France and Germany together in Armistice Day

Across several countries in Europe and other parts of the world people have been commemorating today the end of four years of fighting in what was World War I. It began in 1914 and ended with the defeat of Germany in 1918. A terrible war from which not much was learned as just two decades later another terrible war began in the same battleground, Europe. The Germans were defeated a second time in 1945 and the process of rebuilding the continent started. For many years old wounds remained among the old enemies but eventually some countries began to reach out to one another to heal them. Today for the first time since the armistice that ended World War I a German leader joined French officials to commemorate the end of that war in which millions of lives were lost. The German chancellor Angela Merkel and the French president Nicolas Sarkozy stood side by side before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc deTriomphe in Paris. As President Sarkozy said, the commemoration was not one of one people’s victory over another but of “an ordeal which was equally terrible on both sides.”