By VE-Day, 1.6 million American soldiers stood on German soil. Their first months in the land of their former enemy were marked by a number of surprising observations and interactions.

On June 6, 2015, The National WWII Museum will simultaneously commemorate the 71st anniversary of the D-Day invasion at Normandy and the 15th anniversary of its opening as The National D-Day Museum in 2000. After receiving Congressional designation to become America’s WWII Museum in 2004, the institution launched a major campaign in order to expand into a world-class educational institution that preserves the stories of the Greatest Generation, while benefiting and inspiring future generations.

In 1942, when the Nazis rounded up the children in his Warsaw Ghetto orphanage and sent them to the death camp at Treblinka, Janusz Korczak refused to leave their side. He was murdered alongside his pupils shortly after arriving at Treblinka. 

C.L.R. James (1901-1989) called for mass resistance to Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

During a trip to Alexandria, Louisiana in 1970, Maurice P. "Pete" Bowler returned to Camp Claiborne to visit the base where he had trained with the 103rd Infantry Division in 1942.