The London Imperial War Museum: More Fun Than it Sounds

Completely not on my list at all (I didn’t even know about it before I left), I took a friend’s advice and spent the day at the Imperial War Museum, which featured a very large and high tech exhibit about WWI, and a smaller less technical exhibit about WWII.  I guess they figured either everyone had heard of that one, or they just haven’t gotten around to upgrading it yet.

The detail and interactions were incredible.  I highly recommend it.  I took a bunch of videos of the interactive displays, but I can’t show the videos here (I will post them to facebook once I get home).  Some things about WWI that I didn’t know (and I just finished a hellish history class on WWI and WWII) was that Britain had little to no actual army when it began.  Being an island nation, their main military was Navy.  So it took about two years to build the armory and recruit and train the soldiers for combat.  In fact, they were on the verge of losing the war when America and Canada joined the fight.  The mass amounts of pure ammunition, in the end, was what won out.

At the end of the war, they basically blamed Germany for the entire thing and completely screwed them, destroying the German economy.  That shattered economy led to…you guessed it, the rise of the Nazis and WWII.  I won’t go into a long history lesson here, but the museum was so amazing.  And the best part was that it was free!!!  I would recommend it for the technological displays alone.  The message of the museum was very clear:  Educate yourself on history to preserve peace for the future.

One clear take away from this museum was that WWI started because, in certain countries, distribution of wealth was so inept that 1% of the population in countries like Germany and Austria held 99% of the money and power.  The people revolted by supporting nationalist leaders who were ill-equipped to run the country and in some cases were probably certifiably insane.

One clear take away from WWII is that, due to the horrible treatment of Germany after WWI, their country was left in economic ruin, with only the 1% most wealthy being able to survive.  The people revolted by supporting nationalist leaders who were ill-equipped to run the country and in some cases were probably certifiably insane.

I’m really glad we’re able to learn from history and learn from these mistakes.  Like a play…the first act is income inequality, the second act is a political party coming to power as the people hope they will change that inequality, but in fact the new leaders are oligarch insane people bent on power with very little to no skills at governing or working with other foreign leaders.  And the third act is some crazy war that ends with the needless deaths of millions of people.  Hmm….I feel like I’m in the middle of act II.  Can I return this play to the library and just check out a Barenstein Bear book?

Speaking of plays, I’ve been seeing a bunch and wanted to wait to put them all into one blog!  Until then…

Jeff:  August 15^th, 2017