Would you have bombed Auschwitz?

[Roman_Catholic_1]

During WWII many did not believe that the Roosevelt administration were doing enough to help the plight of the Jewish people in Europe. The Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, himself born into a prominent Jewish family, (and others) pushed Roosevelt to bomb the concentration camps inside Europe.

Roosevelt decided not to bomb the camps and reaffirmed his position that the best why to help the Jewish people would be to end the war as quickly as possible. Roosevelt saw bombing the camps as taking away planes from bombing the German war factories that were allowing the Germans to make war. Not bombing these factories prolonged the war in his eyes.

My question; would you have bombed the camps?

God bless

 

[TAS2000]

I think that bombing prison camps is considered an atrocity of war. And since that was basically a prison camp full of innocent Jewish victims, I don’t think it could be considered a legitimate military target.

 

[Jan_Bolbot]

Since I teach history of WWII and the Holocaust, I guess I get to have an opinion here.

Break it down into a couple of separate questions:

1. Did the Allies have the knowledge of the camp’s purpose enough to legitimately understand that it was a death camp? Answer is clearly yes. We know that the Polish resistance movement provided top Allied leadership with detailed reports on the extermination of the Jews and specifically on Auschwitz by 1943. Of course many Allied leaders simply dismissed such reports.
2. Would this have done any good? Answer: it might have delayed Nazi plans and possibly saved a few lives. Bombing of the rail lines was another possibility (since victims were shipped in by rail), but the Nazis were very good at repairing the rail service. Prisoners within Auschwitz certainly hoped for Allied bombing of the camp. They would have preferred death from Allied bombs to death by gas chamber, starvation, or firing squad. There was a resistance network inside the camp that hoped for a bomb raid that would have allowed for a mass escape attempt. See for example: timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5891132.ece

Practically speaking though it would not have stopped the killing to any appreciable degree.

Also consider that most of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against German industry was highly ineffective. German military production peaked in 1944-45 despite Allied bombing. Moreover, many of the factories used slave labor; hence, bombing an arms factory would have the same result. (Many slave laborers actually sabotaged Nazi munitions. A dud bomb defused in London in 1944 was found to contain a crude note: “Don’t worry English, we are with you. --Polish workers”. The penalty for slaves caught sabotaging weapons production was immediate execution.)

1. Would it have been morally permissible to do so? It is hard to second-guess those who made decisions 60 years ago when facing the unspeakable evil of Nazism. It would probably been less immoral than fire-bomb attacks on German cities carried out by the RAF. Given that most former inmates of Auschwitz would have welcomed this, I think the answer has to be a qualified yes. There were a couple of cases where Allied planes accidentally bombed Auschwitz and other camps. Prisoner memoirs recall watching the once all-powerful Nazi guards running in panic and confusion. Some prisoners danced for joy. Such events, rare as they were, raised prisoner morale and encouraged many to fight on and not give in to despair.

Jan Bolbot

 

[Roman_Catholic_1]

Since I teach history of WWII and the Holocaust, I guess I get to have an opinion here.

Break it down into a couple of separate questions:

1. Did the Allies have the knowledge of the camp’s purpose enough to legitimately understand that it was a death camp? Answer is clearly yes. We know that the Polish resistance movement provided top Allied leadership with detailed reports on the extermination of the Jews and specifically on Auschwitz by 1943. Of course many Allied leaders simply dismissed such reports.
2. Would this have done any good? Answer: it might have delayed Nazi plans and possibly saved a few lives. Bombing of the rail lines was another possibility (since victims were shipped in by rail), but the Nazis were very good at repairing the rail service. Prisoners within Auschwitz certainly hoped for Allied bombing of the camp. They would have preferred death from Allied bombs to death by gas chamber, starvation, or firing squad. There was a resistance network inside the camp that hoped for a bomb raid that would have allowed for a mass escape attempt. See for example: timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5891132.ece

Practically speaking though it would not have stopped the killing to any appreciable degree.

