Why Didn't the Allies Bomb Auschwitz?

Jan 20, 2020
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The Americans and the British did high altitude bombing. Not very accurate. It's doubtful if it would have accomplished anything. However, the Soviets were approximately 100 miles away during the last 6 months of Aushwitz's operations. The Soviets had Illushin Stormovik ground attack planes. They could have easily stopped operations at Aushwitz with minimal collateral damage to the prisoners.
 
Jan 20, 2020
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The Americans and the British did high altitude bombing. Not very accurate. It's doubtful if it would have accomplished anything.

ALL bombing in WWII was inaccurate.

That's one of the major premises of the the article.

Go back and find the sentence which mentioned how many bombs required to achieve 90% chance of success.

Moreover every platform had its limitations... the 15th Air Force at the time was elsewhere in Europe trying to take out the ability for the Nazis to re-supply their war machine.

Medium and low altitude bombing missions required too much of an escort at the time to make bombing Auschwitz a viable target from a purely a strategic perspective.

What the allies could have done, is say, bomb the train tracks into the camps. But, as the article also mentions there was no political appetite to do so because of Antisemitism back home. You should go back and read that part again too.

Illushin Stormovik ground attack planes. They could have easily stopped operations at Aushwitz (sic) with minimal collateral damage to the prisoners.

Completely RIDICULOUS statement. The Il-2 was a close support aircraft NOT a bomber.

It only carried anti-tank and crude cluster bombs. That's NOT going to bring Auschwitz down. It would set it on fire but that's about it.

The IL-2 was considered an inaccurate platform -- even by WWII standards. The only reason it got any notoriety is because how many of them were produced... NOT that it was a capable platform.
 
Jan 21, 2020
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Or maybe Prescott Bush shouldn't have helped to fund Hitler in the first place and or the bankers. Does Rothschild ring a bell? And what about IBM? Take a look at what they did for Hitler.


Finally someone that actually knows they true history and not the fake history that was taught in school. You beat me to the punch wifi lagging so registering for a account took me a bit. Great grand pappy bush and his fellow german/u.k. cabal friend came up with the perfect master plan to get rich by purposely sparking a second world war business was booming and they built they empire. So of course bombing wasn't accurate 🤔 I wonder why. follow the money oh that's right conspiracy theories are acts of terrorism now and will not be tolerated foreign or domestic (with us or against us) 🤣 they will not negociate either just fly they family out of the US for they safety because of the last name
Bushes and Binladens sitting in a tree laughing and bullshiting cause they had planned on paying for 2 wars and only had to pay for 1 cause the other was free.
 
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Finally someone that actually knows they true history and not the fake history that was taught in school. You beat me to the punch wifi lagging so registering for a account took me a bit. Great grand pappy bush and his fellow german/u.k. cabal friend came up with the perfect master plan to get rich by purposely sparking a second world war business was booming and they built they empire. So of course bombing wasn't accurate 🤔 I wonder why. follow the money oh that's right conspiracy theories are acts of terrorism now and will not be tolerated foreign or domestic (with us or against us) 🤣 they will not negociate either just fly they family out of the US for they safety because of the last name
Bushes and Binladens sitting in a tree laughing and bullshiting cause they had planned on paying for 2 wars and only had to pay for 1 cause the other was free.

Thanks! They definitely won't teach it in school that is for sure. I am glad there is also someone else here that don't think I am crazy for pointing it out.lol! Speaking of the Bush's and Binladens. Do you remember right after 911 the Binladens that were here in the US were conveniently flown out of the US. Not to mention Osama Bin Laden was trained in the US and was a CIA asset and used as the boogie man for years. But yea the Bush family has involved with the war machine for a long time not to mention you know who was in charge of the CIA in the 80s. No other then daddy Bush. I would be willing to bet the Bush's were somehow connected to the JFK assassination. But yea there is a lot to be learned more about what really happened in Germany with the NAZI's and Hitler. And I am sure it isn't what we are taught in places they call schools in the US.
 
