At normandy, a special gallery for us here because our museum was originally founded back in 1990s at the National Dday museum by a congressional charter. We were charged with telling the story of the entire American Experience in world war ii, why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today, and so, in this gallery, we get to the big moment where the United States and her allies had to win this particular day. Dday, june 6, 1944. Behind me is our film, merited by tom brokaw narrated by tom brokaw, which gives our visitors the overarching story of dday at normandy, but next to me, over here on the left, a very special exhibit. This is an exhibit case that is dedicated to the long, thin line of english. Bernie pyle walked the beach is where the American Forces landed and he saw all of the d etritus of war at the beach. What we have in this case is actual artifacts and sand from utah and omaha beaches. He writes about what he found. You can see he talks about shoe polish, showing kids diaries, bibles, hand grenades, toothbrushes, razors, and he particularly singles out in his column writing paper. He talks about how the young men who gave their lives at normandy intended to write an awful lot of letters back home and the other thing they had an awful lot of was cigarettes. He said that packs of cigarettes had been handed out to the troops before the landings began and he made the comment that the line of cigarettes up and down the beach marked the high water of this sacrifice at normandy. It is a moment for our audiences after the film to pause and reflect about what was going on in the world. Dday, 1944, was the day hitlers could have driven our forces back into the waters of the english channel. He failed. From that point forward, we were on our way to the road to berlin and ending the third right. On this wall, we have the civilian, military, and political leaderships reactions to the normandy library, starting with anne frank, a young jewish girl hiding in an attic in holland, where she writes in her diary, could it be true that forces had landed and that we would be liberated . Dwight eisenhower weighs in, the Supreme Commander, saying that we have landed, and the hour of liberation is approaching, but winston churchill, the Prime Minister of great britain, adds the sobering note that although we have had a successful landing 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 toehold on the peninsula in france. We are along the beaches, but we are also bottled up and facing a very hard, serious fight to try and move through northern france before we can start to really get some traction on defeating nazi germany. We are now in the race across france galleries, in which we tell the story of the allies advance across northern france, up to operation bottled up in the hedgerows. Behind me, you can see how these would hedgerows across fields of france held up our military advancement. These hedgerows were so thick, for thousands of years, that you could have a german soldier on one side of a hedgerow, three feet away from an allied soldier, and the two would not even know they were there. Tanks could not go through these hedgerows until we built some clippers, if you will, onto the front of these tanks. American ingenuity that allowed us to start busting through towards the liberation of france. The liberation of paris in particular is the 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 to short in holland. To my right over year, as we move through the gallery, we have some artifacts, very interesting. Marie louise, a young french woman in normandy, was a member of the french resistance, and she was spying on the germans, so here we have a german typewriter that she used to write notes to send information to the allies. A german hermes typewriter as well as a crystal radio receiver makes to it which she used to send out listened to the bbc, the legal radio broadcast, illegal under the nazi regime. We have an interesting piece in here as well. You may notice this pink and red silk liberation sash. This was given to an american lieutenant in september of 1944. On the back of it is written viva la grande liberation. It symbolizes the outpouring of joy the french people had as the allies began to move through their country and liberate them from nazi rule, but down here on the end is a special artifact that we have. It is the medal of honor that was awarded to walter uhlers. He passed away a year ago. He was the last, at the time, medal of honor recipient from the normandy landing. 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. He came from a very religious family in kansas. He promised his mother he would not drink or swear or curse or smoke while he was over here. He is going to be moving through france a 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. And despite this, he was able to fight off the germans and basically carry his comrade to safety. So for those actions, while taylors was given the medal of honor. However, i need to mention that walt had a brother named roland healers, who all roman who landed at normandy with walt, and 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 boat coming into the beaches was hit by shell fire. Walt did not know that at the time. He found this out some days later, and so, this was of course a terrible experience for him. Very bittersweet. Over here in this case, we have items that are dedicated to the average gis experience in france and the 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, as an infantry, theres all kinds of you need such as sewing kits, 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 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 some specifically designed for the field and you can see in the case, of course, cooking equipment that people, troops would use as they moved through, advancing against the nazis. In the race across france, after operation cobra, the United States and her allied forces are going to liberate paris in 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, and 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. A dogtags of john mack. John mack, an africanamerican man, was from centerville, louisiana. He was a member of the red ball expressed. The red ball express basically was a convoy of supply trucks. A moving army. George patton, think about him racing across france. You need to be able to keep up with them with food and gasoline. John mack lost his dogtags on the beaches of normandy when he came ashore as part of the red ball express. Over 70 years later, just a couple of years ago, his dogtags were rediscovered by a farmer in france who then sent them to the secretary of States Office here in louisiana and he presented us with the dogtags. So in a sense, john mack and his dogtags came home 70 years later. Here in the case as well, you can see the red ball expresss badge that they were on their uniforms. Wore on their uniforms. 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, where we famously came up one bridge too far, too short from being able to invade into 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, unfortunately, this was a terrible misjudgment. As we got closer to the german border, basically, resistance stiffened. In this german bunker that we are standing in, we learn the story of the battle of a brutal, nasty affair that held us up and should have let us know that things in fact were not going swimmingly. 