PARIS (AP) — They were bitter enemies, seemingly destined to be perpetually at odds after fighting two devastating world wars less than 30 years apart.
But in the decades since French forces were among the victors of World War II, which ended in Europe with Nazi Germany’s surrender 80 years ago, neighbors France and Germany have built a powerful partnership that underpins the European Union.
With the EU’s largest economies, they’re frequently described as the motors of the 27-nation bloc and its stated goal of “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” after generations of conflict.
Statesmen and women and ordinary people alike have worked since WWII to weave deep personal, political, economic, cultural and military bonds upon which French-German friendship has flowered where guns once roared.
French wartime hero President Gen. Charles de Gaulle was a pivotal early peacemaker, after fighting in both WWI and WWII.
His partner in reconciliation was Konrad Adenauer, who as West Germany’s first chancellor led its recovery from the Nazi disaster. Adenauer had himself been one of Nazism’s victims, spending several months in the hands of its murderous Gestapo.
The cooperation treaty they signed on Jan. 22, 1963, marked a fresh start. De Gaulle said it “turns the page after such a long and bloody history of struggle and fighting.” They sealed the deal with a tight embrace.
Other leaders bound France and Germany ever closer with more deals and poignant moments of symbolism. Remembrance of war’s horrors became an integral part of the partnership, so lessons from their shared history of tragic conflict aren’t forgotten.
Seventy years after WWI’s eruption, French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl held hands on the former battlefields of Verdun, facing a memorial housing the remains of 130,000 unidentified soldiers.
As friends do, France and Germany have supported each other through recent calamities, too. Chancellor Angela Merkel sped to Paris to stand with President François Hollande in January 2015 when France was mourning the victims of a deadly assault by extremist gunmen on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
On a bridge that crosses the French-German border that once bristled with guns, words painted in the colors of the French and German flags capture how far the two neighbors have come.
“BIENVENUE” and “WILLKOMMEN,” they read.
Their meaning: Welcome.
