IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM: Sorry for the delay. Here are a lot of scattered thoughts on why visiting the Imperial War Museum was, by far, the best thing the Rat and I did while we were in London.

First of all, the IWM was the least condescending museum I’ve ever visited. Even the section on submarines, which was specifically designed for small children, was informative and engaging; there were lots of fun features, but they never served to hide the dangerous and deadly work of the submariners. Yeah, there were “scratch and sniff”-type panels where you could get a whiff of month-old male sweat (although, perhaps fortunately, these weren’t working when we were there); there’s a dead mouse in a glass; there’s an in-depth account of how to flush a submarine toilet. But there’s also a terrific echolocation activity–you try to tell the difference between the radar reports made by whales, enemy subs, missiles, and so on. And the exhibit was very up-front about how difficult it was for submariners to escape their ships. According to the exhibit, one in three World War II UK submariners died; by way of comparison, an exhibit elsewhere in the museum told us that one in four prisoners in WWII Japanese POW camps died.

And the museum didn’t hammer home some contemporary political point about diversity or tolerance, a temptation far too many museums would succumb to. Two examples: The portraits of soldiers included portraits of Indians, but the commentary, instead of telling us all about The Minority In The British Army, treated these soldiers exactly the way other soldiers were treated. (This is not to say that there’s nothing interesting about The Minority In The British Army–just that too often every portrayal of a woman or a racial minority tells the same story, as if women and minorities never have experiences in common with white men.) And, more importantly, in the exhibit on WWII, there was a section on British internment camps for enemy aliens (=aliens from enemy countries, not aliens who’d been proven to be enemies–a crucial distinction). Instead of engaging in lots of pious hand-wringing (which typically only serves to make museumgoers feel superior to their predecessors, rather than encouraging critical thought), the IWM presented toys, sketches, and a newspaper made by internees; reminiscences from internees; and, most striking to me, a scathing political cartoon drawn by an internee, attacking the government for locking up harmless random German shopkeepers. The cartoon, because it was a direct expression of what people at the time were thinking, made the anti-internment point much more poignantly and memorably than museum-speak boilerplate would have. There were also newspapers, pamphlets, and other paraphernalia of conscientious objectors to both WWI and WWII, which noted that some CO’s performed honorable service in nonviolent roles like nursing.

One major flaw was the transition from the World War I wing to the World War II wing. There basically wasn’t any transition. I think this was unintentional–a flaw in the design of the wings–but WWII was presented as simply a continuation of WWI. This presentation made an unhelpful Kaiser/Hitler parallel unavoidable; you got the impression that WWII was fought not against totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism, etc., but against, instead, the Evil Hun. The museum design discouraged nuance.

The WWI wing left me with a basic question that, perhaps, reflects my lack of historical understanding. I don’t get why WWI happened. I don’t get, especially, why (some) people were enthusiastic about it–why English women sent their sons off to fight. I know there must have been some glamour associated with it simply because it was a world war–“the Great War”–and because of its (unprecedented?) scale–but still, I don’t get it. Some scattered thoughts:

Some of the propaganda displayed in the WWI wing appealed to repugnance at the actions of the Germans–especially the execution of Edith Cavell and the sinking of the Lusitania. A memorable poster created right after the sinking depicts a drowned woman plunging to the bottom of the ocean with her infant in her arms. Both people look peaceful, both are awash in watercolor curves and swirls, but both are clearly very dead. The one-word caption: ENLIST. The exhibit did not mention the many false atrocity stories that were circulated to whip up anti-German fervor; that was another way in which the museum tacitly made WWI look more like WWII than it actually was. (The false atrocity tales continued their deadly work after WWI ended; knowing earlier atrocity rumors to have been false, many people did not believe the first rumors of the Holocaust.)

There was no sense of differing ideology (even on matters like the militarization of society; and certainly not on imperialism!) between the two sides. The Christmas truce brought this essential agreement forward very clearly: Can anyone imagine a Christmas truce, complete with soccer across the trenches, in an ideologically-motivated total war? (I know people wanted a “Ramadan truce” in Afghanistan, but it’s not surprising that it didn’t happen; and even there, the two sides would not, in general, have been celebrating the same holy day.)

