“A national memorial to honor the sacrifice of ordinary people who, half a century ago, did nothing less than save the world.” That’s how beloved movie star Tom Hanks pitched the idea of the National World War II Memorial in 1999 when he was pleading with Congress, donors and the American public to build a fitting tribute to the Greatest Generation on the National Mall in Washington.
Certainly, the lack of a proper World War II memorial alongside the Korean War Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was an omission of, well, monumental proportions.
But when that memorial finally opened in 2004, the surviving veterans of the Second World War must have felt like they were handed a cow patty after being promised a chocolate pie.
The 16 million Americans who served in World War II, including the more than 400,000 who gave their lives in battle, were memorialized with an act of architectural buffoonery that can only be described as shameful and pathetic. And rather than becoming more acceptable with time, the monument grows more ugly, absurd and offensive as the years pass.
Now, a decade after the monument’s dedication and 70 years since some of the most crucial moments of war, the World War II Memorial is a blight on the National Mall; a crass and inadequate tribute to the legacy of the heroic men and women who won the most important war the world has ever known.
I’ve long felt the monument – because of its lack of historical explanation, odd focus on states, and vulgar grandiosity at the expense of components that could make it poignant, haunting or enlightening – does a poor job of paying tribute to America’s WWII efforts. But since what I know about architecture begins and ends with either “wow, it looks neat,” or “dude, that’s really lame,” I decided to see how actual architects feel about the monument.
It seems they loathe the memorial, too.
The most recent edition of the American Institute of Architects’ “Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C.” points out that the severe classical architecture chosen by the monument’s architect, Friedrich St. Florian, evokes “a particularly strong association with the work of Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer.”
Great. So the memorial celebrating America’s role in defeating Hitler looks like a Nazi monument.
“Then,” the American Institute of Architects’ guide continues, “there is the problem of the memorial’s iconography. The names of individual states are called out on separate piers, for instance, and each pier stands in a hemicycle labeled either ‘Atlantic’ or ‘Pacific.’ This scheme not only suggests an inaccurate connection between each state and a particular theater of war, but also implies that state identity was especially prominent in the public consciousness during a period that was in fact marked by remarkable national unity.”
As a result of the memorial’s “arbitrary symbolism” and “lack of compelling expressive gestures” the guide concludes its passage about theWorld War II Memorial by calling it “generic.” That’s not the word you’re hoping for when you’re spending almost $200 million – including $16 million in federal taxpayers’ money – to celebrate many of America’s greatest heroes.
The memorial’s worst offense, however, are the 4,048 gold stars positioned on a western wall within the monument. The stars are a disrespectful math equation that makes no sense in the context of the memorial until visitors read a nearby sign explaining that each star represents 100 American military deaths during the war.
It’s almost as if the memorial goes out of its way to tell the families of the soldiers, sailors and airmen killed in World War II that they are not worthy of their own star; they are not valued or remembered as individuals.
The memorial provides so little poignancy and commands so little respect that it is now common for tourists overcome by D.C.’s summertime swelter to use the pool sitting in the center of the monument as a wading pond. In July and August, children are commonly seen in bathing suits, splashing and frolicking on what should be considered sacred ground.
Tom Hanks was right; the brave Americans who saved the world deserve a memorial on the National Mall. But they deserve better than the one they got.
The current National World War II Memorial fails so horribly at properly memorializing the Greatest Generation that it would be disrespectful to keep it as it is. The only sensible solution is to tear the thing down – raze it to the ground – and replace it with a memorial that’s actually a suitable monument to those who sacrificed, fought and died during World War II.
I’m not sure exactly what the new memorial should look like, other than that, unlike the current one, it shouldn’t appear as if it was designed by Nazis. Having an individual star in memory of every single American who died in service to our country during World War II, however, would certainly be a good place to start.
Drew Johnson is a Senior Fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
