Canadian War Museum dispute over the Bombing of Dresden

Che Guava

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60+ years later and its still a controversy...

Fighting words rile historians

The battle's not over yet. But under pressure from Bomber Command veterans' groups and sympathetic politicians, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa will adjust the wording on a panel dealing with the 1945 firebombing of Dresden.

"The final wording has not come out," Fredrik Eaton, chair of the museum board, told The Globe and Mail yesterday. "But we expect to have it installed by October."

Many observers warn of the precedent of a public museum adapting its texts in response to political pressure. "I am very disturbed," said Margaret MacMillan, warden of St. Antony's College at Oxford, author of Paris 1919, and a consultant to the museum on the controversy. "This exhibit was a fair one."

The fight over the 67-word panel, titled An Enduring Controversy, erupted shortly after the Canadian War Museum opened in May, 2005. A group of veterans objected to its saying that "the value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested," and to its contrasting 600,000 dead with the statement that "the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war."

For two years, the museum defended its independence. So did two of a panel of four independent historians, one of them Ms. MacMillan, hired earlier this year to investigate. (All historians found the panel factually accurate, but two questioned the tone.)

The veterans weren't satisfied. One in four Canadians who served in Bomber Command during the Second World War were killed, and the survivors insist on honouring those comrades' memory. Art Smith, a former Bomber Command captain and former Conservative MP, explained: "The words said that we were responsible for 600,000 dead. I took offence that we were just helter-skelter bombers. We always had justified targets."

The veterans threatened a boycott, attempted to have a private member's bill introduced, and finally got a senate subcommittee to look into their complaints. In June, the subcommittee urged the museum to compromise.

Then, Mr. Eaton volunteered to chair the board. "I thought the museum was taking the wrong slant," he said. "It wasn't right that the museum should fight with the vets. I determined to effect a solution."

Two weeks after Mr. Eaton became chair, museum CEO Joe Geurts - a dogged defender of his institution's curatorial independence - departed.

Ever since, board members, former board member and retired General Paul Manson, and the vets have been negotiating a new text. They'll continue into September.

"The museum staff and professional historians will write the text but will be guided by feelings of respect," said Victor Rabinovitch, president of the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum. "We'll find a way to incorporate the respect while remaining faithful to the historical record."

In fact, the veterans have given the museum a version they want substituted for the existing panel. But at nearly 300 words, it is far too long. Besides, one point the vets object to is true: The strategic value and morality of the Dresden bombing are contested.

No one questions the veterans' bravery, Ms. MacMillan insists. "But a museum is not a war memorial. It should allow the public to make up their own minds." She warned that the decision to alter an exhibition to satisfy the veterans could mean "whoever screams loudest can have their view made known."

Indeed, several groups are in the midst of doing just that. One, the National Association of Japanese Canadians, says that the war museum's version of the internment of Japanese Canadians underplays the racist and economic forces behind the internment; the NAJC also wants the museum to recognize that despite the treatment of Japanese Canadians, 150 volunteered to don uniforms and fight for Canada. NAJC president Grace Eiko Thomson met with Mr. Guerts four weeks before his departure.

Yesterday, Mr. Eaton said that the museum had been in touch with the Japanese Canadians (Not recently, according to Ms. Thomson). "Everyone's knocking on the door," Mr. Eaton said.

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So, what do we think folks? Was the museum right to adjust the 'tone' of the piece, or were they denying historical accuracy by giving into political pressure?
 
The description the museum gave wasn't very fair.
 
There's a great book, "Slaughterhouse 5" by Vonnegut, in which the main character has lost his mind during the firebombing of Dresden.

My understanding is that the firebombing was in support of a Russian advance, and the Russians had already lost FAR in excess of 600,000. To ask the Russians to sacrifice more, in the name of German lives, hardly seems fair.

Side note: despite the internment of Japanese by the US, an entirely Japanese battalion was formed, "The Rainbow Battalian". They were determined to prove their love of America and did so in spectacular fashion. It is the most highly decorated battalian in US history.
 
My understanding is that the firebombing was in support of a Russian advance, and the Russians had already lost FAR in excess of 600,000. To ask the Russians to sacrifice more, in the name of German lives, hardly seems fair.
That's disputed.
The Wikipedia said:
RAF Air Staff documents state that it was their intention to use RAF bomber command to "destroy communications" to hinder the eastward deployment of German troops, and to hamper evacuation, not to kill the evacuees. The priority list drafted by Bottomley for Portal, so that he could discuss targets with the Soviets at Yalta, included only two eastern cities with a high enough priority to fit into the RAF targeting list as both transportation and industrial areas. These were Berlin and Dresden. Both were bombed after Yalta.

