Canadian War Museum

Here is a story with a (tangential) link to the British World theme of this blog:

A veterans groups have announced they are unhappy with a panel within an exhibit at the Canadian War Museum. The panel is question states that both the morality and the military effectiveness of the Allied bombing raids against Germany remain contested. The Museum does not take sides in either the dispute about morality or the empirical question regarding effectiveness, it merely notes that these issues remain controversial.


http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=05bb0c8c-827d-4d79-8ee3-dda6ad6b6707&k=42408

There is no way that the CWM should back down in this issue. As quoted in this news story, the panel in question seems eminently fair in its phrasing. Moreover, as part of their duty to educate the public, museums have an obligation to indicate that the past is interpreted in different ways. Most casual visitors just want the basic facts of the case (actually, many visitors are probably school kids with little interest in the topic), but a good museum will lightly refer to the historiographic debates. The Holocaust gallery of the IWM in London has a good system: the main panels give the basic facts about the Holocausts, but visitors wanting more detail can sit at special computer terminals with PowerPoint displays dealing with historiographic controversies (e.g., the failure of Western nations to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz). There are even suggestions for further reading for the tiny minority of really keen visitors.

The veterans involved are old men and one hesitates to suggest fighting them by citing fancy degrees and "books". However, the CWM should perhaps mention in its next press release the academic credentials of the people who put the exhibit together. This should silence much of the criticism.