A Brief Respite into Academia

Here you go Mom and Dad. This post contains no thinly veiled references to our nighttime trysts at pubs; it’s time to talk about the academic nature of this lovely trip I have embarked on. Yes, the true nature of London will not be found in the hallowed halls of FSU’s classrooms and the museums that abound through the city, but the outings we have had to these academic institutions have been just as distinctive and telling of British culture as have our night’s spent at the ol’ watering hole.

The British Museum is truly breathtaking its size and nature of historical artifacts so that will get a post of its own one of these days. Right now I am going to discuss my visits to two lesser known, but equally worthy museums, the National Army Museum and the Imperial War Museum. Both have helped me to understand history, specifically military history, from a British perspective, which I have found to be very distinct from the American perspective.

In the National Army Museum, we went through a very well done and comprehensive exhibition on World War One. As an American, we tend to glaze over WWI and think of it more as a precursor to WWII, but it is clear that the British feel quite differently. The war was fought on a scale that none of them could have predicted in their wildest dreams and casualties were catastrophic making their view of the war one less victorious and more remorseful. That has been one of the constant themes I have noted about the British attitude towards war, their seemingly general distaste for it and after all that has happened who can blame them.

The next museum we went to was the aptly named Imperial War Museum, where we spent a majority of our time in an expansive Holocaust exhibit. I have been taught about the Holocaust many times before but while we seem to be focused on the individual stories of Jewish struggle, this exhibit gave an interesting perspective by looking deeper into the roots of the issue and the policies behind it. On the wider subject of WWII, I am consistently awed by the plight of the British during this time. Walking by buildings still demolished from the Nazi air raids and even waiting in the Underground were so many people spent every night for years, I don’t have the gall to say I can empathize but it is a testament to the resolve of the British people. While we Americans like to look the wars we fought as victorious struggles of good over evil, the short time I have spent here as shown that there truly are no winners when it comes to war and I really hope everyone else figures that out before it’s too late.