The Search for Meaning

France struggled to find meaning in unprecedented sacrifice. 1.4 million dead—proportionally the highest losses of any major combatant—demanded explanation. Every village mourned multiple losses. Families destroyed, bloodlines ended, potential unrealized. How could such sacrifice be justified?

Official commemoration emphasized patriotic sacrifice. Monuments aux morts arose in every commune, listing names of local dead. November 11 became national holiday celebrating victory. The Unknown Soldier, interred beneath the Arc de Triomphe in 1920, symbolized anonymous sacrifice for national glory. These rituals provided structure for grief while affirming sacrifice's value.

Yet private grief often conflicted with public commemoration. Mothers who had lost only sons found little comfort in patriotic rhetoric. Widows struggling with poverty resented speeches about glory. Mutilated veterans begging on streets contradicted claims about grateful nations. Simone Weil wrote: "They speak of victory, but I see only an absence—empty chairs, unused beds, photographs of boys who will never age."

Religious responses varied dramatically. Some found comfort in faith—suffering as divine test, death as gateway to reunion. Pilgrimages to battlefields became forms of religious observance. Yet others lost faith entirely. How could benevolent God permit such slaughter? Priests who had blessed weapons and promised divine protection faced theological crisis. The war accelerated French secularization even as it drove some toward mysticism.

Intellectual attempts to derive meaning produced vast literature. Historians sought war's causes in diplomatic failures. Philosophers pondered civilization's collapse. Psychologists studied trauma's effects. Yet no explanation seemed adequate to the event's magnitude. Paul Valéry captured intellectuals' bewilderment: "The war proved everything we believed about progress, reason, and civilization was illusion. We are left with rubble of certainties."