We are in the normandy landings gallery, the day at normandy, a very special gallery for us here because our museum was originally founded back in the 1990s as the National Dday museum. By congressional charter, we were charged with telling the story of the entire American Experience in world war ii. Why it was fun, how it was one and what it means today. So in this gallery, we get to big moments where the United States and their allies had to win this particular day. Dday, june six 1944. Behind me is our film, narrated by tom brokaw which gives our visitors the overarching story of dday at normandy but next to me, over here on the left is very special exhibit this is an exhibit case and is dedicated to ernie pyle, who actually watched the beaches at normandy where the American Forces landed. He saw all of the traces of war left over by troops who had been killed coming to shore at the beach. What we have in this case is actual artifacts and sand from utah and omaha beaches. Ernie pyle writes about what he found. He talks about shoe polish, sewing kits, and grenades, toothbrushes, razors and he singles out in his column, writing paper, he talks about how young men who gave their lives at normandy intended to write an awful lot of letters back home. They had an awful lot of cigarettes as well. He said packs of cigarettes had been handed out to the troops before the landings began and he made the comment that sodden cigarettes were lined up and down the beach and marked the high water of the sacrifice there at normandy. It is a moment for our audiences after the film to pause and reflect about what was going on in the world. Did june six 1944 was that they hitler could have driven our forces back into the waters of the english channel. He bailed and from that point forward, we were on our way to the road to berlin and ending the third right. On this wall, we have civilian, military, and political leaderships reactions to the normandy landings starting with and frank of course, a young jewish girl, hiding in an addict in harlem where she writes in her diary, could it be true that forces had landed and we would be liberated . Dwight eisenhower, the Supreme Commander saying that we have landed in the hour of deliberations approaching. But we just unsure chill Prime Minister of Great Britain adds the show sobering know that although we have had a successful landing there at normandy, in fact, we have a very long way to go. We are better than 700 miles away from berlin itself. As you can see by this map here, we have managed to achieve a toll hold on the peninsula and france. We are along the beaches but we are also bottled up and facing a very hard, serious fight. Trying to move through northern france before we can start to really get to start to get some traction on the nazi germans. We are now in the race across france gallery in which we tell the story of the allies advanced across northern france up to operation cobra in july 45. Behind me, you can see how these wooded hedge rows cross fields of france held up how military advancement these hedge rows were so thick for thousands of years, you can have german soldiers on one side of a hedgerow three feet away from an allied soldier and the two would not even know that they were there. Tanks in fact, could not go through these hedge rows until we built some clippers, if you will on to the front of these tanks. American ingenuity that allowed us to start busting through towards the liberation of france. The liberation of paris and particular was a Second Chapter in the race across france, and then at the end of the gallery we tell the story of operation market garden, our daring attempt to try and end the war before christmas of 1944 through a parachute drop that comes up one bridge too short in harlem. To my right over here as we move through the gallery, we have some artifacts, very interesting marie louise maynard, a young french woman in normandy was a member of the French Resistance and she was spying on the germans. Here we have a german typewriter that she used to write notes to send information to the allies as well as a crystal radio receiver next to it, which she used to send out legal messages, or i should say send out rather than send out, listened to the bbcs, the legal radio broadcast under the nazi machine. We have an interesting piece and here as well, you may notice this pink and red silk liberation sash. This was given to american lieutenant by the name of cecil lz in september of 1944, in the back it was written praised the great liberation. It symbolizes the outpouring of joy that the french people had as the allies began to move through the country and liberate them from nazi rule. Down here on the end is a special artifact that we have. It is the medal of honor that was awarded to walter. He was a friend of this museum. He passed away about a year ago and he was the last at the time medal of honor recipient from the normandy landings. He received his medal of honor for actions that took place about three days after the initial landings, and then, besides the medal of honor is a photograph of his mother that he carried in his backpack. Walt ehlers came from a very religious family and kansas. He promised his mother he would not shrink or swear or curse, or smoke while he was over here. He is going to be moving through france one day after he had been involved in a terrible incident when one of his comrades was shot and to protect him, walt is going to go and try and rescue him. The germans shot at him and the bullet went through the portrait of his mother that he was carrying in his backpack. Despite this, he was able to fight off the germans and basically carry his comrade to safety. For those actions, walt ehlers was given the medal of honor. However, i need to mention that walt had a brother named Roland Ehlers who also landed at normandy with walt in june six 1944. Unbeknownst to walt, while he was performing these heroic actions, his brother never made it to the beach at normandy. His brother was killed when his higgins coming into the beaches was hit by a shell fire. Walt did not know that at the times he found out some days later, and so this was of course a terrible experience for him. Very bittersweet. Over here we have items that are dedicated to the average gis experience