America’s Great War

The United States’ official museum for WWI has immersive online exhibitions for visitors to discover the American and international experience of 1914-18

The National World War I Museum And Memorial is the United States’ official museum dedicated to World War I. Located in Kansas City, Missouri, the museum tells the story of the conflict from its origins before 1914 through to the 1918 armistice and 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Its exhibit space is contained within an impressive 3,000-square-metre facility that is both part of the US National Register of Historic Places as well a US National Historic Landmark.

Despite the restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the museum has plenty of online exhibitions for visitors to explore.

This includes introductory tours on the museum’s mission, its architecture and exhibit highlights narrated by curators and volunteers such as Colonel R Dudley (Retd.). One exhibition, Trenches of WWI, is an immersive tour of the museum’s trench displays that re-creates conditions for American, British, French and German soldiers on the Western Front.

There are also in-depth exhibitions on particular topics relating to WWI from both an American and international perspective. American exhibitions include The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I, War Fare: From The Homefront To The Frontlines and The Rise Of Giving: American Philanthropy And WWI. Meanwhile, international exhibitions include The Christmas Truce, Winter 1914, The Poster: Visual Persuasion In WWI, and an A-Z Guide To The War That Shaped The 20th Century.

The National WWI Memorial was opened in 1921 in a ceremony that was attended by General John Pershing, future presidents Calvin Coolidge (then vicepresident) and Harry S Truman, as well as Marshal Ferdinand Foch and Admiral Lord Beatty