Its heritage may be anonymous graveyards and its bequest may have been the Second World War, but World War I was fought and won no less by American heroes who deserve a bolder remembrance than we have given them.
And the absence of an official “national” WWI monument, and the local D.C. monument that sits overgrown, overshadowed, and startlingly underwhelming, are both manifestations of the sober but malnourished sense of honor afforded by the American consciousness to the victors of the Great War.
“The chronicle of its battles provides the dreariest literature in military history; no brave trumpets sound in memory for the drab millions who plodded to death on the featureless plains of Picardy and Poland; no litanies are sung for the leaders who coaxed them to slaughter,” writes John Keegan in his essential work The First World War.
Because of the time and space in which it was fought, the First World War left mass graves in place of battlefields; farmers in Europe–most commonly France–still turn them up from time to time.
But the peace that ended the war became the chief antagonist for the next. Germany lost not just the war, but its navy and air force and most of its army; its territory in Prussia and Poland; and, possibly first and foremost, its pride in having to beg the Allies to lift the blockade so it could breathe again. This was too much for them, and the roots of resentment budded and blossomed before the ink was dry.
That’s how devastating the Allied victory was–it brought Germany to its knees. Such a victory in such a war should have pride of place in our collective military memory. Yet, there is no national memorial to WWI, and the memorial that sits in Washington, D.C. is an embarrassment. It is essentially a stone gazebo, the erosion of which and steady growth of foliage around it serving to slowly erase the physical monument from its surroundings, which include stunning memorials to WWII, the Vietnam War, the Korean War. After the Nazis rose to power President Franklin Roosevelt closed our borders to those fleeing genocide–yet FDR has a significantly more elaborate monument than that of WWI. It is unjust.
Federal money was allocated to revitalize the memorial and work began this month. But that work will only refresh the existing monument:
Contractors will clean and restore the stone and repoint the memorial’s joints. Electrical systems and lighting will be replaced. Landscaping will be overhauled and nonnative plants removed to restore an open lawn around the memorial. New bluestone paving will be modeled on the original 1930s design.
National Mall Superintendent John Piltzecker said the work will allow the memorial to again be used for concerts and other events.
They are cleaning the stone so they can have concerts around it. The monument to the First World War is demonstrative of the war’s atmosphere of anonymity and the proposed restoration only “restores” us to this mindset. Compare that with the National World War II Memorial, which consists of a granite pillar for each state and territory, arches for the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, walls in a semicircle carved with scenes from the war, and the Freedom Wall with gold stars representing the fallen all around a fountain pool:
The WWI memorial (left) and the WWII memorial
The National World War II Memorial was finished and dedicated finally during the Bush administration, which had to fend off opposition from leftists who wanted the space left open to use to protest against our military and those who simply found the idea of military victory unpalatable. (The Boston Globe quoted one leader of the anti-monument movement as saying: “People come to the Mall to understand who we are as a country and what we aspire to. War is not what we aspire to.”)
The National World War II Memorial does justice to the memory of the sacrifice of our armed forces to defeat an enemy whose danger to the world could not be exaggerated. The First World War deserves the same.
About the victims of WWII, Timothy Snyder wrote:
“The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, some of which we can only estimate, some of which we can reconstruct with fair precision. It is for us as scholars to seek these numbers and to put them into perspective. It is for us as humanists to turn the numbers back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity.”
Can we not also say the same of the victims and the casualties of World War I and its villains?
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