in france and european theater. Some of this is materials that i think the public would expect to see such as gun cleaning kits, oils, such and so on. But when you are out in the field moving with an army. Infantry men have to think of things you need such as sewing kits. Things such as prayer books. Razors. Old spice. Matches. Cigarettes. All are in here. What do you do for entertainment . We have things that are as simple as tickets for hot coffee. Free hot coffee. The officers club. You can see as well in this case, something that is a little interesting, item number 26 is a can opener, unlike most can openers that most people have probably seen, this is something specifically designed from the field and you can see in the case of course, cooking equipment that troops would use as a move through, advancing against the nazis. In the race across france, after operation cobra United States and allied forces are going to liberate paris august of 1944. This was a high point for a lot of people who thought that the end of the war might be drawing near. Maybe we would be able to get all the way to berlin by christmas time. However, in this case over here we have a little artifact that reminds us that things get lost along the way. Dog tag of john mac, an African American man. He was from center ville louisiana at not too far from us here in new orleans, he was a member of the red ball express. It was basically a convoy, supplying trucks. You gotta moving army. Think about george patent racing across france. You need to be able to keep up with them with food and gasoline. John mac lost his dog tags on the beaches of normandy when he came as part of the red ball express. Over 70 years later, just a couple of years ago, his dog tags were rediscovered by a farmer in france who then sent them to the secretary of state s office here in louisiana. He presented us with the dog tags. In a sense, john mac and his dog tags came home 70 years later. Here in the case as well, you can see the red ball express, the batch he wore on the uniform. We are now moving into a bunker. A bunker that is supposed to be a german bunker. Basically, after the failure of market garden, in september of 1944 when we famously came up one bridge too far, too short from being able to invade in the northern germany, people still hope that the war might be over, if not by christmas, maybe a little later. Some of these people included omar bradley and dwight eisenhower. However, this was a terrible misjudgment, unfortunately. As we got closer to the german border, basically, resistance stiffened. In this german bunker that we are standing in, we learned the story of the first, a brutal nasty affair that held us up and should have let us know that things in fact were not going well. On top of the bunker, concrete here, you can see a fabrication of Church Steeples and buildings. What the germans used to do from the bunkers was actually use chalk and markers to write out the distances of these various landmarks in the landscape around them. This is how they would zero in and use their artillery and weapons to fire invasive forces. Over here in the bunker we have a map used by the third armored division. This particular map was the property of lieutenant cooper who later went on to write a memoir about what it was like to fight in tanks. His memory was entitled, death traps. You get an idea of the terrain and the fast moving advancement that the allied forces were making through tank and with tanks through the war up until this point. However, as i mentioned we were slowing up on the german border at this point and things were about to get a lot worse. In december of 1944, adolf hitler was going to launch an effort to try to win the war for nazi germany. His strategy was to launch an offensive against the american and British Forces on the western front. This map depicts that attack. Hitler thought that what he could do would be to divide the British Forces to the north from the American Forces to the south. You can see the goal of this offensive by the dotted red line and the port of all the way to the north. If hitler can break all the way up to antwerp and the english channel, he thought the americans and british would be forced to come to a political solution, a political agreement to end the war. In this battle, the largest that has ever been filed by the United States army in its history, better than 600,000 americans were engaged. You can see the lines famously bulged but did not break. You have the story of the siege of vast stone which is going to be depicted here, most famously, george paton is going to come up and save bastion from the south this is an incident that Many Americans will recognize from the film, paton, where terry, the Commanding Officer there was asked by the germans to surrender and he from his lee said to them, one word, nuts. In this case here, you get a sense of how logistics are so important and war, particularly with things like gasoline. Up here, we have a german gas tank where you can actually see the ss markings on the side. Germans were running out of gasoline. We, however are going to not only have to deal with moving mechanical vehicles, tanks and trucks around, but also more importantly, men, troops. You can see in this case as well, tankers boots. These were warned by major karen corbyn in the battle of the bulge. He was in belgium. In the end, we are going to prevail as i mentioned, our lines bulged but they do not break. It comes at a tremendous cost and blood, about 19, 000, over 19,000 americans are killed in this fighting that goes on for six weeks. One last item, i thought i would point out in this case here, as a souvenir nazi flag that was captured by members of the 101st airborne division. They were nicknamed the battered of bastion where some of the airborne members signed their names to it. You can see in particular, sam juul from kenneth missouri, and other members, where they managed to hold out, patent is going to be able to come in and provide them with leave and we are going to push the germans back towards germany. We are now headed into the heart of the battle of the bulge gaggle gallery and National World war ii museum. You can see around me, we have an environment, once again, it is very hostile to our forces. 