During the war France and Poland both spent time under German occupation whereas the British mainland wasn’t occupied. This I felt was represented in the museums we went through. In the Imperial War Museum in London, I noticed less of a focus on telling a German based story and rather the struggles of war and in fighting the enemy. They focused on Allied operations and technology used. In the Les Invalides Museum in Paris in the deportation section, they had a Nazi flag in a display case next to a framed photo of Hitler. In the Krakow Schindler Museum, they focused on the circumstances during German occupation and decorated the rooms as such. One room contained walls covered in German propaganda that would have been seen around the town at that time. Another had German swastikas covering the entire floor with multiple pictures of Hitler on the wall. Another difference between the occupied territories and free was the resistance movements. France and Poland both had anti-German resistance within their two countries, but their museums did not represent this fully. In the France liberation museum, they had a section on resistance but focused on the male effort. In Krakow they focused less on resistance and rebellion within the occupation and instead focused on the submission. I felt this related to how strict their occupation was in regard to the Germans. In Krakow it was harsher because of the number of Jews or rather because they were occupied earlier in the war. Paris on the other hand was still occupied but had free zones which aloud or a greater resistance movement to be told.
All of these museums represented the different states of the specific countries. The British museum showed more the fight against the Germans and focused on the soldiers and liberations. The British weren’t occupied, and in the museum, there was very little on the German war effort as compared to Paris and Krakow. France and Poland spent parts of the war being occupied by the Germans so what they had to show for the war was a lot of German based history. This contained the pains and hardships the people went through and represented their daily struggle. This had a big impact on their country and effected the museums in the same way. While all the museums showed the war effort, they each had their own perspectives based on their own experiences.