Another fact giving the sense that WWI was sharply different from WWII: The Soviet Union, after Lenin’s takeover, could just withdraw. Not with Hitler around, my friend.

A note found in a WWI trench that had been abandoned by the Germans: “TOMMY, thank you for this piece of land. It has served its purpose and you may have it back. FRITZ.”

The section on the Holocaust began with truly poignant films, photos, and voice-over narration and music depicting pre-Nazi Jewish life. I think that was one of the places where I teared up. The exhibit did not point out that German and Austrian Jews were among the most assimilated in the world at the time (although one of the voice-over narrators did say, “I didn’t even know [my friend] was a Jew until I noticed he had different holidays at school”). I’m not sure what to make of that fact (beyond the obvious, Audre Lorde point that “your silence will not protect you”), but I do want to figure out if there’s anything that can be gleaned from it. The exhibit seemed somewhat scattershot and perfunctory, but it had an exellent section on Britain’s and the US’s refusal to take in Jewish refugees. The exhibit ended, in a good and English touch, with Edmund Burke’s famous statement (from memory, sorry if misquoted), “For evil to triumph, it is only necessary that good men do nothing.”

There was a hall of photographs of the English at war, paired with quotations that strongly supported the belief that man’s natural condition is war–that peace is the temporary absence of war, rather than the usual state of things. I can’t remember most of the pairings (although they were uniformly striking and illuminating), but one showed a young recruit wildly waving his cap as he set off for war; the accompanying text read something like (again from memory), “Many young men had never participated in a war before, and thus were in no way unwilling to enter this one. –Thucydides.”

The WWII exhibit made it obvious how much there was for ordinary people to do to protect their country. You could raise a pig, serve with the Home Guards, care for a neighbor’s children while she worked in a factory, and on and on–each tiny helpful activity promoted by scores of posters and pamphlets. I think many people now are frustrated because our own country is threatened, and yet the nature of the threat is so vague that it’s difficult to figure out what, if anything, we can do about it. Hence programs like TIPS, which attempt to reassure us that something is being done. There was a whole genre of TIPS-esque propaganda in the WWII exhibit–the “Careless Talk Costs Lives/Keep Mum, She’s Not So Dumb!” genre, in which your neighbor or your girlfriend might be a spy. The paranoia in these posters was lightened by their humor and grace; and also by the fact that they were aimed at a much more homogenous society than our own, in which people generally did know one another and could tell more easily when something was amiss. The biggest missed opportunity in the current war (for which the only useful name I can think of is WWIV–“the war on terror” is bizarre, and “the war on terrorism” false) is that as far as I can tell, the government is not (publicly anyway) trying to enlist the communities that would be the most helpful–obviously, the American Muslim communities. To the extent that those communities are homogenous, to the extent that people in them would be better able than I would to distinguish threatening behavior or suspicious activity, they should be receiving two types of propaganda: 1) You’re one of us; you’re being called to your duty as Americans, since you likely have special knowledge (of language, of communities, of religion); serve your country in the army, in intelligence, or just by proving to the radical Islamists that Muslims can be good Americans and Americans can be good Muslims; and 2) If you do see something that gives you serious reason to believe that terrorist agents are involved, contact the FBI. (And hope they do something about it–but that’s another story.) Instead, after 9/11 Bush and most other public figures focused on difference and diversity, exhorting non-Muslims to respect Muslims (necessary and good thing to say) but generally without the parallel exhortation to Muslims to aid their country. American Muslims were treated as exotic outsiders needing protection from the torch-bearing yokels; they weren’t addressed as Americans, like the rest of us, with responsibilities and love of country and neighbor.