Also consider that most of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against German industry was highly ineffective. German military production peaked in 1944-45 despite Allied bombing. Moreover, many of the factories used slave labor; hence, bombing an arms factory would have the same result. (Many slave laborers actually sabotaged Nazi munitions. A dud bomb defused in London in 1944 was found to contain a crude note: “Don’t worry English, we are with you. --Polish workers”. The penalty for slaves caught sabotaging weapons production was immediate execution.)

1. Would it have been morally permissible to do so? It is hard to second-guess those who made decisions 60 years ago when facing the unspeakable evil of Nazism. It would probably been less immoral than fire-bomb attacks on German cities carried out by the RAF. Given that most former inmates of Auschwitz would have welcomed this, I think the answer has to be a qualified yes. There were a couple of cases where Allied planes accidentally bombed Auschwitz and other camps. Prisoner memoirs recall watching the once all-powerful Nazi guards running in panic and confusion. Some prisoners danced for joy. Such events, rare as they were, raised prisoner morale and encouraged many to fight on and not give in to despair.

Jan Bolbot

Thanks for contributing. So after weighing your three points; would you have bombed the camps?

God bless

 

[Jan_Bolbot]

Thanks for contributing. So after weighing your three points; would you have bombed the camps?

God bless

Yes. I have known former inmates of Nazi camps including a priest who spent 5.5 years in Dachau. I’m not saying my conscience would have been completely at ease, though.

It goes to the deeper question of when have we/can ever do enough to oppose evil? Someone like the Catholic social worker Irena Sendler who saved 2500 Jewish children and endured weeks of torture by the Gestapo without revealing the location of a single child was haunted by the thousands more she did not save.

Had it been my decision, I would have spent a long time in prayer the night before giving the final order.

JB

 

[Neversofew]

If a prisoner just wanted to die, all they had to do was refuse an order and the Nazi guards would be happy to shoot you.

Try watching the DVD set “World at War” which has special episodes dedicated to the Holocaust which the producer claims is not part of WW2 but a separate issue.

There are several interview of prisoners who wanted to live if just for a few more minutes. Those prisoners were the ones who moved the bodies after extermination and did other degrading things.

Another point was made that prisoners near the arriving trains warned the people getting off to “run” and that “this is a deathcamp”. Many could have easily escaped at that point because the camps were in no way fully staffed to guard all prisoners. But it seemed to many that they resigned themselves to their fate. But it is an interesting look at why people obey orders even though it means their own death.

Some people will give up easily and other will refuse to cooperate to the end.

 

[Jan_Bolbot]

If a prisoner just wanted to die, all they had to do was refuse an order and the Nazi guards would be happy to shoot you.

Try watching the DVD set “World at War” which has special episodes dedicated to the Holocaust which the producer claims is not part of WW2 but a separate issue.

There are several interview of prisoners who wanted to live if just for a few more minutes. Those prisoners were the ones who moved the bodies after extermination and did other degrading things.

Another point was made that prisoners near the arriving trains warned the people getting off to “run” and that “this is a deathcamp”. Many could have easily escaped at that point because the camps were in no way fully staffed to guard all prisoners. But it seemed to many that they resigned themselves to their fate. But it is an interesting look at why people obey orders even though it means their own death.

Some people will give up easily and other will refuse to cooperate to the end.

Plenty of prisoners did just that. The quickest way to die was to simply walk to the fence and start trying to get out. But there is a moral difference between being killed by Allied bombs and committing suicide. The main reason prisoners would have supported the bombing for its effects on the camp guards and commanders.

The Holocaust wasn’t really separate from the war. It wouldn’t have happened without the war and German leaders from Hitler on down were explicit that the war on the Jews (and other racial inferiors) was part and parcel of the larger war effort. It is usually studied separately in school that’s all.

The question of why people did not resist when going to their deaths is a tricky question. Many people were transported with their families and kept together with their families until the last minute (many died together). So, if you could jump from the train and save yourself but leave your wife and children behind, would you do it? Probably not. Second issue, it was often impossible to get away. Camps and transports were very well guarded, although escapes did happen. Successful escapes were usually punished by collective punishment of the remaining prisoners: 10 or more were selected to be executed. This was known by most prisoners. If you did escape where would you go? The penalty for giving a Jew a glass of water was execution. Hiding a Jew meant death for you, your family and your neighbors. (Obviously an amazing number of people did defy such orders. It took the cooperation of 25 people to hide a single Jew but only one to betray.)

