Air force vets declare war on museum display

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'I feel very angry,' 90-year-old Don Elliot told CTV News.

At issue are photographs in the exhibit that show dead German civilians.


Air force vets declare war on museum display

Updated Wed. Apr. 18 2007 10:19 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Second World War veterans are fighting a display in the Canadian War Museum they say describes them as war criminals.

"I feel very angry," 90-year-old Don Elliot told CTV News.

The veteran's plane crashed over Germany when it was shot down on a bombing run, and he spent more than three years in various prison camps. He said part of the display gives the wrong impression of what the Allied airmen tried to achieve in the campaign.

"It gives me the impression by the wording and photographs that they're implying I was a war criminal," he said.

At issue is two photographs in the exhibit that show dead German civilians, and a panel that says historians are divided on the success of the strategic bombing campaign.

The panel reads: "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."

Museum officials say the display is only one part of a much larger exhibit on the campaign, that also pays tribute to the 10,000 Canadian airmen who died.

Dean Oliver, a historian at the museum, said the single panel is "about the size of a movie poster," and argued it has been taken out of context.

"The air war that Canada fought, and those in Bomber Command who fought it, have been appropriately treated with balance and respect and with dignity," he said.

Desmond Morton, a professor at McGill University told The Canadian Press the panel "records and illustrates an irrefutable fact: there is a controversy."

He added that removing the contested words "because of pressure-group intervention would qualify as a suppression of historical fact."

But a Senate Committee is now taking up the veterans' complaint and will examine the display, after prompting from representatives of the Royal Canadian Legion, the Air Force Association and the Aircrew Association.

Sen. Romeo Dallaire, who led the ill-fated United Nations mission during the Rwandan genocide, said he understands the veterans' concern.

"All of a sudden, 60 years later, they get the impression someone's calling you a war criminal," he said.

"I hope their dander is up and I think we should be able to respond."

The veterans have said they tried to discuss a compromise with museum staff that would have changed the wording in the panel, but were denied.

A similar complaint was raised a decade ago against the CBC documentary series "The Valour and the Horror."

The network eventually decided to rebroadcast the series in an altered form, although the filmmakers continued to win several awards.

The bombing campaign lasted almost six years, and involved about two million tones of bombs dropped over Europe. Several German cities were destroyed, while more than 20,000 bombers were shot down.

While Germany continued to produce weapons during the offensive, they still had to devote hundreds of thousands of troops to battle the planes. And in the final days of the war, Allied bombers focused on cutting off the German fuel system.

With a report by CTV's Roger Smith in Ottawa and files from The Canadian Press