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 used talk and markers to write out the distances of these various landmarks in the landscape around them, and this was how they would zero in and use their artillery and weapons to fire on advancing forces. Over here in the bunker, we have a map used by the third armored division, and so, 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 memoir was entitled death traps. You get an idea of the terrain and the fastmoving advancement that the allied forces were making with tanks and 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, at off a letter is going to adolf hitler is going to launch a lastditch effort 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. Hitlers 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 antwerp, all the way to the north. Hitlers could break all the way up to antwerp and the english channel. He thought the americans and the 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 fought by the United States army in its history, better than 600,000 better than 600,000 americans were engaged. And you can see, our lines famously bulged but they did not break. However, you have the story of the siege that is going to be depicted here. Most famously, George Patton is going to come up and save the town from the south after they had been surrendered. This was an incident that Many Americans will recognize from the film patton, where the Commanding Officer was asked by the germans to surrender and he famously said to them one word, nuts. In this case here, you get a sense of how logistics are so important in war, particularly with things like gasoline up here. We have a german gas tank where you can actually see the sf markings on the side. Germans were running out of gasoline. We, however, are going to also not only have to deal with moving mechanical vehicles, tanks, and trucks around, but also more importantly, probably, men, troops, and you can see, in this case as well, tankers boots. These were worn by major carl corbin during the battle of the voltage where he was around belgium. In the end, we are going to prevail. As i mentioned, our lines bulged , but they do not break. However, it comes at a tremendous cost in blood. About 19,000, over 19,000 americans are killed in this writing that goes on for six weeks. One last item i thought i would point out is a souvenir nazi flag captured by members of the 101st airborne division. They were nicknamed the battered masters. Some of the airborne members signed their names to it. You can see in particular sam on here from kenneth, missouri, and other members, where they managed to hold out. Patton is going to be able to come in and provide them relief and we are going to push the germans back towards germany. We are now headed into the heart of the battle of the bulge gallery at the National World war ii museum. You can see around me we have an environment once again that its very hostile to our forces. Early 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 would shoot artillery into the trees, not aiming for american troops, which they knew were under the trees, but to create shrapnel. The tree branches would all shatter and then come down, and few were unfortunate enough if you are not fortunate enough, you would be killed by splinters flying around. In the battle of the bulge, as we present this story in various video screens, we tell the stages of the battle. Coming in. They have broken through the american line. Thousands more have been taken prisoner. One of the things we show is americans being captured. We have pows. I want to point this out. Here is the prisoner of war id tag of Benjamin Cohen who is with the 423rd infantry regiment. He is going to be captured very early on in the battle of the bulge. One thing i will mention of general interest, it was better to be a prisoner of war of the nazis man it was of the japanese. Better than 40 of american pows of the japanese perished in those camps, whereas the germans, because they were concerned that the allies would give good treatment to their own pows, tended to respect the rules of the geneva conventions more, 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 enemys hands. And so, over here, one other thing that i wanted to point out was the famous prayer card that general George Patton 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. Patton credited this is having an influence on the battle. In truth, the chaplain had actually written the prayer sometime before the battle, but so, this prayer card was delivered to all of the troops, and it became part of the legend of the battle of the bulge. Here in our battle of the bulge gallery, we do have a german sedan. This was one of the cars that was used by basically the german officers to go back and forth and transport themselves back and forth to the fronts. Here, you can see all of the camouflage that they in fact used in these types of winter conditions with branches and things like that to try and blend into a landscape when they might have aircraft or run into other dangerous situations. We are now entering our last gallery into the german heartland. As you can see by this map, by early 1945, after the battle of the bulge, the United States and her allies, you can see French Forces and British Forces 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 can see the handwriting on the wall by april 25. In this gallery up 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 the river. This hat was given to a lieutenant by the name of george. From that point forward, berlin was surrounded and the soviets are in fact going to go ahead and crush hitlers and the force in berlin vehicular manslaughter forces in berlin hitler and the forces in berlin. What we want to remind people of, even as we move into germany and we are getting closer and closer to our goal of victory, the violence continues to escalate, and it has a real human cost, so we tell the story of curtis ritter. Curtis ritter was a private in the american army, and here, you can see a letter he wrote to his wife, evelyn, in 1944. He was killed in late 1944 on the way into germany. You can see in the case that the hometown newspaper for, the berlin post is going to bring news of his death to his hometown and public, and you can see them the condolence letters that will be written to his family from various sympathizers, neighbors, friends, family members who knew curtis ritter. Down here in the corner, we have curtis ritters coveted combat infantry badge with a blue background and the rifle on it. The badge i was an honor that was that was an honor that was given only to those who faced an enemy indirect combat in direct combat. What we want to show the public is the immense devastation that went on as we move towards berlin. You can see our representations of hamburg and dresden, basically, the allies raised about 60 german razed about 60 german cities on the way to berlin and the germans refused to give up, but in the end, adolf hitler committed suicide, april 30, 19 45, in a bunker in berlin. On may 7, 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 hitlers had begun his political career, found in nazi headquarters, buildings, Nazi Administration buildings in munich. Basically, with the elimination of adolf hitler, we then have the opportunity to try and sum up what this war in europe amend, and we do so with a film that tries to tell what the entire cost the summation of hitlers nazi germany meant to the world in terms of deaths, 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, such and so on, many oth