The Museum of Military History is also called the War Museum, the Museum of War Victims, War Relics, etc. It is located near the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and, despite the heavy maintenance of some of the displays, is just about the most visited museum in Vietnam.
The museum opened in the autumn of 1975, almost immediately after the end of the largest military conflict of the second half of the last century. At the time, it was called the Museum of American War Crimes History. The name was not given lightly: the exhibition contains many photographs and other evidence of the consequences of the use of different types of chemical weapons. In 1993, after the normalisation of relations with the US, it was named the Museum of Military History.
On the territory of 12 thousand square metres there are various exhibits telling about the struggle of the Vietnamese people first against French colonisation, then against the American invasion. The place to go with children is the museum's courtyard. It is full of trophy military equipment: tanks, helicopters, fighters and attack aircraft. And bombs and other ammunition are stored in the corner. The highlight of the collection is a captured American attack aircraft. It retains the identification marks of the US Air Force.
And it is definitely not worth taking children to the halls where photographs of the atrocities of the American military in the village of Songmi, the terrible consequences of the use of napalm, phosphorus bombs and other no less dangerous defoliants are exhibited. And not just pictures. The Vietnamese even exhibited vessels with the germs that had mutated due to the use of dioxin. One of the buildings houses cages where political prisoners were held, as well as torture chambers for captives and a guillotine for their execution.
The difficult ten-year war affected the history of not only Vietnam and the United States. It involved, in one way or another, neighbouring South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, as well as the PRC and the USSR. This is why the Museum of Military History is protected by UNESCO - as a cautionary reminder of what such wars can lead to.
