News for the Polynational War Memorial

Contrasting impressions on Omaha Beach

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 19:12:21 +0100

This is the second article in a series of reports from a trip to the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy and its surroundings that was made by the author in August 2009.

The English Channel and its beaches lies right in front of me as I arrive at the beachfront at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer by bus in the late afternoon. It’s a cloudy, warm day in late August. I take a few steps out on the sand and I’m literary standing on Omaha Beach, on the very same place where US soldiers landed on that eventful and bloody morning of the day that the historians call D-Day. Yet there is not much at first sight that reminds of the horrifying battles in which thousands of soldiers died. Over the coming days I will learn that there’s a memorial or war museum at every turn in this part of France but at the moment I’m staring at the few holidaymakers going about doing whatever it is holidaymakers do: windsurfing, swimming, sunbathing. But the holiday season seem to be more or less over here and the beach is quite empty.

Then a huge metal sculpture in the middle of the beach catch my eye. It resembles a bunch of broad, pointed, sword blades or metal sails protruding from the sand several meters into the air. Anilore Banon’s monument Les Braves (The Braves) is not a traditional, monolithic war memorial and I have to step up to an information board close to it to assure myself that it has something to do with D-Day, which it indeed has.

Banon’s sculpture group is not a really a comfortable piece of art where it stands in the middle of sunbathers and tourists. It somehow resembles an abstract image of a mortar hit throwing sand high in the air among soaked and bleeding men who try to escape death by running from their landing vessels over the beach to an uncertain fate. But even if you could see the monument as a symbolic depiction of chaos and threat it’s not overly sorrowful. The light, matte, metal surface that reflects the sky and the ocean seem also to communicate a feeling of hope and redemption, perhaps liberation. I found these conflicting emotions to be augmented by the asymmetries of the shapes. Banon manages to handle these contrasts very well. And it’s quite obvious that contrasts can not be avoided here.

This part of Normandy will for a long time function both as a resort for the holidaymakers, a place for remembrance of the killed soldiers and a destination for researchers and war-tourists as myself. Those who come here to remember their relatives or comrades may be hard to spot on the beach but I will meet them when I later visit the many cemeteries and memorials that are not directly on the beachfront.

It’s on the other hand impossible for the sun-worshiping beach-dwellers to ignore the fact that this place is not the ordinary holiday paradise. Over the coming days I will come across numerous small memorials and bunkers and there are several museums aside the roads down to the beaches that are a must for any tourist or first-time holidaymaker here. A good example is the Memorial Museum of Omaha Beach (Musée Mémorial d’Omaha Beach) which is located some 300 meters from the beachfront on the road to the village Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.

While this museum with its 1200 square meters may be somewhat bigger than most of the similar private museums that you stumble across in the vicinity of the landing beaches it’s quite typical for its kind. The museum showcases a large collection of weapons, vehicles, uniforms, weapons and other equipment and there are lot of maps, texts and signs that guide you through the story of the D-day landings. Even though the exhibition had its charming moments I found it to be a hotchpotch of equipment cramped into a too small building. The information design was lacking in far too many ways, and by populating the dioramas with shop mannequins in uniform the exhibition failed for most parts to communicate any emotions. But you have to take these kind of museums for what they are (or at least, seem to be): small, private, slow-growing enterprises that took advantage of an abundance of abandoned vehicles, uniforms and weapons and tried to meet a huge demand from visiting tourists and holidaymakers who want to learn more about the events. And those visitors do seem to love it. During my hour-long stay the museum was full of people. And yes, I did buy a souvenir as well.

After the first day at the beachfront of Omaha Beach I must admit that I felt a bit confused. I had traveled to visit the scene of one of the major battles of World War II and now found myself in a holiday paradise - in a place where the traumatic and dramatic history of the past seemed to be intangibly intertwined with the leisure of the present.

Facts about tourism in Basse-Normandy

According to statistics presented by the French Ministry for Crafts, Trade, and Tourism (which is a part of the Ministry of Productive Recovery) more than 2,8 million hotel rooms were booked in Basse-Normandie (Lower Normandy) in 2012 and of them almost 580,000 were made by foreigners. I have not found any information how many of these bookings was with the aim to explore the landing beaches or other memorials or cemeteries relating to the invasion of Normandy.

Wanås Master Plan: documentation video

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 10:11:14 +0100

In early 2008 I was invited by the curators Marika Wachtmeister and Elna Svenle to present the Polynational War Memorial at Wanås Art, which is located on the estate of Wanås Castle in Southern Sweden. This cooperation resulted in the first full scale experiment of the Polynational War Memorial being created for the park of the estate. The video presented in connection with the article documents the process of creating this work.

