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Imperial War Museum London

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Kathy
Kathy
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4 out of 5
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Editor Pick

The Imperial War Museum - Guns, Gadgets & Genocide...

  • February 28, 2009
  • Rated 4 of 5 by Liam Hetherington from Manchester, United Kingdom
The Imperial War Museum - Guns, Gadgets & Genocide...

Despite its out of the way location – gasp! - south of the river!, the Imperial War Museum is the museum in London I have visited the most. Originally created as a testament to the Great War of 1914-18, the IWM has moved with the times, and is now a chronicler of 20th century war. It is located equidistant from Lambeth North and Elephant & Castle tube stations. You cannot miss the museum itself, situated in a grand domed and pillared grey bruilding. Rather fittingly, the museum of war is based in ‘Bedlam’ – formerly the Bethlehem Mental Hospital.

You enter into the main hall. Tanks crowd the floor, a rocket stands to one side, and overhead dangle warplanes. Galleries lead off on four floors, all free to view. The only exception are major temporary exhibitions. I had been lured by the prospect of ’For Your Eyes Only’: an exhibition on Ian Fleming and James Bond. This was £8.00.

The display introduces you to the man behind Bond. Fleming was a womanizing, globe-trotting individual who found himself working for the secret services during WWII. Indeed. The exhibition is full of gadgets. A computer screen allows to you turn pages of a book from Fleming’s ‘library’ introducing you to his friends and associates. In a room devoted to Fleming’s work with the wartime Naval Intelligence Service a screen shows files popping out and maps unrolling to illustrate some of the operations he had a hand in. In the next room you can roll a roulette wheel to reveal some of the individuals that may have provided inspiration for Bond. And a display case holds artefacts from the Cold War intelligence battle; touching the glass above these pistols, poison-tipped umbrellas, dead drops, and samizdat Russian copies of Bond novels prompts more information to be revealed.

All this was good tech-y fun, but a little dry. But turning a corner revealed the final section of the exhibition, devoted to Bond himself, and principally the films we all know and love. Here you can learn more about the villains, see set designs by the legendary Ken Adams, and see some of the actual props and costumes, from ‘You Only Live Twice’s ‘Little Nellie’ gyrocopter, to the bikini worn by Jinx in ‘Die Another Day’, from ‘Goldfinger’s nuclear bomb to a blood-stained tuxedo and shirt worn by Daniel Craig. It was this, rather than the earlier displays on Fleming that had the fan-boy in me giddy. A monitor showing that moment at the beginning of ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ when Roger Moore skis over a cliff and tumbles, tumbles, tumbles, before fnally popping a cheesy Union Jack parachute, had me almost cheering as the Ba-da-ba-DAA! Bond theme played! Magical!

Gee’d up with spy-mania, I went back to the free galleries. ‘Secret War’ is the story of Britain’s secret services. Having studied intelligence communities at university I didn't learn anything new here. The exhibits dated principally from the Second World War and earlier. Though it is always impressive to see an Enigma code machine! Disappointingly, this seemed purely a celebration of the secret services. You end by passing a video of the SAS assault on the Iranian Embassy. It was more like a recruiting tool than an objective exhibition. No reference is made to the forged Zinoviev Letter than brought down the 1924 Labour government, no criticism that during the interwar period all Britain’s intelligence agencies were focussed on the USSR rather than Nazi Germany, or that in the 1990s they were so obsessed with Irish terrorists that they didn’t monitor Islamic ones. Touch-screens allow you to pull up files on the heads of the secret services, notable agents, and important operations. As I am currently rehearsing for a play (’Breaking The Code’) based on the life of Alan Turing I was interested to see what these screens revealed about his story. He is heralded as a genius whose work helped to decrypt the German Enigma cyphers; no mention is made of him having his security clearance stripped away following the war when his homosexuality became known, or his resultant suicide.

