This question has stuck in my mind since I first learned about the Holocaust as a child. When I asked an adult I usually got the answer that nobody was aware of it until the Allies liberated the concentration camps. Given the lack of modern communication in the 1930’s, and the reluctance of those involved to talk about it, I could see how such a secret could be kept from the world, until I heard or read that the local German population was aware of the camps to some degree.
That means that besides hundreds of perpetrators knowing there were also hundreds, if not thousands, of Germans who had some awareness. I can imagine the fear they must of had of talking about it publicly, so again this secret was well kept, but considering how many millions of people were captured and killed, the disappearance of these people should have tipped off the world off that something was going on. After all, where were all of these people who were being carted away taken to?
So now that this dark period of history is long behind us do we know if anyone outside of Germany was aware of what was going on and tried to take it public? Perhaps nobody would believe that the Nazi’s could do that, but it doesn’t seem like countries, such as the United States, were very concerned about it at the time. If someone outside of Germany was aware they could speak of it freely without the fear of being arrested by the Gestapo.
So who outside of Germany knew about the Holocaust and why wasn’t more written or spoken about it until the Allies liberated the camps?
People who lived near the camps often did not know exactly what was going on inside of them. When they did know, as you pointed out, this was in an era where we didn’t have the instant communication of the internet. Even if someone did know what was going on in their own local area they had no idea what was going on across the country. Very few people knew the immense scale of the Holocaust.
A lot of the Jews in Germany had a better idea of what was going on since they would hear stories from their friends and relatives all across the country. They were also often able to often contact relatives and friends outside of Germany and tell them what was happening. Word of this reached all the way to the U.S. and folks in the government and military were told about it. Most people dismissed it as anti-Germany war propaganda. The general impression was that yes, some Jews were being rounded up, but that sort of thing does happen in wars (we rounded up the Japanese and shoved them into camps too, if you aren’t aware of that). And again, no one really knew the scale of it. It wasn’t until the camps were liberated that we truly began to understand the full scale of it all.
So it wasn’t really a complete secret, but the vast scale of it all and exactly what kinds of torture and killings were going on surprised everyone when the camps were finally liberated.
The western Allies had several reliable reports about what was happening, like the Vrba-Wetzler report. Benjamin Akzin unsuccessfully appealed to FDR to use Allied air power to attack the camps.
A wider look at how escapes helped publicise the existence of the ‘shoah by gas’.
Wasn’t there a Time magazine cover showing a concentration camp/death camp before the Western Allies landed on the continent? Like in 1943? That’s always made me wonder if people really knew as little as they later claimed.
This thread also deserves a mention of Witold Pilecki, a man whose balls must have been the size of bowling balls.
Incidentally the Soviet Union made no announcement of what they had found at Auschwitz until after the war, for fear it would give the Jews some sort of undue prominence as Nazi victims (as opposed to the Soviets themselves).
The worlsd was aware that Jews (and Gypsies, gays, etc.) were being rounded up and held in camps. Krystalnacht was probably well documented, and even debunked (the Jews did not do what they were accused of) but then, until the holocaust was public knowledge, prejudice and racial/ethnic injustice did not have the same bad reputation it got afterwards.
the actual “Final Solution” apparently got going in early 1942. Before that, there had been occasional shootings by the troops of jews in eastern europe as the areas were conquered - then there were SS squads particularly dedicated to mass extermination of Jews in the eastern European areas as they were conquered.
What was happening in war-torn areas of eastern europe, and what was happening in government camps behind enemy lines at the height of WWII was propably not widely known by the public in the west. In fact, some locals claimed they did not know what their troops were up to, just a few miles from camps where people were being slaughtered wholesale. I suspect this was mostly lies and a bit of willful blindness.
There are some stories I recall reading about escapees who warned the allies, and no doubt the situation was not impossible to figure out for the groups who analyzed surveillance photos of the Germans - but considering the shock of regular troops who liberated these camps, it obviously was not a widely known fact that the horror was this bad.
I went through Yad Vashem a few weeks ago, and I don’t recall any significant accusatory exhibits saying “everyone knew”. (There was one, IIRC, saying “why didn’t they bomb the camps”?) I suppose the western allies simply thought of it as “just another pogrom”, not wholesale genocide…
When the US and Britian were fighting a see-saw battle for survival of their own free institutions, with – just to cite a tiny portion of the ongoing disasters, a US warship lost, on average, every few days, and a US flag merchant ship sunk every day – it is hard to imagine Eastern European civilian war deaths being a high priority.
More disturbing is that when we aren’t fighting a desparate total war, we can’t at that time focus on genocide. See this on Rwanda:
Thanks for the great replies everyone. Ignorance fought.
So at least some people in the west must have known about the camps, but it seems they either didn’t believe it was as bad as described, or they were too busy fighting the Germans on the front lines to worry about it.
Perhaps this information never made it down to the rank and file (what good would it have done?) and that’s why the first troops to see the camps were so shocked.
It also sounds like it wouldn’t have made that much difference even if it was known prior to the start of WWII (from the US’s perspective). I realize that other Allied countries were fighting the Germans long before the US was…
A thing to remember is that evidence is never as clear as it looks after the fact. Before you know what’s going on, you have thousands of pieces of information which you have to fit together. You might have all of the information you need to figure out what’s going on but not realize it. Or you might put the pieces together in the wrong way and come up with the wrong conclusion.
So other countries knew that Jews were being persecuted but didn’t really understand the totality of the genocide that was going on until they could see the aftermath in Germany at first hand.
I don’t believe the average German knew the scale of what was happening. My father was placed in an SS training camp when he was about ten (I think it was the Hitler Youth but he hates talking about those days). Most of his male relatives were inducted into the German army, few survived the war. My father tells me that his entire family was in disbelief when the Holocaust was finally revealed.
True, the average German was taught that the Jews were their enemies and a hated minority. But I don’t believe the average German would have supported the Final Solution.
What is often forgotten is that at the time rounding up of troublesome minorities and ethnicities and wholesale deportation were fairly common strategies. The W Allies had done that in recent memory and would post 1945 do that again ( Malaya, Vietnam, to a smaller extent in N Ireland). So knowledge that roundups were taking place=\ being slaughtered. IIRC there was a lot more knowledge about the death squads in the Soviet Union.
Which minority was rounded up (in detainment camps, I presume) in Malaya? Just curious. (Sorry for the semi-hijack, but it is good to learn a bit about comparable examples).
IIRC, Rwanada followed Somalia (of Black Hawk Down fame). After Gulf War I (the justifiable one) the criticism was “sure, you’ll send the might of the USA to save a country that provides you with millions of barrels of oil, but what about the slaughter going on in Somalia? Are you going to ignore it because they don’t have oil? Or are you going to use the force of the USA for humanitarian good?” Kuwait, with heavily armed Iraqi army was an easy romp, how difficult could a bunch of rifle-waving tribesmen be?
Well, see where that got us. Nobody cared, all sides happily picked on the Americans, people danced in the streets on the dead bodies of soldiers. Unmitigated disaster. Hint, unless you are strongly welcomed, why stick your nose in?
Then along comes Rwanda, not conveniently beside a sea where the western forces can stage off their own aircraft carriers, not convenient open desert where you can see everything, and still full of homicidal tribesmen. A few years after Somalia, is it any wonder no western country wanted to get involved in a nasty war?
Yes. The Wansee Conference is usually what people mean when they talk about this.
It’s not entirely clear to me whether you’re saying that the shootings of Jews in areas freshly overrun by the Wermacht were “occasional,” so forgive me if I’m implying wrongly that you did. But the Einsatzgruppen were operating earlier than 1942, well-organized, and systematic; not exactly “occasional.” Einsatzgruppen are estimated to have killed about 2 million people throughout the war (almost all civilians; 1.3 million of them Jews).
OP is a great and famous topic, studied immensely around the world. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the central institution for, among other things, such historical inquiry related to the US.
Another reason for the intentional disregard for the reports (according to Erik Larson in In The Garden Of Beasts) was the fact that many financial institutions were counting on Germany to repay some major bonds - at enormous rates (30% if I remember correctly) and they put pressure on the administration to avoid criticizing Germany, criticism which they feared might have caused Germany to find reason to default.
What people forget is how inconceivable, how mind-bogglingly unthinkable on God’s green Earth this reality–although often expressed in general vis-a-vis the Jews–could be achieved mechanically and industrially and thoroughly. Yet the most modern culture in Europe, with a glorious intellectual and artistic tradition, came up with it.
Remember that when “genocide in x!” is tossed around.
Given that, in every occupied country in Europe,
Every local/city/national gendarmerie rounding up and killing Jews (without whom the Holocaust is unthinkable)
Every villager next to every camp and those near the killing field when every Jew from their village is shot and buried
Every train driver to the camps
Every volunteer “guard” at the camps, without whom the camps could not have been run without higher price Germans
Every contractor to the industrial machinery of the camps
Very few knew of the full extent and how bad it really was, such as the ‘death camps”. The concentration camps were common knowledge, and were not uncommon outside of the Nazis. Stalin used them, and so did the British, earlier.
Even if the stories had gotten out, many were leery of such wartime propaganda. The British, for example, made up quite a bit of over the top horror stories, which may have led to the USA entering WWI.