Wanås Art is the organizer of an annual art exhibition of high international standard which has included works of renowned artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Dan Graham and Maya Lin. The beautiful park and forest includes a large number of permanent site-specific sculptures that were created specifically for these exhibitions that were first organized over twenty years ago. There are also several exhibition spaces for temporary or permanent exhibitions that are run by Wanås Art.

The title of the 21st version of the Wanås exhibtion in 2008 was Loss and it focused on expressions for remembrance and memorials. One of the curators, Elna Svenle, wrote her introduction to the exhibition in the catalog: "The heart of the Wanås 2008 exhibition Loss is composed of works of art created to the memory of an actual event, but none of them can be labeled monuments in a traditional sense. The artists have shaped these alternative memorials without a commission from a country or a concerned organization. Thus they have been able to use materials and expressions suited to other places than public ones, choosing instead such forms as drawings, photographs, video, postal cards, silhouettes or text".

The exhibition included works of 17 artists. One of the centerpieces was the work "American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not including the wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghanis)" by American artist Emily Prince which consisted of an entire wall filled with her small drawings of American soldiers. Another significant work was a huge clock by Esther Shalev-Gerz titled "Les Inséparables" which still hangs over the main entrance to Wanås exhibition space.

My proposal to Wanås was to make a full scale experiment of the Polynational War Memorial for the park. The three architecture projects had just been completed and I had made the first designs for a master plan for the memorial site. The park of Wanås had an ideal size that would fit the master plan perfectly. It was thus an outstanding opportunity to present the architecture in full scale in a way so that it would be possible to feel the extent of the memorial site in your body just by walking around in a fictionalized copy of it.

Being inspired by banners and information boards that can be found at construction sites, with 3D images or CAD-drawings of the architecture that is about to be built, I decided to create five such information boards that would include 3D imagery that showed what the scenery in front of them would look like if the memorial complex was to be built there. These boards would be installed in the park along existing pathways at spots that would be accessible and at the same time offer good vista points for the memorial complex.

To be able to complete this task I created a simple 3D model of the area from a topographic map and inserted my building complexes in it. Photographs were shot from the vista points and matched with the 3D model. Renderings from the model, informative texts and maps were used to create layouts that were printed with UV resistant ink on acrylic glass for maximal durability. These prints were then mounted on metal stands of welded steel which were erected at the vista points.

I also created a visitor map with a walking course to the five information stands. On several occasions during the exhibition period I gave one-hour-long guided tours following the the route, in which I presented the project and the architecture in detail.

The guiding created a synthesis between the existing landscape and the descriptions of my fictional place that I found to be very interesting. At many occasions I could for example use the height of the trees or distance to surrounding landmarks to enhance my narration. I also found that the healing qualities of the breathtakingly beautiful landscape added a dimension to my project.

The project was overall very well received even though a few visitors misinterpreted it as a proposal for an actual building project at the site, despite my efforts to inform visitors that my installation was not a suggestion that Wanås ought to be one of the locations where the complex should be built. It was rather an excellent opportunity, because of the theme of the exhibition and the scale and features of the park, to experience the unbuilt architecture for the project in full scale. The work was an experiment with space and scale while at the same time being informative. I was extremely happy with the result.

The list of wars since 1900 just got longer

Thu, 01 Aug 2013 22:21:59 +0100

As you may already have noticed I maintain a list of wars since 1900 on this website. That list is important in the sense that it was the urge to learn about the wars of the last century that eventually led to the start of the Polynational War Memorial Project. More importantly, it also serves as an important reference point and historical background to all memorials presented here. To be honest I always saw the list as a complement and I was never really interested in making it perfect. I’ve updated it every year with new conflicts and added some functionality and texts but that was basically it. The first part of the list more or less stayed the same for years.But I’ve noticed by analyzing website traffic that the list has become one of the most popular pages on the site and I’ve realized that I need to to keep it tidy, updated and well referenced and I’m currently doing just that: filling in the gaps, updating texts, referencing fatality data and adding functionality.

That’s why, as you may have noticed, the list of wars since 1900 grew longer in the last few days. The reason is because I’m now basing the first part of the list, up to 1946, on the latest battle-deaths datasets from Correlates of War (COW)[1] which were released in 2010, and it turned out that COW:s datasets included many minor wars that weren’t included in my list from the beginning. For wars from 1946 to today I’m relying on the datasets from Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). COW, PRIO and UCDP all use fatality data based on battle-deaths, with which means militaries and civilians killed in the course of fighting for the military goals of the belligerents. The numbers therefore mostly, but not always, exclude deaths that were not caused directly by warfare, such as famine, genocidal acts or disease [2].