Soviet military intelligence asserted that trains stuck in the main station were troop trains passing through Dresden to the front. This proved incorrect, as they were trains evacuating refugees from the east.[10] RAF briefing notes mentioned a desire to show "the Russians, when they arrive, what Bomber Command can do." The specific intent of this statement is now unclear, and there are different possible interpretations: a statement of pride in the RAF's abilities; or to show the Soviets that the Western Allies were doing all they could to aid the Soviet advance; or a demonstration of western strength as a warning or threat to the Soviets in the lead-up to the Cold War.
 
Does anyone deny that the bombings assisted the Russian advance? I think the only debate is "how much". However much, the Russians needed and deserved the help. Russia lost 25,000,000 military men, and another 20,000,000 civilians during the war - a total of ~47 million dead.

600,000 seems a reasonable sacrifice in support of the Russian advance. Especially considering that the impact of the bombings on Nazi production could not be determined, for certain and exactly, in advance of the bombing campaign.
 
Let's face reality in a full and frank manner. We should be mature enough to realise war is pretty horrible and that WW2 was a giant mechanised slaughterfest for all sides, without somehow denigrating the people involved or the rightness of the allied cause in WW2. Dresden was an atrocity in a war of atrocities. War sucks, soldiers don't.
 
I sitll don't see why the musem couldn't at least mention that the benefits of the bombings were contested (they are after all, even if you don't agree). Isn't there a way that they could put both sides of the story up and let people decide for themselves..?!
 
The entire point of the Dresden firebombing is that it was a pretty horrendous example of what war does to even the "good guys". It is an illustration of the "abyss staring into you" nature of war. I think highlighting that moral ambiguity, within the context of even a CLEAR CUT justified war, is a valid thing for a museum to do. It promotes thought and debate. That's good!

Emphasising the firebombing's utility and abstract strategic justification too much seems to me to be answering the questions it posed, picking one side over the other with the answer "yeah it was horrible but we had a war to win". The veterans and conservatives are complaining because this museum exhibit doesn't answer the questions it poses and therefore doesn't provide comfort or easy answers.
 
Things like this are why I don't think we have the resolve to win wars anymore.

I don't really care that we bombed a bunch of Nazis back in the forties. Honestly, I'm glad we did... and if we had to do it again, I'd support it tenfold.
 
The veterans and conservatives are complaining because this museum exhibit doesn't answer the questions it poses and therefore doesn't provide comfort or easy answers.
Doesn't provide comfort or easy answers? Is that what you really think they are looking for!? How degrading!

What if a museum posted: "Germany was attacked on all fronts and destroyed by many countries. Thousands of Germans were killed". And left it at that?? That is exactly what the museum is doing: telling one side of the story. Those objecting want both sides of the story told, not "easy answers and comfort".

I suppose if you wrote the article, you would title it: "Veterans and evil conservatives confront museum exhibit, demand easy answers and comfort". Could you be a LITTLE MORE biased against one side of this argument?
 
I tend to side with the museum. There IS a controversy, and just because the Allies won the war doesn't mean we have to alter facts so the reputation of all Allies' soldiers remain untarnished.
Bad things happen in every war, and to deny it is to fool yourself.

It's crucial to know that just because you're rightly justified in doing a war doesn't absolve you.
 
Civilians are complicit in the enemy's war scheme. Whether through production of war machines, providing a buffer zone against bombing military targets, or by simply not turning on the local soldiers and creating havoc for them that will keep them from getting to the front. Civvies are fair game.

Except if it's your civvies. Then it's a crime against humanity.
 
Thats the thing, this really had little to do with Germany, but everything with "showing (the Russians) what bomber command can do".

Wasn't there a town in Chezh Rep, that was bomb pretty much for no reason then to stop the Russians from having the factorys?
 
Things like this are why I don't think we have the resolve to win wars anymore.

I don't really care that we bombed a bunch of Nazis back in the forties. Honestly, I'm glad we did... and if we had to do it again, I'd support it tenfold.

They weren't all Nazis...
 
I don't get it. It's not like they were condemning the bombings, they just said it was controversial.
Doesn't the very existence of this thread prove there is a controversy, thus vindicating the panel?
 
I see nothing but facts in the War Museum's presentation.

I also don't see any facts that should be there, but aren't.
 
Things like this are why I don't think we have the resolve to win wars anymore.

I don't really care that we bombed a bunch of Nazis back in the forties. Honestly, I'm glad we did... and if we had to do it again, I'd support it tenfold.


I'd have supported it as much as you would have. I would not however, have bombed left and right civilian centers in which military or otherwise Nazis are interspersed with the civilian population. At least some mention must be made to the atrocity of the Dresden firebombing, even if atrocities committed by Axis powers outweigh this one in terms of significance.
 
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