The Louisiana Memorial Pavilion of the The National World War II Museum on Andrew Higgins Drive in New Orleans. Courtesy, National World War II Museum.

In 2008, the museum broke ground on a $60 million expansion that will add a 71,000 square foot complex.

In early March I had the honor of being invited to lecture at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. For those of you who have never visited there, no trip to New Orleans would be complete without an opportunity to see and experience this national treasure. Located at 945 Magazine Street Drive in the Heart of Arts district of the city, the museum was first opened in June 2000 as the National D-Day Museum.

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The idea was the brainchild of the late historian Stephen E. Ambrose, who was a long-time professor at the University of New Orleans. During the early years of the 1980s he began collecting the oral histories of World War II veterans about D-Day and founded the Eisenhower Center for American Studies. What became the National World War II Museum began modestly enough when Ambrose established the National D-Day Museum Foundation in 1991 with the aim of creating a museum that would celebrate the D-Day experience. At first there was little money and years of struggle followed, funds were raised, costs spiraled, mistakes were made and corrected, and volunteers came and went. For Ambrose and those who worked hard to bring about the museum it was a new form of warfare. Supporters had to be recruited and donors persuaded to open their checkbooks.

While the reason it was established in New Orleans had a great deal to do with the fact that Ambrose lived in the area and taught there, of equal importance is that the city was the home of the famed Higgins amphibious landing craft, the creation of New Orleans native, Andrew Jackson Higgins, whose company first manufactured one of World War II’s workhorses.

In 2000 Ambrose wrote in American Heritage magazine of his first meeting with Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower at his farm in Gettysburg, PA.

At the end he said, “I see you live in New Orleans. Did you ever know Andrew Higgins?” “No, sir,” I replied. “He died before I moved to the city.” “That’s too bad,” he said. “You know he is the man who won the war for us.” . . . my jaw dropped . . . Seeing my expression, Eisenhower said, “That’s right. If Andy Higgins had not developed and then built those landing craft, we never could have gone in over an open beach. It would have changed the whole strategy of the war.” He explained that without the landing craft vehicle personnel (LCVP)—a flat-bottomed boat with a ramp that could run right into shore and discharge thirty armed men, turn around, and return to the transport for another load—the Allies would have had to take a French or Belgian port, something that was nearly impossible because the Germans had concentrated their defenses at those ports. Indeed, when the Canadians had tried it in 1942 at Dieppe, they lost an entire division without gaining one inch of continental Europe. (American Heritage, May/June 2000, vol. 51, Issue 3)

As Ambrose notes, “because of Higgins, whose industries had built in New Orleans twenty thousand vessels, the Allies were able to go onto the beaches at Normandy . . . In fact, nearly every American soldier who went ashore in World War II, whether in North Africa or Sicily or Salerno or Normandy or in the Pacific islands, did so in craft designed or built by Higgins in New Orleans. I came away from the meeting determined to do something in New Orleans to honor Higgins. There was no monument to him in the city, no school named after him, no street, nothing.” (Ibid.)

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