There are exceptions (such as the Armenian genocide) that I believe are not included in a satisfactory way but I’m working on that. There are still gaps to fill, flaws to fix and solutions to be found. And even though I have since long accepted that the list will never be ”complete” I still believe that the updated version is a great improvement. I hope that you’ll agree with me.

[1] Correlatesofwar.org, Sarkees, Meredith Reid and Frank Wayman (2010). Resort to War: 1816 - 2007. CQ Press
[2] See the article on sources

Upgrades (and a note on conflict data)

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 11:25:14 +0100

Next year I will celebrate the 10th anniversary for this project – and this website. It was in late 2003 that I decided to develop the concept for a global war memorial, and I set up the website in the spring of 2014 after some initial research and fundraising. Since then I have come to think of the website as an integral and essential part of the concept for a global war memorial for all who died because of war since 1945. Not only has it served, and continue to serve, as a tool for presenting data relating to armed conflicts and my thoughts on memoralization in contemporary cultures, it has also been a great help in my attempt to get an overview of the organizations and institutions that work with data gathering and the creation of war memorials.

After a major redesign of the website in 2010 there has been numerous bugs and information gaps that I have not had the time to attend to properly. I’m therefore glad to announce a new upgrade of the website that takes care of some of the glitches. Most of the novelties are "under the hood" but you’ll notice that there’s a new search page and improvements in searches and cross-referencing between for example wars and memorials.

I’ve also started a major update of the data in the war database after a new report by Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) was released in the beginning of July. As you’ve probably already noticed I’m referencing UCDP:s datasets for battle deaths a lot in the war section and specially for interstate wars after 1975. Most of that data was not, however, referenced at all and I’m now working to rectify that by adding notes on fatality numbers on the details page of each conflict. I’m also reviewing and updating the fatality numbers for each conflict starting with the ongoing ones.

The war section was never meant to be “accurate” in a scientific sense, but as this website draws more and more visitors and my numbers are being referenced to at websites such as Wikipedia I feel the urge to be more transparent and coherent when it comes to such a sensitive and often politicized issue as fatalities in war. To achieve that will, however, take some time and I hope you have patience with my efforts.

New data from UCDP for 2012

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 12:20:09 +0100

The number of armed conflict in the world are at its lowest level since the 1970s conclude Lotta Themnér and Peter Wallensteen from Uppsala Conflict Data Program in a report which was published in the summer issue of Journal of Peace Research (available on-line via Sage Publishing). These distinguished researchers find that the number of armed conflicts dropped from 37 in 2011 to 31 in 2012. However a positive message this may be there are some serious setbacks in the development towards a more peaceful world – foremost in the fact that the number of battle related deaths in the ongoing conflicts, and specially in Syria, are higher than in the previous year.

UCDP identifies six wars in 2012: “The conflict in Syria escalated dramatically during 2012, causing over 15,000 battle-related deaths during the year … In 2012, the conflict in Afghanistan increased in intensity for the fourth consecutive year, causing almost 7,400 battle-related deaths. In Somalia the conflict between the government and Al-Shabaab escalated in 2012, causing over 2,600 battle related deaths, which is the highest number recorded in this dyad. Closely connected to the conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan, the war in Pakistan continued at a high level in 2012, causing more than 2,700 battle-related deaths. In Yemen the conflict between the government and AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) escalated dramatically in 2012, with the number of battle-related deaths more than doubling to over 2,300. The conflict in Sudan continued unabated in 2012, remaining on the same high level of intensity as the previous year. The fighting, which caused roughly 1,100 battle-related deaths, was concentrated around Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan.”

This website uses (when possible and not coherently) UCDP and other academic institutions‘ definition of war as being an armed conflict in which at least 1000 battle related deaths occurred in one year, and our database have been updated to reflect the reported changes in fatalities for the above-mentioned wars.

As more and more internet users start to visit this site and my data start to appear in Wikipedia articles and elsewhere I’ve come to realize the necessity to present the sources for the fatality counts I publish here. You’ll now find such comments in connection with some of the articles. You should however note that the fatality data is not coherent. It comes from several publicly available sources and uses several definitions. It is my goal that the numbers in the database eventually will be more coherent and correct over time and in the meantime I kindly ask for your patience. It is perhaps also worth noting that the numbers and data is presented to give an idea of the scale of killing in wars and is not intended to be perceived as scientific research. I do however strive for an politically and culturally unbiased stance whenever that is possible – if it is at all possible.

