# Why didn't we bomb concentration camps?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 16, 2010, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633 "2010-05-16T12:33:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/21 "2010-05-16T15:26:29Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> That’s not a refutation.
Your statement can’t really be refuted because it makes no claims of fact and is not based on an intelligent or educated assessment of the situtation.
The idea that “we” were on the same path as the Nazis is simply idiotic. “We,” if by “we” you mean the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, those being the countries largely involved in European strategic bombing in that theatre of war, were in no way on the same path towards extermination of entire groups of their own population, the way the Nazis were. It’s an absurd claim and suggests you don’t know anything about Nazism, a philosophy that is about as far from Western liberal democracy as you can possibly get. Nobody taking a serious and objective look at those countries in 1939 would conclude that they were on their way to setting up their own versions of Dachau. If that were true, why haven’t we done it yet? We won the war. What’s stopping us?
The reason the Allies didn’t bomb the concentration camps is that, to sum up a lot of little reasons, **they were a little fucking busy at the time.** The Allied emphasis was, for good reason, on destroying the ability of the Nazis to mount military resistance. The Allies were not ignorant or uncaring of Nazi horrors; we weren’t fighting them over nothing. The Allies, with good reason, wanted to devote military resources to causing the Nazi regime to cease existing, which - correctly, as it turned out - was the only way to actually stop Nazi atrocities.
Hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen died stopping the Nazi regime. There are more Canadians buried over there, or blown to bits so there wasn’t even anything to bury, than I could even begin to count. Thousands and thousands of them died bombing the Nazis. We’re just a week past V-E day here, for fuck’s sake. Some people get it - once again, as they do every year, the Dutch were effusive in their gratitude for Canada’s part in liberating their country. But apparently all that blood and sacrifice isn’t enough for you. If we “didn’t care,” why did 43,000 Canadians die stopping the Nazis?
And as Sophistry and Illusion points out, the idea that it even would have been feasible to do is stupid. The Allies didn’t have the technology to accurately bomb targets at that distance (most of the death camps were at the extreme end of Allied bomber range; Auschwitz, Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec were all in modern-day Poland, not in Germany) except maybe if they’d tried broad daylight raids, in which case the losses to fighters would have torn the Allied bomber force to shreds.
---
### Author:  [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/22 "2010-05-16T15:37:18Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> And as Sophistry and Illusion points out, the idea that it even would have been feasible to do is stupid. The Allies didn’t have the technology to accurately bomb targets at that distance (most of the death camps were at the extreme end of Allied bomber range; Auschwitz, Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec were all in modern-day Poland, not in Germany) except maybe if they’d tried broad daylight raids, in which case the losses to fighters would have torn the Allied bomber force to shreds.
I would add to this in noting that whatever the “day after the game” 20/20 hindsight, the record on strategic bombing consistently disrupting railhubs - even ones of key direct military importance - is not brilliant.
Already Allied bombers took massive losses focusing on core military targets (per the doctrine of the day), spending blood and material on bombing that would not have materially speeded up the end of the war, and might well have delayed it, would be unconscionable. More soldiers dead, more delays, and no certainty that any prisoners lives would be saved. Given information of the day, the Allies were already expending massive effort and it is frankly insulting to imply otherwise.
---
### Author:  [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/23 "2010-05-16T15:49:37Z")
> [@wmfellows](#):
>
> What possible purpose would have bombing Auschwitz served?
I must have expressed myself very poorly in the OP, so I’ll try and address your points.
> [@](#):
>
> Why would concentration camp inmates, Jews, Gypsies, other “undesirables” prefer to die by Allied - British and American - bombs?
This isn’t hard to answer - although dying in the gas chamber and being blown up in a bombing run both end up with you being dead, the former is an ultimately pointless death and exactly what the Nazis want, whereas the latter ends up with the mechanisms of death around you also blown up, saving more in the future. Which is why the survivor I talked to prayed that whenever he heard the distant drone of aircraft engines that they were on their way to drop bombs on the camp, even if it would mean his death.
> [@](#):
>
> Why would devoting scarce military resources to pointlessly killing prisoners (that from an Allied intelligence point of view could have been a variety of people, not just Jews) be an improvement over destroying Nazi industrial infrastructure supporting their (Nazi) war effort? Bombs expended on camps, bombers lost to German fighters, etc. in camp attacks would be bombs and bombers not dedicated to destroying rail centres, munitions factories, other war material fabrication.
