when Politics/Lobbyists interfere with the writing of history

[bk59]

I have no problem with any debate on the topic, my problem is the debate was started by the musuem and thier actions of putting someones opinion on a piece of history. It's not the musuems place or function to question or comment on history but to display it with just facts.

It is the job and place of historians and other groups to comment or debate what they think happened, or was it right or wrong...

The debate was not started by the museum. It has been ongoing in one form or another since the bombing of Dresden. And yes, it is the museum's place to comment to some degree on history. As for historians and their job and place, museums are generally run by historians.

I think your reply says it all, the largest War on this planet, that involved most of the globe, killed millions upon millions and all we learned is we could sit down and create rules of engagement for all future wars. even with these rules in place a full 1/3 of the world did not agree to follow them.

As a pivot piont in mans history we should have been able to match that with a historical leasons learned , allowing man kind to live in a more peaceable enviroment. such is not the case, war has engulf more than a 1/3 of the planet ever since the end of WW II.

If you expect one war to all of a sudden make everyone on the planet, including future generations, stop fighting then you have very unrealistic views of the human race. Humans still fight one another, but hopefully with what we learned from WWII we have avoided some wars through diplomacy and international cooperation. Hopefully we have learned to recognize certain war crimes and crimes against humanity and punish them through a justice system rather than victor's justice. I think we have, at least to some degree. But if your criteria for learning from history is that all of a sudden we live in utopia, then I think you may have missed the point. All we can do is do better, not be perfect.

You can't just pick out key sentences and base your opinion on that , you have to read the entire memo and then put it into context.

You're right about taking things in context. And the context is that after Dresden all of a sudden people saw what the bombing campaign was doing to people and they began to have doubts about it. Hence the claims about its dubious morality. Churchill's draft memo shows a greater link between Dresden and his reasons against terror bombing for the sake of terror bombing. It is understandable that he would phrase his final memo, after advice and objections from others, in terms of Britain's military needs. It was a smarter political move than his first memo. But make no mistake, he is questioning the value of continuing the bombing campaign in the same manner as was done previously. Again, part of the impetus for that was the moral questions surrounding the fire bombing of Dresden.

You can try to call it libel all you want. But those statements on the panel are true. The fact is, the morality & value of the campaign was and is debated. The last part where it talks about small reductions in war production might be questionable and should be backed up with more facts or removed, but that's it.

We can disagree on the value & morality of the fire bombing. That's fine. But let's not pretend that the debate has only recently emerged because of "liberal historians". It's been around for a while.