Where are my comments?

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:33:57 +0100

In my country of residency, Sweden, there has recently been a heated debate about the less flattering ways, to put it mildly, in which some internet users use commenting functions on blogs and social media to mock, threathen or spew hate over their antagonists. So it’s with a bit of hesitation that I’ve decided to upgrade the commenting system on this site to include all news and memorial articles. I must however compliment basically everyone that has commented here over the years for your respectful tone.

I must admit that I was expecting a lot of confrontation in the comment threads when I launched the site but much to my surprise there have been zero to none and rarely have I been forced to remove comments that expressed hate or disregard for others.

I’d nevertheless want to remind you of my simple policy regarding "netiquette". I ask you who wish to comment here to show respect to others opinions, history or feelings. This is a site for remembrance and not for political stand-offs, resentment or historical grudges. All comments that do not adhere to this simple principle will be removed swiftly.

I’ve decided to give the commenting function a complete overhaul by using the excellent service Disqus that has many advanced functions and moderation options. Unfortuneatly this also means that all of the old comments has to go. And it means that you need to sign in via your Facebook, Twitter, G+ or Disqus account when commenting.

You are warmly welcome to share your stories, memories or knowledge connected to the memorials presented on this site, to complete missing or correct existing information and to pay respect to the memories of your loved ones.

New Year’s Wishes!

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 15:49:42 +0100

Many leading experts agree that there has been a decline in the number of armed conflicts and casualties of war in the world over the last two decades. Still, many wars continue to wreak havoc on civilian populations all over the world. According to The Uppsala Conflict Data Program there were 37 ongoing armed conflicts in the world in 2011 of which six reached the intensity of war (Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen).

Even if it is too early to asses the intensity of the armed conflicts of 2012 we will undoubtedly have to add the war in Syria and certainly the wars in the Kivu provinces of DR Congo and in Mali to the list of this year’s wars. Other armed conflicts that may reach that level of intensity during 2012 are the conflicts in Burma, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Waziristan. One can only hope that many of these conflicts will be resolved in 2013 despite bleak prospects.

There will in any case be plenty of work for the Polynational War Memorial project in 2013. After a couple of years low-intensity work due to a series of other commitments the project will intensify its efforts to move forward with the ongoing design projects and the research into the memorials and conflicts of this world. You should, in other words, expect to hear more about the project in 2013 and I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Sincerely Jon Brunberg

Introducing the war memorial Google Map

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:08:30 +0100

In the five years that this web site has been up I’ve been getting numerous questions about directions, opening hours, and event programming, for specific memorials and monuments. I’ve slowly come to realize that many of you, who visit these pages, use the information to plan trips and I have gradually included services that will make it a little bit easier to make those plans. One important feature that was added some months ago is geocode coordinates for some of the physical memorials and monuments in the database and the use of the Google Maps API to present their locations. I have now collected all those geocoded locations in one single map that can be explored on this website or directly on Google Maps, as a way to make it a bit easier for you to find the directions to the memorial you want to visit. This is really just the beginning, more geocoded locations will follow. And if you want to help by adding new locations to the Google map, I strongly encourage you to do so. The map is open for collaborations. View the map at This site Google maps

Le Mémorial in Caen - Narratives of War and Peace

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:36:54 +0100

This is the first in a series of reports from a trip to the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy and its surroundings that was made by the author in August 2009.

When allied forces finally captured Caen on July 20, 1944, after a fierce battle, much of the city had been destroyed by their bombing campaign, over 1,000 civilians had lost their life and half of a population of 60,000 had been left homeless in a shattered city that it took two decades to reconstruct. Caen paid a high price for the liberation from German occupation.

The destruction of the city and the trauma suffered by its population is said to be one of the reasons that its Mayor, and the Senator, Jean-Marie Girault, took the initiative to create a memorial museum with the ambition to present a rather different perspective on the history of World War II. As the original name of this institution - Musée Mémorial de la Paix (the Memorial Museum for Peace) – reveals, it would be another type of institution compared to the common historical, military museum, an institution with the ambition to make visitors reflect upon peace and democracy in the light of the events of WWII and beyond. The museum was inaugurated by François Mitterrand in 1988, and according to information on its website, over 8 million people have visited since, which makes it one of the biggest tourist attractions in Normandy. It has become a natural starting point for those who want to visit the D-Day landing beaches and the museum offers a variety of guided tours to places of interest in regards to the invasion, of which some lasts two days.