Jan 21, 2020
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Finally someone that actually knows they true history and not the fake history that was taught in school. You beat me to the punch wifi lagging so registering for a account took me a bit. Great grand pappy bush and his fellow german/u.k. cabal friend came up with the perfect master plan to get rich by purposely sparking a second world war business was booming and they built they empire. So of course bombing wasn't accurate 🤔 I wonder why. follow the money oh that's right conspiracy theories are acts of terrorism now and will not be tolerated foreign or domestic (with us or against us) 🤣 they will not negociate either just fly they family out of the US for they safety because of the last name
Bushes and Binladens sitting in a tree laughing and bullshiting cause they had planned on paying for 2 wars and only had to pay for 1 cause the other was free.

Funny how you two completely forget good ol’ Joe Kennedy! Wrong party eh?
 
Dec 7, 2019
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One of the most central reasons for nixing the plan to bomb Auschwitz was that it was a one-way mission, the bombers would not carry enough fuel to turn around afterwards and return to any Allied base. They would have to land in nearby Soviet territory, and Stalin refused to give permission for it. That was the end of discussions at high levels in the American military and by Roosevelt. The idea of bombing the trains would do nothing to stop the slaughter, as the Nazis would simply revert to machine-gun executions rather than poison gas. PBS is a notably Left-wing outfit, and so it would not surprise me if they did not include that fact, about Soviet refusals. And as another commenter stated, the Soviets had their own excellent short-range bombers that could have bombed the crematoria with greater accuracy and more easily. Neither are mentioned in the article, however, so I assume it isn't in the PBS video. There is a tendency underway by modern film-makers, almost all of whom are Leftist scribblers, falsifying 20th Century history. Especially the PBS outfit in WGBH (Boston?) has a series of toxic lying "documentaries" about American history.
 
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One of the most central reasons for nixing the plan to bomb Auschwitz was that it was a one-way mission, the bombers would not carry enough fuel to turn around afterwards and return to any Allied base. They would have to land in nearby Soviet territory, and Stalin refused to give permission for it. That was the end of discussions at high levels in the American military and by Roosevelt. The idea of bombing the trains would do nothing to stop the slaughter, as the Nazis would simply revert to machine-gun executions rather than poison gas. PBS is a notably Left-wing outfit, and so it would not surprise me if they did not include that fact, about Soviet refusals. And as another commenter stated, the Soviets had their own excellent short-range bombers that could have bombed the crematoria with greater accuracy and more easily. Neither are mentioned in the article, however, so I assume it isn't in the PBS video. There is a tendency underway by modern film-makers, almost all of whom are Leftist scribblers, falsifying 20th Century history. Especially the PBS outfit in WGBH (Boston?) has a series of toxic lying "documentaries" about American history.

Yea lots of propaganda to sift through that is for sure. I do think you made some good points on that.
 
Jul 6, 2021
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There are two significant shortcomings with this.

Firstly, it gives the impression that the Allies weren't aware of the Nazi extermination camps until 1944, making it too late to do anything for the prisoners. In fact, the Polish underground had sent a report to the Polish government in exile in London as early as January 1941, which was shared with Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff or the Royal Air Force.

In the Mike Wallace-narrated documentary, 'They Looked Away', it also states that Franklin Roosevelt was given a report, entitled "Blueprint for Extermination", on December 8, 1942. Consequently, by the end of 1942, both Churchill and Roosevelt were aware of the Nazi's mass extermination of the Jews.

Secondly, to evaluate the feasibility of destroying the crematoria or rail infrastructure of Auschwitz-Birkenau solely in terms of high-altitude area bombing, is disingenuous. Already in 1942, the RAF Mosquito Mk. B.IV bomber had proved itself highly effective in carrying out low-level, precision daylight attacks -- such as on the Philips works at Eindhoven -- without the need of mass formations or fighter escort.

The maximum range of the Mosquito was 2,040 miles, which put Auschwitz well within the range of the Mosquito airfield at RAF Hunsdon, for example. By 1943, captured airfields in Italy brought Auschwitz into even closer range. In fact, five Allied bombing raids on the neighbouring I.G. Farben factory were carried out from these airfields. Therefore, a Mosquito attack against Auschwitz would not involve a significant diversion of resources away from military targets.

