They wouldn’t have been “symbolic attacks.” They would have disrupted the killing factory’s work. If even a handful of victims’ deaths could have been forestalled this way, it would have been worth it. The fact that the number would have greatly exceeded a handful would have made this action even more significant.
Well, they were not exactly death camps, but rather labour camps (although many people did die), to clarify, let me quote Anne Applebaum (who wrote the Pulitzer prize history on the Gulag):
No one questions that the Soviet camp system was an evil set up that killed millions, but they were not created for the sole purpose of mass producing corpses like the death camps in Germany.
They would have been symbolic because they wouldn’t have disrupted the killing and they wouldn’t have done anything to end the war. The Nazis didn’t need death camps to kill people, they did very well on the Eastern Front just lining Jews up in front of a big ditch and shooting them. Not only that, but rail lines aren’t exactly easy to bomb from 20,000 ft which was where B-17s and B-24s operated from. Rail lines would be best attacked by attack fighters flying at tree top level. That’s what the Allies did in France to disrupt Axis troop movements, but Poland is a long way from France and the single engine fighters of the day didn’t have the range or payload to fly to Eastern Europe to significantly disrupt Nazi transportation to and from the death camps. And how many handfuls of people would have died because the war was extended by not bombing strategic or even tactical targets, but symbolic ones?
I’ve been wondering why we are “fighting” WWII all over again, 50+ years later, when there are Christians, homosexuals, moderate Muslins, etc. being killed NOW by ISIS. What happened to “Never again”? Is it because the numbers haven’t reached 1 million yet? If you think the Nazis committed atrocities, go on-line & see the videos of what ISIS is doing to innocent people RIGHT NOW.
Nothing apparently. Unlike the luck of the Russians throughout history, a nasty great winter isn’t going to save the Syrians and others from the claws of ISIS, so doing nothing will not win. A bit like doing nothing didn’t save millions of Jews from being murdered. All we can do in the meantime is pray and hope.I’ve been wondering why we are “fighting” WWII all over again, 50+ years later, when there are Christians, homosexuals, moderate Muslins, etc. being killed NOW by ISIS. What happened to “Never again”? Is it because the numbers haven’t reached 1 million yet? If you think the Nazis committed atrocities, go on-line & see the videos of what ISIS is doing to innocent people RIGHT NOW.
It’s fine that we can argue about history from the safety of our nice quiet homes, but what have we actually learned from it all?
False. The method of entry into death camps like Auschwitz were rail lines. Again, no rail line access, no deportations to these camps, greatly reduced gassings.
Yes, the Einsatzgruppen was very active. Yet this is NOT the method of killing preferred by the Nazis. The Wannsee Conference firmly and clearly established that gassings were preferred because mass shooting wasted bullets, were ineffective regarding use of time and troops, and led to significant morale problems among soldiers. If mass shootings had been preferred, the Jews of Hungary wouldn’t have been deported to Auschwitz as late as 1944, when it was clear the war was being lost. They simply would’ve been shot in Hungary. But they weren’t.
A) They wouldn’t have been symbolic targets. B) This is false. The US, for example, had made a documented choice to focus on military targets and to refrain from rescuing victims. Our government had clear evidence that killing operations were escalating in death camps like Auschwitz and it chose not to involve itself, even as governmental agencies and representatives demanded such action. It had nothing to do with difficulties in actually delivering a payload – it had to do with a deliberate choice regarding warfare.
We should be studying the Holocaust and the choices made during it to learn from it and apply what we learn to today. Where today are we failing to act? The answer, unfortunately, is vast.I’ve been wondering why we are “fighting” WWII all over again, 50+ years later, when there are Christians, homosexuals, moderate Muslins, etc. being killed NOW by ISIS. What happened to “Never again”? Is it because the numbers haven’t reached 1 million yet? If you think the Nazis committed atrocities, go on-line & see the videos of what ISIS is doing to innocent people RIGHT NOW.
It’s fine that we can argue about history from the safety of our nice quiet homes, but what have we actually learned from it all?
I realize this is your opinion, but I have seen nothing that tells me attempting to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz would have been effective in preventing the holocaust or any significant part of it, if at all. The Nazis spent a lot of resources on that, weirdly so, and there is no reason to think they would not have gone all out to get it done one way or another. Also, for most of the war there were no U.S. bombers and fighter escort for them with sufficient range to get there and back, and the whole, very long route would have been over German-held territory
I do agree wholeheartedly with this statement.
It isn’t a question of preventing the Holocaust – it was already underway. It’s a question of slowing it. **Any **disruption to a death camp’s operations would have been worth it. It may seem like a minimal action to some but given the tremendous speed with which murders were occurring at Auschwitz, creating any hiccup in its operations would have slowed the number of deaths taking place.
It isn’t a matter of their commitment – it’s a practical matter of getting the victims to the killing factory. Trains were required for this.
Yet the Allies had aerial photographic evidence of Auschwitz, demonstrating that it was possible to fly over Poland.
I haven’t actually claimed that this choice was made because most Auschwitz victims were Jewish. That said, there is a wealth of evidence of active antisemitism within the US government during this period.
Sadly the West also let Stalin have Eastern Europe. Millions of dead followed that too.
That’s a point.
There’s not much the West could have done to get Eastern Europe out of Stalin’s hands.
Unless they’d done more before in the area of the world that needed emergency help. It makes me think whether the same seeming lack of care over the Middle East from western powers might be due to anti-Semitism too.
If the rails would have been bombed, the Nazis would have used Jews and prisoners of war to fix it. If they get killed when it gets bombed again, well the Allies would have accomplished what the Nazis would have wanted, the death of Jews. Only this time it would be via Allied bombs instead of German gas or bullets.
Might as well not bother trying then…right?!
They were trying to stop the Holocaust by defeating Germany and removing the Nazis from power. Bombing the rail lines would have been a purely symbolic gesture that would have done nothing to shorten the war.Might as well not bother trying then…right?!
Maybe it would have caused enough confusion in order for the war to take a different course. In those areas at least. All it takes is a few unforeseen happenings for a great many things to come about. One can’t say categorically that an effort to bomb the rail lines would have ensured all those Jews who died definite escape or release but the likelihood of it changing something leading to something else then to something else is greater than if one weren’t to try to directly tackle the problem. Causing confusion or posing an extra problem for the enemy to have to worry about could be enough to slow a process right down and in turn affect many other outcomes in a series / chain of events.
Just because you keep saying it doesn’t make it so. The Allies weren’t trying to end the Holocaust – they hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that it was taking place. Their focus was on the war.