Berlin was the last spot on our trip but also in my opinion the country with the best memorials with one exception. But there is one memorial and cemetery that really stood out to me and that was the Soviet cemetery in Treptower Park. This memorial left a huge impact on me, as it was a mass grave of about seven thousand unknown soldiers, and they were all honored in the cemetery not by individual gravestones but instead by 16 sarcophagi depicting the journey of a Red Army soldier to his death. The centerpiece of the cemetery is a statue that signifies the end of the war and the saving of Germany with a soldier holding a German child crushing a swastika under his boot.

The Treptower memorial is very similar in a way to the Soviet war memorial near the Brandenburg Gate, as that is also a memorial to the fallen soldiers and recipients of the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. That memorial also acts as another mass grave for two thousand fallen unidentified Soviet soldiers. It is interesting that the Soviet memorials seem to act as both a monument to the Soviet victory in the war and as a mourning site for fallen soldiers. I feel this is the perfect end to this trip as the memorials both celebrate the victory of the Allied forces over the Axis as well as mourn the losses required to earn the ultimate triumph.

Krakow is a beautiful city with a rich history as it was the old capital of the Kingdom of Poland. It still retains that beauty to today; with a clash of old and modern architecture the city stands not just as an old city but a monument to Polish history. Krakow was also the capital of the German-run provisional government of Poland during the Second World War. The city was spared the fighting of the Second World War because German troops retreated from the city without a fight. This means that the city is one of the only Polish cities to be untouched by the fighting.

With the old city still intact, it has today become a thriving shopping district which is home to many small stalls and shops. In a way, Bayeux and Krakow are similar in that both have a town square and a church in the center. But Krakow is a much larger city than Bayeux and Krakow, unlike Bayeux, has its large shopping district in the center of its town square. With the city kept untouched by the Second World War it has itself become a symbol of Poland as it is one of the oldest cities with its original architecture still intact. Modern sectors of the city are built around the old town, but shockingly neither clash with each other, the new city fades into the old city with a park surrounding it. Because it was untouched it can continue to be a center for Polish culture for many generations to come.

Paris, while in the same country as Bayeux, felt completely different; this difference was also seen in museums. The museum in Paris that I am analyzing is Les Invalides, an old hospital converted into a museum. As this is a French Army museum, as one would expect it had a lot of items that were dedicated to the French military. But what surprised me was the amount of items that were not French but rather belonged to their allies and enemies in the Franco-Prussian War, the Great War, and Second World War.

It surprised me that a museum dedicated to the French Army would have so much equipment and displays dedicated to other nations. It felt like for every display of French equipment they had another explaining who they were fighting and a display to go along with it. In the Second World War section for the Normandy Invasion there was one room that was dedicated to the United States and the Commonwealth Nations. But while the main section for the Second World War was good, it felt like the museum lacked displays and sections for the interwar years and that era should be expanded. But the museum represented the influence that French Colonial troops had on the Free French Army; giving credit to African troops is something that was not really seen in the Imperial War Museum in London. But overall, Les Invalides was centered on the French Army as it is at its core a French Army museum. Yet it still displays items and stories from allied and enemy counties, giving the museum more life and allowing it to better tell the story of the wars it commemorates.

The Normandy region of France is littered with monuments and memorials dedicated to the achievements of the Second World War. Two memorials stuck out to me in particular, both dedicated to the men who lost their lives in the invasion of Normandy. One is the Omaha Beach Memorial, the newest one from 2023 named Les Braves II: at water’s edge, and the memorial in the Normandy American Cemetery named The Spirit of the American Youth Rising from the Waves. Both are pieces of art that require a viewer’s interpretation of their meaning; neither tell what they are memorializing but to me one does this better than the other.

The memorial on Omaha beach is a three-piece memorial with a piece of the sculpture pointing left, right, and forward. This to me depicts the battle that took place on the beaches as each of the pieces look like flames reaching towards the sky. And where the monument is located each piece points in a different direction in which the landings took place. But to me this memorial fails to capture the memory of the battle and the men who fought it; it feels more like a modern art piece that you would find in a gallery and not a memorial. This memorial stands in contrast to the statue of the American Youth Rising from the Waves; this piece depicts the figure of a young man rising from the waves wearing only a laurel wreath. This piece shows both a sense of memory and mourning for the dead. To me the young figure is most likely a soldier who died in the waves of Normandy, but the memorial also shows triumph as the laurel crown he wears is a symbol of victory. Both are memorials and monuments to the great deeds of the American soldiers in Normandy, but to me at least one does a much better job in representing an artistic interpretation of the battle and memorializing the soldiers who fought it.

I will be describing the HMS Belfast as a historical site and its significance. From a distance it seems like a small ship no larger than a destroyer despite being a light cruiser. As I got closer, its grand scale became apparent as its imposing six-inch guns pointing down river grew larger. The ship gives a sense of regality as it sits still on the River Thames, a lone warship amongst civilian ships. It sits as a reminder to the memory of the Second World War, but while it reminds and informs of Britain during wartime, it also sits as a constant reminder of what once was for what we have now.

The HMS Belfast is both a museum and a memorial. It is for one a museum because it holds artifacts and a museum exhibition inside of the ship. and it is a memorial because it is one of the last ships still in existence from the Royal Navy of the Second World War, so it sits as a memorial to all the ships and sailors who served during the war. I learned more visiting the ship than I ever would have just sitting and reading about it. It is one thing to read about the ship’s details in a book and it is another thing to see it up close and in person.