As the Allied leaders were already aware of Auschwitz in 1942, and by the end of the year they had an aircraft suited to the task with a proven operational record, I believe the reasons given in this article for why the death camp was not attacked are, at best, spurious. I also find Biddle's characterization of the military "fighting for its life in 1944" a gross distortion. The Allies were pushing Germany back on all fronts. Its industrial capacity for waging war could not keep up with that of the Allies in any category of production, even though almost the entire German economy was dedicated to war production. Therefore, the only reason left for not attacking Auschwitz-Birkenau is political.
 
First of all, we need to examine US operations in Europe, post-D-Day.

Between June 1944 and May 8, 1945, there were 552,117 U.S. casualties in the European theater of operations. Of those, 104,812 were killed in action.

The Battle of the Bulge was the largest single battle on the Western Front. It became a struggle of attrition, characterised by poor weather and boggy underfoot conditions. Both sides sustained high casualties, with the Americans taking more during this encounter than in any other during the war.

In mid-December Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, had at his disposal 48 divisions distributed along a 600-mile (nearly 1,000-km) front between the North Sea and Switzerland. For the site of their counteroffensive, the Germans chose the hilly and wooded country of the Ardennes. Because it was generally regarded as difficult country, a large-scale offensive there was likely to be unexpected, just as the use of the same ground caught the French flatfooted in May 1940.

The thick woods provided concealment for the massing of forces. The aims of the German counteroffensive were far-reaching: to break through to Antwerp, Belgium, by an indirect move, to cut off the British army group from American forces as well as from its supplies, and then to crush the isolated British. Overall command of the offensive was given to the highly successful and decorated Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.

The Fifth Panzer Army, led by Hasso, Freiherr (baron) von Manteuffel, a decorated and successful panzer general, was to break through the U.S. front in the Ardennes, swerve westward, and then wheel northward across the Meuse, past Namur to Antwerp. As it advanced, it was to build up a defensive flank barricade to shut off interference from the U.S. armies farther south. The Sixth SS Panzer Army, under its SS commander Sepp Dietrich, was to thrust northwestward on an oblique line past Liège to Antwerp, creating a strategic barrier astride the rear of the British and of the more northerly American armies. The Germans gave the bulk of the tanks that they could scrape together to those two panzer armies. To minimize the danger from a speedy intervention of Anglo-American air power, which was vastly greater than their own, the Germans launched their stroke when the meteorological forecast promised them a natural cloak; indeed, for the first three days, fog, mist and rain kept the Allied air forces on the ground.

Suddenly, over 200,000 German troops (followed by about 100,000 reinforecements); 400 tanks; with 1,900 guns and hundreds of Nebelwerfer rocket launchers launched their attack before dawn on December 16, 1944, and made surprisingly quick progress in the first three days.

However, General George S. Patton had already planned for the 90 degree turn to the North of his entire Third Army and then did so within just two days. Patton from the South and Field Marshal Montgomery from the North, were able, with clear weather around Christmas, were eventually able to pinch off the offensive.

In January, U.S. Army soldiers were still battling against German forces that had launched the Battle of the Bulge, their largest operation of the War in the West.

Consequently, that battle was the largest the U.S. Army ever fought and out of the 90,000 casualties around 19,000 soldiers were killed.

General Eisenhower, despite eventually recognising that he could, like General Schwarzkopf did in the Gulf War inGeneral Powell's words, "cut it off and kill it", the fact that Nazi Germany could mount such a ferocious attack in late 1944 dashed his hopes of an end to the war in that year.

1945 would show that the determined German defence increased as their supply lines grew much shorter. Statistics show that German industry created the greatest number of war materials in 1994 when the industry was given to Albert Speer to manage. The Volksgrenadiers, raised as part of Joseph Goebbel's "total war" program and the increased employment of the Hitler Youth in battle, served to bolster Germany's defensive posture.

See: https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-the-Bulge

**

Bombing missions continued over Germany and every B-17 or B-24 lost over the Reich meant a loss of 10 Americans. On the ground, Allied troops mopped up German resistance on the west bank of the Rhine River.

Anti-Semitism and indifference to the plight of Jews were not among the primary reasons the Allies didn't bomb Auschwitz. But that does not comfort Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, the former president and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation.

Berenbaum sought to answer "Why Wasn't Auschwitz Bombed?" before a crowd of 200 at Sonoma State University on March 25 as part of the Rohnert Park campus' 20th annual Holocaust lecture series.

