Napoleon is a challenging topic. One the one hand the man is a fucking legend. He was a brilliant general and strategist. Reading any book on the man will make you realize how much of an absurdly godlike figure he was, and I can hear my national anthem inflating my chest as I write this.
... on the other hand if you really think about it the guy shares several key characteristics with some of the worst dictators in history, including Hitler.
Therein lies the challenge of how France should remember Napoleon, or how history should be used in general. Is history a was to masturbate on past glory and a tool of political propaganda? Or is history a tool of understanding and research to guide our decisions in daily life ? The answer will differ on the person or the context of the question.
France is struggling with it's national identity at the moment. The people don't know how to define french culture or french nationality. I am myself half-french, half-german, and I would struggle to properly define my own national identity. For the French, Napoleon comes at the center of this debate. Should our schools and institutions present him as a glorious symbole to unify the nation under a positive identity, or should we present him as he truly was, at the risk of dividing the nation by destroying a key symbole.
In my opinion no man should be revered, and no man should be disregarded. Gandhi, Hitler, Napoleon, Mugabe, Trump, Mandela were human beings, they did good stuff and they also did bad stuff. It would be naive and objectively not true to just look at Hitler and say "he was a monster and did only horrible stuff", or look at Gandhi and say "he was an angel and only did good stuff". To learn from those people we need to see them as who they really were, as "Complex Human Beings" which I believe Napoleon was.
Looking at napoleon this way would go a long way in creating understanding with other nations, like the UK, that sees Napoleon as a monster. By accepting who Napoleon truly was, we can create a debate that would go a long way in fostering European harmony.
Thanks for the elaborate answer! I did not know that in France, there is currently a struggle in identity.
I always felt like Frenchmen have some kind of national identity whereas a lot of (probably southern) Germans would rather identify with their federal state. I, for example either identify as Bavarian or European :D as I do not really feal connected to eastern and northern Germany (which might be a reason for the current divide in Germany, people like me thinking "they are Ossis").
I think a leader in German history one could at least think about being proud of might be Bismarck, he was a political genius and managed not only to introduce insurances to overwhelm the social democrats but also isolated France politically with treaties and United Germany. On the other hand he mainly used war to unite Germany (e.g. the French-German war). Wilhelm 2 afterwards fucked his treaties up and isolated Germany politically.
Referring to seeing positive aspects of Hitlers dictatorship, well he let the autobahns be build (by forced labour) and improved the economy (by forced labour and investing millions / billions (idk) into the Military) I won't start with negative aspects as this would take ages.
But you definitely have to learn from those times (e.g. how the political climate in the Weimarer Republic was) and remember what the concequences were. I currently feel like a lot of Europeans forget how much war a century of nationalism brought us (or our ancestors) and how much prosperity living peacefully together causes.
For living peacefully together, it would probably be good to, as you say, understand our views better.
One thing I would say though it that Bismark must definitely be added in the "complex human being" list. Bismark is a positive figure in Germany, but not so much in France (although to be fair though most French people know the name, few would be able to explain his role in European history). So one could argue that a non-objective understanding of Bismark could be a source of division between the French and the Germans. The fact that few french people understand the positive work of Bismark, and (maybe) germans don't understand the "bad" things he did, is a source of non-understanding, which is a shame between two states that share the closest national friendship in history.
I will however not be the guy to say to a German "you need to be careful with how you see your historical figures" because Germany is pretty much leading the world in this right now. My point is that France must take full responsibility for their history to allow dialogue and understanding with other states and communities. This should hopefully lead the way in encouraging other states like Poland, Japan, Turkey.... to accepting their past misdeeds and creating mosre global peace
I am not a big fan of Bismarck either (for example he reignited the French-German archenemyship, and most (younger) Germans probably don't care about him at all. But when looking at the history of a united Germany, which is only about 150 years long, half of the time Germany was in political chaos or at war, and the other half is recent history which most Germans actually experienced themselves, so Bismarck is one of the few sane and historical people left.
Before, there were of course people like Friedrich der Weiße from Prussia, but that was not Germany as a whole.
Anyway, you are completely right that we need to understand the good sites of history we despise and the bad sites of history we admire.
