Bombs

After pressures from veteran groups, the Canadian War Museum decided to change a panel that listed the civilian causalities from and questioned the effectiveness of the bombing of German cities during the WWII. As this sort of things usually are, what is in dispute is not the facts (as normally claimed) but the evaluation of these facts. The devastation of these bombings on the civilian population is not in dispute, what ired the veterans is the statement “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.” How effective was the bombing on Nazi weapon production is hard to evaluate, but the veterans' anger is not so much about the accuracy of the statement but the doubt, however slight, it implies on the absolute perfection of their war deeds.

What both side conveniently left out is the main strategic objective of the bombings themselves. Carpet bombing civilian targets as a strategy was first employed by the Nazis at Guernica, Spain and developed into a prolonged war strategy by the RAF and then the Canadian and American after the Battle of Britain. The outcry after Guernica was universal; it sent the world into shock. The objective of this kind of bombing is not so much to destroy the production of weapons but the demoralization of the civilian population. It works not so much by killing but by disrupting civilian lives and creating an environment of consistent terror. It reasons that if you break the will of your enemy, you win the war. It is therefore more a psychological war than a physical war; and the weapon in this war is more incendiary bombs than high explosives. What both the museum and the veteran fails to mention is that the Bomber Command was conducting a war of terror primarily on the civilian population. The moral question is not so much whether the bombing destroy enough German war production, or even how many died, but the morality of such strategy.

The highly ambiguous statement in question really need to be changed if the museum want it to say something with content. The moral confusion of the veterans is reflected in their suggestion to change: stating that the Nazi had kill many more people and committed far more hideous acts. I don't think they want to compare, however favorably, their deeds to those of the Nazis, particularly when it follows the Nazi's example.