A History Buff’s Guide to U.S. Military Museums

A certain “1 percent” in U.S. society refers not only to the extremely wealthy but also to the number of citizens actively serving in the military—and many of us know far less about that other 1 percent than we do about the ultra-rich. To boost your knowledge, consider visiting these history museums that aim to bridge the chasm between veterans and civilians.

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The National World War I Museum and Memorial

• Open: daily 10 a.m.–5 p.m. in summer; closed Monday otherwise.
• General admission for adults: $19.50 ($15.50 for military)

For in-depth historical coverage of the “Great War,” the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, takes you underground into a huge windowless space. There, sounds of artillery surround you amid life-size replicas of the trenches that epitomize this modern war, which was fought primarily from massive networks of deep ditches.

Built under the Liberty Memorial tower finished in 1926, this museum opened in 2006 to bring to life the first global war. Here, informative charts, timelines, and a compelling film clearly spell out factors that led to the conflict and the sequence of events during the fighting, which lasted from 1914 to 1918.

Even if you’re confident you know “all about” World War I, you’ll learn more. See the slim metal arrows in a glass case? Airplanes dropped those lethal fléchettes to fell soldiers from high above. Nearby, the collection of “the things they carried” (tins of tobacco, dice, mini domino sets) helps personalize infantrymen.

Some of the largest items on display are tanks, aircraft, and weapons; a full-scale crater recreating a howitzer’s destruction of a French farmhouse also has plenty of visual effect. Though smaller in scale, the selection of propaganda posters, directed at civilians—schoolchildren, farmers, factory workers—are colorful graphic alarms and alone worth the visit.

Other objects in this world’s largest collection related to WWI: a woman’s baseball uniform from the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during the American occupation of Germany immediately after the war, an Australian infantry uniform, and diaries from prisoner of war camps. In private booths in the center of the museum, visitors are invited to sit and listen to wartime songs and poems by such notable soldier-poets as Sigfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Whatever you focus on, it’s hard to emerge from this dark underground unaffected.

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The National World War II Museum

• Open: daily 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
• General admission for adults: $35 ($25 for military)

The French Quarter, Mardi Gras, endless restaurants and live music venues: To most visitors, New Orleans is associated with letting the good times roll. But one of the city’s other top attractions is a more serious place.

The National WWII museum here, which opened in June 2000, started as a museum devoted to D-Day and has expanded to include seven buildings and cover the entire U.S. involvement in the war from December 1941 to August 1945. The John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion displays macro-artifacts, such as a PT-305, a patrol torpedo boat built in New Orleans, and the newest building, Liberation Pavilion, opened in 2023 and covers the Holocaust and the postwar years.

A visit starts on a 1940s train; from a kiosk, take an ID card for a real person active in the war; as you move through the museum, you can see how the war affected your person at various checkpoints. I latched onto a free tour led by a volunteer for the floor devoted to D-Day. The guide had no doubt gone over this material countless times, yet he spoke with an enthusiasm that was palpable.

Again, discoveries here await in every corner. That odd little wooden cart? It housed carrier pigeons used to send messages by both the Allies and Axis sides for reliable low-tech communication. That flag featuring an attacking panther? The mini-flags on it represent the 33 subs that the USS Tang sunk in its short career.

Although I arrived early on a weekday and spent all day there, I didn’t have time for the theater with hourly showings of Beyond All Boundaries, a film narrated by Tom Hanks, and sped through the war in the Pacific exhibits. My visit ended in the largest building, the U.S. Freedom Pavilion, which houses several bombers suspended from the ceiling and includes an interactive submarine ride about the final mission of the USS Tang. Enlarged to be less claustrophobic than a regular sub, it is an eerie re-creation. You are assigned to be a crew member from that last journey and given a job to perform; after the sub is sunk, you find out if your man was one of the few to survive. Mine did not.

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The National Veterans Memorial and Museum

• Open: Wednesday–Sunday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
• General admission for adults: $18 (free for military)

Opened in 2018, this museum in Columbus, Ohio, pays tribute to veterans of all branches of military service throughout U.S. history. The late senator John Glenn, the pioneering astronaut and Marine Corps aviator, led efforts to establish this museum, a striking structure of more than 50,000 square feet that spirals up to a rooftop terrace, where you can overlook the city. The focus here is not on battles or strategies but on the people who have served, historical and contemporary.

Special exhibits include the current Remembered Light (until January 26, 2025), 25 artworks that use shards of stained glass recovered from damaged cathedrals, synagogues, and chapels in Europe during World War II.

Letters, other personal artifacts like footlockers, and films present the stories of a wide range of veterans. Interactive elements include Share Your Story, which enables visitors to create a short video of their experience by using screen prompts in a story booth and to leave their stories behind for others. In addition to the Remembrance Gallery, with stained glass stretching from floor to ceiling, outdoors is a Memorial Grove with a reflecting pool, a place to contemplate the debt we all owe veterans.

The Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front

• Open: daily 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (The Red Oak, not part of the NHP, is open to the public only on Sundays).
• Free to visit

World War II united and transformed the USA, impacting all citizens, not only the armed forces. With so many men in active service, a new labor shortage led industries to hire women. Rosie the Riveter represented this new force, women working in munitions factories and building ships and airplanes.

The Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front, a National Historical Park and museum in Richmond, California, on San Francisco Bay, pays tribute to the contributions of these millions of workers. An informative visitor center is in a former Ford Assembly plant.

Nearby is the S.S. Red Oak Victory Ship, the last remaining ship built at Kaiser Shipyards. Appropriately, it’s a Merchant Marine vessel—a vital but often overlooked participant in the war effort.

Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site

• Open: Monday through Saturday 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
• Free to visit

Tuskegee, Alabama, has an importance in Black American history that far exceeds its small size. Here you’ll find the NHS honoring Black men and women who served in the Army Air Forces (now the Air Force) during WWII, when segregation by race was standard in the military. After training began in 1941, the Black 99th Squadron started combat service in North Africa and Italy. Other Black squadrons followed; their success in escorting bombers with few losses kept them in demand. Nicknamed the “Red Tails” because of their Mustang planes’ coloring, they flew more than 15,000 missions. By the war’s end, some 1,000 pilots had trained at the Tuskegee air base.

This NHS has museums in two hangars. Hangar 1 features two WWII-era flight simulator aircraft and exhibits about the early history of the group. (The term Tuskegee Airmen was coined postwar and refers to everyone in the program, including mechanics and nurses.) In Hangar 2, a 27-minute documentary puts their achievements in context; there’s also a full-size replica of a P-51 Mustang.

This article was originally published on November 11, 2019, and was updated with new information on November 7, 2024.