Day 8 (Saturday): To Bayeux in Normandy
A Little History of Caen during World War II
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- Have the Full Experience of the Caen Mémorial Museum
- The Movies
- The Descent into Chaos
A Little History of Caen during World War IIThe German command center for Normandy was located in an underground bunker in Caen. So it is not surprising that the city was completely destroyed during the hundred days of battle following the Normandy landings. During this massive assault on “Fortress Europe,” that ultimately involved a total of 3 million men, the local residents of Caen paid a heavy price, along with the liberating forces. All across Normandy, civilians were trapped by these war efforts and crushed by the bombs. More than 20,000 inhabitants of Normandy were killed during the liberation, and towns were razed to the ground in the massive bombing attacks. To quote from the website for the Mémorial de Caen: “The war years taught people to live in a daily atmosphere of blind violence, inhuman treatment, racial hatred, aggression, rule bending and lawless behavior that had lost all power to surprise. The trivialization of all that is worst in us is part of the second world war’s tragic heritage.” Have the Full Experience of the Caen Mémorial Museum
If you purchased a Twin Ticket when you were at the Arromanches 360 Museum yesterday, you will be able to walk right in and skip the line. You may want to add the audio guide, which is excellent and will bring your visit to life. Watch the ticket line to purchase the audio guide when the line is relatively short. Today’s visit is best broken into segments, with a break at the museum restaurant. One possible schedule for your visit is to: 10:00 am showing of the Jour J (“D-Day”) movie. Arrive at least 10 minutes before the show starts. Follow the sign marked “Begin Visit Here” (“Debut de la Visite”), and enter the downward “spiral” that takes you from the end of World War I into the devastation of World War II. Meet up for an early lunch break before noon, followed by a walk through the Memorial Gardens. Then reenter the exhibits where you left off for another hour or so of immersion. Plan to meet around 2:00 pm in the gift shop or beneath the airplane suspended in the lobby. OPTIONAL: Visit the “Hall of Peace,” with exhibits where many different cultures define their concept of peace. OPTIONAL: Visit General Richter’s underground command post bunker at the foot of the Memorial. The Movies
Jour J (“D-Day”) is a powerful 15-minute film dramatizing the build up to the landings. By using dual images, the movie shows both the German and the Allied forces on the eve of the invasion. The Descent into Chaos Note the “Debut de la Visite” (“Start of Visit”) signs to your left as you enter the museum. This downward spiral draws you “helplessly downward into the abyss.” Beginning with the tentative peace at the end of World War I, your descent will take you through the stirrings and sequence of events that led to World War II. A series of media displays—magazine covers, newspaper clippings, video footage—demonstrates the “gradual unhinging of a world that had just found peace.”
The peace that was negotiated after World War I in the Treaty of Versailles, and guaranteed by the League of Nations, was swiftly challenged and threatened by the rise of totalitarian governments. As you descend the curving ramp, you will witness a Germany trapped in an increasing spiral of debt and economic misery. These hardships spread to the rest of Europe, with severe impact on Wall Street in 1929. This set in motion a chain of cause and effect that precipitated the “disintegration of the ideal of peace,” the rise of Hitler, and the Second World War. You will see amazing footage that chronicles the Nuremberg rallies in the 1920s and 30s, the rise of fascism, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the financial crash of Germany, and Hitler’s being named Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933. At the bottom of the spiral, you will view exhibits, documents and photographs that display the rise of Nazism—a force that “seemed completely unstoppable at the time.” You will enter a “dark sphere, resonating with the distorted voice of Hitler, accompanied by the sound of marching boots.” You will pass through exhibits that depict the “Phony War,” where a weary France gathered what remained of its forces behind the Maginot Line, and engaged in a “strategy of waiting.” This was followed by a brief but violent month of actual fighting that culminated in French defeat in June 1940. German forces arrived in an undefended Paris on June 14, 1940. In a circular room, you will stand surrounded by woods, listening to actual recordings of voices from the train car where France signed its terms of surrender. Under the terms of this armistice, Germany would occupy the north and west of France, Italy would control a small Italian occupation zone in the south-east, and the remaining unoccupied zone, the zone libre, would be governed by the French Vichy government, led by the French Marshal Pétain. As you proceed through “France in the Dark Years”— the four years of the Nazi occupation—you will be faced with the range of options available to the occupied citizens of France… Disobey? Resist? Wait? Collaborate? You will experience the French feeling of helplessness “as onlookers of the barbarity.” Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2016 2016 -> 2017 afoCo Landmark Scholarship Program 2016 -> Instructions for the Preparation of Camera-Ready Contributions to the Conference Proceedings 2016 -> Step student Scholarships for Year 10-13 2016 -> The united church of canada 2016 -> Idan raichel biography – May 2016 Brief Producer, keyboardist, Lyricist, composer and Performer Idan Raichel 2016 -> An introduction to centre’s interventions expanding access to justice 2016 -> Sanchar Shakti 2016 -> Unit analysis should help here. We want number of bananas 2016 -> The Autobiography of Elder Joseph Bates 2016 -> The Great Heat and the Rhode Island Deep Water Bay Scallop (Argopecten irradians) Fishery 1875-1905 Download 6.05 Mb. Share with your friends:
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