Late in the war, the Allies began to gather information on the nature and function of the concentration camps, according to Berenbaum.

"German air defenses were weakened, and the accuracy of Allied bombing was increasing. All that was required was the political will to effectuate the bombing," said the adjunct professor of theology and director of the Sigi Ziering Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Ethics at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

Among the reasons why the bombing didn't occur, Berenbaum maintained was that the political will never materialized, and no Allied government or military officials emerged to plead the case for bombing.

The Allies' focus was on winning the war, he continued, and the United States had decided that "Army units would not be 'employed for the purpose of rescuing victims of enemy oppression.'" The Allies adhered to this rigid policy even when it concerned their own citizens.

Berenbaum offered another reason: American officials believed that "military resources could not be diverted from the war effort; bombing Auschwitz might prove ineffective, and might provoke even more vindictive German action.

Nonetheless, "on Aug. 20, 1944, 127 Flying Fortresses, with an escort of 100 Mustang fighter crafts, dropped 1,336 500-pound bombs on the I.G. Farben synthetic oil factory less than five miles east of Birkenau, the death camp at Auschwitz.

The Allies had the military resources to bombard Auschwitz, he maintained. The U.S. Air Force "was capable of striking the railroad lines to Auschwitz and the vicinity, but for bombing to be effective it had to be sustained, and for it to be feasible it had to be undertaken by day in good weather and between July and October 1944." The window of opportunity closed in the fall with the onset of chilly and foggy weather.

Berenbaum said that ultimately the Allies believed that the best way save Jews and other victims of the Nazis, according to an internal U.S. War Department memo, "was to insure the speedy defeat of the Axis."

Another reason for the Allies' failure to act, Berenbaum stated, was the lack of pressure from the organized American Jewish community. While some Zionists, recent immigrant groups and Orthodox Jews clamored to rescue Jews at all costs, the "established Jewish leadership was reluctant to press for organized military activity for fear of being too overt and encouraging perceptions within the political leadership that World War II was a 'Jewish war.'"

Even David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency's executive committee and later Israel's first premier, was initially against intervention on behalf of Jews in Poland. Berenbaum quoted Ben-Gurion, who said in June 1944 "that we do not know the truth concerning the entire situation in Poland and it seems that we will be unable to propose anything concerning this matter."

Berenbaum said that after the release of a highly detailed report in July 1944 by two Auschwitz escapees, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, the Jewish Agency was "much more willing to risk Jewish lives on the ground rather than permit the gassing to proceed." But the Allies were not prepared to sacrifice the "innocent and unjustly imprisoned civilian population at Auschwitz" without guarantees that it would "interrupt the killing process." And in the end, no bombing occurred.

America's refusal to act nagged at Berenbaum throughout his talk. He said that by the summer of 1944 "the gas chambers at Auschwitz were operating around the clock, and the crematoria were so overtaxed that bodies were being burned in open fields with body fat and gasoline fueling the flames. Any interruption in the killing process might possibly have saved thousands of lives."

Deanna Chase, a third year psychology student, added that Berenbaum "challenged us to think about the United States' role in ending genocide. I think America could've done more."

Berenbaum's talk was the Robert K. Harris Memorial Lecture, honoring a World War II veteran who died in 1993. Harris was a Sonoma County educator largely responsible for the yearly programs that institutionalized the study of the Holocaust in the region.

See: https://jweekly.com/2003/04/11/holocaust-expert-explains-why-auschwitz-was-never-bombed/

Read : The World Must Know by Michael Berenbaum and In Memory's Kitchen by Berenbaum and Cara De Silva, et al. Both are available on Amazon.

The events of 1944 and 1945 can only be understood through the prism of their times. While the Allies understood what was happening in Aushwitz-Birkenau, like people from every era when in the middle of a war, situations which have plagued us throughout human history saw varying motives at hand. Prejudice, military necessity, variable and changing political power, personal motives, differing goals and the variety of the methods for waging war have always been intendant to war. Perhaps the US could've done more but our eventual and costly, in people and materiel, victory over fascism was eventually realised. The concentration and death camps were liberated and thousands of their survivors were saved by the very people who might've done more.
Hartmann352
 
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