This is the crux of my last question, basically, did we have enough bombs. I don’t know if we did, but the question that results from this is were the bombs better spend on the camps than other targets (like residential bombings, as mentioned above). Again, I don’t know…which is why we’re deep in GD territory - initially I contemplated a GQ thread, but reconsidered for reasons that you can see.
> [@](#):
>
> As there were plenty of opportunities to work prisoners to death in factories being bombed if this had been done.
In which case we would have then bombed those factories, which Allies did aplenty.
> [@](#):
>
> This is an utterly fallacious line of thought. Given limited information and resources, the most rational approach for the allies was to devote all resources to degrading and destroying Nazi war machinery. Camp bombing would be as egregiously stupid and wasteful as the Dresden bombing. A waste of resources.
Well, if we could afford to waste bombs (3200 tons of them!) on Dresden this speaks to the idea that the bombs would be better used trying to save Jews.
What we knew is of key importance, but by all accounts by the latter half of 1944 the Allies had the [Vrba-Wetzler report](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrba-Wetzler_report) on the purpose and capability of Auschwitz, which was confirmed by aerial reconnaissance. A chap called Benjamin Akzin who put unsuccessfully the case to the Roosefelt no doubt puts the argument better than I:
> [@](#):
>
> Akzin went beyond the idea of hitting the railroad lines and argued that the Allies should bomb Auschwitz itself. Destroying the camp, he wrote, would “slow down the systematic slaughter, at least temporarily,” since “it would require some time” for the Germans to rebuild the murder-machinery, and “with German manpower and material resources gravely depleted” the Germans might not even be able to “equip new large-scale extermination centers” at all.
>
> Bombing the camps “would presumably cause many deaths among their personnel - certainly among the most ruthless and despicable of the Nazis,” Akzin wrote. He acknowledged that some of the Jewish prisoners might also be killed in such raids, “but such Jews are doomed to death anyhow,” and the destruction of the camps… might save the lives of future victims."
>
> Akzin emphasized the military value of raids in that region, pointing out that “the important mining and manufacturing centers of Katowice and Chorzow” were just 14 miles from Auschwitz, and they “play an important part in the industrial armament of Germany. Therefore, the destruction of these camps could be achieved without deflecting aerial strength from an important zone of military objectives.”
> **[The man who wanted to bomb Auschwitz](https://www.raoulwallenberg.net/press/2004/man-wanted-bomb-auschwitz/)**
>
> The 60th anniversary of a desperate plea Israelis may remember Benjamin Akzin (1904-1985) as a distinguished academic who served as dean of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, president of Haifa University, and recipient of the 1967...
From what I’ve been able to gather, the Auschwitz camp took several months to establish and ‘gear up’ for the mass murder it’s known for now;
“Glucks informed SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, that a camp would be built on the site on February 21, 1940.[9]
…
The first prisoners—30 German criminal prisoners from the Sachsenhausen camp—arrived in May 1940, intended to act as functionaries within the prison system. The first transport of 728 Polish prisoners which included 20 Jews arrived on June 14, 1940 from the prison in Tarnow, Poland.”
(from the wiki on Auschwitz).
So, if we’d have carpet-bombed the camp out of existence it would have taken them a while to rebuild and restart the murder, saving the victims who would otherwise have been killed in the time it took to rebuild. **DSeid** ’s very interesting link seems to state this too, but goes further:
> [@](#):
>
> Yet another argument for not bombing the camps was that it would have made no difference. The Jews still would have been killed by the millions. Erdheim notes, however, that destroying Crematoria II and III at Birkenau would have eliminated 75 percent of its killing capacity at a time when it would have been difficult, if not impossible to rebuild them. Erdheim also rejects the idea that the Jews could have simply been sent to another camp:
>
> ```
> Without the extermination facilities, the SS undoubtedly would have been forced to slow or altogether halt the deportations (which in the spring/summer of 1944 amounted to 70-80,000 Hungarian Jews a week) while they resorted to other, less efficient means of killing and body disposal.8
>
> ```
---
### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/24 "2010-05-16T16:01:42Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> As far as whether or not “-isms” were involved in it not being part of their job - well I wouldn’t state it as severely as **Der Trihs** but I would suspect that it would have become part of their job if they were British nationals being rounded up and exterminated, for example, or even Middle Class Christians who had family in America.