Le Mémorial is located in a park on the outskirts of Caen a 45 minutes walk from the city centre. The first impression of the building is that of a huge, compact block of concrete, with a deep, vertical breach in the middle which is said to symbolise the breakthrough of the German ”Atlantic Wall.” This is the only opening in the façade and it ends in the main entrance. It´s a bit like entering a cave.

On a concrete plinth some fifty metres to the right of the entrance stands a copy of Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd´s famous bronze-cast sculpture Non-violence, of a pistol with its barrel in a knot, which communicates to the visitor that the intention of this site is to promote peace. Its position, however, can hardly be described as central and this is the first indication of what I believe is an ambiguity in the museum´s position in regards to the issues it presents.

The first detail that catch your eye on entering the lobby, which is really more of a huge hall, is a Hawker Typhoon fighter that hangs looming over the information and ticket desk. A lot of people are already here waiting in line for tickets or heading for one of the entrances to the exhibitions, which are divided between the history of World War II and the invasion of Normandy, in the original building, and the cold-war era and temporary exhibitions in a newer section. Two cinemas show hour-long films about the invasion several times a day.

The architecture has its spectacular moments, for example, the start of the World War II exhibition, where you are submerged in a spiralling movement down into the building´s basement trough a huge, spherical, dark room that symbolises the entry of a dark era; the war itself. This exhibition is indeed ambitious, and covers many significant aspects and events of the war, with a special focus on the invasion of Normandy. There are plenty of models, unique objects and multimedia presentations. The atmosphere is tense.

The cold-war era exhibition is a bit more ”modern” in style. It´s mostly at ground level, and has quite a different atmosphere in comparison. If the keyword for the fist exhibit was “dark” the keyword for this section must be “cold.” I must admit though that I did not have time enough to really take in all the information displayed in this exhibit, and that I had to skip the temporary exhibitions. To be able to see everything that Le Memorial has to offer, you really need more than the six hours I spent there.

That ambiguous feeling I had at the entrance keeps lingering on after seeing these two exhibits and one of the films. Le Mémorial is repeatedly referred to as an institution for peace in its visitor- and press information and this is also a phrase that is repeated in many news articles I´ve read about it. But is this stance really reflected in the museum”s program? It is not as the issue of peace is absent in the exhibitions, you will find it for example in the section about the lead up to World War II, and it is not that war is glorified in any way. But I find that the focus, with few exceptions, is very much on the military campaigns, and I can´t stop thinking that there could be another narrative to relay here, a narrative that is not that of a failing peace inevitably followed by global war, but an attempt to explain and map the peace efforts and peace movements of the 19th century, and weave that into the war exhibitions to create a different narrative.

The museum points to the Nobel Peace Prize Gallery as its main, permanent exhibition that deals exclusively with the issue of peace. The gallery, which opened in 1991, is located in an old bunker below the main building, at the foot of the cliff where the museum sits. It is basically a long, underground corridor in which all Nobel Peace Prize Laureates are presented. But, with its location underneath the main museum, it feels quite disconnected from the historical exhibitions.

My critique must of course be seen in the perspective of my limited time spent here and the fact that I may have missed some important information. When I now look at the program for 2010 I find, for example, a very interesting series of seminars about human rights coming up in the beginning of the year. As an historic exhibition, Le Mémorial is indeed worth a visit, and I can really recommend it as a starting point if you intend to visit the D-Day beaches. The exhibitions will give you a detailed background of the events and the bookshop offers plenty of maps and books that will help you to get the most out of your trip. If you only have a couple of hours at your disposal I recommend that you skip the films and go directly to the historical exhibitions. And don´t forget to visit the Nobel Peace Prize Gallery. Even though that exhibit, in my opinion, lacks an overview of the topic of peace and the movements focused on pursuing it, it is a stark remainder of the great efforts to create peace and defuse conflict that are made throughout the world every day.

MORE INFORMATION
Official website (most information in French)
Museums for Peace web site
Article by Benjamin C. Brower in History and Memory, Vol. 11, 1999

New Video: Full Interview with Peter Tonkin

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0100

This is the full interview with Peter Tonkin of TZG Architects in Sydney that was made in 2003. Peter Tonkin has designed several war memorials, sometimes in collaboration with artists, for example the Memorial to the Australian Forces in the Vietnam War, in Canberra, and the Memorial to the Australian Forces in WWI and WWII, in London. In this video he´s talking about those and other projects, about utopianism in architecture and war memorials in general. Camera: Karin Willén. Interviewer: Jon Brunberg.