Memorial to Liberty

The first and last things you witness at the Liberty World War I Memorial Museum are striking, overwhelming, and contemplative. For lack of a better description, they are, “Whoah!” moments. And everything in between is like walking through a History Channel special – complete with sounds and music, wafting through the museum, from the video repeating itself at the far end of the exhibit.

The first “Whoah” comes with the entrance video that uses the primitive footage of the day to describe the factors leading up to the first World War. Social, economic, political, nationalistic. Along with ominous drums beating, the video informed us that the pot was boiling. And then, the assassination of the Archduke of Hungary.

What comes next is what makes the entire video worthwhile – the words scroll up too quickly to write down or memorize, but I will summarize from what I can remember. One at a time, in complete silence, the following sentences appear on the screen. “One month later, within the course of a week:” “Russia declares war on Austria.” “Germany declares war on Russia.” “Germany mobilizes its troops against Belgiuim.” “France declares war on Germany.” “Russia declares war on Germany.” “Germany declares war on France.” “England declares war on Germany.” Within a week, the entire world is at war.

The first half of the museum takes you through the first half of the War – when only Europe was involved. You are astonished by the death toll – over 20 million – not just stated, but displayed in various graphs. One in three soldiers die. You see photographs of ancient castles in Europe destroyed. And you peer into diorama trenches to see exactly what trench warfare looked like from a soldier’s point of view and hear him describe his experience. Trench warfare defined World War I – in a little less than a month after the war began battle lines were drawn. Both sides dug trenches and waited. Waited for the other side to lose enough men to give up. For three years, the battle lines barely changed. Meanwhile Germany began to suffer a horrible famine, even as its resources were being sent to the war.

Another moving, although less mind-boggling, video describes the environment in which America entered the war. In short, Germany offered Mexico the Southwest states if they would join the war against the U.S. and convince Japan to do the same. In an act of outrage and self-defense, President Wilson, who had just been re-elected because of his stance of trying to gain peace in Europe while staying out of the war, declared war on Germany. Coming from a museum in Kansas City, MO, USA, perhaps the video was a little one sided. But I couldn't help but be moved by the thought of the Americans coming to the rescue - that it was our entrance into the war that changed the outcome and spelled the beginning of the end.

In fact, after three years of deadlock, the war the Americans entered was fairly fast paced. Just the body count of the troops we sent to Europe drastically outnumbered the German soldiers. Even though Russia pulled out to deal with its own crisis, the Allies still pushed through. Once the war was won, it was interesting to think of what a horror that time period must have been. The dead, over 20 million, were barely buried when a flu crisis swept around the world, killing as many. Communism swept through Russia, causing panic and scare in America. And Germany was left bitter. Even more interesting was learning that England was already setting up a Jewish state in Israel and dealing with Palestinians to negotiate a treaty - a treaty that would be vague and broken and lead to lasting tensions 100 years later.

The museum is set up in a kind of mirror image, and so the last "Whoah" moment came at the end, in a room of quotes. Each quote was on a holographic display, and when you moved around it, you could see who said it and when. The second to last quote hissed, "The deaths of 2 million German boys shall not have been in vain - we demand vengeance." Who said it? Adolf Hitler, 1923. Chilling.

The first time I went to the museum another takeaway was the sheer brutality of the conditions of war. Men lived in trenches filled with icy mud, with very little room. They were dirty, cold, sick, scared. We really have no appreciation for intense pain these days. But then again, not long before World War I, pioneers were travelling through heat and cold to cross the country and living amid bugs, bad water, and dangerous attacks. People were working in dangerous factories and living in dirty slums. Life was just plain harder back then. Add to the distress the sheer pointlessness of the war - a war even experts can't quite agree on why it happened.

But one thing is for certain - although we may not understand why World War I happened, we know exactly what caused World War II. The War to End All Wars did not take the pot off the heat, it just left it simmering.