Introduction
Often remembered as the “Good War,” the Second World War was a complex struggle that changed the political landscape of not only Europe, but also the rest of the world. The end of the war put into motion events that would begin the Cold War struggle between the United States and the USSR. The war also left battle scars in Europe, especially in Germany, where all the major cities and a large portion of the infrastructure were destroyed.
This exhibit looks at the Second World War through the images and words of German-Americans who witnessed it. They take us from Hitler’s pre-war Germany through the end of the war to the clean-up and the questions that remained after the war. For these Americans, the war was not always easily seen in terms of black and white. Like the pictures they left, they often saw their homeland and the war in Europe in shades of gray.
