Part of a telephone switchboard from Hitler's HQ at the Wolfsschanze
Lair of the Wolf
NAM 1992-10-113
Adolf Hitler's Supreme Command Headquarters, nicknamed the ‘Wolf’s Lair’, was located in woodland near Rastenburg in East Prussia (now Poland). It was a complex of bunkers fortified by barbed wire and minefields.
Built in 1941 for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, it was abandoned in late 1944 when Red Army troops approached East Prussia.
NAM 1985-04-49-30
The names on the telephone switchboard include Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Hermann Göring, chief of the German Airforce, Wilhelm Keitel the Commander-in-Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW), Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, and Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler’s Secretary.
All of these men were indicted war criminals and wanted by the Allies for crimes against humanity. The telephone exchange is a fitting reminder of a tyranny that launched the deadliest war in human history and a policy of industrial mass murder.
Section of sleeper from the 'Death Railway', Burma, c1945
Railway of death
NAM 2005-04-15-1
Between October 1942 and December 1943, the Japanese Imperial Army used forced labour to build a railway that cut 260 miles (420km) through mountainous jungle to link Burma (now Myanmar) and Siam (now Thailand). The project was designed to safeguard the passage of military supplies from Singapore and Bangkok to the Japanese armies fighting in Burma. The previously used sea route had become too risky.
NAM 1995-10-3
Building the railway led to the deaths of around 15,000 Allied prisoners of war and over 80,000 Asian civilians from over-work, disease and starvation. The Japanese used the railway until April 1945, when parts of the line and the famous bridge over the River Kwai (Khwae Yai) were destroyed in Allied air raids. The prisoners were liberated when Japan surrendered on 2 September 1945 following the atomic bomb raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This 14 inch (35.5cm) long section of wood is from one of the railway sleepers at Thanbyuzayat at the Burmese end of the line. It is housed in a red and gold wood box and was used as a miniature Buddhist shrine - a fitting act of remembrance for the railway’s thousands of victims.
Photograph of an Indian Army Sherman
Largest volunteer army in history
NAM 1974-09-79-71
The Indian Army made a vital contribution to the British Empire’s war effort during the two world wars. During World War One (1914-1918), over one million Indian troops served overseas, at Gallipoli, in the Middle East, East Africa and on the Western Front. During World War Two the Indian Army expanded to over two million troops, the largest volunteer army in history. During the war, Indian troops served in North Africa, the Middle East, Italy and the Far East. In 1947 this volunteer Army formed the basis of the armies of the newly independent nations of India and Pakistan.
Photograph of an Allied POW, 1945
Behind the wire
NAM 1991-01-24-1
Around 13,000 British POWs died in Japanese captivity during World War Two, the victims of malnutrition, disease and violence. Many of these men had become POWs when Singapore was taken in February 1942 and were to spend the next three and a half years in captivity.
The men were used as forced labourers on Japanese military projects in Japan, in the Malay peninsular and on the construction of the Thai-Burma railway linking Bangkok and Rangoon.
The Japanese treated these men inhumanely because they believed that surrender was dishonourable and that it was a soldier's duty to commit suicide if captured.