Some prisoners, of course, did resist. The story of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is well known. There were smaller revolts and acts of defiance in many places. Many though went to die peacefully–an acceptance of martyrdom.

Consider the case of St. Maksymilian Maria Kolbe who volunteered to take the place of another inmate slated for execution. This was not an act of despair or submission to evil, but a desire to follow Christ and give up one’s life for another.

JB

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

No. Definitely not. Because that would probably have been indirectly taking part in the horror that was the Sho’ah. I’m sure Hitler and his cronies would have liked for the Allies to have bombed the camps, because that would have gotten rid of all the Jews, etc. in them in one fell swoop. Plus, he’d have had more reason to go after us for killing all the guards/German soldiers involved in maintaining the camps.

 

[elts1956]

During WWII many did not believe that the Roosevelt administration were doing enough to help the plight of the Jewish people in Europe. The Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, himself born into a prominent Jewish family, (and others) pushed Roosevelt to bomb the concentration camps inside Europe.

Roosevelt decided not to bomb the camps and reaffirmed his position that the best why to help the Jewish people would be to end the war as quickly as possible. Roosevelt saw bombing the camps as taking away planes from bombing the German war factories that were allowing the Germans to make war. Not bombing these factories prolonged the war in his eyes.

My question; would you have bombed the camps?

God bless

Big NO! The Jews weren’t responsible for the atrocities performed on them. Why bomb concentration camps that housed (so to speak) innocent victims? Morganthau seems to have a kind of twisted logic.

 

[vz71]

As soon as the German war machine realizes that we will not fire upon prisoners, you will see prisoners being used everywhere as human shields.

That could hinder the war effort.

While I would not make the camps a primary target, I would make them a target of opportunity. The lives lost in such a raid would be less then the lives lost should they start being used as human shields.

It is fortunate that today we have weapons systems that are much more precise.
The question is not if we would target the camp, the question would be which window are we going to fly the missle into.
And the decision is a no-brainer. Take out the fence, guard towers, and barracks.
While we cannot make ourselves believe we killed no innocents in the raid, we could comfort ourselves in knowing that we minimized the innocent lives lost.
And perhaps even convince ourselves a greater good came out of it.

 

[chosen_people]

Auschwitz was as extermination camp. Thousands died in its gas chambers every day. The allies had firm documented knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in the camps from 1943. Allied bombers flew near Auschwitz on a regular basis to bomb other targets. Even if some had been killed in the bombings there long term survival there was negligible. Had Auschwitz been bombed and put out of commission hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. So why wasn’t Auschwitz bombed? For the same reason that the United States couldn’t accept the St.Louis boat refugees and turned them back to Europe and their deaths, for the same reason Canada hermetically sealed its borders to the Jews declaring that any Jews would be too many Jews. Hitler could not have succeeded in the genocide of one third of the Jewish people in the time span between 1933 - 1945 without the full cooperation, whether by omission or commission, of the entire Christian world. Look at the example of one country,Denmark, that managed to save almost its entire Jewish population. When the Nazi’s ordered the Jews to wear the yellow star then everyone from the King on down sewed one on their clothes. They then proceeded to ferry the Jews the safety. It could have been different.

 

[centurionguard]

Plenty of prisoners did just that. The quickest way to die was to simply walk to the fence and start trying to get out. But there is a moral difference between being killed by Allied bombs and committing suicide. The main reason prisoners would have supported the bombing for its effects on the camp guards and commanders.

The Holocaust wasn’t really separate from the war. It wouldn’t have happened without the war and German leaders from Hitler on down were explicit that the war on the Jews (and other racial inferiors) was part and parcel of the larger war effort. It is usually studied separately in school that’s all.

