Germans simply hid in their deep and reinforced dugouts until the barrage ended, emerging largely The Somme offensive opened with a massive artillery bombardment, which lasted five days and did little to knock out enemy troops and artillery guns. It was hoped the assault on a 25 km section of theįront would not only break the stalemate, but relieve pressure on beleaguered French forces defending against the long-running German assault further south, at Verdun. 1 July 1916Īfter two years of stalemate in the vast trench works held by the Allied and German armies on the Western Front, the British launched a massive offensive in the Somme River valley in northern France. It’s about the 15 minutes when the young people will fill the cemetery grounds.Canadian soldiers returning from the Battle of the Somme in France, November 1916. It’s also not about national anthems being played for the umpteenth time. “It’s not about flames that will be rekindled. “The important thing is to take the ceremony from the politicians and the military and give it to the youth,” Schloendorff said. Schloendorff, the director, told DPA that the remembrance of Verdun was in the hands of the younger generation. In the afternoon, they visited the newly redesigned Verdun Memorial in the village of Fleury-devant-Douaumont.īut the main part of the ceremony was the inclusion of 4,000 young people, orchestrated in part to pass on a historical consciousness of a battle that none of the participants is alive to remember.
Yesterday morning Hollande and Merkel visited a cemetery for German soldiers, accompanied by two children from each country as they laid a wreath under a grey sky and pouring rain. In 1984, French President Francois Mitterand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl clasped hands over graves. The bloodbath claimed 300,000 soldiers on both sides 400,000 others were wounded in a battle that typified trench combat in attrition warfare.ĭespite the scale of destruction, the Battle of Verdun is considered by historians to have had limited strategic use, changing the front lines of combat very little.īut it has taken on symbolic value as a site of reconciliation. The Battle of Verdun lasted more than nine months, pitting the German and the French against one another on a small area of northeastern France that still shows signs of the combat.įrench historians say that the remains of thousands of soldiers are still scattered across the former battlefield.
Merkel said the lessons of unity should be applied to contemporary challenges like the refugee crisis. “The forces of division, separation and isolation are at work again,” Hollande warned. The French president said that the site was at once a representation of “the worst, where Europe was lost 100 years ago, and also the best, where the city has been capable of investing in and uniting for peace and friendship between France and Germany”.īoth leaders called for European unity, warning against state-centric thinking that is a throwback to the past. only those who know the past are able to take lessons from it in order to ensure a good future,” Merkel said, calling Verdun a symbol for “the unbelievable atrocity and futility of war, as well as for lessons learned and French-German reconciliation”. “We are all called upon to keep memories alive in the future. The two countries have been the driving force behind greater European integration. The leaders were in Verdun to pay tribute to the battle and send a signal of lasting German-French co-operation. Merkel and Hollande applauded when the production ended, standing and walking onto the field where the artistic re-enactment – created by award-winning German director Volker Schloendorff – had taken place.
The production was performed in front of French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Verdun – one of the longest, and bloodiest battles of the war. Pulling and pushing each other, arms locked in mock combat, 4,000 young people from France and Germany created a tribute yesterday to the soldiers who fought at Verdun during World War I.Īfter running through the woods to appear on a green field, the young people – indecipherable by country and dressed in colourful T-shirts – lined up against one another and engaged in mock struggles to a fast-paced drumbeat, before freezing and collapsing when a figure symbolising death appeared.
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