The downstairs galleries devoted to Field-Marshal Montgomery, World War One (with an interactive ‘Trench Experience’), World War Two (likewise with a ‘Bltz Experience’) and wars since 1945 (which seem to stop at Bosnia, with no reference to Kosovo, Afghanistan or the invasion of Iraq) continue what I see as a slightly out of kilter tone. War is a horrid business. Comments such as those on the sinking of the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst which state that out of a crew of 1968, only 36 survived, just seemed to be glorifying battle a bit too much.

This tone does not gel with other exhibitions. Principally, the Imperial War Museum is home to Britain’s Holocaust exhibition. This is a thorough and detailed look at this chapter in history, as good an overview as I have come across. Personally I believe that every schoolchild in Britain should come here – though you are warned that it is not suitable for those under the age of 14. It starts with the strains of anti-Semitism in European life. Germany is then looked at in more detail, focussing on the policies that the Nazis put in place to cut off Jews from mainstream society (and not just Jews, but also Gypsies, mixed-race children, and the mentally handicapped – I found the disection table from a mental hospital one of the most appalling things in here). We see the struggles of Jewish families to escape Germany, and the Evian conference where the other states of the world agreed that these refugees had to be granted asylum… just not in Britain / America / France / Palestine etc.

From here we progress to the Wannsee Conference and the ‘Final Solution’. An org chart shows just how many people were involved in this, from Heydrich and Eichmann, to the signallers who organised train timetables. You progress through one of the rail carriages that transported Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz to a scale model of the death camp at Birkenau itself, stretching on and on. There are items on loan from the museum at Auschwitz - cases of shoes, spectacles, dolls… Thankfully there are not the cases of human hair that shocked me at Auschwitz. The entire wicked machinery of the Holocaust is laid bear here in rooms silent but for the occassional hushed oath.

For me, this exhibition, while uncomfortable, and certainly not a pleasant way to while away a hour or two, is probably the most important museum display in Britain. It is not as far away or as long ago as we like to think. In particular it is book-ended by two quotes which I would love if every person in the world took to heart. Firstly the 19th century German Jewish writer Heinrich Heine: "Where they burn books, they will ultimately end by burning people". Lastly the 18th-century British political philospher Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing".

This humanism, where the loss of every life is a tragedy, is carried into the first floor World War One exhibition ’In Memoriam’. Unlike the rather militaristic displays in the basement, this focuses on the experiences of individuals. Here the words and experiences of private soldiers and sailors are as important as the ‘great figures’ of history. Though famous names do appear – General Haig, Baron von Richtofen, the German flying ace, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty who later served as an officer on the Western Front, the words of a young American artilleryman by the name of Harry Truman, the poems of Owen and Sassoon and the paintings of John Singer Sargeant. Having made a special study at school and university into the career of H.H. Asquith, British Prime Minister 1908-1916, I was particularly taken by a simple wooden cross that marked the grave of his eldest son Raymond who was killed at the Battle of the Somme. The Prime Minister’s distraught words are recorded beside it ("I can honestly say that in my own life he was the thing of which I was truly proud, and in him and his future I had invested all my stock of life. That is all gone, and for the moment I feel bankrupt.").

At the end of the gallery you can also search for your own ancestors who may have served in the Great War, a nice touch that adds a further personal aspect to this impressive display.

As I say, I didn’t find the sensitivity and humanism displayed in In Memoriam and the Holocaust exhibition carried across uniformly throughout the entire museum. But then, it is a large collection, and renovations take a long time to prepare. However, the Imperial War Museum is a very good museum, and I hope they note that the most touching and affecting dsiplays are actually those that stray the furthest from the institute’s jingoistic founding.

From journal The A-Muse-ment Arcades: Culture on the Cheap

Editor Pick

Imperial War Museum

  • April 22, 2008
  • Rated 5 of 5 by callen60 from Ozarks, Missouri
Imperial War Museum

If you’re planning a visit to London, this place might not be on your itinerary—but it should be. I’ve visited the IWM during both of my trips, and each time I’ve left wishing that I’d been able to spend more time here than I did. And this time, with my kids along, they had the same feeling, much to their surprise.