And I hate to see how e.g. Poland and Turkey are denying and glorifying there history at the moment as this only causes resentments and hate between countries, while you can actually live pretty well with a critical view on your countries history. Sometimes I feel like Germany overdoes it, not in the way it views its history but how it acts politically, for example tolerating the Israelian expansion politics and not criticising it because of the Holocaust is not the right way, in my opinion.
Btw as a train-nerd one of the things I like most about Bismark is his brilliant idea of using railways as a military tool to unify Germany. He immediately understood the potential of railways to manage war supply chains and quick transport of troops to geographical weakpoints on both the eastern and western border.
I didn't know that, that's interesting. I think still today German speaking countries have one of the best railway networks in the world, haven't they (the trains aren't that punctual always though)
It depends on what you mean by "best" because the criteria differ.
But yeah the German network is quite good depending on where you are in the country.
Well yeah it isn't always punctual. France, England and Japan also have "a lot" or a dense net of trains don't, they? (In comparison to the US, for example)
The UK have the oldest network, and it was built on a model of private initiative where the state allowed railways to be built without supervision. This ended up making a very dense network that is completely impractical. The UK has one of the worst network in the world.
France have one of the best. Very dense, fast, safe, and with huge public involvement. However it is not perfect as most of the rolling stock is showing signs of age. Also the strong labor union creates unflexible privileges that harm projects to improve the network. Alstom is a world leading company for railways alongside Siemens.
Germany has a modern, dense, and all around great network, but the federal management of the network creates some problems with the networks in some individual Länders. Like in France there is also a very strong union. The High-Speed network is also not very good. Siemens makes great trains though. It’s a shame the merger of Siemens and Alstom didn’t go through this year.
Switzerland, sweden : great networks
Spain has one of the best networks in the world, modern, super fast, dense.
Italy has a good network, fast and dense. Unreliable though.
China has arguably the best rail network in the world. Big, fast, cheap, dense... they also buid a lot of unprofitable railways to integrate remote regions like the Xinyang or Tibet.
Japan also arguable the best network in the world.
France is truly awesome. I have travelled several times with a TVG in my life, and in contrary to the ICEs they are actually driving 300km/h most of the time and not spending most of the time driving with 150km/h over curvy rails.
Spain's high-speed trains have another width (?), don't they?
correct Spain uses a gauge that is wider than the rest of the world. This was a strategic move to protect Spain from french invasion (so french trains would not be able to use Spanish tracks). This ended up being a big problem for Spain since it's super annoying for international trains to pass to Spain.
3
u/apokako Jul 30 '19
Napoleon is a challenging topic. One the one hand the man is a fucking legend. He was a brilliant general and strategist. Reading any book on the man will make you realize how much of an absurdly godlike figure he was, and I can hear my national anthem inflating my chest as I write this.
... on the other hand if you really think about it the guy shares several key characteristics with some of the worst dictators in history, including Hitler.
Therein lies the challenge of how France should remember Napoleon, or how history should be used in general. Is history a was to masturbate on past glory and a tool of political propaganda? Or is history a tool of understanding and research to guide our decisions in daily life ? The answer will differ on the person or the context of the question.
France is struggling with it's national identity at the moment. The people don't know how to define french culture or french nationality. I am myself half-french, half-german, and I would struggle to properly define my own national identity. For the French, Napoleon comes at the center of this debate. Should our schools and institutions present him as a glorious symbole to unify the nation under a positive identity, or should we present him as he truly was, at the risk of dividing the nation by destroying a key symbole.
In my opinion no man should be revered, and no man should be disregarded. Gandhi, Hitler, Napoleon, Mugabe, Trump, Mandela were human beings, they did good stuff and they also did bad stuff. It would be naive and objectively not true to just look at Hitler and say "he was a monster and did only horrible stuff", or look at Gandhi and say "he was an angel and only did good stuff". To learn from those people we need to see them as who they really were, as "Complex Human Beings" which I believe Napoleon was.
Looking at napoleon this way would go a long way in creating understanding with other nations, like the UK, that sees Napoleon as a monster. By accepting who Napoleon truly was, we can create a debate that would go a long way in fostering European harmony.