National Military Museum in Soest

Military museums are my favorite kind of museums.  I really don’t have much of an appreciation for art museums, it’s just not my thing, but I love spending hours reading about military history, war, and other conflicts.  The National Military Museum is located in Soest, a city just west of Amersfoort where we’re staying.  The website for this museum looked cool and there were a lot of good reviews on Google, so I had high hopes for our visit here.

For our first visit, Brian and I went by ourselves because I knew there was no way the boys would last even 30 minutes inside the exhibits and we’re the kind of people who want to read everything.  This was the whole reason we brought a babysitter on our trip with us – so we could enjoy adult-only activities that would be impossible with a 1 and 4 year old.  We biked to the museum from our house in Amersfoort.  The ride was an enjoyable 30 minute ride with about half of it through the woods and along a few cool sand dunes.  This was the same route we had taken to Utrecht a few weeks earlier, but it went so much faster this time because we didn’t have to stop every 100 meters to check the map.

The museum feels very new, well designed, and engaging.  There is a huge atrium area with dozens of military planes and other vehicles on display.  The displays in the museum are often interactive and progress from the early history of the Netherlands through the wars and conflicts in the 1700’s and 1800’s to today.  There is a room dedicated to the stories of Dutch soldiers where you can listen to recorded, first-hand accounts of their experiences in various military conflicts.  If you’re interested in history, you could easily spend an entire afternoon at this museum.  And if you get hungry, they have a nice little cafe with outdoor seating where you can sit down and relax for awhile.

As an American, it was really interesting to learn more about the history of the Netherlands.  Before we arrived at the museum, I basically knew nothing.  Here’s some of the specifics I remember:

• Indonesia is a former Dutch colony.  Prior to 1949, when it became independent, it was called the Dutch West Indies.
• A lot of the Netherlands lies below sea level and the country has an extremely impressive system of waterways/dams/levees to control the flow of water in from the sea and throughout the country.  Prior to the invention of airplanes and their use in wars, the Dutch used their low lying lands to fend off potential invasions on foot from neighboring countries.  They would flood lands advancing armies were trying to cross to keep them at bay.  This was a very effective tactic until that one really cold winter when the water froze and French army took advantage of their new found access to the Netherlands (I don’t remember which war this applied to…it was a long time ago…1700’s or 1800’s)
• I knew Rotterdam was completely bombed during World War II and that’s why it has such modern architecture today.  I did not know that the bombing of Rotterdam by the Germans occurred only a few days after Germany began attacking the Netherlands (who had hoped to remain neutral in WWII – as they were in WWI ) and was the big reason the Netherlands surrendered to the Germans after only 5 days of fighting.
• Belgium was part of the Netherlands until the mid-1800’s.
• The Dutch and American armed forces have a special relationship and use a lot of the same equipment and train together at times.  The former air base where this museum is housed used to house Americans as well.
• A controversial chapter of Dutch military history is their involvement in the Srebrenica massacre in the Bosnian war in the early 1990’s.  Dutch United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces were outnumbered and overwhelmed by Bosnian Serbs who murdered at least 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
• The Dutch are currently active in aid missions around the world through their involvement in the UN.
• The Dutch fought alongside American and other NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Another really cool part of the National Military Museum is all the hands-on activities they have that appeal to kids.  We were so impressed with what they had to offer that we returned to the museum a few weeks after our initial visit just to bring the kids to play on the free outdoor areas.  The lower level of the museum, which you have to pay to enter, does have an indoor area called Xplore where you can try an F-16 simulator, crawl into a military vehicle, pretend to be a soldier and several other activities that would appeal to kids ages 5 and up.

Outside, there is an obstacle course that Brian and I had fun doing.  We really just laughed hysterically at ourselves as we realized that what we thought we could do in our heads was starkly different than what our bodies were actually capable of still doing…apparently we’re not 18 anymore!  Jack also loved the obstacle course and had no problem conquering most of the course.

A highlight of the free outdoor portion of the museum was the opportunity to take a ride around the base in a military vehicle.  The kids absolutely loved this and so did Brian and I.  There was also a playground, some military vehicles for kids to climb around in, areas where they could experiment with knot tying, paint camouflage on their faces, and learn to set up a military tent.

One of the coolest parts of the museum grounds is hidden way in the back – so far away from the main building that the first time we visited we didn’t even realize this part existed.  There is a course where anyone over 8 years old can drive mini tanks.  This looked awesome!!!!  Brian and I both really wanted to try it, but we figured Jack would freak out if he couldn’t have a turn as well, so we passed.

We spent almost 1.5 hours there with the boys and Jack was really mad when we insisted on leaving to go home to eat lunch.  This was definitely a fun spot for Brian and I to visit alone to view the exhibits, and a fun spot to return to with the kids to explore.  Jack was in awe of all the big planes (he thought a couple were spaceships), loved watching the drones taking off in the distance and would have played on the obstacle course and playground all day.