The Vosges (Vogesen in German) is a relatively unimpressive mountain range in the Alsace Region. It isn’t especially tall (less than 1000 m) and has little strategic significance from a military point of view. It just happened to be there – in a region which just happened to be on a fault-line between two great powers who were in conflict. If you didn’t know any better, this German-made film would seem like a straightforward travelogue. We’re presented with a long phantom ride shot from a train. The mountain scenery is magnificent and the views are spectacular. The message seems to be “Come and visit the Vosges, the Alps of the Alsace”. But 20,000 French and German soldiers had just lost their lives here, in a succession of pointless and absurd battles to control the mountaintop. The peak – known as the Hartmannswillerkopf or Le Vieil Armand – actually changed hands four times between 1914 and 1916, with major offensives costing thousands of lives serving no purpose other than to push one side a few hundred metres back from the top, only to have them take it back again the next day. In light of this, a phantom ride through beautiful mountains seems more like a trip on a ghost train through a giant graveyard. And the German plan to rebrand the so-called Menschenfresserberg – or the Man-eating Mountain – as a tourist hotspot seems macabre indeed.

Karl Wratschko