Re: Randall Hansen: The Canadian War Museum's great mistake

Why would you create a plaque at all regarding something about which you
believed its value and morality is bitterly contested?  Why commemorate such
a thing?  The plaque certainly seems to be at odds with the spirit/sentiment
of this page:

http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/gallery3_e.html

Putting such a plaque up in the first place strikes me as a national
embarrassment, I know my father, as a near life long Canadian, would be
embarrassed if not ticked off by that plaque.  If their panties are in such
a wad about the moral and strategic value of the bombings take the plaque
down all together. 

Why not leave at this:

http://www.civilization.ca/cwm/chrono/1931bomber_command_e.html

And even that is a bit of revisionist hand wringing, (the last line). 

Mike F.

-----Original Message-----
From: dadl-ot-bounces@...
[mailto:dadl-ot-bounces@...] On
Behalf Of Peter T. Chattaway
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 3:00 AM
To: Daniel Amos off-topic listserver
Subject: [DADL-OT] 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 Commands 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 Canadas 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 Canadas most
esteemed historians  Desmond Morton, Margaret MacMillan, Jack Granatstein.
Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, defined Bomber
Commands goal as: [T]he 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  are accepted and intended aims of our
bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.

A basic part of this strategy was the killing of civilians. It was one that
Harris himself relished. In his words, What we want to do  is to bring the
masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill Boche, and to terrify the
Boche.

The numbers are also not in dispute. Official statistics put civilian deaths
at 593,000. Civilians were burned, boiled, crushed, drowned, and
asphyxiated. Most died cowering in cellars, and most were women, children,
or old men. Some 60 German cities  Dresden, but also Frankfurt, Hamburg,
Stuttgart, Hannover, Darmstadt, Pforzheim and many, many others  were
obliterated. Nonetheless, German war production increased year on year until
the autumn of 1944, after which it fell rapidly (when Germany was beginning
to implode, making it hard to quantify bombings contribution).

In short, all of the statements made in the Museums plaque are accepted
historical fact. Given this, the veterans can have only two objections:
they do not like the conclusions or the conclusions do not say enough. As
the former is absurd, it has to be the latter. Specifically, the veterans
believe that more needs to be said about how bombing contributed to the end
of the war. In the words used in their suggested revision, bombing (i) bled
off resources from the enemys campaign against the Soviets [fighters over
Berlin werent over Stalingrad], involving massive amounts of manpower and
material diverted from their primary combat commitments and (ii) destroyed
the enemy defences, oil resources, and transportation net-works.

Here the veterans have a point. These effects did weaken Germany (though it
is hard to know by how much). Point (i) is, however, terribly exaggerated,
because the resources that the Allies used to bomb Germany were also bled
off from other fronts (bombers over Berlin werent in the Battle of the
Atlantic), meaning that resource transfers cancelled each other out. Point
(ii) is true. The problem is that this bombing mostly wasnt British and
Canadian: it was rather American. Throughout the war, some 46% of all Bomber
Command bombs were dropped directly on the centre of German cities. Harris
wanted the figure to be much higher. By contrast, only 6% of American bombs
fell on cities. During 1945, at the peak of the bombing war, the U.S. Eighth
Air Force dropped 50% of its bombs on transportation targets; the figure for
the RAF was 13%. The result for civilians was clear: Bomber Command killed
three German civilians for every one killed by the Eighth. The Canadian War
Museum, therefore, can legitimately highlight the bombings accomplishments
(indeed, on another plaque, it already does). But if the Museum wishes to
retain a shred of historical integrity it will also have to emphasize that
those accomplishments were largely American; that the role played by the
Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force was minor; and that the
part it did play was bitterly resisted by Arthur Harris, who only wanted to
destroy cities. As Albert Speer (I have the document on file) said, the
American attacks  were by far the most dangerous. It was in fact these
attacks which caused the breakdown of the German armaments industry. Is
this really what the veterans want?

So much for substance. The process followed over the last year has been at
best unfortunate, at worst farcical. At first, Museum officials insist that
the plaque is accurate; that they will not make changes; and that to make
changes would be caving to pressure. Then, an ill-advised Senate
intervention adds, intentionally or not, wind to the veterans sails.
Finally, the Museum executes a volte-face, which, by its own standard, can
only be understood as caving to pressure. Since then, the veterans, who are
not historians, have appointed themselves judge and jury in a matter over
which they have a vested and highly emotional interest  as Chadderton put
it, Well look at [the new plaque] and decide whether its fair. If it is,
then well accept it. This outcome is more than regrettable. It is a
national embarrassment.

National Post

z Professor Randall Hansen is associate professor and Canada research chair
at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Fire and Fury: the Allied
Bombing of Germany.

--- Peter T. Chattaway ------------- http://filmchatblog.blogspot.com/ ---
Nothing tells memories from ordinary moments; only afterwards do they
   claim remembrance, on account of their scars. -- Chris Marker, La Jetee

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