The Canadian War Museum and Bomber Command: My Perspective
Abstract: This article is based on David Bercuson’s keynote address at the 22nd Military History Colloquium held at the University of Waterloo in May 2011. Bercuson discusses his role in the controversy over the panel text about the Combined Bomber Offensive at the new Canadian War Museum. Arguing that the original text was not wrong, but reflected older scholarship, he concludes by observing that no serious scholar, whether a single author or a museum staff, should be saved from the age-old processes of historical review, revision and re-writing to reflect more recent research when it is more accurate. Four years ago I became embroiled in the controversy arising from the Canadian War Museum’s exhibit of the Allied bomber war, also called the “Combined Bomber Offensive” or CBO. That controversy came to the public’s attention in the fall of 2006 due to the objections of the portrayal of the bomber war in the museum by Canadian veterans of Bomber Command. The veterans were joined by, among others, former Canadian chief of the defence staff Paul Manson, who had also been commander of Canadian Forces Air Command and a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in Europe during the Cold War.1 They made various claims that the exhibit had, deliberately or inadvertently, portrayed the bomber war as terror bombing and akin to a war crime. They made their case in the media and in front of a Senate committee.2 Eventually they succeeded in having the words of the exhibit altered. At no time did I ever have any connection to any of those activities nor did I register any opinion about what they were saying. I had played a role in an earlier kerfuffle as an advisor to the CBC Ombudsman at the time of the “Valour and the Horror” series; I had no intention of getting involved in any such public controversy again. I first saw the magnificent new Canadian War Museum a few months after it opened in 2005 when I was invited to sit on a panel organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives at the museum. I cannot remember the topic. I do remember that we panellists were given a guided tour of the museum and I distinctly remember being disturbed by the words of one panel of the bomber exhibit which declared: “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 in German war production until late in the war.” The pictures on the panel to the immediate left of those words showed, from top to bottom, a heavily damaged factory complex, a heavily damaged German city with a destroyed bridge and finally pictures of burned German corpses lying in a street or square. I had little argument with the statement of Bomber Command’s aims. I was more than familiar with the history of Bomber Command and its commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, including his refusal to accede to the wishes the chief of the air staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, expressed so often in 1944, that Harris ease off his area attacks and focus on major strategic targets such as oil, transportation and the aircraft industry. I also knew that about one quarter of Bomber Command’s targets were German war industry. I was also fully aware that the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) and the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU) – and some historians of the air war – had concluded that bombing Germany had limited results through most of the war.3 Indeed, volume III of the official history of the RCAF, The Crucible of War, had arrived at the same conclusion4 though with little research and analysis of its own. But other historians and air power The Canadian War Museum and Bomber Command My Perspective
Museums as conflict zones: the Canadian War Museum and Bomber Command
This paper examines a recent controversy at the new Canadian War Museum over its exhibition on the Allied Bomber Offensive campaign in the Second World War. Although recent surveys of the public’s attitudes towards museums suggest that the public both trusts museums to get the story right and thinks museums are good places to deal with controversial topics, in this case the Museum found itself under attack. In the end, despite generally positive reviews from historians called in to review the display, the Museum was forced to make changes after a Parliamentary sub-committee demanded it do so. The paper argues that the Museum’s inability to withstand such intense pressure can be attributed to a number of factors, including its ambiguous nature as a war memorial museum.
Contested Representations: Revisiting 'Into the Heart of Africa'
List of Illustrations Foreword by Anthony Shelton Acknowledgements I. Entering the Debates Reading the Royal Ontario Museum Coming into the Field Museum Ethnography Looking Ahead Final Notes on the Forum II. Into the Heart of Africa and the Status Quo The Status Quo Toward a Reflexive Museology Re-presenting Imperialism: A Personal Walk Through the Exhibit After the Fact Museums Will Be Museums III. Prelude to the Controversy The Ambiguity of Irony Power Relations and Public Culture The Politics of Consultation IV. The Coalition for the Truth about Africa: Strategies and Challenges Performing Resistance The Politics of Contestation Experiences of "Otherness" Democratizing Museums A Counter Text: The CFTA Pamphlet Contradictions of Resistance Racism and Multiculturalism: Articulating a Contradiction V. Various Positions: Responses to the Coalition for the Truth about Africa Beyond Into the Heart of Africa Authority at/of the ROM Classroom Confrontations Media Conclusions: Radicalizing the CFTA The Academy and Complex Subject Positions The Black Community: "Protest and Process" Victims and Victimization Other Voices at the ROM Outcomes Afterword: Canonizing an Exhibition, Renovating the ROM Appendix: Coalition for the Truth about Africa Pamphlet Notes References Index