RAF photo file fuels row over Auschwitz

[kskiska]

Documents reveal RAF turned down plea to attack death camps in 1944


Jewish leaders have condemned Britain for its 'shameful' failure to save Holocaust victims after previously unseen reconnaissance photographs revealed the RAF was monitoring Nazi death camps in wartime.

'This proves beyond doubt that Britain and the Allies knew about the killings long before the end of the war, but chose to do nothing,' said the World Jewish Congress in New York yesterday. The pictures were taken by the RAF over concentration camps in 1944.

'We now know that Allied bombers regularly flew directly over Auschwitz on their way to targets elsewhere, and had many chances to destroy the Nazi death machine,' Elan Steinberg, executive director of the New York-based Congress, told The Observer.

(snip)

According to documents found by the World Jewish Congress, Jewish leaders in US and Britain made the decision shortly afterwards to ask Roosevelt and Churchill to bomb camps, or at least the railways supplying them.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1153452,00.html

[JailForBush]

1. I wonder if they skipped a death camp or two en route to Dresden. N/T

[revcarol]

2. So what's new here. Just a photo.

The Allies always copped out. Those pilots knew about the camps and the leaders refused to do anything. A major black mark on Roosevelt along with Japanes internment.

On second thought, they were "monitoring." That's new, but not surprising since many war industries of the Nazis were based in or around concentration camps.

[mobuto]

20. That's a lie

Those pilots knew about the camps and the leaders refused to do anything.

The pilots did not know about the camps. The US Government did know about the camps, from the Polish Major and other sources, and did its damned best to save as many Jews as possible. The best way by far of doing that was by defeating the Germans just as quickly as possible. The American government went above and beyond the call of duty when it came to saving as many Jews as possible - both before and during the war. And it is a cheap, shallow slur for you to blame even one death on FDR. Shame on you.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. I'm very curious about this line of thought...

WWII bombers were notoriously inaccurate, particularly during night attacks. My guess is that any attack undertaken in 1944 would have been a daylight raid, but high explosive and incendiary bombs dropped on a concentration camp would have resulted in the death of thousands of prisoners...not something for which the Allies wanted to be blamed after the war.

And how exactly would bombing the camps have put the camps out of business? They were extremely low-tech operations that could have been rebuilt in a matter of days. Any prisoners that had been left shelterless by the bombing would have been exposed to the elements until they either died or rebuilt their prison barracks.

[KDLarsen]

4. My thought exactly..

.. what did they want the pilots to do? Attack the guard barracks only, and then shoot the lock off the gates? Sorry, it might work today, but it sure hell wouldn't work back then.

As harsh as it may sound, the only effect of an attack, would have been that the time the prisoners spent there was shortened.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

6. It might have made things worse, too...

It could have spawned a retaliatory mass murder of ALL the Jews in ALL the camps. How would we feel today if NONE had survived?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

8. And would have been a propaganda bonanza for the Nazis

This is revisionist history as bad as the dip shits who claim none of it happened.

[chenGOD]

5. Exactly....

Do they not realise that by bombing the concentration camps, they would have only been aiding the Germans and their "final solution"?

[BiggJawn]

7. "Bomb the camps"?

What, they wanted 7 million dead instead of 6 million?
That's the stupidiest god-damn idea I've heard since I heard you-know-who is thinking about running again.

So we send the 8th airforce over to carpet-bomb Auschwitz. What exactly was THAT supposed to accomplish, beside a lot more dead.

I don't suppose it occurred to the World Jewish Congress that perhaps the Allies had to GET to the camps first before they could liberate them?
Jeebus, is Wolfowitz and Perle-think genetic?

[roguevalley]

9. This had been going on for years because they didn't blow up

the train tracks going to camps when they knew
what was going on. Very sad thing all around.

[ScrewyRabbit]

10. While they could've targeted rail lines

...the bombers were notoriously ineffective in shutting down transport lines.

In the end the great success of the bombing campaign was 1) to destroy the Luftwaffe and 2) slow German production of synthetic fuels, both of which paid great dividends in both the east and the west but which would've had no appreciable effect on stopping the system of genocide. What was needed were armies on the ground to shut down the camps...

