Military and Conflict Museums: a global guide
“Decapitaron una generación,” she murmured. They decapitated a generation. As we finished our tour of Santiago, an Argentine woman recommended I visit the Museo de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Museum) to learn more about Chile’s Pinochet government. This was my first ever visit to Latin America, and this museum changed my life. But this wasn’t my first visit to a museum about the military.
I grew up on a diet of British military history, with tales over the dinner table or the endless games of Bridge as we looked out on our jungly garden in Brunei. My parents were Royal Navy veterans and my dad was deployed in the Falklands War, or Las Malvinas as I later learned in Argentina. We had been on more ship tours than you can shake a stick at, and everywhere we travelled, a military museum had to feature on the itinerary.
The most memorable of my childhood years was the Vietnam War Museum in Ho Chi Minh, and the Cu Chi tunnels where the Viet Cong guerrillas burrowed underground. I remember a photograph of a small naked girl, running in the rain of napalm, her clothes burned away. The memory stands out because the narratives there didn’t match what I had heard before. To this day, for me it is a powerful reminder of the different perspectives on each side of a conflict, and how the arc of war history is often defined by the victors or the powerful.
What I discovered in Chile was different from the military museum style that celebrates the armed forces or narrates conflicts. While I still enjoy and learn a lot from these museums, this was about oppression by one’s own government. It makes for some sombre and morbid tourism, but I now seek these out in every country I visit, if they make such information available to the public. Not every country does.
I am fascinated by this because there is a special kind of horror and pain from violence committed against your own people, by the state that is supposed to protect you. It reminds me of the difference between a random attack on the street and the torture of a husband assaulting you and telling you they love you afterwards. It has happened so frequently, across cultures, timeframes and political allegiances. We ought to pay attention to why, lest it happen again. Lest it happen to us the next time.
The best museums tell the stories better than I ever could and below are those that had the most impact on me, in no particular order. In some cases, readers may not agree with the view of the museum, nor can I possibly vouch for everything that is presented in an institution. Even if a museum seems biased and the narrative disagrees with our own worldview, I think it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. They can help us to understand narratives of the time, or of the present. There are countless other museums beyond what I have mentioned that help us to piece together our past, and I would love to hear from you about which made an impression on you.
1. Museo de Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile.
Tells the story of the Pinochet Government, who seized power in a military coup in 1973 and held it until 1990. The military government was right wing, and overthrew Salvador Allende, a socialist, democratically elected President, with covert support from the United States. It talks about the country before the coup, life and torture under the military government, and the truth and reconciliation process after Pinochet left office and held the first democratic elections in almost two decades.
2. Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany
This memorial and museum was haunting to visit. The artwork of the memorial, a field of gray columns of all shapes and sizes, represents the monolithic anonymity of the men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust, according to our guide. Beneath the memorial there are innumerable stories of the victims of the Nazi regime that are incredibly hard but incredibly important to read.
3. ESMA Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina
This museum tells the story of the desaparecidos, the “disappeared”, who were victims of Argentina’s right-wing military government from 1976 to 1983. This museum is the place where some of these prisoners were housed, underneath a university, sometimes in waiting to be sent to their deaths. In the Plaza de Mayo, the madres (mothers) of the desaparecidos still march every week. They walk as a reminder that they still are looking for their lost children, some of whom were even secretly adopted of the military regime itself.
4. National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, Kyiv, Ukraine
This grand complex, with stunning Soviet-style statues in a sprawling park, tells the story of Ukraine’s experience in World War II, but also includes tributes to more recent conflicts in the Donbas (I visited in 2021, before the 2022 war began). Again the museum talks about the holocaust, but they also talk about life under the Soviets thereafter. There is a sombre room with a long dining table, illuminated in red. One side of the table is laid with pretty plates, and women’s items like embroidered handkerchiefs. The other has canteens, and makeshift crockery, with soldiers’ effects strewn across it. Women’s faces adorn the wall behind their place settings. The photographs of fallen male soldiers face them on the opposite wall.
5. Kigali Genocide Memorial, Kigali, Rwanda
A harrowing museum that explains the lead up to the Rwandan genocide, the ferocious pace at which it occurred, and the reconciliation in the aftermath. This museum is jaw-dropping and a must-visit in Rwanda. This is less a military museum than others on the last, as part of the tragedy of the genocide was its immense scale - ordinary Rwandans committed violent acts and murder, not just the military or government.
6. Red Terror Museum, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The Red Terror Museum covers the period from 1974 to 1991 of the socialist military government, the “Derg” (featuring a few years of “civilian” military leadership), led by Mengistu, who later sought refuge in Zimbabwe. A lesser-known military government, their policies are part of the reason why Ethiopia is famous for famines in the 1980s. It is not for the faint hearted. Victims of the regime are the guides, and the final room of the tour houses the skulls of those who did not survive.
7. Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Pol Pot’s communist regime is famous for its brutality, beginning in 1975 in the dusk of the Vietnam War. These two sites in the Cambodian capital are a school-turned-prison (S21) and the Killing Fields. The prison features defiant photographs of the detainees, and pictures of the guards, very young people who look just like imprisoned. The Killing Fields are a little out of town, easily accessible by tuk-tuk, and are a place for introspection. Audioguides mean the area has an eerie, spiritual silence, as you walk through the gardens where people were murdered, listening to a faceless voice tell you the significance of each site. A similar column of skulls is in the centre of the garden, each marked with colours to identify the victims.
8. Robben Island, Cape Town, South Africa
Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on this island for 18 years before becoming South Africa’s President. The story lives on, as former guards and prisoners alike live and work on the island, guiding people through the facilities and explaining what life was like under apartheid in South Africa.
9. BUNK’ART, Tirana, Albania
Enver Hoxha is an obscure communist dictator compared to his left-wing contemporaries (Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and Josep Tito), leading Albania for 40 years until his death in 1985. Over time he increasingly isolated Albania from their former allies as they liberalised, perceiving them to be losing sight of the original ideals of the communist movement. The museum highlights the security apparatus, spying and torture that occurred on his watch to help him maintain control. Albania became a democratic nation shortly after his death.
10. Eileen Hickey Irish Republican History Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland
This quaint museum, tucked away around the corner from the Sinn Fein headquarters, is a trove of personal effects and stories from the Troubles period in Ireland, highlighting the stories of prisoners at Long Kesh and some of the weaponry used. The Ulster Museum is a grander, wonderful complement to visit, and Say Nothing is a great book by Patrick Radden Keefe on the period. I think we don’t study and teach enough about this violent period in the UK’s recent history, with some wounds still not yet healed.
11. Museo de Las Memorias, Asunción, Paraguay
Another low-profile military dictator, Alfredo Stroessner, ruled Paraguay for over 40 years until 1989. This museum is like many others of its time, charting the history leading up to the coup, the atrocities committed by the government and the aftermath. What is interesting about Paraguay, a tiny nation relative to its neighbours, is that the largest ever archive of documents from this period was found in a forgotten locked room, linking the operations of several countries in the region.
12. National WWII Museum, New Orleans, USA
Tom Hanks’ booming voice narrates the opening video of the World War II museum in New Orleans. This, too, was a shock to the system when I first visited, as I was familiar with the British saviour narrative rather than the American one. This museum is very interesting to learn about America’s perspective and role in World War II.
13. Imperial War Museum, London, UK
Impressive exhibits from the First and Second World Wars and an excellent Holocaust Gallery. What is striking here is the participation from all around the British Empire and the world in service of the Great Wars.