The German Resistance Museum is dedicated to the individuals who stood against the Nazis, most of whom were murdered for their efforts. Along the way, the Museum also made clear that opponents of the regime were a small minority. Nazi ideology was engraved into lives of German children as well as adults. They started teaching them while they were young and as they grew up, they were pro-Nazi. Many displays were of children. One contained child in class all saluting to Third Reich and Hitler himself. Another had Jewish children being transported around the ghettos. The third one had children celebrating German troops invading Austria. Children’s minds are innocent in a sense that they do not necessarily know right from wrong, and Hitler took advantage of that. These pictures represented corruption. They taught children very simply that the Jews were bad, and the Nazis were good.

Throughout Germany I also noticed many sites that accepted the Nazi past for what it was. In the German spy museum, they talked about intelligence throughout history, and they had an entire section about its effects throughout WW2. They wrote about the failure of German intelligence and how they failed to recognize their own faults. At the Berlin Zoo zebra exhibit there was a small plaque talking about how that particular exhibit was one of the few to experience very minor damage during the war. These sites didn’t revolve around the war, but they recognized it instead of hiding it. This shows that they are acting in memorializing the war and Germany’s past rather than denying it.

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.

Madame Marie-Madeline Fourcade was a force in the French Resistance. She led three thousand agents across occupied territories and free zones while working directly with British intelligence. She single handedly recruited valuable agents such as Leon Faye and Antione Hugon. Surprisingly, In the French Liberation Museum there I found only a small passage about her efforts. The display introduced her as the wife of Édouard Méric whom she had left prior to working in the Alliance.  They also mention her directing the organization only after her co-founder Navarre had been arrested, but they started the network together and divided roles internally. She was never second to his leading; she was the one who lead and instructed the agents.

Madame Fourcade was not only one ignored in this fashion. Overall, this Museum didn’t show the overall effect of women during the resistance. About a quarter of the resistance movement were women. This exhibit showed a wall that contained about 1040 pictures of people who participated in aspects of the Resistance and only six of those were women: that is .577%. This alone shows how little emphasis the exhibition put on women’s participation during this time. To me this shows how the French place emphasis on the male participation over the overall female effects.