If your first reaction is (much like a friend of mine confessed) ‘thanks, but I’m not that into tanks and guns’, then you’ll miss out on one of the finest museums in a city of great museums. However, the approach to the building, and the collection in the entry hallway, won’t initially dispel your concern: a massive two-gun pair is poised to defend the entrance, and just inside you encounter a V-2 missile, a biplane, a tank, and a number of other implements of warfare from the two World Wars.

But if you stop here, you’ll truly miss out. The exhibits in the museum are very strongly thematic, and focus much more on the experience of troops and civilians in times of conflict. Founded to collect and display material from the ‘Great War’, the doors opened in 1920 at a South Kensington location. Ironically, the Museum is now housed in the former ‘Bedlam’ (Bethlem Royal Hospital), the world’s first psychiatric hospital, where it moved in 1936. Its purview was expanded to include any conflict in which British forces have been engaged, and it uses that to touch on a wide range of issues and approaches to conflict and war.

The highlight is the Holocaust Exhibit, which opened in 2000, and where I spent all of my time on my first visit in 2001. This split level exhibit opens with photos and stories from several Holocaust survivors, some shown on video, describing Jewish life in 1930’s Europe before Hitler’s genocide began. Their stories are augmented—here and throughout the exhibit—by personal photos and other artifacts. The displays then describe the end of World War I, the consequences of the Versailles Treaty, the long-standing roots of anti-Semitism, and Hitler’s rise to power. A major part for me was learning just what information about the Holocaust made it off the Continent and into the British press and other outlets, which was well beyond what I thought was known at the time. Another painful section chronicles the refusal of Britain, the U.S., and Europe to accept Jewish refugees from Germany and Central Europe, as they focus on their worries about this influx might do to their economies.

The second floor follows the grisly details of the German planning, ending with attempts to cover up the killings as Allied troops close in from east and west. It’s not as extensive as the National Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C., but it equals that institution in quality and in power. My kids’ biggest regret about London was that their time was limited here. Parents are cautioned against bringing kids younger than 13, and a staff member reminds each person entering the exhibit to turn off cell phones and refrain from taking pictures.

I ended my visit in the Holocaust Exhibit, after seeing a temporary display on ‘Weapons of Mass Communication’. This extensive set of war and propaganda posters from World War I through Vietnam includes German, American, British, Russian, Japanese and other materials, showing how image and text were used to rally support, inform the public, raise funds, and vilify the enemy. It’s too bad this exhibit closes in April 2008—it deserves to be a permanent part of the collection here.

Another exhibit closing shortly is an installation by artist Steve McQueen, entitled ‘Queen and Country’. McQueen has taken photographs of over 100 members of British forces killed in Iraq, and laid out each as a mock postage stamp, complete with the standard silhouette of the Queen in the upper left. Each is reproduced in a full sheet of stamps, and in the margin are details about the serviceman or woman, their unit, and the dates of their birth and death. The large sheets contain several hundred identical stamps, each displayed in the pullout cabinets typical of philatelic exhibits. This exhibit was commissioned by the IWM, and McQueen chose this route to connect the conflict and those lost in it with everyday British lives. Each photograph was used with permission of the families of the soldiers, and knowing that they chose the photograph that was used gives the work even more power. McQueen is currently working to have an official set of stamps issued in honor of those lost in Iraq.

In the basement are major exhibits I still haven’t seen, tracing the origins, development, conduct and consequences of World Wars I and II. I’ve had a growing interest in the Great War and how it frames so much of the decades that followed its conclusion, so I did race to this level for a brief, closing-time walk through the highly realistic ‘Trench Experience’, which is aptly named despite the theme-park like character of this moniker. This recreation of a frontline trench at night is filled with sounds, voices, artifacts and mannequins. Alone in this dark, scary, and completely believable environment, within 10 seconds I felt I understood more about this hellish time than any reading had given me. The prospect of being asked to charge out of the trench and into the shelling outside must have produced a terror in both German and Allied troops that was easy to imagine.