[pink_poodle]

11. Okay, if they had bombed, then they would have been blamed..........

for killing the captives. Doh!

[lebkuchen]

12. They chose to fire bomb civilian cities instead

using the holocaust victims as their excuse to commit further atrocities, a familiar ploy to the families of 9-11 victims.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Merlin]

14. Ummm. That's a bit strong, don't you think? He already answered...

your question. The fire bombing of Dresden, to be specific. How does his comment make him a "nazi apologist?"

[mobuto]

21. Shame on you

The US has never used the Holocaust to justify the attacks on German cities. They were seen as a military target. I think they were wrong, unwise, and more importantly, a misallocation of resources, but their goal was legitimate - to stop Germany's ability to fight the United States.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. This is ridiculous...

the Allies were already bombing rail lines, concentrating mainly on those from Germany to the East, in order to disrupt German supply lines. Any greater effort would've required diversion of men and materiel from more critical missions, and, from what I know of the historical record, the Allied leaders were in agreement that the best way to "destroy the Nazi death machine" was to win the war, as quickly as possible.

It's certainly to be regretted that Hitler's murder apparatus couldn't have been dismantled much sooner, buit to do so would have required a large, coordinated campaign of bombing and ground assaults, and the troops and equipment were not available to devote to what was NOT an important military target.

We can look back now and question the wisdom of Roosevelt and Churchill in not doing more about this, but they took what they thought was the best course. And the war in the West might conceivable have turned out differently had a couple of bomber wings and a few airborne divisions been diverted to undertake a risky sabotage and rescue mission far behind enemy lines.

This kind of revisionist "they should have done X instead of Y" thinking is not productive, helps no one, and usually ignores some rather large historical realities.

[mobuto]

22. You could not be more right

The only way to stop the Holocaust once it had started was to defeat Hitler and the Germans just as quickly as possible. Any distraction from that goal would have meant more dead Jews. This is revisionist bullshit.

[0007]

16. See the movie "Amen" just came out - True story of German Officer

attempt to warn the "Holy See" in Rome of the nazi death camps.
Excellent!

[Robb]

17. Wow!

I have nothing to add to this thread, it's being so sensibly constructed! I agree with what others have said, this is a senseless argument.

[buckeye1]

18. Bombing the camps...

would have saved the Nazis alot of trouble.

[mobuto]

19. This is total bullshit.

1. The US Air Force took aerial photos of Auschwitz as well. They were not intentional - automatic cameras on bombers took millions of photos of all of occupied Europe and it wasn't until the 1970s that people who went through them, looking speficically for Auschwitz found that photos had indeed been taken. But nobody was "monitoring" Auschwitz. Indeed, nobody had ever even looked at those particular photos before.

2. There was enormous opposition within the American Jewish community to bombing Auschwitz. Why? Because any attack would inevitably kill Jews, and that would have been exploited to great propagandistic effect by the Nazis.

3. Bombing Auschwitz would have had little effect. By late 1944, when it first became feasible, the killings were winding down - most Jews were already dead.

[Cooley Hurd]

23. And don't forget that when Eisenhower arrived at the camps...

...he was as shocked and surprised as anyone about the atrocities. As Supreme Allied Commander, he would've been privy to any intelligence that told the true story of the death camps, and his surprise tells me that he had no prior knowledge of the real reasons for the camps' existence.

[mobuto]

24. Not quite accurate

While its true that nobody knew the full scale of the atrocities until the end of the war, the US Government knew about the camps and knew that Jews were being killed. It did their damdest to save every Jew it could - but the Allies were busy fighting the greatest war in the history of mankind, and there was only so much they could do. In 1943, in response to intelligence of the Holocaust, FDR set up the War Refugee Board with the express goal of doing whatever was necessary to save the Jews of Europe. It succeeded as far as possible, and by the end of the war they had secret agents all over occupied Europe smuggling Jews, bribing Germans, etc. to save as many lives as possible.

Bombing Auschwitz was out of the question. Not until November of 1944, the very end of the war, was that question even raised, and American Jewish organizations and the War Refugee Board quickly came to the conclusion that it was a bad idea.