Abstract
In Fallen Soldiers, George Mosse argues that the conflict between the sacred and the profane was an inevitable result of the process of trivialization. According to Mosse, World War I was “trivialized” through commercialized battlefield tourism, and many veterans “deplored such trivialization.” However, his discussion does not shed light on the veterans' active participation in the growth of tourism. In order to overcome the shortcomings of his approach, it is necessary to explore the commercial aspects of veterans' pilgrimages to battlefields.
This paper focuses on the American Legion's pilgrimages to the Western Front in the 1920s, which were conducted specifically in 1921,1922, and 1927. In 1919, the American Legion was founded by a small group of World War I veterans in Paris, and it quickly became the largest veterans' organization in the United States. The analysis in this paper is based on the data collected on these pilgrimages, such as the American Legion's annual proceedings, committees' reports, officers' letters, and official newsletters. In the analysis, I explore the pilgrimages planned by Legion officers and Legionnaires' reactions to them.
The results indicate that the veterans themselves engaged in the “process of trivialization.” They expanded the plans and created the “living shrine” in Paris, which was not only a place of pilgrimage but also a popular tourist attraction. In conclusion, I argue that the relationship between the sacred pilgrimages and profane tourism was not conflicting, but rather complementary in nature.
