WWI centenary to be marked in London and Paris, not Berlin

BERLIN (AP):

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on French soil, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be in London for a ceremony in Westminster Abbey with Queen Elizabeth.

But while Germany's leaders visit the capitals of its wartime enemies, at home, there are no national commemorations planned for the centenary of the November 11 armistice that ended the four-year war that left 17 million dead, including more than two million German troops.

Next week, the German parliament is holding a combined commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the declaration of the first German republic, the 80th anniversary of the brutal Nazi-era pogrom against Jews known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), and the 29th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Almost as an afterthought, parliament notes that there's also art exhibition in the lobby called '1914/1918 - Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever'.

More than just being on the losing side of World War I, it's what came next that is really behind Germany's lack of commemorative events.

For Germany, the November 11 armistice did not mean peace, like it did in France and Britain. The war's end gave rise to revolution and street fighting between far-left and far-right factions. It also brought an end to the monarchy, years of hyperinflation, widespread poverty, and hunger and helped create the conditions that brought the Nazis to power in 1933.

The horrific legacy of the Holocaust and the mass destruction of World War II simply overshadows everything else in Germany, said Daniel Schoenpflug, a historian at Berlin's Free University's Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute. His new book, A World on Edge, explores the immediate aftermath of the war through individual perspectives.