>
> Jews, Romani, etc. were “others” to those in power, and therefore not their concern.
Except that the Japanese had internment camps for Allied civilians and we didn’t bomb those.
We were at all out war with Germany and Japan. Diverting critical resources such as bombers to targets that did not further the goal of winning the war would not make sense.
---
### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/25 "2010-05-16T16:03:28Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> The idea that “we” were on the same path as the Nazis is simply idiotic. “We,” if by “we” you mean the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, those being the countries largely involved in European strategic bombing in that theatre of war, were in no way on the same path towards extermination of entire groups of their own population, the way the Nazis were. It’s an absurd claim and suggests you don’t know anything about Nazism, a philosophy that is about as far from Western liberal democracy as you can possibly get. Nobody taking a serious and objective look at those countries in 1939 would conclude that they were on their way to setting up their own versions of Dachau. If that were true, why haven’t we done it yet? We won the war. What’s stopping us?
The embarrassment of looking like the Nazis, that’s what.
Like it or not, mass forced sterilizations in the name of eugenics and rounding up people according to their ethnicities into camps are things America did, and things that strongly resemble Nazi behavior; which is exactly why they became regarded as embarrassments. This is something that has widely been acknowledged; you are simply trying to rewrite history.
---
### Author:  [@Happy\_Poster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Poster)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/26 "2010-05-16T16:13:08Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> The embarrassment of looking like the Nazis, that’s what.
>
> Like it or not, mass forced sterilizations in the name of eugenics and rounding up people according to their ethnicities into camps are things America did, and things that strongly resemble Nazi behavior; which is exactly why they became regarded as embarrassments. This is something that has widely been acknowledged; you are simply trying to rewrite history.
And don’t forget the mass extermination program!
---
### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/27 "2010-05-16T16:24:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> The embarrassment of looking like the Nazis, that’s what.
I don’t know why I’m bothering to respond to this, but…
So, we were heading down the path of NAZI Germany, and the only thing that stopped us was… embarrassment? EMBARRASSMENT???
Gee, maybe we should’ve pulled out a big ol’ can of “embarrassment” at the beginning of the war, shoved it in the face of Hitler, and avoided the whole mess.
---
### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/28 "2010-05-16T16:28:40Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Except that the Japanese had internment camps for Allied civilians and we didn’t bomb those.
Do you not understand the difference between an internment camp and an extermination camp? This comment has nothing to do with this discussion.
Do you seriously believe that one or two bombing runs on the Crematoria would have significantly detracted from the ability to otherwise win the war?
---
### Author:  [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/29 "2010-05-16T16:34:10Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> Do you not understand the difference between an internment camp and an extermination camp? This comment has nothing to do with this discussion.
Perhaps you need to take a look at how Japan ran its internment camps.
> [@](#):
>
> Do you seriously believe that one or two bombing runs on the Crematoria would have significantly detracted from the ability to otherwise win the war?
You have any reason to believe that one or two bombing runs would have been effective, given the same was hardly ever true for factory targets?
---
### Author:  [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/30 "2010-05-16T16:38:57Z")
> [@Angry Lurker](#):
>
> And don’t forget the mass extermination program!
You mean the [Manhattan Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy)? 😉
---
### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/31 "2010-05-16T16:46:34Z")
> [@Shakester](#):
>
> You might want to check some actual facts on that. I know it’s common to accuse the allies of war crimes in bombing the “non-military” Dresden, but are you aware that the “historian” who originated that story is [David Irving](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving) and that his version of events is part of his whole “Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy after all” shtick?
Shakester, this is wmfellows. I believe he is in agreement with Dr. Irving, from his previous postings. You’re not going to get him to change his mind.
---
### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/32 "2010-05-16T17:01:56Z")
> [@wmfellows](#):
>
> Perhaps you need to take a look at how Japan ran its internment camps.
Japanese prisoner of war camps were horrible and indeed many died there but they did not exist in order to exterminate as the very efficient Crematoria did. There is no reason to believe that bombing them would have saved lives as there is for bombing the extermination camps.
> [@](#):
>
> You have any reason to believe that one or two bombing runs would have been effective, given the same was hardly ever true for factory targets?
No, but according to my cite, Stuart G. Erdheim, in “Could the Allies Have Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau?” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, (Fall 1997), pp. 129-170, does, or that at least it would have no more difficult than taking out a factory target. (And indeed those often missed their mark.)
