For Veteran's Day .... The WWII Memorial

[CO Liberal]

For those of you with family members who served in WWII, you can go to this site and register them for inclusion in the WWII Memorial being built in Washington DC. I've registered both my parents - my father for serving in the Marines, and my mother for working as a telephone operator during the war.

http://www.wwiimemorial.com/default.asp?page=home.asp

[northzax]

1. I oppose this entire monument

have you seen it? triumphal arches? bronze eagles holding wreaths? it is ofensive and ugly. This is the first time the US has built a monument to victory. Every other war memorial is to the dead, this is to the people who won. I find it tasteless.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. Right on northzax!

Albert Speer and the Nazis have won. http://savethemall.org/wwii/index.html

[CanuckAmok]

3. it is very "Speer", isn't it?

But all in a day's work for the Neon Rome.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

4. more Albert Speer

Grossehalle, Germania (Berlin), 1937
Albert Speer's hall for Hitler love-ins after the planned Nazi victory of 1948. Sixteen times the size of St Peter's, engineers thought that when it was filled with 180,000 jubilant Nazis, clouds would appear under the dome and would make it rain inside.

[CO Liberal]

5. From the Site

Authorization

President Clinton signed Public Law 103-32 on May 25, 1993, authorizing the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) to establish a World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., or its environs. It will be the first national memorial dedicated to all who served during World War II and acknowledging the commitment and achievement of the entire nation.


Purpose

The memorial will honor the 16 million who served in the armed forces of the U.S. during World War II, the more than 400,000 who died, and the millions who supported the war effort from home. Symbolic of the defining event of the 20th Century, the memorial will be a monument to the spirit, sacrifice, and commitment of the American people to the common defense of the nation and to the broader causes of peace and freedom from tyranny throughout the world. It will inspire future generations of Americans, deepening their appreciation of what the World War II generation accomplished in securing freedom and democracy. Above all, the memorial will stand as an important symbol of American national unity, a timeless reminder of the moral strength and awesome power that can flow when a free people are at once united and bonded together in a common and just cause.


Site

The first step in establishing the memorial was the selection of an appropriate site. Congress provided legislative authority for siting the memorial in the prime area of the national capital, known as Area I, which includes the National Mall. The National Park Service, the Commission of Fine Arts, and the National Capital Planning Commission approved selection of the Rainbow Pool site at the east end of the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. President Clinton dedicated the memorial site during a formal ceremony on Veterans Day 1995.


Design

ABMC engaged the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Public Buildings Service to act as its agent to manage the memorial project. The design submitted by Friedrich St.Florian, an architect based in Providence, R.I., was selected as one of six semi-finalists in an open, national competition. Leo A Daly, an international architecture firm, assembled the winning team with St.Florian as the design architect. The team also includes George E. Hartman of Hartman-Cox Architects, Oehme van Sweden & Associates, and sculptor Ray Kaskey. St.Florian’s memorial design concept was approved by the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission in the summer of 1998. The commissions approved the preliminary design in 1999, the final architectural design and several ancillary elements in 2000, granite selections in 2001, and sculpture and inscriptions in 2002 and 2003.

[northzax]

6. hey, just cause it's legal

don't mean it's ain't wrong and ugly. I do not believe that the US should be in the habit of building monuments to war. that's what this is, make no mistake about it. it is a monument to a war. a successful war. I don't care about the architecture and design (it is hideous, and completely out of place) I care about the ideal behind it. Every other monument on the Mall is to the dead. Every other monument in DC is to the dead. Why is the Vietnam wall so powerful? every single name on it died in the war. The Korea monument lists numbers of casualties, not simply numbers who served. Arlington is filled with monuments to the dead. THe Nacy Memorial is to those who died in the Navy. The Marine Corps memorial is to those who died in the Marines. etc.

this is a monument to victory. don't forget that.