One last effort. The war in Europe went on for almost six years. While horrific, the 1,500 concentration camps and satellites, scattered throughout Europe were of no great military value on their own. Yes the manpower in the camps was slave labor. But the camps per se were not contributing to the war. How much longer to you want the war to go on to go after these non-military targets? Do you not understand that there was not enough assets to do everything? So the bombing of the camp support infrastructure over and over again would take effort away from things that were actually contributing to ending the war.
Put another way, if you are going to send 10,000 bombers against the railways supporting the camps, what are you not going to bomb? Munitions factories? U-Boat pens? Aircraft production? Trains transporting Soldiers? What war fighting capabilities are you going to allow the Nazis to increase in order to bomb the camp railways?
Not only were there hundreds of camps, but the Nazis didn’t really need the camps to kill the Jews. Before they got the industrialized process going, they managed to kill a hell of a lot of them through the simply process of digging gigantic trenches, throwing hundreds of people into them at a time, machine-gunning them, then filling the trench, burying any survivors alive.
The Nazis sought out a more ‘industrialized’ solution because the personal shooting of each Jew or Gypsy was starting to take a psychological toll on the Germans doing the shooting, and because they felt the process was just too inefficient.
But what do you think would happen if a camp was bombed? It seems to me that the likely outcome would be that that the surviving prisoners would simply be lined up and machine-gunned, and future prisoners just sent to a different camp.
It’s not hard to kill unarmed people en-masse if you really want to do it. The Soviets managed to execute 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest in a short time. In Rwanda, the Hutu managed to kill 800,000 Tutsis in a month using little more than machetes. The notion that bombing a camp or two would have slowed the executions in the death camps is speculative at best. It’s entirely possible that diverting bombing to that task would have delayed the war and resulted in even more exterminations. Or, if the Nazis saw the camps as liabilities not worth maintaining, they may have just accelerated the execution of the Jews - many of whom they kept around as slave labor, only executing them after they were too sick or weak to work. They could have killed them faster had they wanted to.
Take a look at a photo or diagram of any of these camps. Almost all the “infrastructure” is barracks. Bomb the barracks, kill the prisoners. The actual instruments of extermination, and the quarters for the guards, constituted a very small percentage of any death camp. The proper targets would have been amazingly difficult to hit, let alone destroy, given the bombing abilities of the time.
In the simplest analysis, what is a “camp” anyway? A few thousand feet of barbed wire, some armed guards, and some prisoners. A bombed camp could function just fine with some new fencing, strung by surviving prisoners, guarded by surviving, well, guards. I hardly think the Nazis would have troubled themselves overmuch at the absence of proper buildings for the prisoners, nor devoted significant war resources to replacing them.
And to reiterate what was said above, they could always just shoot them. Or confine them in a fenced compound, outdoors and subject to winter temperatures, while denied any food or water. Before long the camp would become a giant freezer morgue. Move the fences, bring in the next group, and continue. Poison gas isn’t the only, nor the simplest, method of mass extermination.
Do you seriously disagree with the assertion? As Americans we cared about a few Americans held by Iran; we didn’t particularly care about Hutus and Tutsis. You really need a debate to prove the fact that people care most about people like them and care little to none the more “other” someone is percieved?
Der Trihs’s point is not far off. European Jews were an other and expending any energy to help them was not going to sell in America or in Britain. Remember that it wasn’t so many centuries prior that England had expelled all its Jews. Before WW2 Churchill was blaming the Jews for their persecution. During the Blitz many blamed Jews for their problems.
England’s answer to the Jewish extermination campaign was to issue the White Paper that made it clear that they couldn’t escape t Palestine.
As for American anti-Semitism of the time, I could bore with many cites and quotes, but suffice it to say that my father could only work as a salesman by pretending to be Italian. When the S.S. St Louis, full of Jews escaping from the horrors, was turned away from Cuba (despite having entry visas) America refused to accept a single soul and sent the ship back towards Germany. Polls in America were clear: don’t take Jewish refugees in.
Jews were “other” to large segments of both countries. Death camps of European Jews were not their concern. Indifference at the top levels of both countries was the norm.
As for your twisting of what I said, well read the cite again. Destroying the Crematoria would have likely saved many lives and forced the Germans to expend resources rebuilding when they had little to spare. “Convincing” them would not have been the goal; degrading their ability to do so as effectively and making it cost them more would have been. But the Allies at that point felt it was better to attack civilians to degrade German morale. As far the claims being made here that it wouldn’t have matter, my cited analysis begs to differ.
Actually it turns out that late in the game the Allies did bomb Auschwitz - in 1944 the synthetic oil plant there was worth hitting. The crematoria they didn’t aim at.
The unanswered issue here is did Allied military leaders know about the true nature and extent of the concentration/extermination camps? Eisenhower and other Western Allied leaders seemed to be surprised at them when troops stumbled upon them and the media was subsequently given full tours of some of the remaining facilities within Allied lines. The generals - not the politicians - were the ones who determined where and when to bomb then.
If we bombed the crematoria, we wouldn’t have bombed something else-- say a munitions factory. You’re going to tell us it would cost more to rebuild a crematorium than a munitions factory? And, as others have said, the Germans didn’t need the crematoria to kill Jews.