Directions
The Imperial War Museum is on Lambeth Road, a 15-minute walk east from Lambeth Bridge, and about 10 minutes walk west down St. George’s Road from the Elephant & Castle station. Buses 3 and 344 stop run along Lambeth Road, and stop right in front of the Museum (the 3 will take you here from Trafalgar Square or Westminster).

From journal London, Free and Easy

Editor Pick

Imperial War Museum

  • March 5, 2007
  • Rated 5 of 5 by climbergirl from cypress, California
Imperial War Museum

Imperial War Museum is not on everyone’s top list of things to do while visiting London, however, it was my favorite museum. I am not a war mongrel of any sort, but the museum is actually very interesting. We ended up at the Imperial War Museum because there were too many kids running around at the Natural History Museum. We spent 3 hours there and it was not enough time at all.
The stop for the Imperial War Museum is kind of far from the rest of the "attractions." You have to take the brown line (Elephant & Castle) almost to the end to the Lambeth stop. Stepping out from the tube you definitely feel like you are in the suburbs. A five minute walk gets you to the museum.

At the main entrance of the museum are 2 huge missile launchers or something of the sort. Once entering the main entrance you go directly to the audio guide rental counter. There is no entrance fee, this museum is FREE. Furthermore, we didn’t rent audio guides or feel the need to rent them in retrospect. By the way coat check is also, you guessed it FREE.

The museum has exhibits for WWI, WWII, the Holocaust, and Crimes Against Humanity.

The entrance floor has various tanks, machine guns, missiles, "little boy," and an interactive submarine experience. The submarine experience is made for kids to learn about how a submarine works, but I actually found it very interesting. There were interactive displays such as a radar tuner where you could hear the different bleeps or blips sounds detected by a radar for different things in the ocean (i.e. whale or a missile). Displays on everyday life in a submarine from sleeping, to eating, even going to the toilet.

The displays for the war memorabilia were incredibly detailed, and ranged from the types of guns and uniforms worn in combat, to the notepads that soldiers used.

One of the highlights to illustrate trench warfare included a life-size trench that a visitor may walk through. Another walk through experience was a "blitzkrieg."

A whole floor is dedicated to the holocaust and another towards crimes to humanity (i.e. genocides darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia)

Don’t think that this museum is for guys into wars for when we visited we are 2 women in our twenties that walked away thinking that the war museum as one of the best museums. It was so enthralling that my friend said to me "let’s stay in here until someone kicks us out." Too bad we didn’t have more time to explore.

www.iwm.org.uk

From journal London and All That It Has to Offer

Imperial War Museum

  • May 8, 2006
  • Rated 5 of 5 by CUL8R from Carlsbad, California
This museum is not as popular as the Cabinet War rooms, but is equally as interesting. It covers the conflicts involving Britain from WWI to present day. There is a sobering Holocaust Exhibition that uses historical material to trace the rise of the Nazi party to the amazing stories of perseverance from actual survivors. This exhibit is not recommended for children under 14 however, my 11-year-old son was fine. We could have spent all day here.

From journal Spring Break in London

Editor Pick

Imperial War Museum

  • April 18, 2006
  • Rated 5 of 5 by patty718 from Torrance, California
I went to this museum during Easter Break, which made it full of kids running around. While this was slightly bothersome, I was impressed with the way the museum handled the kids. Being Easter, they provided the children with chance to participate in art contests and Egg Hunts. I realized something about museums in London, which was that they try to make the museum experience fun for the children. I was told that this is so that the children can enjoy learning about things, rather than dreading going to educational museums. The museum was separated into sections of various battles. World Wars I and II, D Day, wars of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America, and the Holocaust. Again, because of the seriousness and the size of this museum, I would have preferred to do different sections of it on different days. This is one of the places that I'd love to go back to on my next visit to London.

From journal A Week in London

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