Relive History at World War II Museum
by Jay Copp

Allied soldiers knew and feared the German 88 mm Flak gun. “These 88s became a legend,” wrote historian Stephen Ambrose. “It was said that there were more soldiers converted to Christianity by the 88 than by Peter and Paul combined.” The deadly German gun is part of the first-floor gallery of the riveting National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Also on display in the hulking onetime warehouse are a Sherman tank, a Willys jeep and landing ships. Hanging from the ceiling is a Douglas C-47, a military transport plane that looks ready to fly. Indeed, it was a working plane until not long ago when a Louisiana oil tycoon bought it off eBay for $300,000 and donated it to the museum, which was not damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The weapons and machinery are impressive enough. But the museum’s real draw is its lucid and concise chronological retelling of the war. The galleries feature emotion-laden oversized photos, short films, familiar but still interesting vintage posters, artifacts such as resistance-fighter radios and the French language book, francs and map given to D-Day invaders. Especially moving are recorded remembrances of soldiers.

The war was fought and won not by professional soldiers but by apple-cheeked volunteers from farms, small towns and cities who were astounded and horrified as anyone else by the death and destruction that engulfed them and the sacrificial duty of the common soldier. Fred Disipio, bobbing alone in the Pacific after a torpedo attack as sharks picked off his shipmates one by one, kept thinking to himself, “This is crazy. I should be at my prom.”

Ambrose, who wrote several popular books about the war and taught in New Orleans before his death in 2002, helped found the museum in 2000. The location of the museum is apt for a second reason: General Eisenhower told Ambrose that the flamboyant Andrew Jackson Higgins of Higgins Industries was “the man who won the war.” By September 1953 the seven Higgins plants in the city churned out more than 90 percent of the Navy’s 14,000 vessels including the pivotal landing boat used on D-Day (a Higgins boat is on display).

Until two years ago, the museum was known as the National D-Day Museum, and indeed the largest, most extensive gallery covers the Normandy invasion, which occurred 64 years ago this June. Laid bare are the extreme preparation, the fear (“men made peace with themselves,” said one GI about his landing boat mates before they hit the shore), the carnage on the beach (“everywhere, the frantic cry, ‘medic, hey medic’ could be heard above the horrible din,” recalled a U.S. Army surgeon) and finally the epic bloody push forward through the German defenses.

The point of view extends beyond the G.I.s. The personal narratives include home front reminisces as well as recollections from Axis combatants. One pensive German soldier, guarding the French coastline, recalled the anxious mood: “Our people used to say the men from the Wild West were coming. They were very brave but not with any experience.” As the Axis soldiers soon discovered, experience apparently was overrated.

The museum doesn’t shy away from some of the war’s contradictions. Exhibits detail the irony of black soldiers fighting tyranny abroad while facing Jim Crow laws at home, and cartoons and posters reveal the appalling racist propaganda against the Japanese. On a lighter note, the displays occasionally mirror the typically American puckishness of the average GI. The seasickness pills given to soldiers in the landing boats “had no effect other than inducing extreme drowsiness” and the GIs used the condoms in their kits to keep the water and sand out of their rifles.

A $300 million expansion of the museum has begun. The six-year, multistage project will add a four-dimensional theater and a virtual-reality train ride from hometown USA to 1940s basic training camp.

Historical museums can be tedious. Not so with the National World War II Museum. It’s hard to get through the galleries without being moved by the photos of the grim-eyed GIs and the fallen bodies in the sand. No less an authority than D-Day historian Ronald Drez praised the museum as “first-class, with lots of artifacts and veterans’ testimony.”

The war was brutish beyond measure, and the museum conveys that. But it also shines a light on the fundamental decency of the soldiers fighting it. “Here we sat, each man alone in the dark,” recalled Pvt. Dwayne Burns of the U.S. 82nd Airborne before landing in France. “These men and me were the best friends I will ever know. I wondered how many would die before the sun came up.”