Assignment 7- Imperial War Museum

The first sight of the Imperial War Museum was big cannons sitting outside the building that were over 20 feet long. I can’t imagine trying to operate and aim something that large, and they were real guns that were used in wars in the past. Walking inside there were planes and rockets and tanks all over on the floor. The main piece that really interested me was the V2 rocket. The overall size of it is astonishing. Something that big full of explosives could do a lot of damage. Another small exhibit that caught my eye was the 9-11 exhibit. They had a piece of metal from one of the towers on display and they also had a video running that lasted over 15 minutes and all it had was pictures of the destruction from the planes hitting the towers. There was also a board with information regarding the attacks.

The majority of the time I was in the Imperial War Museum I went through the Holocaust exhibition. It wasn’t exactly the most enjoyable exhibit to go through, but I’m glad I went through it. There were a lot of short videos that explained things in detail. One thing I didn’t realize is that there was a period of a couple months where Hitler put in effect new laws at least one new one each week, if not more. That’s a lot to put into action in a short amount of time. There were some which were passed in consecutive days. Another thing that caught my eye was the model of a concentration camp. It wasn’t the entire camp, but had most of the buildings that were there, just not the duplicates. Around the model, there were stories and explanations of the different buildings and what they were used for. It said how people were brought in and the conditions the people would be in once they got off the trains. They were convinced they were going to get to take a shower and be clean and see family again once they got off, but in reality they were done for. There was also a model train car, which showed how big the cars would have been back in the day and that there were people stuffed in so tightly that there was no room for anybody to sit down and just a bucket for their waste which would fill up quickly and cause the car to smell bad. There were diseases started and spread throughout as well being in such close contact with so many people with no way to clean up and get away. It’s not something anybody should be proud about putting people through in the case of Hitler. It was quite impressive how he was able to get so many people to back him and his plan for creating the perfect Germany with all the “flaws” out of the way.