The International World War II Museum in Natick , Massachusetts has a collection which comprises over 7,000 objects, 500,000 documents, 3,500 posters and 7,500 books. “The documents include the famous and infamous: an original copy of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 to the Munich Agreement of 1938; the letters written by Eisenhower and Rommel to their wives on D-Day. The objects range from uniforms and military equipment to the more personal items that belonged to members of the Resistance, families on the home fronts or prisoners of war.”
This fall fourteen students visited the International Museum of World War II as part of their World War II class. Divided into pairs, each group was assigned a specific aspect of the war on which to focus and later report. They made their way through the museum, taking notes on topics, such as the military, political, and civilians heroes of the war; the impact of propaganda and correspondence on the course of the war; applying the statement, “Necessity is the mother of invention to innovative technology; and interpreting a 1999 quotation by Senator John McCain on war’s “cruel reality.” Below are some excerpts from students' reflection on their visit:
