Why didn't we bomb concentration camps?

[Malthus]

There is one thing to add to the mix - and that is that Nazi genocidial fixations were a net military disadvantage to them, in all sorts of ways.

Comming at this from the POV of a cold hearted bastard intent on nothing more than defeating mine Nazi enemies, allowing the Nazis to go full steam ahead in their self-defeating plans makes some sort of sense. When the Russian front was screaming for rolling stock, using railroads to transport Jews, Roma and other undesireables around the countryside instead of ammunition to the front was sheer lunacy on the Nazi part … not to mention all of the industrial resources used to construct huge slave-run factories that never produced anything much of value (see for example the insider’s account by Primo Levi about the overall worthlessness of I.G. Farbin using death camp inmates).

Allowing the Nazis to waste their time and resources on this folly, while smashing the actual productive bits of the Nazi regime, makes a certain amount of sense. Though I agree that, if they chose, the Allies could have disrupted the Nazi death camp regime badly.

[RickJay]

@FinnAgain

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.

Are you actually suggesting that the Allies could have stopped the Holocaust by attacking death camps with P-38s? Are we at this level of fantasy now? Exactly how many bombs do you think a P-38 could carry to the absolute limit of its range? When they used P-38s to shoot down Yamamoto’s plane, all the weight they were carrying was extra fuel.

World War II was not a frigging video game. This is getting absurd.

[FinnAgain]

@RickJay

Are you actually suggesting that the Allies could have stopped the Holocaust by attacking death camps with P-38s?

No.
I did say that the allies had viable planes to conduct precision strikes and the claims that we would have to rely on carpet bombing were false to facts.

@RickJay

Are we at this level of fantasy now?

Looks like it.
What I did actually say was:

And your argument works both ways. If we put pressure on their logistical supply lines, they’d have to choose to devote resources to fixing the gas chambers/ovens, or building new rifles (or whatever).

@RickJay

This is getting absurd.

Indeed it is. I point out that claims that we’d have to rely on carpet bombing are false and we could slow the pace of killings and make it impossible for the Nazis to continually run a factory-style death process, you claim that I’m saying we could totally stop the Holocaust with bombing runs on the camps.

[Magiver]

@FinnAgain

No.
I did say that the allies had viable planes to conduct precision strikes and the claims that we would have to rely on carpet bombing were false to facts.

There were no bombers in WWII capable of precision bombing a concentration camp. The accuracy simply wasn’t there.

At best, low level fighter bombers might hit a building or two but it would be a tremendous effort to actually target an entire camp and do much damage.

[E-Sabbath]

@Fuji

So I think it would’ve been technically feasible to hit Auschwitz with P-38L’s based out of Foggia. That still leaves aside the potential opportunity cost, though. It happened on the other side of the world, but P-38 pilots were responsible for taking out one major high value target that had a major effect on the course of the Pacific War. In Europe, Spitfires (rather than Lightnings) took out this guy as well.

Yeah, but that’s shooting down, not bombing. Bombing is annoyingly hard, even if you have things dead on target, fixing stuff is surprisingly easy. And they’d probably make the jews do it, just to add insult to injury.
Hell, they’d probably have the jews act as human shields after the first few. You’d have to keep it up for a good while. And, again, ‘precision bombing’ in WWII meant ‘you hit somewhere in the football field area around a building’. Unless you’re talking dive bombing, which was mostly a naval tactic on the US side of things. Doing it over the ground generally meant you got to eat a faceful of ack-ack. The few USAF dive bombing uses were for things like the P-47 Thunderbolt, for anti-armor uses, rather than anti-building. And those things were seriously armored… but they would have nothing like the range. (Think A-10 Thunderbolt II. It’s a good analogy.)

Yeah, by 44, it’s in the combat range, but only barely, you’re right. And I don’t know if that combat range is ‘full bombload’ or ‘light bombload’. I’d call it out of range if you expected dogfighting, too, but in range if you had an escort.
Probably a better idea, all around, to just go for the rails. Double or triple effect there. At least, that’d be my evaluation.

[E-Sabbath]

Oh. And as far as the P-38? It was slow. Too slow to be competitive against German fighters. They used them for dive bombing once. Lost a quarter of the planes. Never did it again. Replaced by the P-51 as fast as possible, in the European Theater. Worked fine in the Pacific, but it just couldn’t handle the Germans.

[Mr.Miskatonic]

nm

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@DSeid

The reality is that “policy” was to not divert any war resources to any “refugee” issues and therefore it was not possible to do so. The Allied powers just felt that halting or slowing down the death camps were not part of their job.

Did we know that these concentration camps were actually extermination camps? Its not like it was well advertised, I would think that this would do mroe to demonize the enemy than anythign else we could have said about the nazis. It wasn’t just political differences of opinion, these guys were evil.

If we HAD known then why would one frikking bomb on a railroad been such a burden?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@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.

We used to sterilize the mentally retarded, other people with what people thought were heritable disabilities and criminals (according to some sources, in some places being black or native american was considered a heritable disability (or a crime)).

Winston Churchill proposed a forced sterilization plan before the war. After the war, not so much.

We interned the Japanese and some folks made huge fortunes buying their land.

At least back then we realized that abstinence wasn’t really a viable option. :rolleyes:

Of course now with scientific advances we can chemically sterilize folks. At least this is not permanent.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@wmfellows

**What?**represents one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever seen, the worst in modern Western history.

As another aside The worst genocides of the 20th and 21st Century

[Mr.Miskatonic]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Did we know that these concentration camps were actually extermination camps? Its not like it was well advertised, I would think that this would do mroe to demonize the enemy than anythign else we could have said about the nazis. It wasn’t just political differences of opinion, these guys were evil.

It is hard to say. We knew things were rough for Jews, et al under the Nazi regime, and there were certainly rumors and some intelligence about the camps but it was hardly ironclad evidence. The rumors were often dismissed as more-of-the-same by those who remember the absurd ‘Belgian Baby Eating Germans’ - I cannot be certain how good the intelligence was regarding the camps. It was kind of like the general populace of Germany - some of them didn’t even have a clue, others knew.

Even so, a few folks with access to intelligence reports are not likely to result in a drastic undertaking such as the proposed raid on Auchwitz.

[Marley23]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Did we know that these concentration camps were actually extermination camps?

Depends on who “we” are in this question. I think there have been enough cites posted to this thread to establish the answer is yes, at least for the U.S. government. And whether a camp is an extermination camp or just a slave labor camp that gasses a lot of people and works the rest until they die of exposure or malnutrition or mutilation… well, it was clear what was happening there. Tons of people were dying.
In some camps the pace of murders escalated as the war drew to a close and it became obvious that Germany was going to lose. The SS wanted to take as many people with them as possible and perhaps they realized that if there were living witnesses, it wasn’t going to look good. For that reason I think some of them destroyed some of their meticulous documentation during the last days of the war.

I would think that this would do mroe to demonize the enemy than anythign else we could have said about the nazis.

I wasn’t around at the time, but I think the Nazis were thoroughly demonized by this point anyway. And you’re probably overestimating the strength of casual antisemitism at the time. It seems to me the American public was okay with goign to war after Pearl Harbor, but it definitely did not want to go to war to save Europe’s Jews. There were cites about this upthread, too.

If we HAD known then why would one frikking bomb on a railroad been such a burden?

…That’s been the entire topic of the thread. One bomb on a railroad would not have made much idfference even if you could safely get the plane there and hit the track, neither of which were guaranteed at all.

[Mr.Miskatonic]

Let us recall one of the few things German’s could do efficiently during the war was repair railroads.

[FinnAgain]

@Magiver

There were no bombers in WWII capable of precision bombing a concentration camp.

Yes, there were.

@Magiver

At best, low level fighter bombers might hit a building or two but it would be a tremendous effort to actually target an entire camp and do much damage.

As has been discussed many times, the issue was taking out the crematorium and the gas chambers, significantly slowing down the process of extermination. Not rubbling the entire camp.

@E-Sabbath

And, again, ‘precision bombing’ in WWII meant ‘you hit somewhere in the football field area around a building’.

No, it didn’t.

[

The 370th Fighter Group formed on 25 May 1943 and activated on 1 Jul 1943. The Ninth AF, equipped with P-47s and then P-38s in Feb., trained until May 1, 1944 when the group entered combat. They dive-bombed radar installations and flak towers, and escorted bombers that attacked bridges and marshalling yards in France as the Allies prepared for the invasion of the Continent.

](Lockheed P-38 Lightning)

[

Later in the war, the Mosquito’s ability to outrun German fighters was seen as an asset outweighing its limited bomb load capacity. Mosquitoes were increasingly used on hit-and-run diversionary raids, complementing large scale area bombing missions, and on small-scale precision bombing missions.

Most of these were carried out not by RAF Bomber Command but by 2 TAF. The force was formed in 1943 with the task of establishing air superiority in support of army operations in North Africa and, ultimately, Europe. In the run-up to the Normandy landings, 2 TAF launched numerous attacks in occupied France and elsewhere, supporting resistance groups and harassing the German occupiers.

An outstanding example of this was the bombing of Amiens prison. The prison’s 700 inmates included several activists in the French Resistance, 12 of whom were to be executed on 19 February 1944.

At noon on 18 February, 11 Mosquitoes dive-bombed the prison, dropping time-delay bombs inside the outer wall from a height of 60 feet; the guards’ accommodation area was also bombed. A 12th Mosquito repeatedly overflew the area and photographed the entire operation.

The blast breached the wall and blew in the doors of the prison. The explosion killed 102 prisoners, but 258 escaped, including 79 Resistance or political prisoners; sadly, two-thirds of the escapees were later recaptured.

Completed with the loss of two aircraft, including that of the operation’s leader Group Captain Percy Pickard, the Amiens prison raid exemplified the costs of precision bombing as well as its advantages.

](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a1135199.shtml)

[DSeid]

@Magiver

There were no bombers in WWII capable of precision bombing a concentration camp. The accuracy simply wasn’t there.

At best, low level fighter bombers might hit a building or two but it would be a tremendous effort to actually target an entire camp and do much damage.

Wrong. By then the accuracy was extant and was used in several runs on the Buna synthetic oil plant.
Train lines may have been rebuildable but this quote is also telling.

In the French documentary “Shoah,” a German locomotive driver who took trainloads of Jews to the camps was interviewed. He said, “In those days, all the trains drivers wanted to get the run to Auschwitz.” Why? Imagine you are an Allied pilot, and you want to bomb a German train. What is the ideal? You blow up the locomotive. It was not a safe place for locomotive drivers back in those days, especially when Germany was losing. The driver said, “About the only run in the entire war that wasn’t bombed was the main line to Auschwitz.”

@Damuri Ajashi

Did we know that these concentration camps were actually extermination camps?

Yes. Reports already published in the New York Times even.
It was known what these camps were doing and it was possible to bomb them with reasonable accuracy. But it wasn’t even seriously considered.For the interested:

By June 1944 information concerning the camps and their function was available—or could have been made available—to those undertaking the mission. German air defenses were weakened, and the accuracy of Allied bombing was increasing. All that was required was the political will to order the bombing. …

… By June 1944 information concerning the camps and their function was available—or could have been made available—to those undertaking the mission. German air defenses were weakened, and the accuracy of Allied bombing was increasing. All that was required was the political will to order the bombing.

Another page of the three part series.

Requests were made to both American and British officials to bomb Auschwitz. … In fact, as early as May 1944 the U.S. Army Air Forces had the capability to strike Auschwitz at will. … On August 20, 127 B-17s, with an escort of 100 P-51 fighter craft, dropped 1,336 500-pound bombs on the IG Farben synthetic-oil factory that was less than 5 miles (8 km) east of Birkenau. German oil reserves were a priority American target, and the Farben plant ranked high on the target list. The death camp remained untouched. … There had been no study on bombing Auschwitz. Instead, the War Department had decided in January that army units would not be “employed for the purpose of rescuing victims of enemy oppression” unless a rescue opportunity arose in the course of routine military operations.

Those in power were overwhelmingly indifferent to the plight of those being exterminated. Of course providing evidence of that indifference and why it was politically wise to be indifferent given the biases of the voters was somehow playing the victim card. (What? European Jews victims during the Holocaust. Nah.) To pretend otherwise is revisionism and I challenge anyone to meet my illustrations of that indifference with any serious evidence that those in power cared enough to do more than give lip service to concerns expressed. The reaction mentioned here illustrates the mindset (note the concern wasn’t how much the trucks would help the Germans; it was why would I want these Jews?). The fact that Churchill gave lip service to calling for the camps to be bombed but then failed to make it actually happen, speaks volumes. Prime Minister Churchill “ignored”? Not bloody likely anyone would dare do that.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called for the death camp at Auschwitz to be bombed. He was ignored. … the Nazis offered the British a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks. When asked why he had refused to negotiate the deal, a British diplomat responded, “What would I do with one million Jews? Where would I put them?”

[E-Sabbath]

I am going to point out, again, that dive-bombing installations past the front was tried, by the Lightning. It turned out to be a lethal failure. A loss of 22 out of 86 planes. The P-38, by that point in the war, was too slow to be competitive in the German Front.
The Mosquito was famously fast, and it had the range, as well.

Now, you just have to get the Brits to agree that bombing the crematoriums was in their interest.

Generally, I’m of the opinion that dive bombing was always considered a bit of a risky thing, and used mostly for soft targets of extreme interest, or targets on the actual battlefield. The few times past the battlefield the Allies used it tend to be extremely notable, like the time they bombed Goring’s anniversary address. If they could have taken out the main radio station in Berlin any time they wanted, why didn’t they?

At this point, you’re no longer asking ‘hey, swing over here and drop some bombs.’ You’re asking for a specialized mission from elite pilots whose skills could be used for some other task. The question is, would the British really think tasking these pilots to set some jews free, be worth it?

Remember, you have to overfly pretty much all of Germany to get to Poland, too. This is a significantly deeper penetration than Berlin. I mean, if you want Auschwitz.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Majorcampseurope.gif
Hm. Dachau and Buchenwald would be in range, though. Sooo… hey, you know.
I’m assuming they didn’t. Maybe they did!

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/dachauscrapbook/ElserExecution.html
It looks like there were bombing raids on Dachau and Buchenwald. Or at least nearby enough to act as cover for executions.

Chapter 9: Air Raid

… god, they got lucky on that one.

But if you look at the maps, the extermination camps are all way the hell and gone on the Poland side of things.

[E-Sabbath]

Yeah, DSeid. If you’re going to bomb that far into enemy territory, you’re looking at about that many planes. 100 B-17s, and 100 escorts. That’s a lot of bombs.

It’s just not a simple ‘while you’re over there’ thing. That being said, I’m going to agree there’s was a lot of ‘yeaaaah, let’s just not deal with this problem’ involved.

[Mince]

@FinnAgain

Sure they did. They represented a major ideological and material investment for the Nazis, a shocking and revolting secret that stunned the world once they were made public, and an example of what the vanquished could expect if the Nazis won.

It hardly would have taken a propaganda genius to come up with a PR offensive.

**emphasis added

I’m not sure I understand; you claim the Germans propagandized the extermination of Jews, yet kept it secret. I am not aware of any literature which purports that the Allies knew, until late in the war, when things had been well decided, that the Germans were slaughtering millions of Jews or that the Germans openly boasted of such activities. Thus, I maintain that concentration camps weren’t a military objective, for propaganda purposes or otherwise.

[Marley23]

@Mince

I am not aware of any literature which purports that the Allies knew, until late in the war, when things had been well decided, that the Germans were slaughtering millions of Jews or that the Germans openly boasted of such activities.

I don’t know who tomndebb meant when he said the Allies knew within the first months of the war, but crowmanyclouds mentioned Witold Pilecki upthread. He informed the Allies of what was going on in late 1940 or early 1941.

[RickJay]

@FinnAgain

As has been discussed many times, the issue was taking out the crematorium and the gas chambers, significantly slowing down the process of extermination. Not rubbling the entire camp.

And I suppose you know where the precise intelligence could be found that would allow for knowing which nondescript-looking buildings were the gas chambers, so the P-38 pilots flying their planes with magically enhanced range could have picked off those particular buildings. (Again, why people think bombing the crematoria would have helped is beyond logical explanation.)

Again, this is real life, not an XBox game.