They hope to spare the susceptibility of the 6

On 11 November, celebrated in France with more luster this year books,... emissions it's his ninetieth birthday, does not exist in German memory. Amnesia losers Not only. In 1918, the Germans have head elsewhere. Since 30 October, beginning of the mutinies of the sailors in Kiel, the revolutionary events move. November 7, Kurt Eisner form a Republican government in Bavaria, 10, Guillaume II is exiled to the Netherlands (he died there in 1941). The same day, German, exclusively civil delegates reach hard Rethondes, where they receive the Marechal Foch the conditions of the armistice. The German high command, Hindenburg and Ludendorff in mind, refuses the idea of defeat: the civilians to take their responsibilities. 11, After the signing of the armistice, the Marshal publishes an explicit release: "...". We leave the head high and full of pride in the struggle for more than four years against a world of enemies. In the consciousness of having defended our country and our honour to the end, we draw new energy. "The politicians of the new Republic in turn sing the refrain of an undefeated army. They hope to spare the susceptibility of the 6.5 million of exhausted and frustrated soldiers returning en masse to civilian life. Despite this, takes body legend army betrayed by the "stab in the back kick" civilians. The extreme right, will make his honey under the Weimar Republic. And in 1940, after the invasion of the France, the "völkiche beobachter", journal of the nazi party, will salute the event by a drawing. A soldier of the Wehrmacht makes their flag at a group of soldiers of the great war and said to them: "You were winners still."

If November 11 means nothing for the Germans, the French, it is a moment of liesse. Even though the faces remain serious: the Spanish flu has run rampant. Yet, in a first move, the French were suspicious of the German peace proposal. With the "Hun", there is nothing to wait.

An original angle

Write the history of the great war, birth of the 20th century, and part of the trench by confronting the points of view, it is the original "Great war" angle, subtitle: "A Franco-German history", adopted by the historians Jean-Jacques Becker and Gerd Krumeich, Emeritus Professor at Paris X - Nanterre and Professor of history at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf. One is President of the centre for research of the Historial of the great war to Péronne, where, for the first time, the history of this period was written by an international team; the other led by Germany an encyclopedia of the great war.

In their work in four hands, Becker and Krumeich present points of view of civilians, soldiers, military leaders, policy makers of hand and across the Rhine; they are the moral one and the other, the degree of mobilisation of each country, the evolution of opinions. The "outworn" spirit of the French, for example, been overestimated, nationalist of some bluster have never held place program. The radical party, dominant political force, Patriot and pacifist. The Germans are in any other provision of mind. Diplomatic reconciliations Franco, Franco-Russian, Anglo persuaded them to an "encirclement". And if, Paris, 14-18 war is first a Franco-German war, the second of its kind for the Germans, the main enemy is the United Kingdom. Verdun, symbol in the French imagination of a victorious resistance, is on the German side the proof of the cynicism of a high command despising lives, etc.

Pages, Jean-Jacques Becker and Gerd Krumeich draw a different conflict of the story made national vulgates long. "The great war" is a feast for the mind.