{"id":11465,"date":"2025-03-26T09:40:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T07:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/?p=11465"},"modified":"2025-03-26T09:46:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T07:46:17","slug":"dark-tourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/dark-tourism\/","title":{"rendered":"DARK TOURISM"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=””]By: David Rilley-Harris, Curator, DITSONG: National Museum of Military History (DNMMH)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Adolf Hitler visiting a First World War memorial site during his conquest of Europe. (Picture: Battlefield Tourism \u2013 Then and Now Blog by Andreas Moser. https:\/\/andreasmoser.blog\/2022\/06\/09\/battlefield-tourism-then-and-now\/).<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n

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Dark tourism or thanatourism is the visiting of locations which present death or suffering as a central theme. These locations include places of genocide like Auschwitz, murder like the Manson murders house, memorial sites like the 9-11 memorial, disaster sites like Pompei, or places of political or economic repression. War museums, such as the DITSONG: National Museum of Military History (DNMMH), are also considered part of dark tourism.<\/p>\n

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While some places make full and gratuitous use of the darkness involved, most of these sites exist for respectable purposes. These sites memorialise the dead and help people do the duty of bearing witness to the dire consequences of misguided human actions. The locations can also be a place of pilgrimage and remembrance for those who have a personal connection to the associated events. Nonetheless, even the most conscientious of dark tourism sites cannot deny entry to visitors who take a less than respectable view of the displays of terror and heroic sacrifice. During the Second World War, the Nazi Party went to great lengths to design their weapons and uniforms to present appealing ideas of superiority and power. This propaganda still has a hangover effect on some militaria enthusiasts who prefer collecting Nazi memorabilia than collecting the comparatively bland militaria of their compatriots who gave their lives to stop fascist domination. For the most part, war museums like the DNMMH highlight the memorial significance of their displays and use the museums as a history learning tool contributing to the prevention of repeating such horrors. In contrast, the Nazi party\u2019s focus on First World War cemeteries leading up to the Second World War was purposed to rally the German people to vengeful arms. Today, if military museums permit too much insensitivity to the horrors represented, then they risk desensitising visitors to the horror of war. Military museum visitors will often delight in an opportunity to sit inside a tank or fighter jet. Accessing history in this way can be both a fun and fulfilling experience which, while being fun, also makes the realities of war even more stark. It can often be seen that a museum visitor enjoying the privilege of sitting inside a tank will, in occasional moments, stop with a chill and bring the horror to mind. In contrast, the occasional visitor struggles to or cannot be bothered to separate the real machine they are looking at, which killed the cannon fodder thrown at it, from the computer games they play at home. Thankfully, even avid players of computer war games usually present a more serious understanding, even while mostly enjoying themselves thoroughly. Museums can influence the responses of visitors by how they display their items and by how much educated personal guidance is available to visitors. Military museums are probably the most vital museums in which to provide as much staff guidance to visitors as possible.<\/p>\n

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A halftrack displayed at the DNMMH. The entry wound in the centre of the picture caused the death of a conscripted soldier who was sitting in the front left seat. (Picture: DNMMH).<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n

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While military history museums generally offer a structured and curated presentation of war, some of them can lend themselves to motives of propaganda. These museums skew the story and focus on their country\u2019s heroism downplaying the horrors of war. Such museums can even be directed to encourage hawkishness or military enlistment.<\/p>\n

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Outside of military museums, morbid curiosity often takes dark tourism to dangerous places. During South Africa\u2019s Battle of Bangui in 2013, some civilians moved closer to the front line mostly to spectate. It is also common to see people in war zones, often children, playing on the burnt out remains of military vehicles be they friend or foe. There was even a tourism demand during the First World War to visit the front lines while battles raged. A well-known travel agent of the time, Thomas Cook, had to issue a statement in The Times<\/em> in March 1915 saying that they would not offer tours to the Western Front while there was still fighting, due to French opposition to the idea. The name of the publication could not have been more pertinent. The first guidebooks for touring the Western Front were available in 1919. In the first mass of tours, there were still unrecovered bodies on the battlefields. Even then, the tours were represented as a noble civic duty to bear witness to the horrors, but there should be an observation of the line between respect and gratuitous indulgence. For example, the 1919 bicycle race through the battlefields. Some people of the time were sensible enough to take part in a public backlash leading to some new examination of the phenomenon of dark tourism. Thomas Cook announced that their tour offers were not aimed at those with low motives but as stated earlier, you cannot control who it is that takes up the offers.<\/p>\n

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Into the twenty-first century, military museums have been shifting focus from the militaria enthusiast\u2019s obsession with detail towards a wider focus on heritage education and storytelling. Nonetheless, certain forms of controversial dark tourism continue to persist. A contemporary fixation on virtue signalling and victimhood politics has led to a rise in poverty tourism. In locations around the world special bus tours offer visits to poverty-stricken areas for wealthy tourists. These tours bring some much-needed attention to the plight of the poor and create some jobs in those areas bringing in much needed income. However, determining where and how to draw the line can be challenging.<\/p>\n

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Slum tourism in Jakarta, Indonesia. (Picture: TourismConcern: Research Briefing. https:\/\/www.humanrights-in-tourism.net\/sites\/default\/files\/media\/file\/2020\/rc026slum-tourism-helping-fight-poverty-or-voyeuristic-exploitation-image-1199.pdf.)<\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n

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The first image and some content points in this article were taken from the Then and Now<\/em> blog by Andreas Moser. (https:\/\/andreasmoser.blog\/2022\/06\/09\/battlefield-tourism-then-and-now\/).<\/p>\n

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=””]By: David Rilley-Harris, Curator, DITSONG: National Museum of Military History (DNMMH)   Dark tourism or thanatourism is the visiting of locations which present death or suffering as a central theme. These locations include places of genocide like Auschwitz, murder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":11468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"table_tags":[],"class_list":["post-11465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 10:31:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11465"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11473,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11465\/revisions\/11473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11465"},{"taxonomy":"table_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditsong.org.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/table_tags?post=11465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}