Of course [strategic bombing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II) wasn’t only targeted at industrial targets. While bombing the Crematoria was not worth it, bombing civilians to degrade morale was.
> [@](#):
>
> On 14 February 1942, Directive No. 22 was issued to Bomber Command. Bombing was to be “focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular of the industrial workers.” Factories were no longer targets.[126]
But sure nothing cold be diverted from the highly effective strategic bombing effort
> [@](#):
>
> Although nearly half a million German civilians, their dwellings and possessions were destroyed,[144] the bombing had very little effect on German armaments production or on the German people’s general commitment to the war. The targeting of civilians had the reverse effect of actually strengthening the will of the German people.[145]
The most good the bombing did was to force the Germans to use up resources defending against it. A run against the camps would also have forced that defensive posture.
---
### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/33 "2010-05-16T17:02:41Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> Do you not understand the difference between an internment camp and an extermination camp? This comment has nothing to do with this discussion.
Well, you made a **highly speculative** assertion, and I pointed out the nearest thing to reality that compares. You got some facts to back up your assertion, let’s see them.
> [@](#):
>
> Do you seriously believe that one or two bombing runs on the Crematoria would have significantly detracted from the ability to otherwise win the war?
Are you claiming that 2 bombing runs would have convinced the NAZIs to stop killing Jews?
---
### Author:  [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/34 "2010-05-16T17:02:57Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> Shakester, this is wmfellows. I believe he is in agreement with Dr. Irving, from his previous postings. You’re not going to get him to change his mind.
**What?**
Having looked up Irving I am not in any fashion in “agreement” with David Irving. Irving appears to be a disgusting Nazi sympathizer and a Holocaust denier. I am neither. The Holocaust most certainly happened, it liquidated millions and millions of Jews and other sundry other “undesirables” in Nazi race-mythology and represents one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever seen, the worst in modern Western history.
What would led you to engage in such a disgusting smear really escapes me. Previous postings?
---
### Author:  [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/35 "2010-05-16T17:09:17Z")
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> No, but according to my cite, Stuart G. Erdheim, in “Could the Allies Have Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau?” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, (Fall 1997), pp. 129-170, does, or that at least it would have no more difficult than taking out a factory target. (And indeed those often missed their mark.)
I have precious little patience for historians second guessing in comfort from armchairs.
> [@](#):
>
> Of course [strategic bombing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II) wasn’t only targeted at industrial targets. While bombing the Crematoria was not worth it, bombing civilians to degrade morale was.
I agree that the “dehousing” bombings were a waste, and suggested so above.
However, they were based on a real military rationale (a bad one, one that was arguably deeply mistaken), with a view to breaking the Germans and ending the war. I readily grant that said efforts were probably wasted and would have far better spent on factories, rail lines, etc. However, Harris etc genuinely believed that they were working towards breaking the German military resistance.
No such rational existed for internment camps, concentration camps and the like.
Putting oneself in the shoes of the Allied military command, which was already losing hundreds of planes, the military analysis is clear.
> [@](#):
>
> But sure nothing cold be diverted from the highly effective strategic bombing effort The most good the bombing did was to force the Germans to use up resources defending against it. A run against the camps would also have forced that defensive posture.
First, your characterisation of the strategic bombing campaign in general is … extreme, many military analyses point to the significant degrading of German industrial capacity (yes it grew, but it grew at much lower rates than the Allies - resources diverted helped).
Second, it strikes me as … wishful thinking that bombing the camps would have done anything relative added ‘defensive posture.’
---
### Author:  [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/36 "2010-05-16T17:11:48Z")
The US didn’t even bomb interment camps in the Asia where US and other allied soldiers were being kept and forced into slave labor.
---
### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/37 "2010-05-16T17:14:39Z")
> [@Shakester](#):
>
> You might want to check some actual facts on that. I know it’s common to accuse the allies of war crimes in bombing the “non-military” Dresden, but are you aware that the “historian” who originated that story is [David Irving](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving) and that his version of events is part of his whole “Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy after all” shtick?
>
> If you’re interested, the section of that Wiki page [dealing with his Dresden book](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#The_Destruction_of_Dresden) will give you a better grasp of why you shouldn’t just repeat everything you hear without checking the facts first.
