Twenty American military cemeteries dot the pastoral countryside of western Europe. Casualties of the Great War, numbering 31,000, are buried in eight sites: 73,000 of America's 93,000 overseas burials from the Second World War are interred in twelve European cemeteries. These “silent cities” are monuments to an enduring result of global conflict: a forceful American presence in the cultural and political landscapes of other countries. The cemeteries' standardized styles, laconic epitaphs, and their removal from the sphere of family and community erase much of the sense of individual tragedy associated with premature death. Indeed, the American burial grounds were not meant to be mere memorials; they were designed primarily as representations of the American spirit abroad and as a political “foothold in Europe,” according to one of their prominent exponents. They were planned to evoke a common national cause rather than mourn the death of young soldiers. Their foreign context, the New York Times stated, meant that they would “stand forever as symbols of America, our spirit and our aesthetic.”