The Great War strongly marked the western societies of the XXth century until our days, quite particularly Germany and France. However, beyond a common history connected to both world conflicts, the World War I engendered memories at the same time close and different.

As part of the dynamics of the centenary of the First World War, this book analyzes the birth of the military cinematographic services that hatched everywhere in the world when, at the heart of the conflict, the cinema, then quite a recent medium, committed itself to the service of States and/or the armies.

In May 1920, on the occasion of an International Exhibition for the Renaissance of the liberated regions, Georges Lyon Lille chief education officer, asked the teachers to reply to a questionnaire and asked the pupils to write an essay about their memories at war and a narrative dramatic experience they could have been watching as well.

While historiography often insists on the French-German antagonism dominating the period 1870 to 1918, a new analysis of the « hereditary enmity" allows on the contrary to highlight contacts, links and exchanges between the two countries.

The unexpected and lasting resistance of Maubeuge during its siege in 1914 led to a controversy around General Fournier through the twentieth century.

Georges Lyon, the regional Chief Education Officer, facing the German invasion, decided in 1914 to remain committed to supporting school and university structures belonging to the occupied part of the Lille region in order to keep them alive. During the War, he wrote his Memoirs which can be considered as a precious testimony to better understand..