You said earlier that we would’ve bombed the extermination camps if they contained Christians w/ relatives in America. To bolster that, all you cite is anti-Semitism. You haven’t made any sort of case that we would’ve bombed those camps if they were filled with Christians. You can’t just play the victim card, and claim that you’ve proven some other group would have been treated differently.
Witold Pilecki? Or are there others I really should know about too?
(E.G. Did Charles Coward ever inform the Red Cross? If he was willing to take the risk to smuggle dynamite into Auschwitz II (Birkenau), used by the Sonderkommandos of Birkenau Kommando III to blow up Crematorium IV, that doesn’t seem unlikely.)
Being a cynical misanthrope*, and given what we know was known at the time and the general antisemitism of the time, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that “nobody” (on both fronts) really had much of a problem with what the Germans were doing. :mad:
CMC fnord!
*Thank you Mr. Vonnegut and Mr. Clemens, Slaughterhouse-Five was how I came to know about Dresden, and Comments onthe Moro Massacre changed my view of my country forever.
BTW The notion that bombing the death camps would kill a lot of innocent people. What was the life expectancy of someone at, say, Auschwitz/Birkenau? Days? Hours?
I can’t imagine after entering the “Final Solution” machine that anyone ever said “Eh, it could be worse, the “Good Guys™” could be bombing us too”.
There seem to be a few people in this thread who think the starting position is that we, of course, should have bombed the camps and only refrained from doing so because we didn’t really care about the Jews. What on earth would make bombing the camps the default position? What other war can you point to where a similar action was taken?
Should we have bombed the concentration camps in Yugoslavia as that country disintegrated? We bombed the shit out of Serbia, after all.
What precise history facts have I denied? Are you seriously suggesting there wasn’t a difference between Nazi Germany and, say, any Western democracy at the time?
Your “we suck” line has its place, but here your point is laughable. The United Stayes, UK and Canada were not “on the same path” as the Nazis or else we’d be there now. That’s a stupid, trollish claim.
Am I the only one here who knows that they didn’t execute people in the crematoria, and that destroying the crematoria would not have stopped them from continuing to gas people to death?
We should be talking about the gas chambers, not the crematoria. But it’s not really central to the debate. The issue is that bombing the camps would be a diversion from fighting the larger war, and would be of dubious value to the Jews anyway. The NAZIs were bent on exterminating them, and they didn’t need the camps to do that.
The Crematoria were one stop affairs, gas chamber and incinerator all in one. The Nazis were all about efficiency. And apparently, RickJay you are not the only one who didn’t know that. Nor the only one here who is sure of their incorrect information.
And since some here seem intent on just repeating the same statements without consideration of cited evidence to the contrary I will stop after this last attempt.
Expert opinion of those who have studied the matter in depth (cited already) is that destroying the Crematoria would have made a significant difference in the numbers of people murdered. You can not believe that if you want.
The targets that were being chosen that the war’s success depended on at that time included the synthetic oil factory at the camp and mostly civilian targets. It was more important to kill a few more thousands civilians to attempt by means of that terror campaign to demoralize the German public, than to attempt to decrease the numbers of Jews and Romani being murdered. The choice being made at that point was not between the killing factory and the munitions factory; it was the killing factory between killing civilians. Cite already given but ignored.
And also already cited and ignored is that it was already very clear what these camps were.
We attacked Afganistan and Iraq because some of our citizens were murdered and in the belief (incorrect as it may have been for Iraq) that such an attack would possibly save a few American civilian lives. Of course we care about those we think of as “us” more than “them”. I readily accept the warning the mod will slap on me for this but fuck off with that “victim card” crap. It is offensive.
I care about this bit of history not because these were my relatives being murdered, although they were, but because this is one of the most important bits to wrestle with about genocide that we still have not figured out. When, during the course of “an other” being massacered, is it “our job” to intervene even if that intervention is not clearly in our own national interest? How much out of our way do we go? In this case we couldn’t even been bothered to drop a few bombs on the extermination part of the camp while we were already there bombing the oil factory portion, and terrorizing civilians with bombs was more vital to the war interest than degrading the execution apparatus. Have we learned anything that we can apply to the next genocide? How can we if we continue to try to spin our way out of the facts and put our fingers in our ears?
You know the irony of this fascinating discussion is that the OP’s point is that using said finite resources would have done damage to the German war machine and at the very least forced it to divert attention and resources to rebuilding their killing machines. I gather from Wfellows and Mr Mace that 1) Resources were aforementioned finite… and the attention of those in charge had to be to the larger military issue… and not to this specific though horrendous matter.
I would also add that if you could ask should we have bombed the camps to perhaps “save” the jews… you could also ask that perhaps only allocating 9 percent of African-American troops to combat contributed to resources being finite. That discrimination in a lot of ways bit the allies in the ass until the end when they pretty much had to use the manpower they had regardless of the color.
Australia had Aboriginal troops in WWII, the British had countless regiments from the Colonies (including India and their African holdings) made up of “Natives” fighting in the War, as did the French, and New Zealand’s Maori Battalion fought with gallantry and distinction in North Africa, much to Rommel’s frustration and admiration.
