The end of the First World War on November 11, 1918, only marked the beginning of a long and difficult reconstruction of a traumatized country.

France comes out of the First World War in a wound: millions of dead and missing, thousands of invalids and many villages wiped off the map. Then comes the time for reconstruction. How will the French face this delicate end of the war and try to win the peace? How will society reintegrate soldiers damaged by the trenches? How is the state going to make sense of the sacrifice of the 1.5 million men killed in combat? From the armistice to the first homage to the unknown soldier, on November 11, 1920, this film, all in colorized archives, recounts the reconstruction of a country after the trauma of 1914-1918.