You can decide whether you find this offensive. It’s a clip from an old show called History Bites, which ran from 1998-2003. Here is a link to the show’s Wikipedia entry if you are interested in learning more about the program.
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Not bad for History Bites. Normally their clips are lame. It appears that Canadians are no better at debating their history than Americans – indeed, some are as bad as the worst neo-Confederates. The state-run broadcaster once produced a program – I won’t dignify it by calling it a documentary – on the Allied bombing campaign in WWII that lauded Nazi fighter pilots as valiant heroes while denouncing the Allies as murderers. They did this with taxpayer’s money.
Do you have a link to the WWII clip? I’ve nev er seen it, but as a WWII buff I can say with authority that allied bombers were hardly angels (e.g., Dresden). This has nothing to do with the “causes” of WWII, but the actions of individual commanders. The Allies were desperate to win and willing to do anything, whether it was “nice” or not. I have a hard time believing they meant to run a pro-Nazi documentary, but I’ll withhold judgement until I see it.
http://www.nfb.ca/film/death_by_moonlight_bomber_command/
Here’s the link. The most incriminating comments come between minute 68 and 71.
I also recommend Bercuson and Wise’s book “The Valour and the Horror Revisited,” a thorough critique of the historical inaccuracies in the program.
Also check out minute 84-85 – they say that the Nazi fighter pilots had “never been reticent. They had nothing to be ashamed of.” Even Freeman Dyson, a British (now U.S.) scientist, claimed they “ended the war morally undefeated. We (the Allies) had given them the one thing they lacked at the beginning, a clean cause to fight for.”
Yup, and on the taxpayer’s dime. Yet the CBC still exists. This makes the Enola Gay controversy look game by comparison.