War Museum Bomber Command Exhibit Change

[rlh]

The front page of the Ottawa Citizen today reads "'A victory for veterans'; Museum to rewrite controversial text to show 'respect.'"

I think there are a whole slew of aspects that could be debated around this issue and decision.  I'll throw a few questions out there for discussion:  Is this the right decision?  Were veterans over reacting?  Was the museum wrong to include reference to a controversy (about which many long books have been written) in a short panel trying to depict Bomber Command history?  What is the role of Canada's war musuem?  Who is its logical audience -- both now and in the future?  Can the "value vs morality of strategic bombing" debate ever be resolved?

Your thoughts?

 

[George Wallace]

rlh

I thought I would change a few words to see if it really mattered or try and figure out what the point could really be from a different perspective.

The front page of the Ottawa Citizen today reads "'A victory for Gays and Lesbians'; Museum to rewrite controversial text to show 'respect.'"

I think there are a whole slew of aspects that could be debated around this issue and decision.  I'll throw a few questions out there for discussion:  Is this the right decision?  Were Gays and Lesbians over reacting?  Was the museum wrong to include reference to a controversy (about which many long books have been written) in a short panel trying to depict Gays and Lesbians throughout history?  What is the role of Canada's Museum of Civilization?  Who is its logical audience -- both now and in the future?  Can the "value vs morality of Gay and Lesbian Lifestyle" debate ever be resolved?

Your thoughts?

 

[George Wallace]

What we actually have here, is a belated reaction by the Canadian War Museum and its parent, the Museum of Civilization, to an outcry from Canadian Veterans.  It is the same thing, (although a lot slower to be acted upon,) as would have happened for any other of Canada's minority groups who vocally protest.

 

[rlh]

Taking the "vocal minority" perspective should not mean that discussion is dismissed or avoided.  Here are some of my feelings on the issues I raised.

Firstly, history cannot be sanitized; otherwise, it is propagada or fiction.  There are great things to remember; there are awful things that have to be acknowledged as well.  This is the theoretical stand I take on writing history, and I have to chaff at any attempt to erase negative things from the history pages.

Nevertheless, I do NOT think that those who participated in air bombing campaigns should ever have been called "war criminals" in the first place.  Strategic bombing was accepted war practice at the time by both sides.  Hence, I feel that veterans are totally justified in being incensed by any such insinuation.

A musuem's role is to preserve and present our national history for and to the public.  The audience a museum should be aiming for is those coming to learn about Canada's history -- children, their parents, foreign visitors.  And the natural method to do this is visually (isn't that what musuems started off as, places to preserve artifacts?) and short explanations to give facts and context.  Musuems are at a level too general to really teach much to those who are already knowledgeable about history; there is simply not enough room for all the text to do that.  (Read a book!)  As an historian, I enjoy going to the musuem to see the "things" that were actually a part of the history I have already learned about.

Hence, I think the War Musuem was wrong to include reference to any controversy in the first place.  That is part of historiography which has no place in a museum trying to teach the basic facts to the general public.  Nevertheless, the protest by the veterans bothered me somewhat -- the debate exists and cannot simply be blotted out of intellectual debate so as to sanitize history.

Can the debate ever be resolved?  No.  Should that mean it is never discussed?  No again.  Discussion and disagreement are both informative, and they force us to understand our position, as well as articulate it clearly with reasonable arguments.  But there is something else that can be gleaned from considering this specific debate:  in writing our history, we cannot put our values of today onto those who lived in the past.  Instead, we need to understand why strategic bombing was considered OK at the time, and we need to understand why it did or didn't work.  Facing reality is the only way we can learn from history.  There's not much to learn from fiction:  either everything was perfect, or it's just all made up so why does it matter in the first place?

A messy answer -- yes.  But that's reality as well:  not neat and tidy, but rather full of contradictions that must co-exist.

 

[George Wallace]

I agree with you 100%.  I do place a lot of blame on the Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum for treating Canadian Veterans differently than they would any other minority in this country.  The management, including the Historians, at these two institutions have tried to rewrite history in a way, putting today's values and Politically Correct views on a historical event that had totally different values and social norms.  The sad thing is that they can't even get modern history correct.  To these people the Canadian Forces are still Peacekeepers.

 

[Haletown]

the original text was not just insulting, it was at best inaccurate, at worst an outright lie. 

Clear case of historical revisionism, brought to you by our moral superiors who failed in their duty to provide a balanced explanation of what happened.

Way overdue, some heads should have rolled as well.

 

[rlh]

the original text was not just insulting, it was at best inaccurate, at worst an outright lie. 

Clear case of historical revisionism, brought to you by our moral superiors

All part of a predominant trend amongst the civilian culture that wouldn't want to say anything good about military forces in general!

 

[dapaterson]

The plaque said nothing about war criminals.  It raised the question whether Bomber Comand's efforts were of miltiary value and whether they were moral.

The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested.

Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war.

Indeed, it's only the always voluable Cliff Chadderton who's using the words "War Criminals" - a rather sleazy tactic of smearing the War Museum for something they never said.

However, with this tempest over, I'm certain that someone in the Museum hierarchy will boast about having  achieved "Peace in Our Time", since we all know how well appeasement works...

 

[Good2Golf]

Whatever the sentiment at the time was, we have to objectively recognize what took place.  No one should be able to stand up and honestly say "The attack on Dresden only targeted military installations; civilian collateral losses were unfortunate but a necessary part of war."  It is what it is, a tactic that was deemed acceptable by the leadership of the time.  Would it be acceptable today?  I certainly think not.  I actually saw nothing wrong with the way the display was worded -- it was an honest and true statement: huge civilian losses and relatively little loss in military/industrial production.  The display never said that personnel of Bomber Command, either leadership or the aircrew, acted in a criminal manner.  Although one of my grandfathers worked on Mosquito night fighters on the ground, he would often hear aircrew discussing the evening's exploits (sweep and escort for Lancasters) and there were a few times he recalls hearing aircrew question the deliberate bombing of civilian centers.  There are some very hard questions that could be asked.  Some would say that we had the benefit of winning the war and thus being able to frame the case whereby actions taken to ensure such victory were 100% warranted.

mein 2 ¢
G2G

 

[Haletown]

I think this line . . . "the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war"  is the one that irks vets. It effectively states what they did was useless, a wasted war effort, that they died in vane.  It is one of the stupidest comments ever made.

Albert Speer was asked about the effectiveness of the bombing campaign and he had a lot to say - all of it about how much it limited German War Production.

Even more important was the effect it had on German deployment of what war production it did have -  a couple of million Air Defense soldiers, 10 000 + heavy FLAK (88, 105, 128mm) and countless light FLAK units. Radar and searchlight batteries, repair personnel and hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition that would have been much appreciated by Front Line German Army units.

The Bombing campaign forced the Germans to concentrate on fighter aircraft production at the expense of investing into their own offensive aircraft, forced them into a defensive strategy and without doubt, played a very significant role in Allied victory. The disruption of the German war effort when forced to disperse and/or go underground certainly didn't help the Germans step up war production.


To imply that the bomber offensive was a useless effort is cheap historical revisionism at its worst. 

 

[Good2Golf]

infer / imply.

If some vets infer from the wording that their effort was in vain, that is their prerogative -- the wording states that the value and morality of the bombing campaign remains bitterly contested, that IMO is not inaccurate.  I think that some actions during the bombing campaign were wrong, in particular the Dresden fire bombings.  I would feel worse if I told myself it was all okay, had to be done, a necessary evil, etc... and just move on thinking that only the Germans and the Japanese did things that were at some point between the black and white of bad and good.

Haletown, you have given excellent points on how the bombing campaign affected the German war effort, but the German war effort went on....and quantitatively without the full effects that the Allies had hoped for from their bombing campaigns.

I'm not going to go back and judge actions taken in the past against society's morality today -- at the same time, however, I'm not going to change my beliefs to think that we were pure as the driven snow in an attempt to avoid exacerbating the issue to which some vets have taken umbrage.  There are more than a few folks out there with relatives who served in that period that will tell you some stories that definitively put aside the pure-driven snow image.

Regards,
G2G

 

[Strike]

The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested.

I think that this is the part that gets to me the most.  It's a true statement, but at the time of the war, was it really?  Those who were making the decisions at the time certainly didn't believe it, since they kept ordering these actions.

I think to raise questions (although not worded as such that's exactly what it does) such as these goes beyond what we expect to see in a museum.  Throw the facts and numbers out there, but let the visitors use this information to make their own decisions and possibly look into things further.

I've been to many museums, some of which displayed controversial topics, but none ever talked about what the moral whole's views were.  Case in point, the KKK display that was at St Mungo's museum in Glasgow.  All very factual, but not once did it say, "the KKK's views about non-whites and non-Christians remains a hot topic in today's society."  All the photos and descriptions were neither positive nor negative.  They gave facts and descriptions of photos, and that was it.

When a museum starts adding emotional diatribes to its displays (and the use of "bitterly contested" makes this one just that) they run the risk of affecting someone's views instead of allowing that person to make decisions on their own.

My view on the subject.

 

[rlh]

but the German war effort went on....and quantitatively without the full effects that the Allies had hoped for from their bombing campaigns.

This is totally correct, but it is too complicated an issue to try to place on a panel in a museum that is going to be viewed by more non-experts than experts (general public -- kids, parents, tourists from around the world).  This is what books, documentaries, or even public lectures are for -- delving into the fact that the theory didn't quite pan out in reality.  And why -- because it's goals were beyond the ability of aircraft technology of the time and because people's morale was more resiliant than assumed.  Sometimes theories don't work, but that is only discovered by trying and failing.  nevertheless, the bombing did partially accomplish what was aimed for -- tying up the German war effort -- but this could only have been learned by experience  All part of lessons learned. 

 

[Shec]

Value and Morality?  Haletown addresses the value, as in utility,  in his post above.  Morality?  Morality? Get real, the allies were fighting a demonstratedly immoral and draconian evil regime.  Morality ended with Hitler calling the 1938 Munich Agreement something to the effect of "a miserable scrap of paper".  There comes a time when fire can only be fought with fire and one must trade blow for blow.  600,000 dead German civilians, what percentage of the millions of innocent civilians the German Nazi regime massacred and uprooted is that?  To associate my father and uncle, Bomber Command vets both,  with war criminals while their grandparents, uncles, aunts. and cousins were being exterminated in places like Aushwitz and Treblinka is a travesty.   Lest we forget that Bomber Command's disproportionately high casualties were the price paid for admission to the museum.   Commemorate them, remember why they did it,  and honour their efforts.

 

[dapaterson]

Shec:  I'll say again that the War Museum never uses the term "war criminal" nor does it imply it.  The only person using that term in a drive-by smear campaign is Mr Chadderton.

Museums are not monuments to heroism, frozen in time.  They should inspire reflection and discussion.  As written, the plaque in the War Museum does just that - it opens to the door to discussion and debate about what was done.  Even the radical left-wing anti-military historian, Jack Granatstein (and yes, that was said fully toungue in cheek) supports the text as written.

"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" to quote an old canard.  If we cannot re-examine our actions and discuss them, if we cannot understand why things were done and whether we would do the same today, then we have learned nothing.  A society shrouded in silence, with no ability to discuss issues in the past, but only mindless adulation without critical examination, is not what Canadians fought and died for.

 

[Strike]

Shec:  I'll say again that the War Museum never uses the term "war criminal" nor does it imply it.  The only person using that term in a drive-by smear campaign is Mr Chadderton.

No arguments there.

Museums are not monuments to heroism, frozen in time.  They should inspire reflection and discussion.  As written, the plaque in the War Museum does just that - it opens to the door to discussion and debate about what was done.  Even the radical left-wing anti-military historian, Jack Granatstein (and yes, that was said fully toungue in cheek) supports the text as written.

"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" to quote an old canard.  If we cannot re-examine our actions and discuss them, if we cannot understand why things were done and whether we would do the same today, then we have learned nothing.  A society shrouded in silence, with no ability to discuss issues in the past, but only mindless adulation without critical examination, is not what Canadians fought and died for.

Then both sides should have been presented equally to allow the reader the chance to make their own decision.  As it was written, the info given was only on the allied campaign and not the methods used, and damages done, by the German campaign.

 

[Flip]

As it was written, the info given was only on the allied campaign and not the methods used, and damages done, by the German campaign.

I agree!

To which I will add - Also, the context and pressures of "total war"(Gwynn Dyer's term)
are probably absent.  Easy to judge the actions of another time while enjoying
the fruits of those actions, largely without acknowledgment.

We grow up fat and happy in post war world - And we are shocked at what
gave us that post war era.

 

[Haletown]

The text as currently written is inaccurate.
The text as currently written is "torqued" to convey sentiments not applicable at the time the events took place
The text as currently written is intended to lead readers to assume things that did not happen for reasons that are clearly revisionist, ex post facto interpretations of history.

Bomber Command played a vital role in defeating a sick, murdering, demented tyranny. In the long, bleak years of defeat after defeat, Britain had to do whatever it could do to hit back, to convince Russia to stay  in the war and to do everything to support civilian moral on the home front.  After what the Nazis did to Britain arguments about morality were restricted to the lofty  hypothetical levels by a few CoE and were the 20th century equivalent of arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of pin.  People cheered in the streets of London when the Germany, who sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, had city after city razed to rubble.  Any pain inflicted on Germany was good, just and moral because everything, in the final sums, that hurt Germany's war effort, moved the Allies one step closer to victory.

Nobody is saying Bomber Command defeated Germany all by itself, but there is no argument that it played a key role and helped ensure victory in a timely manner.  There were negligible arguments during the war over mass bombing - it is a post war historical discussion. 

Trying to impose current visions and morals on past events is like farting into a windstorm . . ya feel better but it matters not a whit.  While we live in a world that currently is a button press away from a nuclear attack that would kill 600 million in a quick blink, carping on about what our ancestors and my father did to ensure our victory and Germany's defeat is utterly incomprehensible.  Every bomb that fell on Germany was cheered loudly by the hundreds of millions who suffered under the mass murdering Nazi regime. The sufferers would be gob smacked that there is any debate here at all and wondering why we didn't bomb the rubble in to fine dust.

 

[Shec]

Whether Cliff Chadderton initially raised the issue "war criminals" is no longer relevant.  CBC radio news has been using, and thereby propagating, the use of that label all morning.  The perception has been created and as perceptions tend to become reality it is imperative to deal with it head on, not dance around it. 

 

[dapaterson]

OK then, here's a text that could be used:

(The aim of Bomber Command) was the destruction of German cities; the killing of German workers; and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.

The authour?  Air Marshall Arthur Harris, who directed the policy.