Or, to put it another way: The Allies were more than just the USA, and other countries had “Native” units whom they did deploy extensively, even if the USA didn’t.
That 91% of the African American servicemen in WWII filled important roles logistically speaking. Red Ball Express - Wikipedia
The Red Ball Express is just one example but they were also mechanics and served in other capacities. If those 91% of AA weren’t used in “non-combat” roles then they just would have been filled by other men. Overall, I don’t think the discrimination of blacks contributed to a significant lack of manpower on the front.
Odesio
Armchair historians taking a static analysis I find less convincing than you. After the fact, moving little pieces on a board and examining abstract documents well outside of the stress of war… easy to do. Easy to assert X, Y or Z could be done.
Not ignored, qualified.
Primo, from the very start, I have been of the position that Bomber Harris thinking that the “dehousing” bombings would break the German war effort was wrong (you’re ignoring over half the RAF rational that destruction of industrial areas would degrade and destroy German industrial effort, Harris thinking was not the only input there, it was not purely driven by Terror Bombing thinking, perhaps not even majorly).
However, in the entirely honest military analysis contemporaneous to the times - in the midst of the fog of war as it were with millions of allied soldiers dying -
It is in no way unusual for military strategy to “sacrifice” short-term civilian protection for long-term military strategy - as not winning is far worse a result.
So, yes, you can rip facts out of the context of history and contemporaneous thinking and put it that it was more important to kill Germans than save Jews, Roma, Gays, Communists, whatnot…
Or one can appropriately place the decisioning in its context, where the Strategic Bombing Command believed their bombing was indeed degrading and breaking German industrial production, and thought the dehousing as part of that campaign. (Again noting I think such analysis, was wrong, but at the same time easy thing for someone in a comfortable leather chair typing to say).
Nevermind eliding the critique put forth by Mace,Stone, myself and others that said bombing might well - like the standard strategic bombing proven sadly ineffective and certainly run a non-trivial risk of smashing barracks and missing the real death machinery.
I rather find it unfortunate you play the relatives card in the argument. I personally am refraining, although plenty of family blood, including two grandfathers, was spent there.
If you say you’re not going to do something, it looks a bit less odd if you don’t immediately go and do it. To say nothing of the fact that if you are going to claim that someone is “playing the relatives card”, it looks a little bit less odd if anybody actually was in the first place.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen a Fallacy of Appeal to Authority from Some Guys on the Internet. Given that P-38’s or Mosquitoes could be (and were) used for precision strikes without appreciably taking away resources from the campaign, the argument that they could not have done so is, naturally, somewhat less than totally convincing.
My referencing the others in arguing is not a fallacy of appeal to authority - although your pointless personal attack is duly noted - it was simply referencing the others in the argument who have the same argument. None of us are "authorities.
Yep, it is.
-On one side we have the facts, that precision bombing/attacking was well within the realm of possibility and it didn’t detract significantly from the overall materiel needed to wage war.
-On the other we have your protestation that Dseid was doing wrong by ignoring the Authority of You Guys on the Internet since you were trying to gainsay the facts and he was blasphemously relying on facts rather than your Authority.
Oh oh oh, I take it that you are starting the stage of the discussion where people ‘note’ imaginary things? If so, then your brightly colored plumage and beautifully feathered wings are noted alongside my dastardly and pointless personal attacks.
On the point of the crematoria, you have to go back to why they were necessary - the Nazis had to dispose of the bodies somehow. Even the SS Death’s-Head knew that a dead body is a serious health hazard, and the crematoria presented a quick and efficient solution. In mid 1944 the camp actually went overcapacity:
“From April until July 9, 1944, 475,000 Hungarian Jews, half of the pre-war population, were deported to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day for a considerable part of that period.[28] The incoming volume was so great that the SS resorted to burning corpses in open-air pits as well as in the crematoria.[29]”
(from the wiki on Auschwitz).
So you get a back-log of victims. Magiver and others have said that the Nazis would have just found other ways of killing their victims, which is undoubtedly true, but less efficiently - remember the whole point of the camps was to kill an entire people as quickly and cheaply as possible. The point has been made that the Allies has limited resources, but the opposite is also true, and moreso. It simply wasn’t practical to hope to murder millions of people by conventional means, especially when they had a war to fight. John Mace makes the very good point that every bomb dropped on a camp would detract a bomb dropped on another target, potentially strengthening the German war machine - although in the timespan we’re talking about we weren’t bombing factories any more. What I want to know is, if, for sake of example, a few hundred tons of explosives were taken off city bombings like Dresden (3200 tons), Cologne (1455 tons) or Hamburg (9000 tons) and dropped on Auschwitz would it really have made a difference in the overall war effort? Or would it have been in fact better used on larger camps to interrupt camp operations? I don’t know, but I think the question a few less dead German civilians versus a few more surviving Nazi victims is an important one.
I think the question is a natural one, given the unprecedented scale of industrialised murder - when the Allies became aware of it, did they do enough to stop it?
:mad: