Their Last Battle: The Fight For The National World War II Memorial [Paperback]

Nicolaus Mills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2004

On Memorial Day weekend in 2004, the National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington will officially open to the public. What began as a casual conversation between a Congresswoman and one of her constituents in 1987 grew into a struggle that lasted more than four times longer than it took America to fight the war itself. Its rocky progress to completion is a compelling story about how America chooses to memorialize its past and how we view World War II.Nicolaus Mills recounts the development of the Washington Mall, from its time as swampland to Southern outrage over the Lincoln Memorial to Maya Lin's controversial Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. The World War II Memorial would prove just as controversial; it took the support of WW II vet Bob Dole and actor Tom Hanks to overrule the strong objections of interest groups, self-appointed art critics, and others.In Their Last Battle, a story vividly narrated through interviews with politicians and vets, architects and citizens, Mills discovers what a public monument can tell us about America and the values it honors.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kira Brunner is an editor of Radical Society magazine and lives in New York City. Nicolaus Mills is Professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.

From The Washington Post

The torturous 17-year struggle to create a National World War II Memorial in Washington was a battle of far longer duration than World War II itself. How, one might wonder, could a monument to honor the 16 million men and women who served in the war and the 400,000 Americans who died in history's deadliest conflict be the source of controversy? Yet when a junior congresswoman from Ohio introduced legislation in 1987 calling for a memorial in the nation's capital, her initiative set off a bitter dispute that embroiled a distinguished cast of architects, critics, historians, actors, politicians, veterans organizations, preservationist groups and cultural institutions. Although none of the participants, even the project's most vociferous critics, opposed the idea of a memorial, they battled over the site, the design, the construction, the funding, and over the site again. With WWII veterans dying at a rate of more than 1,000 a day, it took an act of Congress in 2001 to cut through the tangle of arguments and counterarguments and clear the way for construction to begin. In Their Last Battle, Nicolaus Mills does an admirable job of explaining just how it came to that.

He begins by providing a highly instructive historical perspective, reminding us that controversy and delay are the norm whenever art, politics, public memory and money collide, especially when the Washington Mall, "the most symbolic piece of political real estate" in the country," is involved. All such projects, not just the famously contested Vietnam and Korean War memorials of the 1980s, but the august Lincoln and Jefferson memorials as well, have inspired years of public strife -- and all revolved around problems of location, design and funding. The World War II Memorial was no different.

Mills then plunges his readers into the bewildering thicket of agencies, boards, commissions, committees and governmental departments through which the memorial project had to pass. It was a daunting process, if "process" does justice to the aesthetic wrangling, political intrigue and court proceedings involved. These details also make for exhausting -- at times exasperating -- reading, but they certainly support the author's point.

Every aspect of the project aroused controversy. After winning the competition, Frederich St. Florian's design continued to draw pointed criticism for years and was subjected to numerous revisions. Some detractors even suggested that the Austrian-born architect's plans bore stylistic similarities to the work of Hitler's favorite architect, Albert Speer. But the most acrimonious and protracted row was over the site. Those who spoke against the Mall location made two basic arguments. First, a memorial of any size located on the Mall's central axis would ruin the classical sight lines envisioned by Pierre Charles L'Enfant in the 18th century and reaffirmed by the McMillan Plan at the beginning of the 20th. Second, continued proliferation of memorials on the Mall would create "a theme park effect" that would undermine the Mall's existing memorials. Linked to these aesthetic arguments was a historical-cum-political one -- that the two defining moments of American history are the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, represented by the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial respectively, and a World War II memorial would break that thematic unity.

Supporters of the memorial argued that such views assumed implicitly that the formative experiences of the Republic had ended in 1865 and that the Mall was a static, completed work, not to be tampered with. They argued that the Mall -- like the country -- was, instead, a work in progress, and the Rainbow Pool site was, in fact, the most fitting location for a monument to commemorate the generation that fought World War II.

