Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed?

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Luft300
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Why wasn't Auschwitz bombed?

#1

Post by Luft300 » 21 Jun 2005, 20:18

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[Title changed to be useful again /Marcus]
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Beppo Schmidt
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#2

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 21 Jun 2005, 20:37

it's getting difficult to determine who the bad guys really were...
The Allies didn't commit genocide. I'd say that's a big distinction.


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Luft300
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#3

Post by Luft300 » 21 Jun 2005, 20:44

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Max Williams
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#4

Post by Max Williams » 21 Jun 2005, 20:55

Beppo Schmidt wrote:
it's getting difficult to determine who the bad guys really were...
The Allies didn't commit genocide. I'd say that's a big distinction.
What about the Cossacks "repatriated" by the British to certain death in Stalin's Russia? What about the many millions who disappeared in Stalin's gulags? I don't think any side is squeaky clean in war. However, I digress.

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Beppo Schmidt
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#5

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 21 Jun 2005, 20:57

I didn't say either side was squeaky clean, and by the Allies, I meant the Western Allies.

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#6

Post by Max Williams » 21 Jun 2005, 21:00

Beppo Schmidt wrote:I didn't say either side was squeaky clean, and by the Allies, I meant the Western Allies.
The British government were fully aware of the consequences of their actions. Evidence is also emerging that the western Allies were fully aware of what was going on in the camps, especially Auschwitz, and they chose to take no action to prevent it.

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Annelie
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#7

Post by Annelie » 21 Jun 2005, 21:18

Max History

Your correct. Recently within the last few months the History Channel showed an episode in which
they divulged that the Allies did indeed know. They also showed documents to back this up.
If I remember correctly this episode was filmed in England.

They indicated that the British planes flew over Auschwitz and as you stated took no action
to prevent it.....by perhaps bombing the railway lines?

Annelie

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Luft300
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#8

Post by Luft300 » 21 Jun 2005, 22:03

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Andreas
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#9

Post by Andreas » 21 Jun 2005, 22:48

Max History wrote:
Beppo Schmidt wrote:I didn't say either side was squeaky clean, and by the Allies, I meant the Western Allies.
The British government were fully aware of the consequences of their actions. Evidence is also emerging that the western Allies were fully aware of what was going on in the camps, especially Auschwitz, and they chose to take no action to prevent it.
They did. They landed in Normandy and defeated the Wehrmacht. While their Soviet allies liberated the camps. You must have missed those parts of the war?

Annelie - can you please let us know the extent to which you think/believe/know the bombing methods of 1944 would have been able to interdict a single railway line leading into a camp? Can you also let us know what you think the effect of this bombing (assuming it would have been a success) would have been on the number of Jews killed? To put it plain - do you believe that the Germans would have said 'Oh bugger this, now the railway has been bombed I guess we better stop killing all these people, because its just plain impossible now, without that railway line.'? Do you really think that a government crazy enough to be ready to commit genocide would have been stopped by a bombed out railway?

All the best

Andreas

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Annelie
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#10

Post by Annelie » 21 Jun 2005, 23:16

Andreas

Fair enough question.

I should perhaps tell you what an survivor on the show said about the planes that flew over and took photos of the camp and the
railway lines.

She thought that the killing would at least be slowed down if the Allies took action and bombed the lines,
but probably not stopped.
She was upset and angry about the lack of action. Later in the show they showed that
somehow the information and photos of Auschwitz and the railway lines was misplaced in a pile and forgotten. Was this explanation valid or perhaps an afterthought explanation? I somehow don't believe this explanation for it has been
noted that the Brits were very thorough and knew and tried to be aware of what was going on.




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Annelie

Andreas
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#11

Post by Andreas » 21 Jun 2005, 23:27

Annelie wrote:Andreas

Fair enough question.

I should perhaps tell you what an survivor on the show said about the planes that flew over and took photos of the camp and the
railway lines.

She thought that the killing would at least be slowed down if the Allies took action and bombed the lines,
but probably not stopped.
She was upset and angry about the lack of action. Later in the show they showed that
somehow the information and photos of Auschwitz and the railway lines was misplaced in a pile and forgotten. Was this explanation valid or perhaps an afterthought explanation? I somehow don't believe this explanation for it has been
noted that the Brits were very thorough and knew and tried to be aware of what was going on.

Best
Annelie
Annelie

I refuse to get into speculation what really happened with those pictures. Regardless, that still leaves the question - what were they supposed to do other than what they already did? With all respect to the survivor, and I can not even begin to think of the horrible feeling to see that no action was taken, I have serious doubts that it would have made any difference to the number of people killed whether these lines had been bombed or not.

The only way to stop the killing in those camps was to physically occupy them with a force that made sure that the Germans did not return to them. Unfortunately due to the heroic resistance of the Wehrmacht admired by so many on this forum that took a very long time to achieve.

All the best

Andreas

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#12

Post by David Thompson » 21 Jun 2005, 23:34

The U.S. Gevernment certainly did their trick on the Indians though, issuing them blankets impregnated with all sorts of diseases, like smallpox, that they knew the Indians couldn't stand up to.
This happened in 1763, before there was a United States. See

Columbus 'sparked a genocide'
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 626#303626

For why the western allies didn't bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz see

FDR Knew About The Holocaust Early
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=49973

For who knew what and when about Nazi mass murder see

Breitman's Discovery of Allied Decodes about the Holocaust
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=48883
The role of the US - in the death camps
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=42760
How early in the war was the reality of the Holocaust known
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=12067

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Annelie
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#13

Post by Annelie » 21 Jun 2005, 23:37

Andreas,

I am in agreement, there is no value in questioning what happened to the information in this thread.

I have to believe that slowing down the process of the trains camp and that the end result
that some people would still be alive does have value.

Yes, some of the Wehrmacht were heroic, I try not to wipe everyone as they say with the same brush.

Best
Annelie

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Michael Miller
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#14

Post by Michael Miller » 22 Jun 2005, 00:13

Even if the railway lines had been completely destroyed by Allied bombing - isn't it possible they would have transported them via truck? Or sacrifice some degree of the customary secrecy and install the mass destruction equipment further west (Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachaus, etc.).

~ Mike

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#15

Post by Larry D. » 22 Jun 2005, 01:05

Auschwitz and Allied Air Power

For those who might wish to pursue this a little further, there was a book published in the early 'nineties that heaped condemnation upon Roosevelt, Churchill, the USAAF and the RAF for not bombing the rail lines leading up to and including the junction at Auschwitz. This led to a very heated and protracted battle on the op ed page of the Washington Post between the author and his camp of Holocaust activists and one of the senior USAF historians on the staff of the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama. This then spun off into numerous scholarly articles in the academic periodicals and several more books. The upshot of it all was more or less along the line of the argument put forward by Andreas. Today, the more rational and scholarly members of the Holocaust community gruggingly agree that it would have been politically and tactically impossible for the Allied air forces in Europe to attack the targets mentioned and thus bring a halt to or significantly slow down the activities of the extermination process. There is a great deal in print on this subject for those so motivated.

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