30 degrees below is the weather. Snow all over. In this forest, one of the things that made fighting in the forest rather dangerous, was that the germans which shoot artillery into the trees. Not aiming for american troops which they knew or under the trees, but to create shrapnel, the tree branches would all shatter and come down and if you were unfortunate enough to not be close enough to the tree than you would probably be killed by pieces of wood and splinters flying around. In the battle of the bulge, as we present the story and various videos to tell the stages of the battle inaudible one of the things that we show is americans being captured. We have not mentioned p. O. W. s thus far, so i want to point this out. Here is the prisoner of war i. D. Tag of benjamin cohen, who was with the 434th infantry regiment. He is going to be captured very early on in the battle of the bulge. One thing i will mention a general interest, it was better to be president more of the nazis bennett was of the japanese. More than 40 of american p. O. W. s of the japanese perished in those camps, whereas the germans, because they were concerned that the allies would give a good treatment to their own p. O. W. s tended to respect the rules of the geneva condemn convention, which the japanese had refused to sign. So i wanted to point that out that, not everything in war is necessarily victorious and sometimes, you wind up on, not just the losing side but in the enemies hands. So, over here, one other thing that i would like to point out was the famous prayer card that general georgia patent asked his chaplain to come up with to basically guarantee good weather during the battle of the bulge. And, basically, when the chaplain made the prayer, the weather cleared up, patent credited this with having an influence on the battle. In truth, chaplain had written the prayer sometime before and so, this prior card was delivered to all of the troops and became part of the battle of the bulge. In our battle of the bolt gallery we do have german sedan, this was one of the cards that was used for the german officers to go back and forth and transport themselves back and forth to the front, here, you can seell of the camouflage they used with branches and things like that to try and blend in to a landscape when they ran into other danger situations. We are now entering a last gallery, into the german heartland. As you can see, during this map, by 1945, after the battle of the bulge, the United States and her allies, you can see french sources flanking American Forces in the west, as well as forces from the soviet union, basically crushing germany from the east. The war is in its endgame stages as we are all converging on berlin. Now, in this gallery, we have basically the story of how berlin falls, even though american troops never actually quite make it to berlin itself. However, people could see the handwriting on the wall by april 25th. In this gallery here, we have a hat. This was a hat worn by one of the soviet troops when those troops met with the americans along the elbow river in april, april 25th 1945. This had was given to a lieutenant by the name of george tall b. So, from that point forward, berlin was surrounded and the soviets were going to go ahead and crush hitler and the forces in berlin over the next week or so by may 2nd, the battle of berlin is over. In this gallery, what we want to remind people of, even as we move into germany and are getting closer and closer to our goal of victory, the violence continues to escalate and as a real human cost. We tell the story of curtis river. Curtis reiter was a private in the American Army and here, you can see a letter he wrote to his whether, ellen in 1944. He was killed in late 1944 on the way to germany. You can see in the case in the hometown newspaper is going to bring news of his death to his hometown and public and you can see condolence letters, about a half dozen of them, that are going to be written to his family from various sympathizers, neighbors and friends and family members who knew curtis ritter. Down here, in the corner, we have curtis ritters combat infantry badge, with the blue background and rifle on it that was an honor. It was given only to those who had faced the enemy in direct combat. In this conclusion gallery to the road to berlin, but we want to show the public is the immense devastation wind on as we moved towards berlin. You can see our representations of breman and dresden. 60 german cities on the way to berlin, and the germans refused to give up. But in the end, at off hitler committed suicide april 30th, 1945, in a bunker in berlin. So on may 7th, nazi germany formally surrendered to the allies. In this case here, we have silverware and a teapot with adolf hitlers initials on them that were captured by american troops in munich, where hitler had begun its political career found in nazi headquarters buildings, Nazi Administration buildings there in munich. So, basically, with the elimination of adolf hitler, we then have the opportunity to try and sum up what this war in europe meant. And we do so with a film that tries to tell what the entire cost of hitlers nazi germany meant to the world in terms of death, it was something that had never been seen before. In terms of destruction, culture, entire communities, the holocaust of the jews, as well as others, political prisoners, the roma, etc, so on. So many others perished and hitlers confrontation camp systems. We try to give people a sense of what the allied troops were fighting for, what it meant to distinguish that from the world. At the end of the road to berlin, after we try and summarize the cost of the war for our public, we have an ending quote by general dwight eisenhower. This came from a letter that the Supreme Commander of the allied forces wrote in april of 1943 to his son, john, where he tried to put in his words the meaning of a conflict that he was so central and trying to prosecute. He said, no other war in history has so definitely lined up the forces of arbitrary oppression and dictatorship against those of human rights and individual liberty. To eisenhower, this is what the war was about. This was his great achievement as a general and military leader and, later on, it made him the president of the United States and leader of the free world. Ed