“War remains a historical constant”

As a teenager, Stéphane Grimaldi visited the battlefields of the 1914-1918 war. Having become a historian, he has made the war his subject of study and is preparing to step down after 17 years at the head of the Mémorial de Caen. He analyzes the way in which war crosses societies.

Each conflict has its heritage, its memory. It is still early to say, but what traces could the war in Ukraine leave?

Every war is different. The First World War remains a war of fronts, therefore of soldiers, which counts 9 million deaths, few among the civilians. It marks the end of the central empires which, with the war in Ukraine, again become a subject. The Second World War is an ideological confrontation. It kills more civilians than soldiers in Europe and Asia.

What will be the memory of the conflict u