OTTAWA —

The Canadian War Museum has come up with new wording for a controversial display that angered Second World War veterans, divided historians and even dragged in a Senate subcommittee.

The Canadian War Museum has come up with new wording for a controversial display that angered Second World War veterans, divided historians and even dragged in a Senate subcommittee.

The museum reached a compromise with veterans groups and has rewritten a controversial panel about the Allied bombing campaign in the Second World War.

"This new panel is three times longer than the original wording, it adds more context,'' said Duane Daly, dominion secretary of the Royal Canadian Legion.

Daly, who was part of what the vets dubbed the Mayday committee, said the vets are satisfied that the new display will give a better explanation of the long and bloody campaign airmen waged in the skies over Europe.

The Legion is happy with the result. "There's no winners or losers here,'' said Bob Butt, a Legion spokesman.

Veterans complained more than a year ago that the panel portrayed them as war criminals by stressing that the effectiveness and morality of the bombing campaign has been a controversy since the war. They felt it made their efforts look futile, even immoral.

They said they initially got short shrift from museum officials, whom they said were "grossly unfair,'' "judgmental,'' "arrogant,'' and "morally biased.''

The veterans took their complaints to a Senate subcommittee, which held hearings at which former combat flyers, historians and museum officials laid out their cases.

The contested panel said:

"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.''

Accompanying photos show dead Germans amid the ruins.

Some veterans testified at the Senate subcommittee that museum officials seemed to have an axe to grind.

"Why do the museum officials hype this statement except to reinforce the implication that Bomber Command aircrew were guilty of war crimes?'' said Donald Elliott, a 90-year-old airman who was shot down over Germany during a bombing raid and spent more than three years in prison camps.

Jack Granatstein, one of the country's most respected historians, backed the museum in his appearance before the committee.

He said he has the highest respect for the men who defeated Hitler and Nazism, but can't side with them on this question.

"Every fact in that panel is a fact, it's true,'' he said. "It's almost impossible for me to put the interpretation on it that they do. I'm frankly baffled on this one.''

The senators eventually urged both sides to find a compromise.

Two weeks after the Senate report last spring, Joe Geurts, director of the museum, resigned abruptly, without explanation.

Mark O'Neill, acting head of the museum, said he's satisfied that the new, longer wording, remains true to history, while meeting the veterans' objections.

"I would say that what we have accomplished is a text that's respectful of the history and also of the veterans,'' he said.

"I think it brings the issue of strategic bombing into a broader context.''

He explained the changes:

"There's four substantive differences. One of them is noting the public and political support at the time. Next is, we include the fact that there were major strategic targets that were identified. We note that the aircrew had great courage against heavy odds. We also talk about the cost of lives in the campaign for the Allied and the Canadian members of the aircrew.''

The Allied bombing campaign against Germany stretched over almost six years and took a terrible toll on both sides. The Allies dropped almost two million tonnes of bombs on Europe. The cores of many German cities were burned to rubble. Devastation was measured in hectares. Hundreds of thousands died.

The flyers paid their own high price. More than 20,000 bombers were shot down. About 82,000 airmen were killed, including almost 10,000 Canadians.

For most of the campaign, German armament production rose steadily, despite the devastation. However, most historians agree that Germany was forced to assign hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of guns to fight the bombers. They also expended much of the dwindling strength of their air force against the bombers.

In the dying days of the war, the bombers concentrated on the German fuel system, essentially starving the war machine of its life blood.