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The War That Changed the World

Factual: History

The effect of World War One from a global perspective

One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again.

The War That Changed the World: France: Heroism

Factual

Paris: Heroism

06/12/2014

France: Heroism

BBC World Service - The War That Changed the World, France: Heroism

How World War One killed the ancient idea of heroism

How did World War One destroy the ancient idea of heroism? Amanda Vickery explores valour and panache with experts and an audience at Les Invalides, Paris.

"The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue" said Napoleon. Life in the trenches during the war, amongst rats, mud, shelling, barbed wire and unprecedented numbers of dead, called upon new reserves of both. But what did the war do to the ancient idea of heroism? With death, degradation and grief on such an unprecedented scale how did the concepts of duty, sacrifice and honour survive? At Napoleon's last resting place, the Hôtel National des Invalides, on the centenary of the outbreak of the first industrialised war, Amanda Vickery, her guests and audience explore heroism and World War One. With more women entering the work place than ever before, did the war redefine what it meant to be a man as well as a woman?

She is joined by André Loez, Sciences Po Paris and Emmanuelle Cronier, University of Picardie, and professor of literature Laurence Campa from L'université de Paris Ouest Nanterre and an audience in Paris. Christian Carion, joins them to explore the Christmas Truce - the subject of his Oscar-nominated film Joyeux Noël - in an essay on courage selected by our partners the British Council. It marks the centenary of the spontaneous ceasefire which took place across the Western Front at Christmas 1914.

(Photo: An undated archive picture shows French soldiers moving a 95 mm cannon, on the rear guard near the front, at unknown location in France, 1916 World War One)
(Credit: Reuters)

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