Mills is good at isolating the central issues and key players in the drama, and he gives all sides to the various disputes a fair hearing, but his sympathies are clearly with the project's supporters. Indeed, following the twists and turns of the controversy, readers come to share the author's obvious frustration as the project staggered from one board meeting to the next agency review to the subsequent public hearing and back again, while time was running out for a generation of Americans who, in the darkest days of the 20th century, fought and won a war to protect the very values on which the United States was founded.

In 2001, congressional intervention brought the seemingly endless rounds of wrangling to a halt and removed the last hurdles to construction of the National World War II Memorial. In a highly successful appeal for contributions to the Memorial, actor Tom Hanks summed up widespread public sentiment when he said: "It is time to say thank you" to that wartime generation.

And so -- at long last -- it is.

Reviewed by Thomas Childers
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (May 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465045820
• ISBN-13: 978-0465045822
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,108,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The 17 year struggle to build the World War II Memorial, July 22, 2004

By 

Paul Tognetti "The real world is so much more... (Cranston, RI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Their Last Battle: The Fight For The National World War II Memorial (Paperback)

In "Their Last Battle: The Fight For the National World War II Memorial" author Nicolaus Mills discusses the seemingly endless struggle to build a National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington D.C. In fact, it took nearly 17 years to get the job done. What was all the fuss about and who could possibly object to building such a memorial to honor the accomplishments of the so-called "Greatest Generation"? In order to fully appreciate the issues involved here one must fully understand the history of the Mall in our Nation's Capitol. Furthermore, one needs to be familiar with the history of monuments in this country. Mills does an admirable job getting the reader up to speed in both of these areas.

From there Mills takes us on a 17 year journey that commences at a fish fry just outside Toledo, Ohio in 1987 to the dedication in the Spring of 2004. Mills introduces us to all of the important players in this odyssey from World War II veteran Roger Durbin who first proposed the idea to Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and former Senator Bob Dole (R-KS) who were both very instrumental in bringing this project to fruition. You'll learn about all of the various governmental agencies who would become involved. Find out about the design competition and meet the eventual winner Friedrich St. Florian, former dean of the Rhode Island School of Design. And finally, you will discover who the opponents were. There were quite a few and at several key junctures it seemed as though the opposition just might carry the day. "Their Last Battle" is exceptionally well written and I would highly recommended it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars America Pays Tribute To The Greatest Generation, May 28, 2004

By 

W. C HALL (Newport, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Their Last Battle: The Fight For The National World War II Memorial (Paperback)

This timely book arrives on the eve of the dedication of the National World War II Memorial, but can be read with interest for some time after. Anyone who absorbs this story will likely come away asking how we as a people manage to create any national memorials at all. The battles over the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, as well as the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial, are recent history and perhaps still fresh in many memories. Mills retells these with economy and grace, and also recounts the opposition, delays and clashes over location and design that also faced the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

The opening of the World War II Memorial represents the culmination of an effort that began almost two decades ago. One man, WW II vet Roger Durbin, asked his Congresswoman why there was no national memorial to those who fought and died in that momentous struggle. Winning approval in both houses of Congress took six years, and was only the first hurdle. Next came the far more complex battles to win approval for the site and design. Mills recounts all of this in great detail, from the potentially serious concerns to the more ludicrous (an assertion that construction at the memorial site might cause the nearby Washington Monument to tip over. It didn't). It finally took another act of Congress to lay the challenges to rest and get actual construction under way.

While Mills attempts to give voice to all viewpoints about the memorial project, his sensitive examination of its artistic merits that closes the book makes it clear that he sees this as the right memorial, in the right place, and at the right time. We can wish that it might have come along sooner, so that some of the 12 million WW II vets who have left us in the six decades since V-J Day could have seen it. But at least some four million of their brothers in arms are still with us to enjoy this overdue, well-deserved tribute.--William C. Hall

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The inside story on the WWII Memorial, March 16, 2005

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Janine M. Rush "JaRush" (Kansas City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Their Last Battle: The Fight For The National World War II Memorial (Paperback)

Great background information on the Memorial. I can't wait to share it with my parents when they visit "their" Memorial soon!