Museum of World War II, Natick, Massachusetts, main page

1942 Poster by Allen Saalburg, published by the Office of War Information.

The Museum of World War II, Inc., is a 10,000 square foot, fully staffed, private collection containing the most comprehensive display of original World War II artifacts on exhibit anywhere in the world. The Museum is located just west of Boston, at the junction of two major highways.

Our new Museum Store offers original World War II artifacts for sale. These include signed letters and documents from the major personalities, posters, and other artifacts from World War II. Everything is original--there are no reproductions. We also offer a selection of special current books in the Museum Store. Click on the 'Museum Store' sidebar to see more.

Additionally, we can create collections and libraries for those interested. Contact the webmaster for more information.

Flag that hung at FDR's cottage at Campobello Island, 1945.

Formed over a period of more than 40 years, the collection documents and illustrates the period from the Versailles Treaty, ending World War I, to the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, ending World War II. All of the more than 6,000 artifacts on display, as well as 83 mannequins with complete uniforms and equipment, are original and from the Second World War.

The presentation of the exhibits is a major reason that the Museum is private and not open to the general public--although visits are scheduled virtually every day for those who will appreciate and understand the era and the collection. Most of the artifacts are not behind glass.

Printed copy of the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War I and laid the foundation for World War II, along with the silver fountain pen used by the British delegation to sign the Treaty

Wartime portrait of Winston Churchill, which hung in the R.A.F. Officer's Mess at Barnby Moor, Yorkshire.

Fragile items, important letters and documents, handguns, small spy weapons, and the like, are in museum cases, but everything else is openly exhibited.

The Museum is arranged chronologically and geographically, and a visitor is guided by original materials--not signboards--from section to section. ' Political correctness' is found in its proper

place--with Joseph Goebbels in the Third Reich

The sections of the Museum include:	Germany in the 1920's The Rise of Nazism The German Military The Fall of France Winston Churchill and The Battle of Britain
	Resistance and Spying *The Holocaust* Pearl Harbor and the United States War Effort

North Africa Italy Soviet Union	The Normandy Invasion The Japanese Homefront **The War in the Pacific Iwo Jima Prisoners of War The Atomic Bomb The German and Japanese Surrenders The German and Japanese War Trials "Everybody's War" The Cold War: Post-WW2 Spy Equipment**

There are highly important wartime letters, documents and manuscripts displayed from all the major personalities, as well as a comparable number from "average" people: from soldiers' diaries to concentration camp inmates. Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery, Stalin, Rommel, Mussolini, Joseph Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, Raoul Wallenberg and Anne Frank's family--all of the leading

Bust of Winston Churchill by Clare Sheridan, 1943.

characters are represented in original letters.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, autograph picture, receiving Legion of Merit from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Of particular importance are Hitler's draft of the Munich agreement, containing his notations as well as Neville Chamberlain's; the first message alerting armed forces of the attack on Pearl Harbor; Patton's letter to the Sultan of Morocco announcing the American landings and threatening destruction; Montgomery's address to the troops before El Alamein; Patton's annotated map

Gen. George S. Patton's operational map for the invasion of Sicily.

for the invasion of Sicily; the complete plans for the D-Day invasion in Normandy; and MacArthur's draft of the Japanese surrender terms.

Artifacts include Hitler's SA shirt; his first sketch for the Nazi flag; his reading glasses; Patton's battle helmet; Montgomery's beret; and copies of Mein Kampf belonging to Hitler, FDR and Patton. Five different Enigma code machines, including the

German High Command ten-rotor Enigma code machine, one of five machines known to have survived. This was used only by the High Command and the embassies in Sweden and Switzerland, and its particular code was never broken.

ten-rotor, of which only five are known, are displayed--the most extensive collection outside of the National Security Agency. Literally hundreds of spy weapons, clandestine radios and sabotage equipment are

Norman Rockwell's poster, "The American Way"

shown, together with thousands of other artifacts that reflect everyday life on the home fronts and the battle fronts.

The smallest artifacts are the spy weapons and cameras; the largest are an American Sherman tank from the North African campaign, a German Kubelwagen, a German Goliath tank from Normandy, and one of the very few surviving original landing craft (LCVP) from the Pacific.

German remote-controlled Goliath tank, filled with explosives, intended to be run up the landing ramps of the Higgins' boats on the Normandy beaches.

If a visitor is overwhelmed with the enormity and the complexity of the war, I have achieved my goal.

Manuscripts and artifacts from the collection have been exhibited at the National Archives; West Point; Museum of Our National Heritage; Grolier Club, New York City; University of Southern California; the Newseum, Washington; the Supreme Court of the United States; the National D-Day Museum, New Orleans; all of the Presidential Libraries; and other institutions.

Last updated on: Wednesday, February 9, 2005