Actually, Irving did not “originate that story.” The issue of whether or not Bomber Harris’s air campaign was moral was well under way years before Irving published his account of the Dresden raid. His portrayal certainly gave an enormous boost to the awareness of that raid among people who had not paid much attention to the matter, previously. However, the issue, (of all the raids, not just the one on Dresden), was well known to any student of the war and the morality of the raids was a hot topic of discussion.
> [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](#):
>
> A chief reason that Arthur “Bomber” Harris went to city bombings (like Dresden) was that cities were the smallest target his bombers could reasonably hit. This was pre-GPS, and even toward the end of the war, bombers had only the most rudimentary radar. Many bombers failed to get within miles of their target, and they were of course dropping unguided bombs from high altitudes, meaning that even if they found their target they usually missed it. They had to fly at night to reduce casualties (even further reducing accuracy and navigation).
This is partly correct. British bombsights were not in the same class as the Norden and devastating losses, (by both the British and the Germans), persuaded all the European combatants that daylight raids were too prohibitively expensive to maintain. (The Yanks tried it anyway, but were saved from self-destructing by the development of long range escort fighters.)
However, Harris’s tactics were much more deliberate than than you present, here. Harris had his people work out the ways in which cities could be completely destroyed by bombardment and he worked to perfect those techniques that made it impossible for much of the citizenry in bombed areas to survive. Beginning with pathfinder raids made at twilight, where Mosquitos would drop incendiaries on still visible portions of the center city and various “rings” expanding outward, the heavy bombers then brough in more incendiaries, using the existing fires as targets. The result was the creation firestorms that eliminated any flammable substance and sucked oxygen out of nearby areas. It was a very effective technique that, once he was out from under Hap Arnold’s thumb, Curtis LeMay brought to Japan, causing greater death and destruction in Tokyo than that caused by the later nuclear bombs.
The reason that Dresden is singled out in such discussions is that, unlike Hamburg, Frankfort, and a number of other of Harris’s targets, Dresden had no manufacturing centers. Many consider the city not a legitimate military target. It did have a rail marshalling yard, but that was effectively destroyed by daylight bombing by the USAAF; there was no need to destroy the city except that it was something that we could do.
While Irving surely distorted a lot of the facts in his book, he did not “originate” the story, but chose Dresden for his topic based on an already growing revulsion regarding its destruction.
This is getting away from the topic of this thread, however, and any further discussion should probably be moved to its own thread.
---
### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/38 "2010-05-16T17:15:52Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> The embarrassment of looking like the Nazis, that’s what.
While you’re correct about the history of eugenics in the U.S., you’re not saying anything that proves this was a factor in the Allied bombing startegy. (And it’s not as if antisemitism was invented in the U.S.; there was a long tradition in Germany, too.) If you can’t cite this theory you need to let it go before it hijacks the thread.
And personal comments like these are not necessary:
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> Shakester, this is wmfellows. I believe he is in agreement with Dr. Irving, from his previous postings. You’re not going to get him to change his mind.
> [@wmfellows](#):
>
> Do you never get tired of this little schtick.
---
### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/39 "2010-05-16T17:18:26Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> Shakester, this is wmfellows. I believe he is in agreement with Dr. Irving, from his previous postings. You’re not going to get him to change his mind.
Attacking other posters in this way is not going to promote the discussion.
Let’s stick to the topic and leave the comments on other posters out of it.
= = =
This goes for all the by-play with **Der Trihs** , as well. If anyone find his comments silly, demonstrate the errors of his post or ignore him without getting into a distracting hijack over his beliefs.
[/Moderating]
---
### Author:  [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2010, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633/40 "2010-05-16T17:20:24Z")
I think there is a misconception on what allied bombing could have done to stop the killing in the camps. First there weren’t just a few of them. And there are literally hundred and hundreds of camps and sub camps. So even if you stop the killing at one place, there are hundreds more. And keep in mind if you stop the inmates going into the camps due to bombing, you are stopping the food. and other supplies that the inmates are counting on to live.
Also what do we think will happen if the camp is bombed, or the railways are bombed? Do you think that thousands of inmates will just waltz out of the camps and go home to their families? Just catch a cab back to Warsaw? And you just don’t bomb the rail way once and it stays destroyed. The Germans will rebuild it in a day. It must be bombed again and again. It would take a concerted, sustained effort in blood and equipment. And this effort taken from the general war effort would prolong the war in some small way.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633.md?page=1)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-we-bomb-concentration-camps/539633.md?page=3)