World War II also makes a handy test for those who would try to draw a philosophically isolationist conclusion from pragmatic isolationism. By “philosophically isolationist” I mean “opposed to all American intervention abroad except in the event of clear and present threat to American lives or self-government [or, for some but not most isolationists, American interests].” By “pragmatic isolationist” I mean “starting from a position of deep skepticism about American intervention abroad except in the event of etc.” As I’ve made clear on this site before, I’m not especially certain of my views on foreign policy, but I tend toward pragmatic isolationism. However, World War II makes some of the limits of that position clear, I think; and not just because of the evident evil of the Nazi regime. Many regimes are evil, and evidently so. What makes WWII (and especially the Nazi war against Britain) different from almost every other armed conflict I can think of: 1) There were obviously preferable alternatives–people who could wield power when the war was over. This was true in Germany, and even more so, of course, in France and England. A far cry from our interventions in Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan… etc. 2) One side was demonstrably, and unmistakably, more hideous than the other. 3) Defeating Hitler (especially defeating him earlier…) was unlikely to produce worse leaders elsewhere in the world. 4) We understood the cultures involved; especially, but not solely, the French and the English. This wasn’t about grievances dating back to 1322 or what have you. This is one case in which “humanitarian warfare” made sense. It’s one major reason that I can’t be a philosophical isolationist. There was an English political cartoon on display, in which a man stands alone on a tiny island amid a raging ocean storm, captioned, “Very well then–alone“; it made me ashamed that my country had not come into the war sooner. (Although the material aid we were sending Britain was much appreciated–cf. Churchill’s famous line about the Lend-Lease program, “one of the least sordid acts in history.”)

The WWII exhibit also reminded me of something I must have learned about in high school, but had forgotten–the “Phoney War,” the period right after Chamberlain’s careful, defeated-sounding statement that “a state of war exists” between Britain and Germany. What followed that statement was the kind of confusion, ineffectual action, and uncertainty that should be familiar to all of us, less than a year into this new war. I took some comfort from the fact that WWII had not exactly started out on the right foot.

One propaganda film was especially interesting because of the particular images of besieged Britain it chose to show. One scene showed rescue workers at a bomb site digging out and saving a cat (and frankly, this appeal to naked sentiment totally worked on me); another scene displayed a crucifix (from a bombed church?) while the voice-over narration spoke of British self-sacrifice. I don’t know how one would appeal to the necessary self-sacrifice today; such an explicitly Christian appeal would be ruled out, of course. I suspect that the new popularity of “God Bless America,” and the fact that it was sung by the members of Congress on the steps of the Capitol in the wake of the attacks, is a response to the understanding that self-sacrifice, hope, and courage require some deeper meaning to sustain themselves–something greater than revenge, practicality, or survivalism. I hope that the only alternative to public piety is not a kind of worship of one’s country. We haven’t seen anything particularly intense in that direction because, frankly, most of us have not needed to sacrifice anything yet. (Longer lines at the airport don’t count, folks.)

Another big omission: the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The Soviet Union was treated as a dictatorship, but its role in WWII was somewhat prettified.

Something I hadn’t thought about: all the governments-in-exile stationed in Britain during the war. Pretty amazing to think about, this island haven, full of refugee governments from across Europe.

A headline at war with its subheds: From the end of the Munich Conference. Banner headline something like, “PEACE IN OUR TIME”; subheds: “Prague’s day of sorrow” and “[NUMBER–can’t recall] British troops sent to the Sudetenland.”

Throughout WWII, all of the newspapers’ front pages on display bore liquor ads.

Common denigratory description of American GIs in England: “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” There were fascinating pamphlets from both US and UK military sources detailing how GIs should relate to the English and vice versa; the biggest bones of contention were pay (the US soldiers really did get a lot more money than the Tommies) and US soldiers trying to rub Britons’ faces in the role the US had played in WWI (“we saved your sorry asses,” essentially). The latter was especially unappreciated given that the English had been living through regular and intense bombing runs well before America entered the war.

The British government had a pamphlet on everything during WWII. One pamphlet gave advice to people who were caring for refugee children who wet the bed.

Queen Mary had a ration book. Her surname was listed as, “Her Majesty.”

The practicality of the Marshall Plan came through pretty clearly–though again, this was not a condescending museum and it did not spell this out for you. But the Marshall Plan was presented as an anti-Versailles, a way of preventing future grudges, economic disaster, and ensuing war.

Final impression left by IWM: The twentieth century was a chamber of horrors. To quote Oliver Larrabee from “Sabrina,” “The twentieth century? I could pick a better century out of a hat!” (Please don’t email me about all the wonderful stuff that happened in the 20th century. I know. But visit the war museum, and see if you really feel like talking about that.)