The question of why people did not resist when going to their deaths is a tricky question. Many people were transported with their families and kept together with their families until the last minute (many died together). So, if you could jump from the train and save yourself but leave your wife and children behind, would you do it? Probably not. Second issue, it was often impossible to get away. Camps and transports were very well guarded, although escapes did happen. Successful escapes were usually punished by collective punishment of the remaining prisoners: 10 or more were selected to be executed. This was known by most prisoners. If you did escape where would you go? The penalty for giving a Jew a glass of water was execution. Hiding a Jew meant death for you, your family and your neighbors. (Obviously an amazing number of people did defy such orders. It took the cooperation of 25 people to hide a single Jew but only one to betray.)

Some prisoners, of course, did resist. The story of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is well known. There were smaller revolts and acts of defiance in many places. Many though went to die peacefully–an acceptance of martyrdom.

Consider the case of St. Maksymilian Maria Kolbe who volunteered to take the place of another inmate slated for execution. This was not an act of despair or submission to evil, but a desire to follow Christ and give up one’s life for another.

JB

Plenty of prisoners did just that. The quickest way to die was to simply walk to the fence and start trying to get out. But there is a moral difference between being killed by Allied bombs and committing suicide.

Given the choice of facing extermination in the ovens, torture, or firing squad and the great fear that both Jews and Catholics in the prisoner camps were subjected to, I would hardly call walking to a fence barricade suicide even if you didn’t care if the German soldiers shot you or not. It would be difficult for any of us to truly place our mental resolve in such a frame of mind since none of us experienced in exacting detail what they were subjected to.

Would I have bombed Auschwitz? The question itself implies euthanizing in the name of some humanistic humanitarian ethical code. Back then if I were a fighter pilot in the military and given the order. Yes I would. Would I do the same today ? Perhaps not.

 

[Jan_Bolbot]

Bombing the camp does not automatically imply killing prisoners. In fact, it may easily save the prisoner’s lives. One could also have conceivably bombed the rail lines leading to the camp. Since the Nazis used slave laborers (Jews and gentiles) throughout the country, any bombing of any war factory could easily have led to the same result–deaths of innocent civilians.

The comparison to euthenasia is not appropriate here. The primary issue is one of intent. Euthenasia is a deliberate effort to end a life, while the intent of bombing the camps was to disrupt the German extermination effort and perhaps allow some prisoners to escape.

Again, there is simply no way the Allies, the local populations, or the Jews themselves could have stopped the Holocaust given the means available. They might have saved a few lives (which would have been worth it surely), but not stopped the effort. In regards to bombing, by the time Allied bombers were able to reach Auschwitz (1944), most of the Jews of eastern Europe had already been murdered.

I’d also like to respond to “chosenpeople” re: Denmark. The Danes saved their miniscule Jewish population because the Nazi authorities permitted it. The Germans were simply bribed (partly using funds from the Jewish community) to look the other way. Sweden was close by and the Denmark’s Jews only numbered a few thousand and all were fully assimilated. As in most of western Europe, those Danes caught helping Jews received only a slap on the wrist or at worst were conscripted for forced labor. It was a laudable action but hardly heroic as the Danes themselves are quick to point out.

By comparison, Poland had 3.3 million Jews, 90% unassimiliated, many not even speaking local languages, with no neutral countries nearby and an occupation that lasted 5.5 years. The penalty for giving a Jew a glass of water was death. Those caught hiding Jews were executed on the spot along with their family and all their neighbors. At least 117 villages had their entire population exterminated for aiding Jews and other fugitives. It was a simply a different scale of events.

It is very hard to imagine what it was like to be a Jew or a gentile during that period and to live through these events. It is very easy to assume that we would make the right choices that we would be the good ones. When confronted with the reality, it is not easy. Irena Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Ghetto, was captured by the Gestapo, tortured non-stop for two weeks, her interrogators smashed all the bones in her feet and legs, and she didn’t reveal the name or location of a single child. How many of us would stand this?

JB

P.S. Sendler died a year ago and insisted to the end that she had not done enough. Who could?