there was a show on the history channel that discussed this and from what the show said and what the editor in chief/publisher in the 40s of the NY times apologized for was the government before and during the war had all the major newspapers and news services bury any rumors and stories of the concentration camps…
some didn’t print them at all and some did as early as 37/8 a little but buried it on page 43 the reason before the war was FDR didn’t want the Jewish groups agitating for a war that no one wanted and wasn’t ready for then during he didn’t want it turning to a “Jewish” war and upsetting the southern and other factions during the war
it was considered a dark page in the history of journalism and the NY times its self and as an organization regretted it and apologized publicly for giving in "when they should have told them to go to hell "
This is again a different issue if you go back to 1937 or even discuss concentration camps later. Before the US was attacked by Japan and declared war upon by Germany (after FDR basically had the USN in an undeclared naval war with Germany) it was in issue of saying the US had to enter a war to help people being mistreated by Germany. This indeed would have echoed British propaganda about German atrocities in WWI, a sensitive point in the US for I believe understandable reasons. And people’s rights were being trampled in the late 30’s in Germany, eventually their freedom taken away. People were not being exterminated in large numbers until the US was almost in the war anyway. Nor did the US have much military capability to directly interfere with the genocide until mid 1944. Before that the death camps were out of range of escorted bombing raids, and bombing concentration camps, though large numbers of people there died gradually of mistreatment, malnourishment and/or overwork, would have been a far doubtful tactic to help victims than bombing extermination camps.
When the extermination camps came within range of practical USAAF bombing with significant deployment of P-51’s to the 15th AF by mid 1944, the US govt could have put at least some of the death camps and/or their rail connections on the target list for the 15th AF. Which was discussed within the USAAF and FDR admin in the summer of 1944, but rejected on the basis of non-clarity that it would help the victims, even of death camps. One could debate that, and add in if desired the current fashion to impute ‘ism’ motives to any past official decision where it’s conceivably relevant. But it’s not obvious that such a tactic would have worked. And target selection for the USAAF wasn’t discussed publicly for good reason. Even a general fully public discussion of the issue of trying to help holocaust victims would have potentially given the Germans useful information to counter USAAF raids. At the time, that was considered completely out of the question as a way to operate, and I think that can be defended.
Knocking railroad lines out for any length of time proved to be beyond the RAF’s powers, at least at night. They concentrated on marshalling yards which were bigger and identifiable - even these proved difficult to reduce capacity in for any length of time.
I have seen pictures of rail tracks being surrounded by bomb craters, yet the tracks themselves being fine and usable. :eek:
Stations, coal dumps and yards were the more effective targets and they were going to be engaged regardless of the Holocaust.
Right. We knew that Jews were being murdered and sent to concentration camps where it seemed that Very Bad Things were happening. It was not until we liberated the camps that we realized the full extent of the horror.
Likewise the Germans living in the towns surely saw thousands of Jews coming into the camps each day and surely knew that murders were occurring, but like most things, you try to survive by minimizing horrible things in your mind and don’t realize the full import until you see it with your own eyes.
I once saw an example of the mentall dislocation involved, at the Topographie des Terrors exhibition in Berlin: a letter protesting at the brutality with which deportees were being whipped into lorries, right under the windows of the writer’s office, to the horror of his female staff, and asking for some humanity to be shown. But the point is, this was the editor of an SS newspaper, who held SS rank, and must have known what it was all about.
Mass relocations and rounding up of troublesome minorities was a standard thing in that eras. All powers, on both sides had done it. Its hard to appreciate that today.
Everyone knew it was “unpleasant” and the death rates were “high”. That coloured everyone’s interpretation of the intelligence.
Einsatzgruppen rounding up and killing Jews (and other undesirables)? *Well policing in enemy territory is by necessity hard, especially of potentially troublesome groups. And people will sometimes get carried away. But a purposeful policy? Yeah unlikely.
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People being sent to Concentration Camps. *Yes, unfortunately, war requires some difficult decisions to be made,and controlling troublesome groups requires ruthlessness at times. Remember the Boers/ And people have high death rates in camps, no matter how much we try. The stories we are hearing are exaggerations of well known phenomena *
But this sort of thinking was not relevant to the actual decision not to bomb Auschwitz once it became practical, the known historical record seems to show. It was known by then, summer 1944, that Auschwitz was some kind of extermination camp or included that function. It was actually the only >100k death toll extermination camp still operating by then. The resistance to bombing it was based on the belief it would not necessarily help victims, as well as divert resources from targets with a greater practical effect on Germany’s war effort, as opposed to symbolic gestures. I think the latter misunderstanding by later critics is actually the more relevant one than any ‘misunderstanding’ of how morally compromised the other ‘great powers’ were in treating minorities so they cut slack to the Germans. In fact whether they should have or not, according to modern and/or non-Western opinion, the Anglo-Americans did not tend to look on any German misbehavior as ‘oh well that stuff happens’. They tended actually to hold the Germans to a higher standard where both sides’ conduct was arguably similar (for example charges related to unrestricted submarine warfare in the Nuremberg trials). And what was happening at Auschwitz was not similar, and known not to be by the time there was any practical decision to be made about countering it directly with military action.
That decision can be further analyzed and/or second guessed to some degree. For example one push back on making such a raid was that the Germans might react with even more vicious reprisals against Jews, but in reality they couldn’t have gotten that much worse. OTOH it’s clear that bombing Auschwitz in the summer of '44 would not have had a big statistical effect on the holocaust: ~90% of its victims had been killed already by then. Auschwitz was working flat out, to murder mainly Hungarian Jews at that time, in spring-summer 1944 so damaging the facilities would have slowed that down. But it’s open to serious question if it would have ultimately prevented anyone being murdered as opposed to delaying it.
The likely outcome of bombing Auschwitz once that became practical would have been IMO a symbolic gesture whose effect if any on the holocaust death toll would still be unclear now. And ‘but at least they’d have tried’ is simply weighed more heavily from the modern viewpoint than it was then. The opportunity cost of not bombing other targets tends conversely to be given lower weight now than then. USAAF bombing by then was becoming quite effective compared to its checkered early phases. Not for example launching as many raids on synthetic oil facilities within 15th AF range (some right near Auschwitz) was perceived as having a real cost, which is generally ignored in socio-political discussion or assumed to be purely an excuse.
One factor that stayed the hand of the allies, when it came to announcing publicly what they heard about the holocaust, was the reaction to the WW1 British propaganda about German atrocities in Belgium. The atrocities were absolutely real, but the propaganda about them (especially from the British tabloids, unlike today where they stand as a model of moderation and responsibility ) was so over the top that the whole story became synonymous with the government lying to drum up support for a war. So in WW2 there was a conscious effort not to talk up German atrocities too much.
) was so over the top that the whole story became synonymous with the government lying to drum up support for a war. So in WW2 there was a conscious effort not to talk up German atrocities too much.