1 Sep 2007 09:00
Randall Hansen: The Canadian War Museum's great mistake
http://communities.canada.com/nationalpost/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/08/30/randall-hansen-the-canadian-war-museum-s-great-mistake.aspx The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has decided to “adjust” its plaque about Bomber Command during the Second World War in response to veterans’ complaints. This is a great mistake. The offending plaque says the following: “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.” If we are to believe Canada’s National Council of Veterans Associations, these sentences are offensive and inaccurate. They are offensive because they accuse veterans of committing “war crimes” or “war atrocities” and they are inaccurate because, to quote Cliff Chadderton, the Chairman of the Council, they “[go] against all of the books that have been written on Bomber Command.” Either Mr. Chadderton has not read those books, or he has read them very badly. The statements on the plaque are supported by the official British, American, and Canadian histories, by all serious studies of Bomber Command, including those sympathetic to its accomplishments, and by Canada’s most esteemed historians — Desmond Morton, Margaret MacMillan, Jack Granatstein. Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, defined Bomber Command’s goal as: “[T]he destruction of German cities; the(Continue reading)
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